“That was a great deal for a man to lose,” said I.

“What?” he inquired, not clearly understanding me.

“The cheerfull face of his wife.”

“The face was but an index of her heart,” said he.

“So much the worse.”

“True enough for that.  Yes, it was a great deal to lose.

“What has he gained that will make up for this?”

The man shrugged his shoulders.

“What has he gained?” I repeated.  “Can you figure it up?”

“He’s a richer man, for one thing.”

“Happier?”

There was another shrug of the shoulders.  “I wouldn’t like to say that.”

“How much richer?”

“Oh, a great deal.  Somebody was saying, only yesterday, that he couldn’t be worth less than thirty thousand dollars.”

“Indeed?  So much.”

“Yes.”

“How has he managed to accumulate so rapidly?”

“His bar has a large run of custom.  And, you know, that pays wonderfully.”

“He must have sold a great deal of liquor in six years.”

“And he has.  I don’t think I’m wrong in saying that in the six years which have gone by since the ‘Sickle and Sheaf’ was opened, more liquor has been drank than in the previous twenty years.”

“Say forty,” remarked a man who had been a listener to what we said.

“Let it be forty then,” was the according answer.

“How comes this?” I inquired.  “You had a tavern here before the ‘Sickle and Sheaf’ was opened.”

“I know we had, and several places besides, where liquor was sold.  But, everybody far and near knew Simon Slade the miller, and everybody liked him.  He was a good miller, and a cheerful, social, chatty sort of man putting everybody in a good humor who came near him.  So it became the talk everywhere, when he built this house, which he fitted up nicer than anything that had been seen in these parts.  Judge Hammond, Judge Lyman, Lawyer Wilson, and all the big bugs of the place at once patronized the new tavern, and of course, everybody else did the same.  So, you can easily see how he got such a run.”

“It was thought, in the beginning,” said I, “that the new tavern was going to do wonders for Cedarville.”

“Yes,” answered the man laughing, “and so it has.”

“In what respect?”

“Oh, in many.  It has made some men richer, and some poorer.”

“Who has it made poorer?”

“Dozens of people.  You may always take it for granted, when you see a tavern-keeper who has a good run at his bar, getting rich, that a great many people are getting poor.”

“How so?” I wished to hear in what way the man who was himself, as was plain to see, a good customer at somebody’s bar, reasoned on the subject.

“He does not add to the general wealth.  He produces nothing.  He takes money from his customers, but gives them no article of value in return—­nothing that can be called property, personal or real.  He is just so much richer and they just so much poorer for the exchange.  Is it not so?”