THE BUNG-HOLE PARTY.
The story of that singular cask, which the owner said was a hundred years old, should be told now. Pointing to his cask, he said to a gentleman : --
"That cask is a hundred years old."
"A hundred years old!" exclaimed the astonished person addressed, "and never re-hooped!"
"Oh, yes! "responded the owner; "it has had new hoops on it."
"Is that all?"
"Now exactly; several years ago I had new heads inserted."
"But the staves are a hundred years old?" continued the interrogator.
"Why, no! I remember that I had new staves put in some years ago, when it got to leaking; but it is the same bung-hole."
All that he had saved of the cask was the bung-hole.
Last year the license party made a fight for the bung-hole, and they won. That was all they saved. License Republicans gave up Republicanism, and Democrats gave up Democracy, and rumsellers relinquished both, to save the bung-hole; and they did save it. There is proof of it all over the country. The increase of pauperism and crime in every town and city shows that the bung-hole party is in power.
-- from Temperance Anecdotes, by George W. Bungay