No; these are trifles, compared with the merits which wise men concede to me—­if not in my single self, yet as the representative of a class—­of being the grand reformer of the age.  From my spout, and such spouts as mine, must flow the stream that shall cleanse our earth of the vast portion of its crime and anguish which has gushed from the fiery fountains of the still.  In this mighty enterprise the cow shall be my great confederate.  Milk and water—­the town-pump and the Cow!  Such is the glorious copartnership that shall tear down the distilleries and brewhouses, uproot the vineyards, shatter the cider-presses, ruin the tea and coffee trade, and finally monopolize the whole business of quenching thirst.  Blessed consummation!  Then Poverty shall pass away from the land, finding no hovel so wretched where her squalid form may shelter herself.  Then Disease, for lack of other victims, shall gnaw its own heart and die.  Then Sin, if she do not die, shall lose half her strength.  Until now the frenzy of hereditary fever has raged in the human blood, transmitted from sire to son and rekindled in every generation by fresh draughts of liquid flame.  When that inward fire shall be extinguished, the heat of passion cannot but grow cool, and war—­the drunkenness of nations—­perhaps will cease.  At least, there will be no war of households.  The husband and wife, drinking deep of peaceful joy—­a calm bliss of temperate affections—­shall pass hand in hand through life and lie down not reluctantly at its protracted close.  To them the past will be no turmoil of mad dreams, nor the future an eternity of such moments as follow the delirium of the drunkard.  Their dead faces shall express what their spirits were and are to be by a lingering smile of memory and hope.

Ahem!  Dry work, this speechifying, especially to an unpractised orator.  I never conceived till now what toil the temperance lecturers undergo for my sake; hereafter they shall have the business to themselves.—­Do, some kind Christian, pump a stroke or two, just to wet my whistle.—­Thank you, sir!—­My dear hearers, when the world shall have been regenerated by my instrumentality, you will collect your useless vats and liquor-casks into one great pile and make a bonfire in honor of the town-pump.  And when I shall have decayed like my predecessors, then, if you revere my memory, let a marble fountain richly sculptured take my place upon this spot.  Such monuments should be erected everywhere and inscribed with the names of the distinguished champions of my cause.  Now, listen, for something very important is to come next.