John Barleycorn..................................................................................................................................................1

It all came to me one election day. It was on a warm California afternoon, and I had ridden down into the

Valley of the Moon from the ranch to the little village to vote Yes and No to a host of proposed amendments

to the Constitution of the State of California. Because of the warmth of the day I had had several drinks

before casting my ballot, and divers drinks after casting it. Then I had ridden up through the vineclad hills

and rolling pastures of the ranch, and arrived at the farmhouse in time for another drink and supper.

She uttered an exclamation of surprise. For, be it known, in my younger days, despite my ardent democracy, I

had been opposed to woman suffrage. In my later and more tolerant years I had been unenthusiastic in my

I answered. I answered at length. I answered indignantly. The more I answered, the more indignant I became.

(No; I was not drunk. The horse I had ridden was well named "The Outlaw." I'd like to see any drunken man

And yethow shall I say?I was lighted up, I was feeling "good," I was pleasantly jingled.

"When the women get the ballot, they will vote for prohibition," I said. "It is the wives, and sisters, and

mothers, and they only, who will drive the nails into the coffin of John Barleycorn"

"I am. I was. I am not. I never am. I am never less his friend than when he is with me and when I seem most

his friend. He is the king of liars. He is the frankest truthsayer. He is the august companion with whom one

walks with the gods. He is also in league with the Noseless One. His way leads to truth naked, and to death.

He gives clear vision, and muddy dreams. He is the enemy of life, and the teacher of wisdom beyond life's

I continued to talk. As I say, I was lighted up. In my brain every thought was at home. Every thought, in its

little cell, crouched readydressed at the door, like prisoners at midnight a jailbreak. And every thought was

a vision, brightimaged, sharp cut, unmistakable. My brain was illuminated by the clear, white light of

alcohol. John Barleycorn was on a truthtelling rampage, giving away the choicest secrets on himself. And I

was his spokesman. There moved the multitudes of memories of my past life, all orderly arranged like

soldiers in some vast review. It was mine to pick and choose. I was a lord of thought, the master of my

vocabulary and of the totality of my experience, unerringly capable of selecting my data and building my

exposition. For so John Barleycorn tricks and lures, setting the maggots of intelligence gnawing, whispering

his fatal intuitions of truth, flinging purple passages into the monotony of one's days.

I outlined my life to Charmian, and expounded the makeup of my constitution. I was no hereditary

alcoholic. I had been born with no organic, chemical predisposition toward alcohol. In this matter I was

normal in my generation. Alcohol was an acquired taste. It had been painfully acquired. Alcohol had been a

dreadfully repugnant thingmore nauseous than any physic. Even now I did not like the taste of it. I drank it

only for its "kick." And from the age of five to that of twentyfive I had not learned to care for its kick.

Twenty years of unwilling apprenticeship had been required to make my system rebelliously tolerant of

I sketched my first contacts with alcohol, told of my first intoxications and revulsions, and pointed out always

the one thing that in the end had won me overnamely, the accessibility of alcohol. Not only had it always

been accessible, but every interest of my developing life had drawn me to it. A newsboy on the streets, a

sailor, a miner, a wanderer in far lands, always where men came together to exchange ideas, to laugh and

boast and dare, to relax, to forget the dull toil of tiresome nights and days, always they came together over

alcohol. The saloon was the place of congregation. Men gathered to it as primitive men gathered about the

I reminded Charmian of the canoe houses from which she had been barred in the South Pacific, where the

kinkyhaired cannibals escaped from their womenkind and feasted and drank by themselves, the sacred

precincts taboo to women under pain of death. As a youth, by way of the saloon I had escaped from the

narrowness of woman's influence into the wide free world of men. All ways led to the saloon. The thousand

roads of romance and adventure drew together in the saloon, and thence led out and on over the world.

"The point is," I concluded my sermon, "that it is the accessibility of alcohol that has given me my taste for

alcohol. I did not care for it. I used to laugh at it. Yet here I am, at the last, possessed with the drinker's desire.

It took twenty years to implant that desire; and for ten years more that desire has grown. And the effect of

satisfying that desire is anything but good. Temperamentally I am wholesomehearted and merry. Yet when I

"But," I hastened to add (I always hasten to add), "John Barleycorn must have his due. He does tell the truth.

