The Sedalia weekly bazoo. [volume] (Sedalia, Mo.) 187?-1904, 1884-09-23
PEcK AS 4 Preacher.
Good Advice to Boy Who Wants to 60
Into the Saloon Business.

0uNI'S iOuhNil anu 1h1iS 10 INV 'ut
that is more pleasant TO the editor
than that of setting the boys right
when they have symptoms of going
wrong. \ letter from Il boy at West
Alexandria, O., is us follows:
DEAR SRI have been reader
of your paper for some time and have
noticed your advice to boys. l am
in predicament To know what to do,
and | thought | would write and ask
your advice. | am a young man of
seventeen years and am very DESTROYS
to go into the saloon business. |
have capital enough but my father
and mother object. Think that am
capable of running my own affairs.
Any advice from you will be kindly
received by, Yours truly,
Now here is a chance to save a sew
enteen year old boy from almost sure
ruin, if he will take the medicine.
The medicine is this: Boy, take a
sharp Ratchet, lay your right wrist
across butchers block and with the
left hand take the Ratchet and cut off
the right hand, haggle it, because you
can't do a clean job of cutting with
the left hand. Then go through life
peddling popcorn balls with the left
hand rather than enter the business
of selling whiskey at your age. As
popcorn peddler you will be respected,
as a seventeen year old saloon keeper,
you will be pitied and despised, and
at the age of twenty you Will be
drunkard. or will have made dozen
other boys drunkards, and the friends
of the other boys will hate you, your
parents will not be proud of you, no
girls of responsibility would be seen in
your company, and your companions
will be loafers; you will be disguised
with yourself, will smell of stale lemon
peel, whiskey, and two-for-a-nickle
nicotine, and you will be a sign post
of warning to the other boys to take
the other road. There, you got more
advice than you expected, didn't you?
Well, any respectable saloon keeper
and there are successful and respec-
table men who keep saloons, though
they are as scarce rs hens teeth
would give you the same advice.
ANY of them will tell you, if they tell
the truth, that ninety-seven out of a
hundred who begin life at your age
behind the bar of a saloon, become
either drunkards, gamblers, thieves,
loafers or else lose their health, leave
the business in disgust and die pau
pers. You don't want TO he an I'M
successful saloon keeper. Well, to be
successful one you have got to have
ability enough to he a successful
lawyer, doctor or merchant. The
men who are successful as saloon
keepers have ability which turned in
another direction would have made
them successful in other callingS. and
they hate themselves when they think
of the lost opportunities. and they
almost hate the wealth that has come
to them through the mouth of a
whiskey bottle. A man who keeps
successful saloon and makes money,
does not realize what mean business
il is until he has a family of nice
children grown up. He has money,
furnishes them with nice home,
educates them and is proud of them,
and knows that his girls are as beau
tiful and accomplished as those of the
best citizens in the community, and
knows that they are worthy TO marry
the best man in the state and country.
The first that he notices is that the
young ladies of his household are
ashamed of themselves. They are
qualified by nature and education to
90 into the best society, but the sign
over the door of the fathers place of
business is what is the matter. If
such a girl is invited into the best
society, she is liable to have her heart
broken by some one asking who the
beautiful girl is, and hearing the an
swer, "why, her father keeps saloon
down town somewhere"
No, young man, if there is any
wood to saw in your vicinity, if there
is a good crop of peanuts that can be
baked and sold, job to be secured
driving pair of blind mules hauling
the dirtiest load that can be found, if
you can control the capital to buy a