Buck up, my
boy! One look at Elizabeth will show her she's mistaken"
"You don't know my mother," Blakely replied; "I feel that I haven't
known her till now. It's out of the question, our staying here after
what has happened. Let's go up to Del Monte, and let's not wait four
months for the wedding. Why can't we be married this week? I'm done
with my mother and with the whole tribe of Porters; they're not my
kind, and you and Elizabeth are."
"Tom, I never felt, that I had a father till I found you. Elizabeth,
girl, I never knew what happiness was till you told me you loved me.
My mother says she would never consent to her son's marrying the
daughter of a man who has kept a livery-stable. I say that I'm done
with a family that made its money out of whisky. My mother's father
was a distiller, her grandfather was a distiller, and if there's any
shame, it's mine, for by all the standards of decency, a livery-
stable is a hundred times more respectable than a warehouse full of
whisky. You made your money honestly, but ours has been wrung out of
the poor, the sick, the ragged, the distressed. The whisky business
is a rotten business, Tom, rotten!"
"It was whisky that bought an ambassadorship for my mother's
brother; it was whisky that paid for the French count my sister
married; it was whisky that sent me to college.
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