The means to which they resorted to bring this about seemed equally strange. By a sort of general consent, a certain number of them were chosen to absorb all the respectability, property, and comfort of the rest. These individuals distributed themselves about in different quarters of the towns, and you could easily have recognized their habitations from the rest for being the finer buildings, which increased in size as the surrounding dwellings of their neighbors became the more squalid, desolate, and uninhabitable. They, with their wives and children, also added the more to their comfort and luxury as the families about them became the nakeder and the hungrier. So far was all this carried, that, I observed, not a few, after having given up all their own, would often go and steal from others, and carry not only money, but even articles of furniture and clothing, to these men, who seemed also to be very popular persons and great favorites, if I might judge of the number of their clients and the pleasure apparently derived from long visits to them, to the loss of the company of their friends and families, and of their natural rest after wearisome days of toil. I wondered greatly at all this, and asked my guide to explain it to me. "Do you not see," said he, "that these rich and powerful persons are in possession of a wonderful elixir? {71} It is said to produce happiness for those who may obtain a little of it, and these people are so anxious to be happy that they eagerly give up all they have, and all they hope for in this world and the next, in order to get some of it." "I do not see," I said, "that it makes those who use it happy; on the contrary, they seem to me to be really bartering all their means of happiness away, and getting nothing but misery in exchange." "You need only look around you upon those comfortless homes and diseased men and women, and glance at their daily lives, to confirm the truth of your observation," he replied. "Then these poor, misguided souls are only grasping at shadows of happiness, and losing the reality in the meanwhile?" "You have spoken the truth," said he; "and you need not be surprised at it, for the country you are in is called the Land of the Shadow of Happiness." "I will tarry no longer here," said I, "for the sight sickens me. I will return quickly to my own country." "So you may," said my guide; "but the seller of the shadow of happiness lives and thrives with you also." "Does he?" I asked. "And what may he be called?" {72} "The Dram-seller." I awoke from my reverie, and found myself standing, not in a strange land, but in the streets of my own city, before a fine brick building, ornamented with cut stone, proudly rearing its showy front, and looking down with contempt upon the humble homes of the poor that surrounded it; and glittering in the sunshine shone the gilded sign-board over its doors, "IMPORTED WINES AND LIQUORS."