It appeared that I was wrong.
On the train Mr. Sims unfolded to me that his idea in
"blowing in" upon his college was one of benefaction. He
had it in his mind, he said, to do something for the "old
place," no less a thing than to endow a chair. He explained
to me, modestly as was his wont, the origin of his idea.
The brewing business, it appeared, was rapidly reaching
a stage when it would have to be wound up. The movement
of prohibition would necessitate, said Mr. Sims, the
closing of the plant. The prospect, in the financial
sense, occasioned my friend but little excitement. I was
given to understand that prohibition, in the case of Mr.
Sims's brewery, had long since been "written off" or
"written up" or at least written somewhere where it didn't
matter. And the movement itself Mr. Sims does not regard
as permanent. Prohibition, he says, is bound to be washed
out by a "turn of the tide"; in fact, he speaks of this
returning wave of moral regeneration much as Martin Luther
might have spoken of the Protestant Reformation. But for
the time being the brewery will close. Mr. Sims had
thought deeply, it seemed, about putting his surplus
funds into the manufacture of commercial alcohol, itself
a noble profession.
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