and all the rest o' the songs about drinkin'! And no wonder,' says he, 'for where'll you find a prettier sight than a clear glass tumbler with a sprig o' mint and a silver spoon in it and two or three lumps o' sugar dissolvin' in the julep?' And the Judge says, 'All right! All right! Keep your toddy and your julep in a glass tumbler and look at 'em and write poetry about 'em, and I won't say a word against 'em. But,' says he, 'when they get inside of a man, where's your poetry then?' Says he, 'It'll take some mighty plain prose to fit that situation,' says he. "Well, they had it up and down and back and forth, and finally their friends had to hold 'em to keep 'em from comin' to blows. But as I was sayin', that coffee house was the beginnin' of Sam Amos's troubles and Milly's. The coffee house was a sociable sort of a place, and Sam was a sociable sort of a man, and it was natural for him to go there and see his friends and talk with 'em, and the first thing we knew he was drinkin' with 'em; not much, but enough to unsettle his brain and make him talk wild and act foolish. And he went on followin' the same old beaten track that men 'a' been walkin' since the days of Noah. And at last he got to neglectin' his farm, and he'd go to town every week and come home in such a condition that it wasn't safe for Milly and the children to be in the same house with him. Folks used to say that the first drink made Sam a fool, and the second drink made him a devil, and the third drink put the fool and the devil to sleep. "Sam was as smart a man as you'd find anywhere, and many a time I used to feel for Milly when he'd mortify her before company by sayin' foolish things he never would 'a' said if he'd been in his right senses. I ricollect once she had a parlor full o' company and she was showin' an ambrotype of her brother David, and somebody passed it to Sam and he took it and looked at it right hard, and says he, 'Shuh! that don't look half as much like Dave as he looks like himself.' And another time, one county court day, me and Abram happened to be standin' on the corner in front o' the old drug store, and Sam come a staggerin' up and laid his hand on Abram's shoulder and looked him straight in the eye like he had somethin' mighty important to say, and says he, 'Uncle Abram, I want to tell you right here and now, and don't you ever forgit it; if there's anything I do despise it's one thing more'n another.' I don't believe Abram ever got through laughin' at that. And if Sam had only stopped at the first glass that made a fool of him, his drinkin' would 'a' been a small matter. But the man that can stop at one glass don't live in Kentucky, child, and so Sam went from the first glass to the second and from the second to the third and from that to the gutter. And many a time the neighbors had to pick Sam up and bring him home, for betwixt the shame of seein' him in that condition and the danger of bein' with him, Milly had to stop goin' to town.