If a man really wants to drink himself into a drunkard's grave, he can
certainly save time by going to Maine. Those desiring the most prompt and
vigorous style of jim-jams at cut rates will do well to examine Maine
goods before going elsewhere. Let a man spend a week in Boston, where the
Maine liquor law, I understand, is not in force, and then, with no warning
whatever, be taken into the heart of Maine; let him land there a stranger
and a partial orphan, with no knowledge of the underground methods of
securing a drink, and to him the world seems very gloomy, very sad, and
extremely arid.
At the Bangor depot a woman came up to me and addressed me. She was rather
past middle age, a perfect lady in her manners, but a little full.
I said: “Madam, I guess you will have to excuse me. You have the
advantage. I can't just speak your name at this moment. It has been now
thirty years since I left Maine, a child two years old. So people have
changed. You've no idea how people have grown out of my knowledge. I don't
see but you look just as young as you did when I went away, but I'm a poor
hand to remember names, so I can't just call you to mind.”
She was perfectly ladylike in her manner, but a little bit drunk. It is
singular how drunken people will come hundreds of miles to converse with
me. I have often been alluded to as the “drunkard's friend.” Men have been
known to get intoxicated and come a long distance to talk with me on some
subject, and then they would lean up against me and converse by the hour.
A drunken man never seems to get tired of talking with me. As long as I am
willing to hold such a man up and listen to him, he will stand and tell me
about himself with the utmost confidence, and, no matter who goes by, he
does not seem to be ashamed to have people see him talking with me.
[Illustration: THAT BUTTONHOLE.]
I once had a friend who was very much liked by every one, so he drifted
into politics. For seven years he tried to live on free whiskey and
popular approval, but it wrecked him at last. Finally he formed the habit
of meeting me every day and explaining it to me, and giving me free
exhibitions of a breath that he had acquired at great expense. After he
got so feeble that he could not walk any more, this breath of his used to
pull him out of bed and drag him all over town. It don't seem hardly
possible, but it is so. I can show you the town yet.
He used to take me by the buttonhole when he conversed with me. This is a
diagram of the buttonhole.
If I had a son I would warn him against trying to subsist solely on
popular approval and free whiskey. It may do for a man engaged solely in
sedentary pursuits, but it is not sufficient in cases of great muscular
exhaustion. Free whiskey and popular approval on an empty stomach are
highly injurious.
Railway Etiquette.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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