Every now and then, in these days, the boys used to tell me I ought to get
one Jim Blaine to tell me the stirring story of his grandfather’s
old ram—but they always added that I must not mention the matter
unless Jim was drunk at the time—just comfortably and sociably
drunk. They kept this up until my curiosity was on the rack to hear the
story. I got to haunting Blaine; but it was of no use, the boys always
found fault with his condition; he was often moderately but never
satisfactorily drunk. I never watched a man’s condition with such
absorbing interest, such anxious solicitude; I never so pined to see a man
uncompromisingly drunk before. At last, one evening I hurried to his
cabin, for I learned that this time his situation was such that even the
most fastidious could find no fault with it—he was tranquilly,
serenely, symmetrically drunk—not a hiccup to mar his voice, not a
cloud upon his brain thick enough to obscure his memory. As I entered, he
was sitting upon an empty powder-keg, with a clay pipe in one hand and the
other raised to command silence. His face was round, red, and very
serious; his throat was bare and his hair tumbled; in general appearance
and costume he was a stalwart miner of the period. On the pine table stood
a candle, and its dim light revealed “the boys” sitting here
and there on bunks, candle-boxes, powder-kegs, etc. They said:
“Sh—! Don’t speak—he’s going to commence.”
