Best Short Stories Omnibus - Volume 2

XIII—Peace and Contentment

XIII—Peace and Contentment

”Prohibition”, said the Old Soak, “is doing more harm than you can see with the n***d eye. Formerly when a man called up and told his wife that he was detained at his office by an unexpected caller on business just as he was starting home his wife knew he had stopped to take three or four balls with the boys on the corner and thought very little about it. Now she wonders if that unexpected caller could have been a lady.

“When a man came home late with the smell of liquor on his breath he knew he was in bad, but he knew just how bad in he was. Now everything is uncertainty and guesswork everywhere, and intellects is cracking under strains on all sides.

“It must 'a' been the same way back in the historic days of iniquity and antiquity, when the Roman Empire switched all of a sudden from being heathen to being Christian; everybody had to be good all of a sudden, and only a few had learnt how; and everybody that hadn't quite succeeded in turning Christian went around for a while wondering if everybody else was as gosh-darned Christian as they let on to be. I know a lot of people now that says they're on the wagon, but I'd hate to go so sound asleep in a street car that I wouldn't wake up if they tried to pull my flask out of my pocket. I don't struggle none trying to be good, myself. I'm a dipsomaniac, and I know it, and I'm contented to be that way.

“Years ago I used to struggle, and think maybe I would quit drinking some time, and it kept me unhappy. But as soon as I come right out and acknowledged Booze as my boss and master, and set him up and crowned him king, a great peace fell onto me, and I ceased to struggle, and I been happy and contented and full of love for my fellow men ever since. There ain't nothing like finding out which g**g you belong to and sticking to your own crowd consistent. If I had only been brought up to be a drunkard when I was young I would 'a' settled into it natural and been saved a lot of worry and struggle and uncertainty. But there was years when I fit against it, from time to time, and it kept me unsettled and discontented, and I wasted a lot of good time trying to keep sober when I might 'a' been drunk and cheerful, radiating joy and happiness into the world and being of some use to my fellow men. But I s'pose everybody thinks if they had their life to live over again they'd do different, and the main thing is to reach peace and contentment toward the end, as I have reached it.”

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