dollar the people pay into the liquor traffic that gives a few cents into
the treasury, is costin' the people ten times that dollar in the loss
intemperance entails, loss of labor, by the inability of drunken men to do
anything but wobble and stagger, loss of wealth by the enormous losses of
property and taxation, of alms-houses, mad-houses, jails, police forces,
paupers' coffins, and the diggin' of thousands and thousands of graves
that are filled yearly by them that reel into 'em." Sez I, "Wouldn't it
be better for the people to pay that dollar in the first place into the
treasury than to let it filter through the dram-seller's hands, a few cents
of it fallin' into the national purse at last, putrid and heavy with all
these losses and curses and crimes and shames and despairs and agonies?"

He seemed to think it would, I see by the looks of his linement he did.
Every honorable man feels so in his heart, and yet they let the Liquor Ring
control 'em and lead 'em round. "It is queer, queer as a dog." Sez I, "The
intellectual and moral power of the United States are rolled up and thrust
into that Whiskey Ring and bein' drove by the whiskey dealers jest where
they want to drive 'em." Sez I, "It controls New York village and nobody
denies it, and the piety and philanthropy and culture and philosophy of
that village has to be drawed along by that Ring." And sez I, in low but
startlin' tones of principle:

"Where, where is it a-drawin' 'em to? Where is it drawin' the hull nation
to? Is it drawin' 'em down into a slavery ten times more abject and
soul-destroyin' than African slavery ever wuz? Tell me," sez I firmly,
"tell me!"

He did not try to frame a reply, he could not find a frame. He knowed it
wuz a conundrum boundless as truth and God's justice, and as solemnly deep
in its sure consequences of evil as eternity, and as sure to come as that