Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 May 1885 — Ten Thousand Dollars for a Drink. [ARTICLE]

Ten Thousand Dollars for a Drink.

“You may not believe it, hut I once paid SIO,OOO for a drink of whisky,” said a corporal on duty at the arsenal in the mens room the other day. The talk had turned to war prices and some pretty steep figures were mentioned. No one believed the corporal and all laughed. But the corporal braced up and said: “When I left Petersburg in 1865 I had $20,000 in Confederate scrip. It was as cold as blazes and a feller got warm thinking of whisky. I was hard up for a drink, and as I had been reading a paper on the delicious liquor, my mind wandered to it. Before I had gone far I met a traveling whisky saloon on wheels. Yes, a sutler, you know. That’s what we called them. I hadn’t a cent except the scrip, but I just went up and says: “ ‘Sutler, have you any good whisky ?’ ‘That I have.’ says he. ‘Well, if you will give me a good drink,’ says I, ‘l’ll give you $10,000.’ Well, you should have seen him smile. He knew it was a gag, but just to see the thing ont he filled me a enp fall of tanglefoot, which I drank with a relish, you bet. Then I gave him SIO,OOO. I offered him the other SIO,OOO, but he had been there.”— Washington Republican. Genius, having intuitively what talent has to gain by toil, is less likely to be pedantic—values not that which is natural to it—dreams not of the exaggerated price put on it by others. Flattery-—the hocus-pocus nonsense with which our ears are sometimes cajoled, in order that we may be more effectually bamboozled and deceived.