“‘How is that prime old chap, Graves?’ he asked of me, as soon as he found out I was there.

“‘I havn’t seen him for a week,’ I replied.  ’I have been sick for that time.’

“’But he’s a rum ‘un, though, ain’t he?’ chuckled Adams.  ’Many a scheme he and I have laid to get money out of the grog-drinkers.  But he was always ahead of me.  I used, in my early days, to feel a little compunction when I saw a clever fellow going to ruin.  But it never affected him in the least.  All was fish that came into his net.  I wish we had him with us.  We want just such scheming devils as he to help us devise ways and means to circumvent these temperance men.  They’ll ruin us, if we don’t look out.  How were they coming on when you left?’

“‘Carrying everything before them,’ I said.  ’The rum-sellers are almost driven to their wit’s ends for devices to get customers.’

“‘Too bad!  Too bad!’ ejaculated old Adams.  ’I’ll turn hell upside down, but what I’ll beat them out.’

“’You’ll have to do your prettiest, then, let me tell you, old fellow,’ I rejoined, ’for the temperance cause is going with a perfect rush.  It is a mighty torrent whose course, neither men nor devils can stay.  It moves onward with a power and majesty that astonishes the world,—­and onward it will move, until your hell of rum-makers and rum-sellers will not be able to find a single point through which to flow into the world and tempt men with your infernal devices!’

“O, if you had heard the horrid yell of malignancy which arose, and echoed through the black chamber of that region of wickedness and misery, it would have made you shrink into nothingness with terror.  They fairly gnashed on me with their teeth in impotent rage.  At length old Adams got upon a whiskey-still—­they have such things in hell—­the pattern was got from there when introduced here, and made a speech to his associates.  From what he said, I found that he had minute information of all that was going on in this region.

“‘Old Graves,’ he said—­’our very best man, has already been so reduced in his business by this accursed temperance movement, that he has recently thought seriously of giving up.  This must not be.  We cannot lose him.  No mind receives our suggestions more readily than his.—­If he gives up, we lose a host.  You all know, that our influence on earth is powerless, unless we have men to carry out our plans.  If they will not listen to our suggestion—­if they will not become our agents, we can do nothing there.  As spiritual existences, we cannot affect that which is corporeal, except through the spiritual united with the corporeal—­that is, through spiritual bodies in material bodies.  In other words, we can act on men’s minds, and they can do our works on earth for us.  Now, seeing that we can do nothing to stop this temperance movement, except through the self-love of the rum-sellers and rum-makers, it will never do to let old Graves fall.  We must help him to some new scheme by which to bring back his diminished custom.  Now what shall it be?’