There shall be little more related on this point of dypsomania and its remedy. I took the prescription for a trio of days. At the expiration I sate me solemnly down and debated within myself whether or no I craved strong drink, with the full purpose of calling for it if I did. Absolutely, the anxiety was absent; and since I had resolved not to force the bottle upon myself, but to give the Jolly Doctor and his drug all proper show to gain a victory, I made no alcohol demands. All this was years ago, and from that hour until now, when I write these lines, I’ve neither taken nor wanted alcohol. I’ve gone freely where it was, and abode for hours at tables when others poured and tossed it off; for myself I’ve craved none and taken none. Toward the last of my stay, there came to dwell at the hostelry a goodly circle; one for a most part chance-sown. For days it had been snowing with a free, persistent hand; softly, industriously, indomitably fell the flakes, straight down and unflurried of a wind, until the cold light element lay about the tavern for a level depth of full three feet. It was the sort of weather in which one should read Whittier’s Snow-Bound. Our circle, as snow-pent and held within door we drew about the tavern fire, offered a chequered citizenry. On the earliest occasion of our comradeship, while the snow sifted about the old-fashioned panes and showed through them with the whiteness of milk, I cast my eye over the group to collect for myself a mental picture of my companions. At the right hand of the Jolly Doctor, solid in his arm chair, sat a Red Nosed Gentleman. He showed prosperous of this world’s goods and owned to a warm weakness for burgundy. He was particular to keep ever a bottle at his elbow, and constantly supported his interest in what was current with a moderate glass. In sharpest contrast to the Red Nosed Gentleman there should be mentioned a gray old gentleman of sour and forbidding eye. The Jolly Doctor, who had known him for long, gave me in a whisper his story. This Sour Gentleman, like the Red Nosed Gentleman, had half retired from the cares of business. The Red Nosed Gentleman in his later days had been a stock speculator, as in sooth had the Sour Gentleman, and each would still on occasion carry a few thousand shares for a week or two and then swoop on a profit with quite the eagerness of any hawk on any hen. Not to be overlooked, in a corner nearest the chimney was a seamed white old figure, tall and spare, yet with vigorous thews still strung in the teeth of his all but four score years. He was referred to during our amiable captivity, and while we sate snow-locked about the mighty fire-place, as the Old Cattleman. Half comrade and half ward, our Old Cattleman had with him a taciturn, grave individual, to whom he gave the title of “Sioux Sam,” and whose father, he informed us, had been a French trader from St. Louis, while his mother was a squaw of the tribe that furnished the first portion of his name.