better business in dis town dan I am a-doin' right in dis shop. But if
I didn't tink it vas right, I vouldn't be doin' it at all. You talk in
dis country as if de rum-sellers vas de very vorst people in de vorld.
I vant you to understand over in my country, dat's a good deal older
dan dis, and vere de peoples has had a good deal more experience, a man
don't get no right to sell liquor unless he is a first-class citizen in
every respect. It's a sign dat a man is honest an' sensible an' knows
how to manage oder men, if he gets de right to sell liquor. Dat's more
dan you can say about _your_ business, Deacon Quickset. Any rascal can
go in de business dat you is doin' now."

"Well," said the deacon, beginning to feel that he was on dangerous
ground, "this wasn't what we were talking about, anyhow. We began to
talk about Sam Kimper; and I want you to promise me that you won't talk
to anybody else about his needing liquor, and about his breaking down
in the course of time unless he gets it."

"Of course I von't talk about it, deacon. Do you s'pose I'm a fool? Do
you s'pose I vant to see people get drunk? No, sir; people dat gets
drunk don't come to my shop. Dey know dey couldn't get anyding if dey
did."

Meanwhile Sam Kimper went on, after the humble manner in which he had
begun, to try to bring his family to his new standard of
respectability. He introduced family prayers, much to the disgust of
his son Tom and the amusement of his daughter Mary. The privacy of
family affairs was not entirely respected by the Kimper family, for Sam
soon heard remarks from street loafers, as he passed along, which
indicated that the devotional exercises of the family had been
reported, evidently by his own children, and he heard quotations from
some of his weak and halting prayers pass from mouth to mouth and
elicit peals of coarse laughter.

Nevertheless he found some encouragement. His son Tom was not quite so
much of a cub at home as he had been, and actually took to trying, in a
desultory way, to find work, although his father's offer to teach him
the trade which had been learned in the penitentiary was declined very
sharply and without any thanks whatever. Billy, the younger boy, had an
affectionate streak in his nature, which his father succeeded in
touching to such an extent that complaints of Billy's truancy were
nowhere near so numerous as they had been just after his father's
return. Mary, the youngest daughter, was a less pro