Sweet the poison, love it well,
As the common path to hell.
Let the charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Double, double, toil and trouble,
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
They sang these devilish curses with dreadfully malignant satisfaction: and when all the processes in the preparation of the liquor were finished, with equal delight they proceeded to draft it in immense quantities into hogsheads and casks of every dimension. Into every vessel, as they filled it, they put a certain quantity of potash, lime, salts, and sulphuric acid, and then drove in the bung, and wrote upon the cask head, according as it suited their fancy. Some of the inscriptions were as follows:
"BEST LONDON PORTER, FROM DEACON JONES'S BREWERY."
"PALE ALE, OF THE PUREST MATERIALS."
"TEMPERANCE BEER, FROM DEACON JONES'S BREWERY"
"MILD AMERICAN PORTER, FOR FAMILY USE."
"BEST ALBANY ALE, FROM DEACON JONES'S BREWERY."
They also filled an immense multitude of bottles, from the fermenting tun, and packed them very neatly in strong square baskets, which they labelled in shining letters in these words:
"RESTORATIVE FOR WEAK CONSTITUTIONS—DEACON JONES'S BEST BOTTLED PORTER."
A very queer label, as I thought, was used by some, and that was:
"PALE ALE FOR THE NURSERY."
This work was finished just as it grew towards dawn, and having converted the Deacon's old distillery into an extensive brewery, they all vanished from the building; before light, in the same unaccountable manner in which they came into it.
In the morning, the Deacon walked out towards the establishment, not a little disturbed in his thoughts, as to what might have been going on ovenight. He found the outside of his distillery not very much altered, though a number of new windows were observable, surmounted with an out-jutting piece of plank like a penthouse, and covered with coarse blinds, through which the steam from the brewery was pouring in volumes. He thought likewise that the brick walls looked larger and longer than ever before, and more saturated with alcoholic perspiration, as though, indeed, they might have taken a midnight sweat. He found the man in blue and velvet walking about in the clear morning air, and surveying the scene apparently with peculiar satisfaction.
Without saving a word, the man took the Deacon by the arm, and led him into the building, and after pointing out all the extensive transformations and additions which had been accomplished during the night's work, he threw open the doors of an immense store-room, where the workmen had filled the casks of liquor for the Deacon, after the midnight brewing. "Now, Deacon," said the man, with a singularly expressive grin, "I think I have removed all your perplexities, and you may pursue your business on temperance grounds. Meantime we will be just as good friends as ever; for I do assure you that so long as you manage this brewery as I have begun it. you will, be doing my work quite as effectually as you were while you were carrying on the distillery." With that he politely lifted his three-cornered hat. passed gravely out of the building, and tho Deacon saw him no more.
The Deacon was greatly puzzled. He knew not what to think of his strange companion, and for a time he hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry for the acquisition of wealth which he saw before him. Especially was he perplexed by the language of the man, when he said, "You will be doing my work" He could not tell what to make of it, and it troubled him not a little. However, he soon became absorbed in the study of the new machinery, and began to be particularly pleased with the prodigious size of the tun for fermentation, and the vastness of the well-filled store-room. He thought he could almost swim a revenue cutter in the one, and pile more than a thousand hogsheads in the other.
In the couse of the day he got busily engaged in his brewery, and the liquor was sent into all parts of the country; and wherever it came, and whoever tasted it, it was pronounced the most delicious of all intoxicating liquors. Confirmed drunkards smacked their lips, and declared that if they could only live upon such liquor as that, they never would touch another drop of New England Rum in the world. The Deacon was very much pleased, and some time afterwards he was heard to say in the midst of a company of bloated beer-drinkers, that Mr. E. C. Delavan, of Albany, would do more to injure the temperance reformation, by his ill-judged crusades against wine and beer, than he had ever done to forward it by all his energetic efforts against rum and brandy. The besotted crew, one and all, applauded the speech of the Deacon, declaring that he had expressed their opinion precisely; for they had long thought that the temperance cause was greatly suffering from the imprudence and misguided zeal of its professed friends.
The Deacon continues his brewery on so great a scale, that even his devil-built fermentation tun is hardly large enough to supply the demands of his customers. It is said that he manufactures the best "Copenhagen Porter in the country: but every time I see his advertisement, "Inquire at Deacon Jones's Brewery," I hear again the midnight curse of the demons, and think of the dreadful meaning of their leader's language to the Deacon, "You will, be doing my work."
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Hy. J. Crate, Printer, 181 William Street, N.Y.
