"That there train ain't goin' to wait a minute," reminded Amos,
civilly. The Colonel turned upon him with a large sweetness of manner.
"Ah, yes, my friend, but trains will be passing through your pretty
little hamlet for years--I hope for ages--yet. They pass every day, but
you can't have Jonas Rodney Potts every day."
Here, with a gesture, he directed the crowd's attention to Amos.
"Look at him, gentlemen. Speak to him for me--for I cannot. I ask you to
note the condition he's in." Here, again, the Colonel burst into tears.
"And, oh, my God!" he sobbed, "could they ask me to trust myself to a
drunken rowdy of a driver, even if I _was_ going?" Amos was not only
sober, he was a shrewd observer of events, a seasoned judge of men. He
turned away without further parley. Big Joe told him he ought to be in
better business than trying to break up a pleasant party.
As the 'bus started, the strains of "Auld Lang Syne" floated to us
again, and we knew the day was lost.
"A hand of iron in a cunning little velvet glove," said Westley Keyts,
in deep disgust as he left us. "It looks to me a darned sight more like
a hand of mush in a glove of the _same!_"
I have often been brought to realize that the latent nobility in our
human nature is never so effectually aroused as at the second stage of
alcoholic dementia.
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