“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 takes more than is good for me?  Does you say so, Mr. Bunce?”

“No, thank ye, no.  How should I say what ain’t true?  You don’t take half enough, now, it’s my idee, neither on you.  It’s all talk and no cider, and that I call monstrous dry work.  Come, pass round the bottle.  Here’s to you, Master Tongs—­Master Brooks, I drink your very good health.  But fill up, fill up—­you ain’t got nothing in your tumbler.”

“No, he’s a sneak—­you’re a sneak, Brooks, if you don’t fill up to the hub.  Go the whole hog, boy, and don’t twist your mouth as if the stuff was physic.  It’s what I call nation good, now; no mistake in it, I tell you.”

“Hah! that’s a true word—­there’s no mistake in this stuff.  It is jest now what I calls ginywine.”

“True Monongahely, Master Bunce.  Whoever reckoned to find a Yankee pedler with a raal good taste for Monongahely?  Give us your fist, Mr. Bunce; I see you know’s what’s what.  You ain’t been among us for nothing.  You’ve larned something by travelling; and, by dogs! you’ll come to be something yit, if you live long enough—­if so be you can only keep clear of the old range.”