George Barrell Cheever: Deacon Giles' distillery (1844)

He made them his accustomed offer; as much rum every day, when work was done, as they could drink; but they would not take it Some of them broke out and told him that they had enough of hot things where they came from, without drinking damnation in the distillery. And when they said that, it seemed to the Deacon as if their breath burned blue; but he was not certain, and could not tell what to make of it. Then he offered them a pittance of money; but they set up such a laugh, that he thought the roof of the building would fall in. They demanded a sum which the Deacon said he could not give, and would not, to the best set of workmen that ever lived, much less to such piratical looking scape-jails as they. Finally, he said, he would give half what they asked, if they would take twothirds of that in Bibles. When he mentioned the word Bibles, they all looked towards the door, and made a step backwards, and the Deacon thought they trembled; but whether it was with anger or delirium tremens, or something else, he could not tell. However they winked, and made signs to each other, and then one of them, who seemed to be the head man, agreed with the Deacon, that if he would let them work by night instead of day, they would stay with him awhile, and work on his own terms. To this he agreed, and they immediately went to work.

The Deacon had a fresh cargo of molasses to be Worked up, and a great many hogsheads then in from his country customers, to be filled with liquor. When he went home, he locked up the doors, leaving the distillery to his new workmen. As soon as he was gone, you would have thought that one of the chambers of hell had been transported to earth, with all its inmates. The distillery glowed with fires that burned hotter than ever before; and the figures of the demons passing to and fro, and leaping and yelling in the midst of their work, made it look like the entrance to the bottomless pit.

Some of them sat astride the rafters, over the heads of the others, and amused themselves with blowing flames out of their mouths. The work of distilling seemed play to them, and they carried it on with supernatural rapidity. It was hot enough to have boiled the molasses in any part of the distillery; but they did not seem to mind it at all. Some lifted the hogsheads as easily as you would raise a teacup, and turned their contents into the proper receptacles; some scummed the boiling liquids; some, with huge ladles, dipped the smoking fluid from the different vats, and raising it high in the air» seemed to take great delight in watching the fiery stream, as they spouted it back again; some drafted the distilled liquor into empty casks and hogsheads; some stirred the fires; all were boisterous and horribly profane, and seemed to engage in their work with such familiar and malignant satisfaction, that I concluded the business of distilling was as natural as hell, and must have originated there.