Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/41

 reminded Amos, civilly. The Colonel turned upon him with a large sweetness of manner.

"Ah, yes, my friend, but trains will be passing through your pretty little hamlet for years—I hope for ages—yet. They pass every day, but you can't have Jonas Rodney Potts every day."

Here, with a gesture, he directed the crowd's attention to Amos.

"Look at him, gentlemen. Speak to him for me—for I cannot. I ask you to note the condition he's in." Here, again, the Colonel burst into tears. "And, oh, my God!" he sobbed, "could they ask me to trust myself to a drunken rowdy of a driver, even if I was going?" Amos was not only sober, he was a shrewd observer of events, a seasoned judge of men. He turned away without further parley. Big Joe told him he ought to be in better business than trying to break up a pleasant party.

As the 'bus started, the strains of "Auld Lang Syne" floated to us again, and we knew the day was lost.

"A hand of iron in a cunning little velvet glove," said Westly Keyts, in deep disgust as he left us. "It looks to me a darned sight more like a hand of mush in a glove of the same!"

I have often been brought to realize that the latent nobility in our human nature is never so effectually aroused as at the second stage of alcoholic dementia. The victim sustains a shock of illumination hardly less than divine. On a sudden he is vividly cogni-