horse--lands and niggers--liberty and [hiccup] plenty to live on! Don't
you see how I drive ahead, and don't care for the hind wheels? It's all
owing to whiskey! Grog, I say--Hark ye, Mr. Pedler--grog, I say, is the
wheels of life: it carries a man _for'ad_. Why don't men go _for'ad_ in
the world? What's the reason now? I'll tell you. They're afeared. Well,
now, who's afeared when he's got a broadside of whiskey in him?
Nobody--nobody's afeared but you--you, Ben Brooks, you're a d----d
crick--crick--you're always afeared of something, or nothing; for, after
all, whenever you're afeared of something, it turns out to be nothing!
All 'cause you don't drink like a man. That's his cha-cha-_rack_-ter,
Mr. Bunce; and it's all owing 'cause he won't drink!"

"Guess there's no sparing of reason in that bit of argument, now, I tell
you, Mr. Tongs. Bless my heart--it's no use talking, no how, but I'd a
been clean done up, dead as a door-nail, if it hadn't been for drink.
Strong drink makes strong. Many's the time, and the freezing cold, and
the hard travelling in bad roads, and other dreadful fixins I've seed,
would soon ha' settled me up, if it hadn't been for that same good stuff
there, that Master Brooks does look as if he was afeared on. Now, don't
be afeared, Master Brooks. There's no teeth in whiskey, and it never
bites nobody."

"No," said Brooks, with the utmost simplicity; "only when they take too
much."

"How?" said the pedler, looking as if the sentence contained some
mysterious meaning. Brooks might have explained, but for Tongs, who
dashed in after this fashion:--

"And who takes too much? You don't mean to say I takes too much, Ben
Brooks. I'd like to hear the two-legged critter, now, who'd say I takes
more of the stuff than does me good. I drinks in reason, for the benefit
of my health; and jest, you see, as a sort of medicine, Mr. Bunce; and,
Brooks, you knows I never takes a drop more than is needful."

"Sometimes--sometimes, Tongs, you know you ain't altogether right under
it--now and then you take a leetle too much for your good," was the mild
response of Brooks, to the almost fierce speech of his less scrupulous
brother-in-law. The latter, thus encountered, changed his ground with
singular rapidity.

"Well, by dogs!--and what of that?--and who is it says I shan't, if it's
my notion? I'd like now to see the boy that'll stand up agin me and make
such a speech. Who says I shan't take what I likes--and that I