“But suppose,” said Lucius, “suppose something took your mind off of it.”
“But just suppose something did turn up—right in the start of a spell, say—something you found you’d rather do. You know, Joe, I believe if it did and you found something else was _really_ pleasanter, it might be you’d never start in again. You’d understand it wasn’t the fun you think it is, maybe.”
“Fun!” Joe cried. “I don’t _want_ to drink!”
And at that his stocky companion burst into outright laughter. “I know you think so, Joe,” he said apologetically, when his hilarity was sufficiently diminished. “Of course you believe it. I’m not denying that.”
“By George!” the unfortunate young man explained. “You _do_ make me sick! I suppose if I had smallpox you’d say you weren’t denying I believed I had it! You sit there and drink your buttermilk, and laugh at me like a ninny because you can’t understand! No man on earth can understand, unless he has the thirst come on him the way mine does on me! And yet you tell me I only ‘believe’ I have it!”
“Yes, I ought to explain,” said Mr. Allen soothingly. “It did sound unfeeling. One of the reasons you drink, Joe, is because this is a small town;—you have an active mind, a lot of the time there’s nothing much to do, and you get bored.”
“I told you nobody could understand such a thirst as mine—nobody except the man that’s got one like it!”
“This hankering is something inside you, isn’t it, Joe?”
“If there weren’t any liquor in the world, you’d have the thirst for it just the same, would you?”
“Just the same,” Perley answered. “And go crazy from it.”
“Whereas,” Mr. Allen returned, “since liquor’s obtainable you prefer to go crazy from the imbibing of it instead of from the hanker for it. You find that more ossedalious, and nobody can blame you. But suppose alcohol had never been discovered, would you have the hanker?”
“No, because I wouldn’t have inherited it from my father. You know as well as I do, how it runs in my family.”
“So I do, Joe; so I do!” Mr. Allen sighed reminiscently. “Both your father and your Uncle Sam went that way. I remember them very well, and how they enjoyed it. That’s different from you, Joe.”
“Different!” Joe laughed bitterly. “Do you suppose I get any ‘enjoyment’ out of it? Three days I’ll drink now; then I’ll be in hell—and I’ve got to go on. I’ve _got_ to!”