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Updated: October 21, 2025
Those who lived by the vices the low indulgences and the ruinous excesses of their fellow-creatures trembled and became aghast at its approach. The vulgar and dishonest publican, who sold a bona fide poison under a false name; the low tavern-keeper; the proprietor of the dram-shop; of the night-house; and the shebeen all were struck with terror and dismay. Their occupation was doomed to go.
And it was evident that what the peasant needed was not so much food as drink, and that whatever might be given him would find its way to the dram-shop. In these quarters, therefore, there were none of the sort of people whom I could render happy by a present of money. But there were poor people who appeared to me to be of a doubtful character.
But in his false oath for the man perjured himself in the first sentence he gained more courage. "Chester," he said, "had entered the dram-shop, where he and his friend" here the man pointed to his accomplice "were quietly passing an hour before going to fulfill an engagement. Here he spent perhaps half an hour, drinking brandy-and-water by the stove.
'Look here, 'Arry, the elder began, 'I want this explaining. What do you mean by shirking your work? There was no reply. 'Arry strode to the window and leaned against the side of it, in the attitude of a Sunday loafer waiting for the dram-shop to open. 'If this goes on, Richard pursued, 'you'll find yourself in your old position again.
He felt that his cruel words had entered that humble home, to make desperate poverty more desperate, to sicken sickness, and to sadden sorrow. Before him was the dram-shop, let and licensed to nourish the worst and most brutal appetites and instincts of human natures, at the sacrifice of all their highest and holiest tendencies.
The regular citizen gamblers were reinforced by numbers of insatiable chuck-a-luckers in the ranks, who would set up a "board" at the least chance, even under the enemy's fire, while waiting the order to move. Chuck-a-luck was Shorty's greatest weakness. He found it as difficult to pass a chuck-a-luck board as an incurable drunkard does to pass a dram-shop.
The cemetery of Mont-Parnasse, called the Eastern cemetery, succeeded to it, and inherited that famous dram-shop next to the Vaugirard cemetery, which was surmounted by a quince painted on a board, and which formed an angle, one side on the drinkers' tables, and the other on the tombs, with this sign: Au Bon Coing. The Vaugirard cemetery was what may be called a faded cemetery.
Fill again, and tell me, on the word of an honest toper, did you ever, in cellar, tavern, or any kind of a dram-shop, spend the price of your children's food for a swig half so delicious? Now, for the first time these ten years, you know the flavor of cold water. Good-bye; and whenever you are thirsty, remember that I keep a constant supply at the old stand. Who next?
"I have ascertained," he went on, smiling, "that the village is so healthy no physician can be supported. There is one church and good schools; though there is no hotel and not one dram-shop. I think we shall like it; and if you say you will try to be contented, I shall conclude the bargain at once and turn farmer." "Why, Lawrence, what do you know about such business?"
That such a herding together, almost in the centre of a great Christian city, of the utterly vicious and degraded, should be permitted, when every day's police and criminal records give warning of its cost and danger, is a marvel and a reproach. Almost every other house, in portions of this locality, is a dram-shop, where the vilest liquors are sold.
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