?' 'Indeed I do.'
'Go directly, then, and buy a jug of Santa Cruz.' 'Santa Cruz? my wife
drink Santa Cruz?' 'Either that or die.' 'But how much?' 'As much as she
can get down.' 'But she'll get drunk!' 'That's the cure.' Wise men, like
doctors, must be obeyed. Much against the grain, the sober deacon got
the unsober medicine, and, equally against her conscience, the poor old
woman took it; but, by so doing, ere long recovered health and spirits,
famous appetite, and glad again to see her friends; and having by this
experience broken the ice of arid abstinence, never afterwards kept
herself a cup too low."

This story had the effect of surprising the bachelor into interest,
though hardly into approval.

"If I take your parable right," said he, sinking no little of his former
churlishness, "the meaning is, that one cannot enjoy life with gusto
unless he renounce the too-sober view of life. But since the too-sober
view is, doubtless, nearer true than the too-drunken; I, who rate truth,
though cold water, above untruth, though Tokay, will stick to my earthen
jug."

"I see," slowly spirting upward a spiral staircase of lazy smoke, "I
see; you go in for the lofty."

"How?"

"Oh, nothing! but if I wasn't afraid of prosing, I might tell another
story about an old boot in a pieman's loft, contracting there between
sun and oven an unseemly, dry-seasoned curl and warp. You've seen such
leathery old garretteers, haven't you? Very high, sober, solitary,
philosophic, grand, old boots, indeed; but I, for my part, would rather
be the pieman's trodden slipper on the ground. Talking of piemen,
humble-pie before proud-cake for me. This notion of being lone and lofty
is a sad mistake. Men I hold in this respect to be like roosters; the
one that betakes himself to a lone and lofty perch is the hen-pecked
one, or the one that has the pip."

"You are abusive!" cried the bachelor, evidently touched.

"Who is abused? You, or the race? You won't stand by and see the human
race abused? Oh, then, you have some respect for the human race."

"I have some respect for _myself_" with a lip not so firm as before.

"And what race may _you_ belong to? now don't you see, my dear fellow,
in what inconsistencies one involves himself by affecting disesteem for
men. To a charm, my little stratagem succeeded. Come, come, think better
of it, and, as a first step to a new mind, give up solitude. I fear, by
the way, you have at some time been reading Zim