The Liquor Dealer’s Business
"This business removed to next door," is the placard fastened on the front of an old grog-shop in New York. The word business, somehow, sets forth the office and work of the liquor-dealer in a very instructive light. The business which has removed from the old stand to the new, is the business of lightening men's pockets and adding to their burden of care; of stealing away their brains, at the price of a wife's shawl or a child's shoes; of helping them to become worse citizens, and no Christians at all; of turning people from church doors towards police courts and barred windows. As one thinks of the "business" that will go on without change, in the new and more pretentious quarters of that "merchant" and "importer," the mind instinctively recalls the brimstone labels that suddenly flashed forth from the barrel-heads in Deacon Giles's Distillery. We do not wonder that liquor-dealers ransack the dictionaries for euphemistic titles, to be applied to their establishments. Plain English has an unfortunate habit of telling the truth; and therefore it happens that not all rum-shops bear, even unintentionally, such veracious placards as that which we have quoted.—S. S. Times.