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"We won't wait for no law; if we only ketch him we will hang him up so high that the buzzards can't git him." And then he yelled out savage and fierce and started off on a run for the swamp, the rest of the men applaudin' him up high, and follerin' on after him. And Josiah told me that wuz the saloon-keeper up to Zoar. Sez I, "The very man that sold that poor sinner the licker on that night?"
I'm not sayin' the world wouldn't be better off if there wasn't any licker to drink. It stands to reason that there wouldn't be half so much bunglin' if people kept sober, 'specially when it comes to crime. Now, if this guy Sancho had had a couple of pints in him, everybody would be going around preachin' about the horrible effects of booze, and What say?"
Of course, says he, a minister of the gospel ain't even supposed to know what licker tastes like, and I says to him that's where we have the advantage of him. We know what it tastes like, and we like it, and we leave it alone because it cramps our style. He leaves it alone because it's the style for preachers to leave it alone, and because they'd go to hell if they drank like ordinary men.
Bill used to think o' ways, too, knowing the 'arm the drink was doing 'im, and his fav'rite plan was for 'is missis to empty a bucket o' cold water over 'im every time he came 'ome the worse for licker. She did it once, but as she 'ad to spend the rest o' the night in the back yard it wasn't tried again. Bill got worse as he got older, and even made away with the furniture to get drink with.
I went up in the hill country, fur up from my home, an' the man what I stopped with was a maker of licker an' atter dark I went with him to his still an' helped him fetch some wood for the fire; an' jest as I flung down a turn, bang, bang, an' here was the government men.
"Yev hed a long ride, Josh," said he, leaning towards the table and clutching hold of the bottle: "try a taste o' this hyur rot-gut 'taint the daintiest o' drink to offer a man so genteelly dressed as you air this morning; but thur's wuss licker in these hyur back'oods, I reckun. Will ye mix? Thur's water in the jug thar." "No water for me," was the laconic reply. "Yur right 'bout that.
Write a book o' poems, and ca' it 'A Voice fra' the Goose, by a working Tailor' and then why, after a dizen years or so of starving and scribbling for your bread, ye'll ha' a chance o' finding yoursel' a lion, and a flunkey, and a licker o' trenchers ane that jokes for his dinner, and sells his soul for a fine leddy's smile till ye presume to think they're in earnest, and fancy yoursel' a man o' the same blude as they, and fa' in love wi' one o' them and then they'll teach you your level, and send ye off to gauge whusky like Burns, or leave ye' to die in a ditch as they did wi' puir Thom."
"It's all right for you, becos it's the last licker as you'll be allowed to taste, but it's rough on me and the cook." "Damn you an' the cook," said the skipper, and went on deck to see whether the men's tongues were hanging out.
Why, you've been the makin' of me. And a long time ago, when I used to drink licker and fight, you'd set up and wait for me and you never scolded me, and that very fact turned me agin licker, for I jest nachully thought that it was too much work for you to keep up a show of good humor all the time.
"'Now, as to the Adamses' apple, which he would consider next in this brief reply, he went on to explain, 'Science teached us that the Adamses' apple didn't have no regular functions to speak of, and what few it did have bore no relation to the consumption of licker in the reg'lar and customary manner, viz., to-wit, by swallowing of the same from demijohn, dipper, tumbler or gourd.
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