I've heard people say that things--like liquor, for instance--couldn't get the best of such and such a man, because he was strong-willed. What kind of argument is that? Suppose he _wants_ to drink. Ain't his strong will going to make him drink just that much harder, and be that much harder to turn back, than a man with a putty spine? The only backbone some men has is what their neighbors think. Them you can handle. But the man that rules himself generally finds it quite different from being the lady boss of an old woman's home. Just because he's fit to rule, he'll rebel, and he'll scrap with himself till they put a stone up, marking the place of a drawn battle. But the neighbors won't know it. They'll envy him the dead easy time he had, or get mad when he does something foolish--loses one heat out of many that the neighbors didn't even dare to run--and gossip over him. "Who'd think a man that's lived as good a life as Mr. Smith would," and so forth. But you can't blame the neighbors neither. Most people reasonably prefer peace to war, and with a man like Sax it's war most of the time. You have to care a heap to stay with him. Well, he was in a bad way for sure. He talked fast--often not finishing what he had to say. He laughed a great deal, too, and when the laugh passed and the dreary look came on his face again, it was enough to make you shiver. Presently a nice little man came up--a Spaniard and a gentleman. From the time I took hold of his hand I felt more cheerful. You knew by his eye he understood things. Sax introduced him as an old friend and as his partner in the business. "Perez puts up the money and the experience," says he, "and I put up a bold front." "After I've begged you not to speak in that way?" says Perez, smiling, but reproachful. "I'm not sailing under false colors," says Sax, sharp. "You've made an asylum for an empty head--you'll have to listen to it." Perez dropped the subject at once. The Spaniard turned to me and asked me most courteously about my aims in the country. We were talking along when Saxton interrupted us. "We'll never get enough to drink this way," says he; "come into the office." We went back into the little room where they entertained the big customers. Saxton called a boy and ordered brandy. When it came he grabbed the bottle feverishly. As he did so, Perez glanced at me. We understood each other. Sax couldn't drink until we joined him--habit again--how she pulls! He wanted that drink. It was the one thing he did want in the world, yet there he waited while we fooled away as much time as we could. "Well, here's regards!" he said at last, and his lower jaw trembled with eagerness. Perez drank and I made the motions. "That's the stuff!" says Sax, with a cheap swagger that knocked me harder than anything I'd seen so far. "The good old truck that you Spaniards mollify under the name of aguardiente is the solution of all problems, Perez."