FullReads

III– Tone Picture’s Suggesting Conditions in U. S. A. Some Two Years After Alcoholic Stimulants Had Been Legislated out of Business

Grandma’s sitting in her attic,
Oiling up her automatic.
Mid-Victorian is her style,
Prim yet gentle is her smile
As she fits the cartridges
One by one, and softly says:

“Grandson is a Dry Enforcer.
Grandpa is a Legger–
All for one and one for all–
I’ll never die a beggar.
Bill brings booze from Montreal,
Grandpa lets him through–
Oh, life’s been rosy for us folks
Since the red-light laws went blue.”

Pretty Sadie, aged fourteen,
To a lamp-post clings serene.
“What’s the matter?” some may ask.
On her hip she wears a flask
Labelled “Tonic for the Hair”–
“Hic,” says Sadie, “we should care!”

“Father is a corner druggist–
Why should I abstain?
Brother is a counterfeiter,
Printing labels plain.
I can buy grain alcohol
As all the neighbors do;
And if you treat me right I’ll lend
My formula to you.”

Sits the plumber, man of metal.
Joining gas-pipes to a kettle.
‘Neath the bed his wife is lying
Rather silent–she is dying
From some gin her husband gave her.
He’s too busy now to save her.

“Things,” he sings, “are looking upward;
I am making stills.
Soon we’ll cook the stuff by wholesale,
Running twenty ‘mills.’
What we make and how we make it
Doesn’t cut no ice.
Anything you sell in bottles
Brings the standard price.”

In the gutter, quite besotted,
Lies the drunkard, sadly spotted.
People pass with unmoved faces–
Why remark such commonplaces?
Just another Volstead duckling,
Rolling in the gutter chuckling:

“Over seas of milk and water,
Angels’ wings a-flappin’,
Now we’re purified and holy,
Things like me can’t happen.
Liquor’s gone and gone forever–
Even the word is lewd:
Otherwise there’s somethin’ makes me
Feel like I was stewed.”

IV– Finale–A Short Interview with the Human Stomach

Last night as I lay on my pillow,
Last night when they’d put me to bed
I spoke to my dear little tummy
And wept at the words that I said:

“My sensitive, beautiful tummy
That once was so rosy and pure!
My dainty, fastidious tummy–
O what have you had to endure?

“You once were inclined to be fussy;
You turned at inferior rye;
You moped at a dubious vintage
And shrieked if the gin wasn’t dry.

“But now you are covered with bunions
And spongy and morbid and blue;
You bite in the night like an adder–
O say, what has happened to you?”

Then my sullen and sinister tummy
Rose slowly and spoke to my brain;
“Say, boss, what’s the stuff you’ve been drinking
That fills me with nothing but pain?

“Today you had ‘cocktails’ for luncheon–
They tasted like sulphured cologne.
They–were followed by poisonous highballs
That fell in my depths like a stone.

“I am dripping with bootlegger brandy,
I ooze with synthetical gin;
And the beer that you make in the kitchen–
Ah, dire are the wages of sin!

“The cursed saloon has departed,
And well we are rid of the plague;
But I’m weary of furniture polish
With the counterfeit label of Haig.

“Yea, gone is the old-fashioned brewery
And the gilded cafe is no more….”
Here my tummy jumped over the pillow
And fell in a fit on the floor,