. Berry, who handled
the liquors, kept himself in a genial stage of inebriation and sat in
smiles and loud calico talking of gold mines and hidden treasure. Jack
Kelso said that a little whisky converted Berry's optimism into opulence.

"It is the opulence that tends to poverty," Abe answered. "Berry gets so
rich, at times, that he will have nothing to do with the vulgar details
of trade."

"And he exhibits such a touching sympathy for the poor," said Kelso, "you
can't help loving him. I have never beheld such easy and admirable
grandeur."

The addition of liquors to its stock had attracted some rather tough
characters to the store. One of them who had driven some women out of it
with profanity was collared by Abe and conducted out of the door and
thrown upon the grass where his face was rubbed with smart weed until he
yelled for mercy. After that the rough type of drinking man chose his
words with some care in the store of Berry and Lincoln.

One evening, of that summer, Abe came out to the Traylors' with a letter
in his hat for Sarah.

"How's business?" Samson asked.

"Going to peter out I reckon," Abe answered with a sorrowful look. "It
will leave me badly in debt. I wanted something that would give me a
chance for study and I got it. By jing! It looks as if I was going to
have years of study trying to get over it. I've gone and jumped into a
mill pond to get out of the rain. I'd better have gone to Harvard College
and walked all the way. Have you got any work to give me? You know I can
split rails about as fast as the next man and I'll take my pay in wheat
or corn."

"You may give me all the time you can spend outside the store," said
Samson.

That evening they had a talk about the whisky business and its relation
to the character of Eliphalet Biggs and to sundry infractions of law and
order in their community. Samson had declared that it was wrong to sell
liquor.

"All that kind of thing can be safely left to the common sense of our
people," said Abe. "The remedy is education, not revolution. Slowly the
people will have to set down all the items in the ledger of common sense
that passes from sire to son. By and by some generation will strike a
balance. That may not come in a hundred years. Soon or late the majority
of the people will reach a reckoning with John Barleycorn. If there's too
much against him they will act. You might as well try to stop a glacier
by building a dam in front of it. They have o