“I can’t work so many hours a day without drinking sometimes,” replied the clerk. “What I ask of you is to take a boy. If I could come in a couple of hours later every morning—and there’s next to nothing done in the first two hours of the day—I could have a decent amount of rest, not have to hurry so much, and wouldn’t break down so often, and have to go to whisky to be helped up again.”
“A boy would have to be paid,” remarked the Squire in the tone he habitually used when making a penitential speech in class-meeting; “and here’s summer-time coming; there isn’t much business done in summer, you know.”
“A boy won’t cost more than a dollar a week the first year,” replied the clerk, “and you’d make that out of the people who sometimes have to go somewhere else and trade on days when you’re not here and I’m too busy to wait on them. There isn’t so much money made in summer; but women come to the store then a good deal more than they do in the winter, and they take up an awful amount of time. Besides, the store has to be opened about two hours earlier every morning than it does in winter.”
The merchant pinched his gloomy brow and reflected. Doughty looked at him without much hopefulness. The Squire’s heart might be all right, but his pocket-book was by far the more sensitive and controlling organ. At last the Squire said,
“Well, if it’s for your good that you want the boy, you ought to be willing to pay his salary. Besides——”
“Excuse me, Squire Tomple,” interrupted Doughty; “ ’tisn’t for my good alone. ‘Accursed be he who putteth the bottle to his brother’s lips.’ I’ve heard you quote that to more than one man right in this store. That’s what you’re doing to me if you keep on. You sell half as much again as any other storekeeper in town, and why? Because I am smart enough to hold custom. I haven’t cared to do anything else. I’ve given myself up to making and holding custom for you, and I took to whisky to keep me up to my work.”
“Well, haven’t I paid you for all you’ve done?” demanded the proprietor.
“Yes; but now I ask you to pay a little more. I’ve told you why; and now the case stands just here: which do you care for most, the price of a boy or the soul of your faithful clerk? You say a man’s soul’s in danger if he drinks.”
“Well, I’ll tell you, George,” replied the Squire, “I’ll think about it. I want to do what’s right; but I—I don’t like to have other people’s sins fastened on me.”
CHAPTER III.
A WET BLANKET.
The first task to which the penitent Crupp devoted himself on the morning after the meeting was hardly that which his new admirers had supposed he would attempt. They imagined he would knock in the heads of his barrels, and allow the accursed contents to flood his cellar; but Crupp, on the contrary, closed out the entire lot, for cash, at the highest prices he could exact from dealers with whom he had lately been in competition. “ ’Twas a splendid lot of liquors,” said Crupp, in the course of an explanatory speech at the post-office, while every one was waiting for the opening of the regular daily mail; “and though I do feel above sellin’ ’em over the counter, they’re better for men that will drink than any that have ever come into Barton since I’ve been here.”
With easier mind and heavier pocket, the ex-rumseller then called upon the Rev. Jonas Wedgewell. That good man’s domestic, although from an ever-green isle whose children do not generally regard whisky with abhorrence, had sympathetically caught the spirit of her employers, and as she had not heard of Mr. Crupp’s change of mind, she left him standing on the piazza while she called Mr. Wedgewell. The divine descended the stairway two steps at a time, dived into the parlor, and had a congratulatory speech half delivered before he discovered that the new convert was not there. He wildly shouted, “Mr. Crupp!” traced the penitent by his voice, escorted him to the parlor with a series of hand-shakings, shoulder-pattings, and bows, and forcibly dropped him into an elegant chair which Mrs. Wedgewell had bought only to show, and in which no member of the family had ever dared to sit.
“Ah, my valiant friend,” said the Rev. Jonas, hastily drawing a chair near Mr. Crupp, and shedding upon him the full effulgence of a countenance beaming with enthusiastic adoration; “the morning songs of the angels of God must have been sweeter this morning as they thought of your noble deed. You have cast off the shackles of a most accursed bondage. Doubtless you wish to fulfill all of the conditions of the liberty with which Christ hath made you free. The church——”
“Excuse me, parson,” interrupted Mr. Crupp; “but I don’t want to join the church—not just now, anyhow. I——”
“Wish to consecrate your ill-gotten gains to the service of the Lord,” broke in the good pastor; but Mr. Crupp frowned, then pouted, then compressed his lips tightly, and gave so sudden a twitch as to wrench one of the joints of the sacred chair, as he replied:
“No, sir, I don’t, for I haven’t any ill-gotten gains. I never sold anything but good liquor, and the price was always fair. I never sold any liquor to a drunken man, either. What I came to you for is this: I know who drinks, when they drink, what they take, and I know pretty well why they drink. Some of them signed the pledge last night, and they’re going to have an awful hard job in keeping it.”
“Prayer——” interrupted the minister, but the hard-headed Crupp quickly completed the sentence.
“Prayer never cured a dyspeptic stomach, that I’ve heard of, and I don’t believe it’ll take away a man’s hunger for whisky. These fellows that’s been drinking, and have got anything to ’em, can be kept from falling into the old ways again; but they’ve got to be handled carefully, and what I came to you for was to ask who was going to do the handling? You know who’s free-handed with money in your congregation, and free-handed men ought to be free-hearted. I’m going to Dominie Brown on the same errand, and to the other preachers, too.”
Mr. Crupp’s speech consumed only a moment of time, but its effect upon the preacher was wonderful—and depressing. From being a mirror of irrepressible Christian exultation, Mr. Wedgewell’s face became as solemn as it ever was when he bemoaned from the pulpit the apathy of the elect. His eyes enlarged behind his glasses, and he stared for a moment in an abstracted manner at a dreadful chromo which hung upon his wall—a chromo at which no one in active possession of his mental faculties could possibly have looked so long. But the old pastor had a heart so great that even his theology had been unable to wall it in, and after a moment of inevitable despondency he realized that Crupp was intent upon doing good.
“Mr. Crupp,” said he, turning his head suddenly, and regaining a portion of his earlier expression of countenance, “I do not fully comprehend your intention, but I can see that it is good. May I ask what the people of God can do for these beings who have been under the dominion of alcohol?”
“Well, it’s a long story,” replied the old bartender. “Among them that signed, there isn’t one in ten that ever drank, and of them that drank, half of ’em’ll take something before night.”
“And break their solemn vow! Awful! awful!” ejaculated the minister.
“Yes,” said Crupp, “’tis awful; but, on the other hand, there’s some that’s in earnest. There’s Tom Adams, now—he that drives the brick-yard team. Tom’s a good, square, honest fellow, and he loves his family, but I don’t see how he’s going to stop drinking. He can’t work without it; leastways, he can’t work along the way he’s working now. Deacon Jones ought to give him easier work to do until he can bring himself around; but Deacon Jones won’t waste his money in that way, if he is a member of your church. Then there’s old Bunley: there isn’t anything to him. He’s been drinking and drinking