Don Marquis

“ It lifts itself, it curls itself, It feels the empty air, It seeks a long brass railing, And the railing isn't there! I do not seek for sympathy For stomach nor for throat, I never liked my liver much— 'T is such a sulky goat!— I do not seek your pity for My writhen tongue and wried, I do not ask your tears because My lips are shrunk and dried,— But, oh! ”

“ Cocktails are the little brooms That whiskey way your will-power! A dark disease is Bright's disease, And will not yield to pill-power. Some may upon red rums descant Who never did decant rums, But I have eaten bitter bread Where bitters breed their tantrums. The fool will give his life to booze, The wiser man taboos that, And I'm a sad Budweiser man Than when I used to ooze that. ”

“ Sometimes it leaps to clutch the curb When I walk down the street— Oh, how I suffer for the hope That lives within my feet! Myself, I can endure the drouth With stoic calm, and prayer— But my feet still seek a railing When a railing isn't there. ”

“ My eyes ain't what they used to be and the newspapers are different from each other so who can tell what to believe, but in the old days you could keep in touch with politics in the barrooms. It made a better citizen out of you for every man ought to vote for what his consciousness tells him is right and to abide in politics by his consciousness.
Well, closing the barroom has shut off my chance to be imbued with political dope and who to bet on in the next election and I am not so good a citizen as before the saloons was closed. ”

“ Well, I said, here I set turning over the leaves of the Bible and you attack me that way and me trying to think up a business deal to buy you an automobile and the pappitation in my heart that bad it shakes the chair I am setting in and if a man with one foot in the grave can't get any peace and quiet to read his Bible in his own home against the time he is going to cash in then I will say that Prohibition has brought this country to a pretty pass. ”

“ Well, one word leads to another, and you go off without any breakfast, for you see her taking the Bible down to set and read it, and when she sets and reads the Bible you know she is reading it against you and it gets you madder and madder.
And in the old days when there was barrooms you would go into one still feeling mad and say Ed, mix me one of the old-fashioned whiskey cocktails and don't put too much orange and that kind of damned garbage into it, I want the kick. ”

“ I used to know all about all those outdoor sports and who the Giants had bought and what they paid for him and who was the best pitcher and what the dope was on tomorrow's entries at Havana, but all that is taken away from me now the saloons is closed and I got no chance to get into touch with outdoor sports and I feel it in my health. Some of these days the Prohibition aliments will wake up and see they have ruined the country but then it will be too late. Taking the sports away from a nation is not going to do it any good when the next war comes along if one does. ”

“ Let her prance out to sea like a frolic-footed pup, For the ship is full of liquor, and to hell with the land! Ghosts from the ocean abysses, clambering, clamour- ing, come; Climb to our decks and roar: “Broach us a puncheon of rum! We are scaly with salt and sand; we've had nothing but water to swallow— Stave in a hogshead of rum! Let us roll in the scuppers and wallow!” Heh! Splice the main-brace! Ho! She smells the gale! The shipper walks the bridge with a bottle to his eye ”

“ Of course a young feller has got to learn to drink some time but there is such a thing as learning too young and it stunts their growth and the good book says keep it out of the mouths of babes and sucklings.
Maybe a little beer is all right if a baby is puny to fatten him up but I never give my children any hard liquor till they had their growth and I got no use for a government that turns in and puts liquor in the home to make drunkards out of the little innocent children. ”

“ I teached my boys to drink in the barroom just as fast as they growed up and teached them to tell good liquor from bad liquor and not to mix their drinks and not to go in for fancy drinks and to drink along with me for a comfort for my old age and a father had ought to make chums of his boys like that and give them the right example and they stay close to him and he knows what they are thinking about and can give them good advice and my boys has been a comfort to me. ”

“ I have seen ghosts of men I never knew,— Great, gracious souls, the golden hearts of earth— Look from the shadows in those rooms we love, Living a wistful instant in our mirth; I have seen Jefferson smile down at Drew, And Booth pause, musing, on the stair above. ”

“ I can get all the booze I want, but I can't get sympathy. What a man needs in the morning is a kind heart for to comfort him, and a strong arm to lean on. Anybody can give me good advice, but it don't soothe me any; what I want is a quick friend in a white apron, wise as a bishop and gentle as a nurse.
“What I want is the Al's and Ed's I used to know. But they've went. Forever. I won't meet 'em in Hell, because they're too kind hearted to go there, and I won't meet 'em in Heaven, because I won't go there myself. ”

“ I turned back to the stair, And faced nine keyholes pale and stern That lay in ambush there. Six keyholes on the ceiling sat, Eight keyholes on the door, And seven saddened keyholes lay Hiccoughing on the floor. I crawled through one, I crawled through two, I crawled through keyholes three— And then I saw a vistaed mile Of keyholes waiting me!— “I will not crawl another yard Through keyholes, though I die!”— Oh, when my fighting blood is up A Turk am. They leapt at me, they flew at me, They whistled as they came, They gritted of their gleaming teeth, They stung and spurted flame ”

