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Make the life of your community cheerful and pleasant and interesting, you reformers, provide men with recreation which will not harm them, if you want to take away the power of the gilded saloon and the grimy boozing-ken. Parks and play-grounds, libraries and music-rooms, clean homes and cheerful churches, these are the efficient foes of intemperance.
"Pshaw! sentimental," cried Long Ned, a little alarmed at the thought of Paul's gliding from those clutches which he thought had now so firmly closed upon him. "Why, you surely don't mean, after having once tasted the joys of independence, to go back to the boozing-ken, and bear all Mother Lobkins's drunken tantrums! Better have stayed with MacGrawler, of the two!"
The booty was enormous, and a week later he revisited the shop on another errand. This second visit was the one flash of genius in a somewhat drab career: the jeweller was so completely dumfounded, that Vaux might have got clean away. But though he kept discreetly out of sight for a while, at last he drifted back to his ancient boozing-ken, and was there betrayed to a notorious thief-catcher.
Carew, he crossed the way, came up to him, and in the cant language, asked where he lay last night, what road he was going, and several other questions; then, whether he would brush into a boozing-ken and be his thrums; to this he consented, and away they went; where, in the course of their conversation, they asked each other various questions concerning the country, the charitable and uncharitable families, the moderate and severe justices, the good and queer corporations.
That the following tale was banned by the oligarchs we have proof from the records of the criminal police court of Ashbury, wherein, on January 27, 2734, one John Tourney, found guilty of telling the tale in a boozing-ken of labourers, was sentenced to five years' penal servitude in the borax mines of the Arizona Desert. Listen, my brothers, and I will tell you a tale of an arm.
Count Victor thought of Barisdale and his cousin-german, young Glengarry, gambling in that frowsiest boozing-ken in the Rue Tarane the Café de la Paix without credit for a louis d'or; he thought of James Mor Drummond and the day he came to him behind the Tuileries stable clad in rags of tartan to beg a loan; none of these was the picturesque figure of loyalty in exile that he should care to paint for this young woman.
She had slipped the hood of her parka back, and her face, outlined against the dark fur, rosy with the cold and bright, was like a shaft of the sun shot into the murk of a boozing-ken. They all knew her, for who did not know Jacob Welse's daughter?
Now, I do not wish to idealize those stiffs. No use saying they were honest workingmen kidnaped to sea. They were not. They were just what the mates called them dogs, scum, vile sweeps of jail and boozing-ken. With the single exception of the shanghaied parson, there was not a decent man in the lot. Bums and crooks, all. These men had lived violent, lawless lives ashore.
One is strongly led to believe that this is the origin of our cant word boozing-ken, imported from the East by the gipsies some four or five centuries ago. A grateful and luxurious operation in the warm climate of India, more especially after the fatigue of travelling. Shampooing is a word of uncertain etymology; the French have a better term, masser.
"Pshaw! sentimental," cried Long Ned, a little alarmed at the thought of Paul's gliding from those clutches which he thought had now so firmly closed upon him. "Why, you surely don't mean, after having once tasted the joys of independence, to go back to the boozing-ken, and bear all Mother Lobkins's drunken tantrums! Better have stayed with MacGrawler, of the two!"
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