“Now Paul will you listen to reason and common sense?  I have a proposition to make.  I am about to embark in a profitable business, and I know that it will pay better than anything else I could undertake in these times.  Men will buy liquor if they have not got money for other things.  I am going to open a first class saloon, and club-house, on M. Street, and if you will join with me we can make a splendid thing of it.  Why just see how well off Joe Harden is since he set up in the business; and what airs he does put on!  I know when he was not worth fifty dollars, and kept a little low groggery on the corner of L. and S. Streets, but he is out of that now—­keeps a first class Cafe, and owns a block of houses.  Now Paul, here is a splendid chance for you; business is dull, and now accept this opening.  Of course I mean to keep a first class saloon.  I don’t intend to tolerate loafing, or disorderly conduct, or to sell to drunken men.  In fact, I shall put up my scale of prices so that you need fear no annoyance from rough, low, boisterous men who don’t know how to behave themselves.  What say you, Paul?”

“I say, no!  I wouldn’t engage in such a business, not if it paid me a hundred thousand dollars a year.  I think these first class saloons are just as great a curse to the community as the low groggeries, and I look upon them as the fountain heads of the low groggeries.  The man who begins to drink in the well lighted and splendidly furnished saloon is in danger of finishing in the lowest dens of vice and shame.”

“As you please,” said John Anderson stiffly, “I thought that as business is dull that I would show you a chance, that would yield you a handsome profit; but if you refuse, there is no harm done.  I know young men who would jump at the chance.”

You may think it strange that knowing Paul Clifford as John Anderson did, that he should propose to him an interest in a drinking saloon; but John Anderson was a man who was almost destitute of faith in human goodness.  His motto was that “every man has his price,” and as business was fairly dull, and Paul was somewhat cramped for want of capital, he thought a good business investment would be the price for Paul Clifford’s conscientious scruples.

“Anderson,” said Paul looking him calmly in the face, “you may call me visionary and impracticable; but I am determined however poor I may be, never to engage in any business on which I cannot ask God’s blessing.  And John I am sorry from the bottom of my heart, that you have concluded to give up your grocery and keep a saloon.  You cannot keep that saloon without sending a flood of demoralizing influence over the community.  Your profit will be the loss of others.  Young men will form in that saloon habits which will curse and overshadow all their lives.  Husbands and fathers will waste their time and money, and confirm themselves in habits which will bring misery, crime, and degradation; and the fearful outcome of your business will be broken