“ Such prestidigitator tricks, I ween, As finding false teeth in a soup tureen Are not real humour; they are crass and crude, And cast suspicion on the host's cuisine: My way of life can end in nothing good. ”

“ Look at the history of the world—every once in a while it has always looked as if the pious and the uplifter was going to bring in the millennium, with bells on it—but something has always happened just in time and the mammal of unrighteousness has come into his own again. ”

“ Ed, you says to him, or leastways I always used to say, a silver fizz is too gentle, and one of them golden fizzes, with the yellow of an egg in it, has got the same objections as a milk punch, it is too much like vittles.
Yes, sir, Ed says, I think you are right about vittles. I can understand how you feel about not wanting vittles in the early part of the day. And that makes you love Ed, for you meet a lot of people who can't understand that. There ain't no sympathy and understanding left in the world since bartenders was abolished.
How about an old-fashioned whiskey cocktail, says Ed. ”

“ Well, the better class of them had pictures on the walls, and since they been taken away what chance has a busy man like me got to go to a museum and see all them works of art hand painted by artists and looking as slick and shiny as one of these here circus lithographs. Well, a country wants to look out what it is doing when it shuts off from the plain people all the chance to educate itself in the high arts and hand painting. Some of the frames by themselves must of been worth a good deal of money. ”

“ And you sort of wish you hadn't been so mean with your wife when you left home, and you look around and see a friend and have one with him and your soul says to you away down deep inside of you for all you know about them old Bible stories they may be true after all and maybe there is a God and kind of feel glad there may be one, and if your friend says let's go and have some breakfast you are surprised to find out you could eat an egg if it ain't too soft or ain't too done. ”

“ Nobody is never going to think as much of home and mother as they used to. And I guess them prohibitionists won't feel so smart when they see all them old ladies with gray hair flung out onto the streets in the rainy weather just because nobody would pay the mortgage off. Lots of times when I was a young feller after hearing them songs for awhile I would say to myself I will set right down and write a letter to my mother, I ain't wrote her for five or six months. ”

“ But when there was liquor to be had in plenty it was easier to make up after one of them rows and Home Life went along smoother.
You would get up in the morning and she would say to you, would you have a boiled egg for breakfast or a fried, and you would say hades what an idea. Can't you never think of anything but eggs for breakfast. And she would say yesterday I didn't have eggs and you was sore because you wanted eggs. You would say just because I wanted eggs yesterday is that any sign I want them every day of my life till death do us part. ”

“ I'll soon be in a place where the godly cease from troubling and the wicked are at rest. But I got children and grandchildren that'll fight against the millennium to the last gasp, if I know the breed, and I'm going to pass on full of hope and trust and calm belief. ”

“ My conscience is Republican, but my religion is liquor; an' I would of voted agin any conscience fer the sake o' my religion. But I ain't goin' to be compelled fer to make that sacrifice. I'd ruther vote fer an outan'-out Prohibitionist than one of these here fellers that gits the word passed private to the wets that they'll be a stick in the lemonade, and gets the word passed private to the drys that what he means is nothin' but a stick o' pep'mint candy. They ain't no hope fer liquor in public life no more; it has become a question fer the home. ”

“ I'm mild, myself. I won't explode. I'm getting my booze. I know where there's plenty of it. My heart's broke to see the saloons closed, and I'm licked by the overwhelming righteous... but I won't suffer any personal for a long time yet. But there's them that will. And on top of everything else, tobacco is to go! All right, take it—but I say solemn and warningly: Look Out For Crime Waves!
“The godly and the righteous can push us wicked persons just so far, but worms will turn. Look at the Garden of Eden! The mammal of iniquity ain't never yet been completely abolished. ”

“ I don't threaten nobody, I just predict. If you ever waked up about 1 o'clock in the morning, two or three miles from a store, and that store likely closed, and no neighbour near by, and the snow drifting the roads shut, and wanted a smoke, and there wasn't a single crumb of tobacco nowheres in the house, you know what I mean. You go and look for old cigar and cigarette butts to crumble into your pipe, and there ain't none. ”

“ Well, I ask you, did you ever get that way in the morning after you had spent the night before drinking the unfermented juice of the grape.
That there Book of Exclusiastics is just one long howl from the next morning head. Things seem right, says old Exclusiastic, and they look right; but if you bite into them they don't taste right, or words to that effect. And you stick around awhile, says old man Exclusiastic, and you'll darned soon see they ain't nothing right nowhere and never will be again. ”

“ 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 gang you belong to and sticking to your own crowd consistent. ”

“ My way of life can end in nothing good. Why should one cry that he is William Tell, Then flip a pippin from his hostess' head That none but he can see? Why should one dwell Upon the failings of the newly wed At wedding breakfasts? ”