ce it that that law
will be distasteful to the minority that it envies and hates. The poor
numskull who is so horribly harrowed by Puritan pulpit-thumpers that he
can't go to a ball game on Sunday afternoon without dreaming of hell and
the devil all Sunday night is naturally envious of the fellow who can,
and being envious of him, he hates him and is eager to destroy his
offensive happiness. The farmer who works 18 hours a day and never gets
a day off is envious of his farmhand who goes to the crossroads and
barrels up on Saturday afternoon; hence the virulence of prohibition
among the peasantry. The hard-working householder who, on some bitter
evening, glances over the _Saturday Evening Post_ for a square and
honest look at his wife is envious of those gaudy drummers who go
gallivanting about the country with scarlet girls; hence the Mann act.
If these deviltries were equally open to all men, and all men were
equally capable of appreciating them, their unpopularity would tend to
wither.

I often think, indeed, that the prohibitionist tub-thumpers make a
tactical mistake in dwelling too much upon the evils and horrors of
alcohol, and not enough upon its delights. A few enlarged photographs of
first-class bar-rooms, showing the rows of well-fed, well-dressed
_bibuli_ happily moored to the brass rails, their noses in fragrant mint
and hops and their hands reaching out for free rations of olives,
pretzels, cloves, pumpernickle, Bismarck herring, anchovies,
_schwartenmagen_, wieners, Smithfield ham and dill pickles--such a
gallery of contentment would probably do far more execution among the
dismal _shudra_ than all the current portraits of drunkards' livers. To
vote for prohibition in the face of the liver portraits means to vote
for the good of the other fellow, for even the oldest bibulomaniac
always thinks that he himself will escape. This is an act of altruism
almost impossible to the mob-man, whose selfishness is but little
corrupted by the imagination that shows itself in his betters. His most
austere renunciations represent no more than a matching of the joys of
indulgence against the pains of hell; religion, to him, is little more
than synthesized fear.... I venture that many a vote for prohibition
comes from gentlemen who look longingly through swinging doors--and pass
on in propitiation of Satan and their alert consorts, the lake of
brimstone and the corrective broomstick....

VII

STABLE-NAMES

Why