Leacock, Stephen, 1869-1944 / 2008-11-25 00:00:00
People said it
was a shame that a man like Josh Smith should be run out of Mariposa
by three license commissioners. Who were the license commissioners,
anyway? Why, look at the license system they had in Sweden; yes, and
in Finland and in South America. Or, for the matter of that, look at
the French and Italians, who drink all day and all night. Aren't they
all right? Aren't they a musical people? Take Napoleon, and Victor
Hugo; drunk half the time, and yet look what they did.
I quote these arguments not for their own sake, but merely to
indicate the changing temper of public opinion in Mariposa. Men would
sit in the caff at lunch perhaps for an hour and a half and talk
about the license question in general, and then go down into the
Rats' Cooler and talk about it for two hours more.
It was amazing the way the light broke in in the case of particular
individuals, often the most unlikely, and quelled their opposition.
Take, for example, the editor of the Newspacket. I suppose there
wasn't a greater temperance advocate in town. Yet Alphonse queered
him with an Omelette a la License in one meal.
Or take Pepperleigh himself, the judge of the Mariposa court. He was
put to the bad with a game pie,--pate normand aux fines herbes--the
real thing, as good as a trip to Paris in itself. After eating it,
Pepperleigh had the common sense to realize that it was sheer madness
to destroy a hotel that could cook a thing like that.
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