ad been drinking also?"

"Oh, yes. There's no use in denying that."

"Liquor does you harm."

"Nobody knows that better than I do."

"Why do you drink, then?"

"Oh, just because it comes in the way. Liquor is under my eyes and nose
all the time, and it's as natural as breathing to take a little now and
then. And when I don't think of it myself, somebody will think of it
for me, and say--'Come, Sam, let's take something.' So, you see, for a
body such as I am, there isn't much help for it."

"But ain't you afraid to go on in this way? Don't you know where it
will all end?"

"Just as well as anybody. It will make an end of me or--of all that is
good in me. Rum and ruin, you know, sir. They go together like twin
brothers."

"Why don't you get out of the way of temptation?" said I.

"It's easy enough to ask that question, sir; but how am I to get out of
the way of temptation? Where shall I go, and not find a bar in my road,
and somebody to say--'Come, Sam, let's take a drink'? It can't be done,
sir, nohow. I'm a hostler, and I don't know how to be anything else."

"Can't you work on a farm?"

"Yes; I can do something in that way. But, when there are taverns and
bar-rooms, as many as three or four in every mile all over the country,
how are you to keep clear of them? Figure me out that."

"I think you'd better vote on the Maine Law side at next election,"
said I.

"Faith, and I did it last time!" replied the man, with a brightening
face--"and if I'm spared, I'll go the same ticket next year."

"What do you think of the Law?" I asked.

"Think of it! Bless your heart! if I was a praying man, which I'm sorry
to say I ain't--my mother was a pious woman, sir"--his voice fell and
slightly trembled--"if I was a praying man, sir, I'd pray, night and
morning, and twenty times every day of my life, for God to put it into
the hearts of the people to give us that Law. I'd have some hope then.
But I haven't much as it is. There's no use in trying to let liquor
alone."

"Do many drinking men think as you do?"

"I can count up a dozen or two myself. It isn't the drinking men who
are so much opposed to the Maine Law as your politicians. They throw
dust in the people's eyes about it, and make a great many, who know
nothing at all of the evils of drinking in themselves, believe some
bugbear story about trampling on the rights of I don't know who, nor
they either. As for rum-sellers' rights, I never could see any right
th