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- 6149
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:47:57.722Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
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- 6089
- text
- ones. No, no. This austerity won't do. Let me tell you too--_en
confiance_--that while revelry may not always merge into ebriety,
soberness, in too deep potations, may become a sort of sottishness.
Which sober sottishness, in my way of thinking, is only to be cured by
beginning at the other end of the horn, to tipple a little."
"Pray, what society of vintners and old topers are you hired to lecture
for?"
"I fear I did not give my meaning clearly. A little story may help. The
story of the worthy old woman of Goshen, a very moral old woman, who
wouldn't let her shoats eat fattening apples in fall, for fear the fruit
might ferment upon their brains, and so make them swinish. Now, during a
green Christmas, inauspicious to the old, this worthy old woman fell
into a moping decline, took to her bed, no appetite, and refused to see
her best friends. In much concern her good man sent for the doctor, who,
after seeing the patient and putting a question or two, beckoned the
husband out, and said: 'Deacon, do you want her cured?' 'Indeed I do.'
'Go directly, then, and buy a jug of Santa Cruz.' 'Santa Cruz? my wife
drink Santa Cruz?' 'Either that or die.' 'But how much?' 'As much as she
can get down.' 'But she'll get drunk!' 'That's the cure.' Wise men, like
doctors, must be obeyed. Much against the grain, the sober deacon got
the unsober medicine, and, equally against her conscience, the poor old
woman took it; but, by so doing, ere long recovered health and spirits,
famous appetite, and glad again to see her friends; and having by this
experience broken the ice of arid abstinence, never afterwards kept
herself a cup too low."
This story had the effect of surprising the bachelor into interest,
though hardly into approval.
"If I take your parable right," said he, sinking no little of his former
churlishness, "the meaning is, that one cannot enjoy life with gusto
unless he renounce the too-sober view of life. But since the too-sober
view is, doubtless, nearer true than the too-drunken; I, who rate truth,
though cold water, above untruth, though Tokay, will stick to my earthen
jug."
"I see," slowly spirting upward a spiral staircase of lazy smoke, "I
see; you go in for the lofty."
"How?"
"Oh, nothing! but if I wasn't afraid of prosing, I might tell another
story about an old boot in a pieman's loft, contracting there between
sun and oven an unseemly, dry-seasoned curl and warp. You've seen such
leathery old garretteers, haven't you? Very high, sober, solitary,
philosophic, grand, old boots, indeed; but I, for my part, would rather
be the pieman's trodden slipper on the ground. Talking of piemen,
humble-pie before proud-cake for me. This notion of being lone and lofty
is a sad mistake. Men I hold in this respect to be like roosters; the
one that betakes himself to a lone and lofty perch is the hen-pecked
one, or the one that has the pip."
"You are abusive!" cried the bachelor, evidently touched.
"Who is abused? You, or the race? You won't stand by and see the human
race abused? Oh, then, you have some respect for the human race."
"I have some respect for _myself_" with a lip not so firm as before.
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