Page:The Trimmed Lamp (1907).djvu/48



HIS document is intended to strike somewhere between a temperance lecture and the “Bartender’s Guide.” Relative to the latter, drink shall swell the theme and be set forth in abundance. Agreeably to the former, not an elbow shall be crooked.

Bob Babbitt was “off the stuff.” Which means—as you will discover by referring to the unabridged dictionary of Bohemia—that he had “cut out the booze;” that he was “on the water wagon.” The reason for Bob’s sudden attitude of hostility toward the “demon rum”—as the white ribboners miscall whiskey (see the “Bartender’s Guide”), should be of interest to reformers and saloon-keepers.

There is always hope for a man who, when sober, will not concede or acknowledge that he was ever drunk. But when a man will say (in the apt words of the phrase-distiller), “I had a beautiful skate on last night,” you will have to put stuff in his coffee as well as pray for him.

One evening on his way home Babbitt dropped in at the Broadway bar that he liked best. Always there were three or four fellows there from the downtown offices whom he knew. And then there would be high-