aw. Nor was
the younger Brooks forgotten. Being a tall, good-looking lad of sixteen,
Tongs insisted it was high time he should appear among men; and the
invitation of the pedler was opportune, as affording a happy occasion
for his initiation into some of those practices, esteemed, by a liberal
courtesy, significant of manliness.

With everything in proper trim, Bunce stood at the entrance of his
lodge, ready to receive them. The preliminaries were soon despatched,
and we behold them accordingly, all four, comfortably seated around a
huge oaken table in the centre of the apartment. There was the jug, and
there the glasses--the sugar, the peppermint, the nutmegs--the pipes and
tobacco--all convenient, and sufficiently tempting for the unscrupulous.
The pedler did the honors with no little skill, and Tongs plunged
headlong into the debauch. The whiskey was never better, and found, for
this reason, anything but security where it stood. Glass after glass,
emptied only to be replenished, attested the industrious hospitality of
the host, not less than its own excellence. Tongs, averaging three
draughts to one of his companion's, was soon fairly under way in his
progress to that state of mental self-glorification in which the world
ceases to have vicissitudes, and the animal realizes the abstractions of
an ancient philosophy, and denies all pain to life.

Brooks, however, though not averse to the overcoming element, had more
of that vulgar quality of prudence than his brother-in-law, and far
more than was thought amiable in the opinion of the pedler. For some
time, therefore, he drank with measured scrupulousness; and it was
with no small degree of anxiety that Bunce plied him with the
bottle--complaining of his unsociableness, and watching, with the
intensity of any other experimentalist, the progress of his scheme upon
him. As for the lad--the younger Brooks--it was soon evident that, once
permitted, and even encouraged to drink, as he had been, by his
superiors, he would not, after a little while, give much if any
inconvenience to the conspirators. The design of the pedler was
considerably advanced by Tongs, who, once intoxicated himself, was not
slow in the endeavor to bring all around him under the same influence.

"Drink, Brooks--drink, old fellow," he exclaimed; "as you are a true
man, drink, and don't fight shy of the critter! Whiskey, my boy--old
Monongahely like this, I say--whiskey is wife and children--house and