CONSCIENCE. Let me see. Five hundred dollars, or one hundred dollars, earned to promote the cause of religion by selling poison! By killing husbands, and fathers, and brothers, and torturing poor women and children! It smells of blood--and can God possibly accept of such an offering? DEALER. So then, it seems, I must stop the sale at once, or entirely forfeit what little charity you have left. CONSCIENCE. You must. Delay is death--death to the consumer at least; and how can you flatter yourself that it will not prove your own eternal death? My convictions are decisive, and be assured, I deal thus plainly because I love you, and cannot bear to become your everlasting tormentor. DIALOGUE III. AT THE RETAILER'S STAND. CONSCIENCE. Do you know that little half-starved, bare-footed child, that you just sent home with two quarts of rank poison? (Retailer hums a tune to himself, and affects not to hear the question.) CONSCIENCE. I see by the paper of this morning, that the furniture of Mr. M---- is to be sold under the hammer to-morrow. Have I not often seen him in your taproom? RETAILER. I am extremely busy just now, in bringing up our ledger. CONSCIENCE. Have you heard how N---- abused his family, and turned them all into the street the other night, after being supplied by you with whiskey? RETAILER. He is a _brute_, and ought to be confined in a dungeon six months at least, upon bread and water. CONSCIENCE. Was not S----, who hung himself lately, one of your steady customers? and where do you think his soul is now fixed for eternity? You sold him rum that evening, not ten minutes before you went to the prayer-meeting, and had his money in your pocket--for you would not trust him--when you led in the exercises. I heard you ask him once, why he did not attend meeting, and send his children to the Sabbath-school; and I shall never forget his answer. "Come, you talk like a minister; but, after all, we are about of one mind--at least in some things. Let me have my jug and be going." RETAILER. I know he was an impudent, hardened wretch; and though his death was extremely shocking, I am glad to be rid of him. CONSCIENCE. Are you ready to meet him at the bar of God, and to say to the Judge, "He was my neighbor--I saw him going down the broad way, and I did every thing that a Christian could do to save him?" RETAILER. (Aside. O that I could stifle the upbraidings of this cruel monitor.) You keep me in constant torment. This everlasting cant about _rank poison, and liquid fire, and blood, and murder_, is too much for even a Christian to put up with. Why, if any body but Conscience were to make such insinuations and charges, he would be indictable as a foul slanderer, before a court of justice.