That is the curse of it. The socalled truths of life are not true. They are the vital lies by which life lives, and

"Very true," I answered. "And that is the perfectest hell of it. John Barleycorn makes toward death. That is

why I voted for the amendment today. I read back in my life and saw how the accessibility of alcohol had

given me the taste for it. You see, comparatively few alcoholics are born in a generation. And by alcoholic I

mean a man whose chemistry craves alcohol and drives him resistlessly to it. The great majority of habitual

drinkers are born not only without desire for alcohol, but with actual repugnance toward it. Not the first, nor

the twentieth, nor the hundredth drink, succeeded in giving them the liking. But they learned, just as men

learn to smoke; though it is far easier to learn to smoke than to learn to drink. They learned because alcohol

was so accessible. The women know the game. They pay for itthe wives and sisters and mothers. And

when they come to vote, they will vote for prohibition. And the best of it is that there will be no hardship

worked on the coming generation. Not having access to alcohol, not being predisposed toward alcohol, it will

never miss alcohol. It will mean life more abundant for the manhood of the young boys born and growing

upay, and life more abundant for the young girls born and growing up to share the lives of the young

"Why not write all this up for the sake of the men and women coming?" Charmian asked. "Why not write it

"The 'Memoirs of an Alcoholic,'" I sneeredor, rather, John Barleycorn sneered; for he sat with me there at

table in my pleasant, philanthropic jingle, and it is a trick of John Barleycorn to turn the smile to a sneer

"No," said Charmian, ignoring John Barleycorn's roughness, as so many women have learned to do. "You

have shown yourself no alcoholic, no dipsomaniac, but merely an habitual drinker, one who has made John

Barleycorn's acquaintance through long years of rubbing shoulders with him. Write it up and call it 'Alcoholic

And, ere I begin, I must ask the reader to walk with me in all sympathy; and, since sympathy is merely

understanding, begin by understanding me and whom and what I write about. In the first place, I am a

seasoned drinker. I have no constitutional predisposition for alcohol. I am not stupid. I am not a swine. I

know the drinking game from A to Z, and I have used my judgment in drinking. I never have to be put to bed.

Nor do I stagger. In short, I am a normal, average man; and I drink in the normal, average way, as drinking

goes. And this is the very point: I am writing of the effects of alcohol on the normal, average man. I have no

word to say for or about the microscopically unimportant excessivist, the dipsomaniac.

There are, broadly speaking, two types of drinkers. There is the man whom we all know, stupid,

unimaginative, whose brain is bitten numbly by numb maggots; who walks generously with widespread,

tentative legs, falls frequently in the gutter, and who sees, in the extremity of his ecstasy, blue mice and pink

The other type of drinker has imagination, vision. Even when most pleasantly jingled, he walks straight and

naturally, never staggers nor falls, and knows just where he is and what he is doing. It is not his body but his

brain that is drunken. He may bubble with wit, or expand with good fellowship. Or he may see intellectual

spectres and phantoms that are cosmic and logical and that take the forms of syllogisms. It is when in this

condition that he strips away the husks of life's healthiest illusions and gravely considers the iron collar of

necessity welded about the neck of his soul. This is the hour of John Barleycorn's subtlest power. It is easy

for any man to roll in the gutter. But it is a terrible ordeal for a man to stand upright on his two legs

unswaying, and decide that in all the universe he finds for himself but one freedomnamely, the anticipating

of the day of his death. With this man this is the hour of the white logic (of which more anon), when he

knows that he may know only the laws of thingsthe meaning of things never. This is his danger hour. His

All is clear to him. All these baffling headreaches after immortality are but the panics of souls frightened by

the fear of death, and cursed with the thricecursed gift of imagination. They have not the instinct for death;

they lack the will to die when the time to die is at hand. They trick themselves into believing they will outwit

the game and win to a future, leaving the other animals to the darkness of the grave or the annihilating heats

of the crematory. But he, this man in the hour of his white logic, knows that they trick and outwit themselves.

