pricorn.

"When we gets in five hours of the country that we was going to
introduce to long drinks and short change the captain calls us over
to the starboard binnacle and recollects a few things.

"'I forgot to tell you, boys,' says he, 'that Nicaragua slapped an
import duty of 48 per cent. ad valorem on all bottled goods last
month. The President took a bottle of Cincinnati hair tonic by
mistake for tobasco sauce, and he's getting even. Barrelled goods is
free.'

"'Sorry you didn't mention it sooner,' says we. And we bought two
forty-two gallon casks from the captain, and opened every bottle we
had and dumped the stuff all together in the casks. That 48 per cent
would have ruined us; so we took the chances on making that $1,200
cocktail rather than throw the stuff away.

"Well, when we landed we tapped one of the barrels. The mixture was
something heartrending. It was the color of a plate of Bowery pea
soup, and it tasted like one of those coffee substitutes your aunt
makes you take for the heart trouble you get by picking losers. We
gave a nigger four fingers of it to try it, and he lay under a
cocoanut tree three days beating the sand with his heels and refused
to sign a testimonial.

"But the other barrel! Say, bartender, did you ever put on a straw
hat with a yellow band around it and go up in a balloon with a
pretty girl with $8,000,000 in your pocket all at the same time?
That's what thirty drops of it would make you feel like. With two
fingers of it inside you you would bury your face in your hands and
cry because there wasn't anything more worth while around for you to
lick than little Jim Jeffries. Yes, sir, the stuff in that second
barrel was distilled elixir of battle, money and high life. It was
the color of gold and as clear as glass, and it shone after dark
like the sunshine was still in it. A thousand years from now you'll
get a drink like that across the bar.

"Well, we started up business with that one line of drinks, and it
was enough. The piebald gentry of that country stuck to it like a
hive of bees. If that barrel had lasted that country would have
become the greatest on earth. When we opened up of mornings we had a
line of Generals and Colonels and ex-Presidents and revolutionists a
block long waiting to be served. We started in at 50 cents silver a
drink. The last ten gallons went easy at $5 a gulp. It was wonderful
stuff. It gave a man courage and ambition and nerve to do anything;
at