Page:The dream, or, The true history of Deacon Giles's distillery, and Deacon Jones's brewery.djvu/14

10 most terrible in its appearance was as follows:

". Enquire at Deacon Giles's Distillery."

In the morning the workmen vanished as before, just as it was dawn; but in the dusk of the evening they came again, and told the Deacon it was against their principles to take any wages for work done between Saturday night and Monday morning, and as they could not stay with him any longer, he was welcome to what they had done. The Deacon was very urgent to have them remain, and offered to hire them for the season at any wages, but they would not. So he thanked them and they went away, and he saw them no more. In the course of the week most of the casks were sent into the country, and duly hoisted on their stoups, in conspicuous situations, in the Taverns, and Groceries, and the Rum-shops. But no sooner had the first glass been drawn from any of them, than the invisible inscriptions flamed out on the cask-head to every beholder. "CONSUMPTION SOLD HERE, DELIRIUM TREMEMS. DAMNATION AND HELL-FIRE."



The drunkards were terrified from the dram-shops; the bar-rooms were emptied of their customers: but in their place a gaping crowd filled every store that possessed a cask of the Deacon's devil-distilled liquor, to wonder and be affrighted at the spectacle. For no art could efface the inscriptions. And even when the liquor was drawn into new casks, the same deadly letters broke out in blue and red flames all over the surface,

The rumsellers, and grocers, and tavern-keepers, were full of fury. They loaded their teams with the accursed liquor, and drove it back to the distillery. All around and before the door of the Deacon's establishment the returned casks were piled one upon another, and it seemed as if the inscriptions burned brighter than ever. Consumption, Damnation, Death, and Hell, mingled together in frightful confusion; and in equal prominence, in every case.