“By George!” the unfortunate young man explained. “You _do_ make me sick! I suppose if I had smallpox you’d say you weren’t denying I believed I had it! You sit there and drink your buttermilk, and laugh at me like a ninny because you can’t understand! No man on earth can understand, unless he has the thirst come on him the way mine does on me! And yet you tell me I only ‘believe’ I have it!” “Yes, I ought to explain,” said Mr. Allen soothingly. “It did sound unfeeling. One of the reasons you drink, Joe, is because this is a small town;—you have an active mind, a lot of the time there’s nothing much to do, and you get bored.” “I told you nobody could understand such a thirst as mine—nobody except the man that’s got one like it!” “This hankering is something inside you, isn’t it, Joe?” “What of that?” “It comes on you about every so often?” “Yes.” “If there weren’t any liquor in the world, you’d have the thirst for it just the same, would you?” “Just the same,” Perley answered. “And go crazy from it.” “Whereas,” Mr. Allen returned, “since liquor’s obtainable you prefer to go crazy from the imbibing of it instead of from the hanker for it. You find that more ossedalious, and nobody can blame you. But suppose alcohol had never been discovered, would you have the hanker?” “No, because I wouldn’t have inherited it from my father. You know as well as I do, how it runs in my family.” “So I do, Joe; so I do!” Mr. Allen sighed reminiscently. “Both your father and your Uncle Sam went that way. I remember them very well, and how they enjoyed it. That’s different from you, Joe.” “Different!” Joe laughed bitterly. “Do you suppose I get any ‘enjoyment’ out of it? Three days I’ll drink now; then I’ll be in hell—and I’ve got to go on. I’ve _got_ to!” “Funny about its being hereditary,” said Lucius, musing aloud. “I expect you rather looked forward to that, Joe?” His companion stared at him fiercely. “What do you mean by that?” he demanded. “You always thought it was _going_ to be hereditary, didn’t you, Joe? From almost when you were a boy?” “Yes, I did. What of it?” “And maybe—” Lucius suggested, with the utmost mildness—“just possibly, say about the time you began to use liquor a little at first, you decided that this hereditary thing was inevitable, and the idea made you melancholy about yourself, of course; but after all, you felt that the hereditary thing made a pretty fair excuse to yourself, didn’t you?” “See here,” Joe said angrily, “I’m not in any mood to stand——” “Pshaw!” Lucius interrupted. “I was only going on to say that it’s more and more curious to me about this hereditary notion. I’m thirty-five, and you’re only twenty-six. I remember well when your father began to drink especially. I was seventeen years old, and you were about eight. You see you were already born then, and so I can’t understand about the thirst being heredi——”