"Tom, I never felt, that I had a father till I found you. Elizabeth,
girl, I never knew what happiness was till you told me you loved me.
My mother says she would never consent to her son's marrying the
daughter of a man who has kept a livery-stable. I say that I'm done
with a family that made its money out of whisky. My mother's father
was a distiller, her grandfather was a distiller, and if there's any
shame, it's mine, for by all the standards of decency, a livery-
stable is a hundred times more respectable than a warehouse full of
whisky. You made your money honestly, but ours has been wrung out of
the poor, the sick, the ragged, the distressed. The whisky business
is a rotten business, Tom, rotten!"

"It was whisky that bought an ambassadorship for my mother's
brother; it was whisky that paid for the French count my sister
married; it was whisky that sent me to college. Whisky, whisky-
always whisky!"

"I never thought twice about it before, but I've done some tall
thinking today. I'm done with the Porters, root and branch.
Elizabeth and I are going to start a little family tree, of our own,
and we're not going to root it in a whisky barrel, either. We're--
we're--"

"There, there!" said Dad. "It's all right, Blakely, boy. It ain't so
bad as you think. You ain't going to throw your mother over and your
mother ain't going to throw you over. I take it that all mothers are
alike; they love their sons. Naturally, you're sore and disappointed
now, but I reckon that mother of yours is sore and disappointed,
too. As for our going to Del Monte, I never heard of a Middleton yet
that cut and ran at a time like this, and Elizabeth and I ain't