It was late in that winter that the trading instinct cropped out in my uncle and aunt. They decided to open a candy-store in the tenement where we lived. For this purpose the landlord was persuaded to allow them to use the bow window for display purposes. The parlor was fitted with a small counter, a large store lamp, and a various assortment of sodas, confectionery and pastry. That was a prohibition year in city politics, and the tenement thirst was pronounced to be “something awful!” Desperate men were compelled to go away on holidays and Saturdays to get what refreshment they could. The police were on keen watch for illegal selling. They were making daily raids in different parts of the city. Liquors had been found in cellars, hidden under the floors, in flasks buried in the bodies of huge codfish, water-pipes had been cut off from the main pipes and tapped to barrels of whisky and beer; every trick possible to the imagination seemed to have been uncovered, yet my aunt undertook to let some chosen throats in the neighborhood know that she planned to keep a supply of intoxicants on hand. I was asked, at night, to take a pint of whiskey here and there to some shut-in woman like Old Burnt Jane, a cripple from a fire, who always let tears fall in the food she was cooking as she said: “Wait, wait, little boy, dearie. I’ll get my mon-ey when I’ve got this taste of cheese off; wait like a good little boy!” Our customers, who came for a drink at any time, had a secret sign whereby they could ask for intoxicants without mentioning them by name. On Sundays, our kitchen would be filled with men and women having their thirsts quenched. My Aunt Millie rubbed her hands with satisfaction over the prosperous business she did. But one Sunday afternoon there came three plain-clothes men to the shop. The alarm had been given, and Aunt Millie waited for the raid with no outward traces of fear. There were some people at the rear of the house, and they were engaged in a very busy, “manufactured” conversation about “Charley’s throat trouble” when the officers came in the back to investigate. If they sniffed the air for traces of whisky, they only got a superabundance of “mint” and “musk,” “lozengers” half thrown into the customers’ mouths by Aunt Millie. A “complete” investigation was made, covering the back-yard, the cellar, the kitchen, the counter, and the bedrooms, but no illegal wares were found, and the officers left the shop in chagrin. As they left, my Aunt Millie bent her fond gaze towards a row of black bottles that stood in a row in the display window, marked, “Ginger,” “Spruce,” and “Birch.” “You dear creatures,” she cried, “what a salvation you are!” Whereat, she took one to the back room, uncorked it, and poured out a noggin of whiskey apiece for each of her customers, and the “throat trouble” gave way to a discussion of, “What tasty stuff it is, this whiskey!”