The Old Soak was silent a moment, and then he said: “This here installment of my diary of booze takes up that very point of quarrellin' with the Old Woman.” CHAPTER EIGHT--The Old Soak's History--More Evils of Prohibition WELL, another kick I got on the abvolition of ' the barroom is the fact that you got to stay around home so much and that naturally leads to having a row with your wife. When there was barrooms my wife used to jaw me every time I come home anyways lit up and I just let her jaw me and there wasn't any row for I figured better let her get away with it who knows maybe she thinks she is right about it. But now I stick around home a good deal of the time and it leads to words. Well, she says to me, why don't you go and get a job of work of some kind. Well, I tell her, mind your own business I always been a good pervider ain't I. You have got five or six children working for you ain't you and a man that pervides his wife with five or six children to work for her is not going to listen to no back talk. Well, she says, you ought to be ashamed to loaf around home all the time. Well, I says, I'm thinking up a big business deal but that's the way with women they never understand they got to keep their mouth shut and give a man peace and quiet to do his thinking in so he can make them a good living all they think about is newfangled ways to spend the money after he has slaved himself half to death making it. Well, she says, I ain't seen you slaving any lately. Well, I tells her, I done all my hard slaving when I was young and I got a little money coming in right along from them two houses I own, and I ain't going to work myself into the grave for no extravagant woman, and me with a heart pappitation you can hear half a mile on a clear day. Well, she says, what rent money them two houses brings in don't any more than pay for the booze you drink. Well, I says, you Prohibitionists done that to me. You went and made it plumb impossible to get good liquor for any reasonable price. That there rent money used to pay for three times the booze I drink. Well, she says, you oughta get a job. If I was to tie myself down to a job, I tells her, what chance would I have to trade and dicker around and make little turnovers, let alone thinking up this big business deal I am working on. You are a liar, she said, and if I knowed where your whiskey was hid I'd bust every bottle and what kind of a business deal are you thinking up. It is an invention I says to her and you mind your own business just because I have stood for you intrupting me for forty years is no sign I am going to stand for it forty years more. You can quit any time she says and good riddance the children will keep me and there will be one less to cook for besides being ashamed of you before all my own friends and the nice people the children know.