Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/199

 argument, the entire subject bored me terribly, till you and Willys drenched it again in—in reality. Since my student days a generation ago, I have hardly even seen liquor enough of all sorts to float an old-fashioned alumni reunion for a single evening. A resident during the latter half of my life in a bone-dry district, I, like most of my neighbors, view the annual extension of the dry lands with the aloofest academic interest."

"Of course!" said Oliver, smiling, "of course! But you can abridge that; we all know the quality of a professor's interest in any matter of first-rate importance."

"It was not till bootleggers were commonly reported to be as ubiquitous as German spies in wartime," I resumed, "and men began to attribute all the evils of the hour to prohibition, and seriously to argue that the Volstead Act was forcing drunkenness and criminality upon numberless respectable citizens who thitherto had led lives of unblemished virtue—it was not till then that I began to feel a certain curiosity about the facts, and especially about the mental condition of intelligent and responsible people resident in territory which is still subterraneously wet."

"Their mental condition, Professor?" Oliver