But Elder Morton jumped up, and says he,—“There was two kinds of likker in earlier times; one that was unfermented and harmless, and contained no alcohol or any principle of intoxication, and another that contained this raging mocker.” Then old Peedick spoke up. Says he,—“Likker would be all right if it wasn’t for the adultery in it: poison stuff, wormwood, and etcetery.” But Dr. Bombus jumped up, and says he,—“Nothing that can be put into it, can be worse poison than the pure alcohol itself, for that is a rank poison for which no antidote has ever been found; useful for medical purposes, like some other poisons: arsenic, opium, laudanum, and so 4th.” But old Peedick kep’ a mutterin’,—“I know there’s adultery in it;” and kep’ a goin’ on till Cornelius Cork, the President, sot him down, and choked him off. Solomon Cypher spoke up, and says he: “No! licence bills don’t do no good; there is more likker drunk when there haint no licence, than when there is. If you hinder one man from sellin’ it, another will.” I declare, that excited me so, that entirely unbeknown to myself, I spoke right out loud to Josiah: “Good land! of all the poor excuses I ever heerd, that is the poorest. If I don’t kill my grandmother, somebody else will; or she’ll die herself, of old age, or sunthin’; good land!” The sound of my voice kinder brought my mind back, and Josiah hunched me hard, and I went to knittin’ dretful fast. Whitfield looked round to me and kinder smiled, and says he, right out in meetin’: “That’s so, Mother Allen!” I declare for’t, I didn’t know whether I was seamin’ two and one, or towin’ off, or in the narrowins. I was agitated. But Whitfield went right on, for it was his turn. His speech was about licencing wrong: admitting a thing was wrong, evil in itself and evil in its effects, and then allowin’ folks to carry on the iniquity, if they’d pay enough for it. It was about givin’ folks the privilege of bein’ mean, for money; about a nation sellin’ the right to do wrong, and so 4th. Whitfield done well; I know it, and Tirzah Ann knows it. Jest as quick as he sot down, Solomon Cypher got up and says he—with an air as if the argument he was about to bring forred, would bring down the school-house, convince everybody, and set the question to rest forever: “The way I look at it, is this:” said he, (smitin’ his breast as hard as I ever see a breast smote,) “if there haint no licence, if a man treats me, and I want to treat him back again, where—” (and again he smote his breast almost fearfully,) “_where_ will I git my likker to do it with.” “That’s so;” said Simon Slimpsey, “there he has got you; you can’t git round that.”