XI—Jabe Potter's Optimism
509 Words
XI—Jabe Potter's OptimismNo, sir,” said the Old Soak, “I ain't got so darned much left. It may get me through a year, and it may run me only about ten months.
“But I don't want so much as I use to, for some reason. In course, no gentleman of the old school figgers on less than a quart a day, but there has been times when I exceeded that there limit. Looking back on them times, I don't know whether to be glad or sorry. It's a satisfaction to remember that I had the liquor, but it's a grief to know I won't never have that same liquor again.
“But at a quart a day, if I'm careful, and don't give any parties to new acquaintances that is took sudden with a love and admiration for me, I'll toddle along fer ten or twelve months yet. And by that time, something or other will happen in my favour; you see if it don't. Either the country will backslide into iniquity again in spots; or else somebody will die and leave me an island down near Cuba; or else Old Jabe Potter, my friend out on Long Island I told you of, will get his smuggling works started into operation.
“Fact is, Old Jabe is already set, and his smuggling works is ready to operate right now, only there don't seem to be nothin' to smuggle, Jabe says. He's got one of these here gasolene boats, and he goes out and makes signals to the ocean liners to and from Europe, but they ain't onto Jabe's signals, or something. I tell him he's got to make arrangements in advance with some of them transatlantic bartenders, for they don't know what he's driving at. 'Well,' Jabe says, 'you'd think they could tell by my looks I'm thirsty, wouldn't you?' Jabe, he's romantic and optimistic; but them notions of his is all right if they was only organized.”
He paused a while, refreshed himself from his pocket flask, and then took up another line of enquiry.
“What I would like to know,” he said, “is what mean folks is going to blame their meanness onto, now that booze is gone. It used to be a good excuse for a lot of people that wasn't worth nothin', and knowed it, and acted ornery... booze was the answer, everybody said. If they did anything they hadn't orter, people said they was all right except when they had a drink or two, but a drink or two changed their entire disposition, and the drink orter be blamed, and not them. My own observation and belief leads me to remark that them kind of folks was less ornery and mean when they had booze than when they didn't have it.
“Well, I notice in myself a kind of a habit growing up to blame everything onto Prohibition, just as Prohibitionists used to blame everything onto booze. I want to be fair to the drys, and I will say that neither Prohibition nor booze has much to do with making a mean man mean. I want to be fair to the drys, so as to show them up; they ain't fair to me, and when I'm fair to them it shows how superior I be.”
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- Writer
