, man, let me dream on! It ain't true, but don't
waken me! Jus' lemme slumber!"

Two hours before, Frink had completed a newspaper lyric beginning:

"I sat alone and groused and thunk, and scratched my head and sighed
and wunk, and groaned, There still are boobs, alack, who'd like the
old-time gin-mill back; that den that makes a sage a loon, the vile and
smelly old saloon! I'll never miss their poison booze, whilst I the
bubbling spring can use, that leaves my head at merry morn as clear as
any babe new-born!"

Babbitt drank with the others; his moment's depression was gone; he
perceived that these were the best fellows in the world; he wanted to
give them a thousand cocktails. "Think you could stand another?" he
cried. The wives refused, with giggles, but the men, speaking in a wide,
elaborate, enjoyable manner, gloated, "Well, sooner than have you get
sore at me, Georgie--"

"You got a little dividend coming," said Babbitt to each of them, and
each intoned, "Squeeze it, Georgie, squeeze it!"

When, beyond hope, the pitcher was empty, they stood and talked about
prohibition. The men leaned back on their heels, put their hands in
their trousers-pockets, and proclaimed their views with the booming
profundity of a prosperous male repeating a thoroughly hackneyed
statement about a matter of which he knows nothing whatever.

"Now, I'll tell you," said Vergil Gunch; "way I figure it is this, and
I can speak by the book, because I've talked to a lot of doctors and
fellows that ought to know, and the way I see it is that it's a good
thing to get rid of the saloon, but they ought to let a fellow have beer
and light wines."

Howard Littlefield observed, "What isn't generally realized is that it's
a dangerous prop'sition to invade the rights of personal liberty.
Now, take this for instance: The King of--Bavaria? I think it was
Bavaria--yes, Bavaria, it was--in 1862, March, 1862, he issued a
proclamation against public grazing of live-stock. The peasantry had
stood for overtaxation without the slightest complaint, but when this
proclamation came out, they rebelled. Or it may have been Saxony. But
it just goes to show the dangers of invading the rights of personal
liberty."

"That's it--no one got a right to invade personal liberty," said Orville
Jones.

"Just the same, you don't want to forget prohibition is a mighty good
thing for the working-classes. Keeps 'em from wasting their money and
lowering their productivene