The one event happeneth to all alike. There is no new thing under the sun, not even that yearnedfor bauble

of feeble soulsimmortality. But he knows, HE knows, standing upright on his two legs unswaying. He is

compounded of meat and wine and sparkle, of sunmote and world dust, a frail mechanism made to run for

a span, to be tinkered at by doctors of divinity and doctors of physic, and to be flung into the scrapheap at

Of course, all this is soulsickness, lifesickness. It is the penalty the imaginative man must pay for his

friendship with John Barleycorn. The penalty paid by the stupid man is simpler, easier. He drinks himself into

sottish unconsciousness. He sleeps a drugged sleep, and, if he dream, his dreams are dim and inarticulate. But

to the imaginative man, John Barleycorn sends the pitiless, spectral syllogisms of the white logic. He looks

upon life and all its affairs with the jaundiced eye of a pessimistic German philosopher. He sees through all

illusions. He transvalues all values. Good is bad, truth is a cheat, and life is a joke. From his calmmad

heights, with the certitude of a god, he beholds all life as evil. Wife, children, friendsin the clear, white

light of his logic they are exposed as frauds and shams. He sees through them, and all that he sees is their

frailty, their meagreness, their sordidness, their pitifulness. No longer do they fool him. They are miserable

little egotisms, like all the other little humans, fluttering their Mayfly life dance of an hour. They are

without freedom. They are puppets of chance. So is he. He realises that. But there is one difference. He sees;

he knows. And he knows his one freedom: he may anticipate the day of his death. All of which is not good

for a man who is made to live and love and be loved. Yet suicide, quick or slow, a sudden spill or a gradual

oozing away through the years, is the price John Barleycorn exacts. No friend of his ever escapes making the

I was five years old the first time I got drunk. It was on a hot day, and my father was ploughing in the field. I

was sent from the house, half a mile away, to carry to him a pail of beer. "And be sure you don't spill it," was

It was, as I remember it, a lard pail, very wide across the top, and without a cover. As I toddled along, the

beer slopped over the rim upon my legs. And as I toddled, I pondered. Beer was a very precious thing. Come

to think of it, it must be wonderfully good. Else why was I never permitted to drink of it in the house? Other

things kept from me by the grownups I had found good. Then this, too, was good. Trust the grownups.

They knew. And, anyway, the pail was too full. I was slopping it against my legs and spilling it on the

I was so small that, in order to negotiate the pail, I sat down and gathered it into my lap. First I sipped the

foam. I was disappointed. The preciousness evaded me. Evidently it did not reside in the foam. Besides, the

taste was not good. Then I remembered seeing the grownups blow the foam away before they drank. I

buried my face in the foam and lapped the solid liquid beneath. It wasn't good at all. But still I drank. The

grown ups knew what they were about. Considering my diminutiveness, the size of the pail in my lap, and

my drinking out of it my breath held and my face buried to the ears in foam, it was rather difficult to estimate

how much I drank. Also, I was gulping it down like medicine, in nauseous haste to get the ordeal over.

I shuddered when I started on, and decided that the good taste would come afterward. I tried several times

more in the course of that long halfmile. Then, astounded by the quantity of beer that was lacking, and

remembering having seen stale beer made to foam afresh, I took a stick and stirred what was left till it foamed

And my father never noticed. He emptied the pail with the wide thirst of the sweating ploughman, returned it

to me, and started up the plough. I endeavoured to walk beside the horses. I remember tottering and falling

against their heels in front of the shining share, and that my father hauled back on the lines so violently that

the horses nearly sat down on me. He told me afterward that it was by only a matter of inches that I escaped

disembowelling. Vaguely, too, I remember, my father carried me in his arms to the trees on the edge of the

field, while all the world reeled and swung about me, and I was aware of deadly nausea mingled with an

I slept the afternoon away under the trees, and when my father roused me at sundown it was a very sick little

boy that got up and dragged wearily homeward. I was exhausted, oppressed by the weight of my limbs, and

in my stomach was a harplike vibrating that extended to my throat and brain. My condition was like that of

In the weeks and months that followed I had no more interest in beer than in the kitchen stove after it had

burned me. The grown ups were right. Beer was not for children. The grownups didn't mind it; but neither

did they mind taking pills and castor oil. As for me, I could manage to get along quite well without beer. Yes,

and to the day of my death I could have managed to get along quite well without it. But circumstance decreed

otherwise. At every turn in the world in which I lived, John Barleycorn beckoned. There was no escaping

him. All paths led to him. And it took twenty years of contact, of exchanging greetings and passing on with

My next bout with John Barleycorn occurred when I was seven. This time my imagination was at fault, and I

was frightened into the encounter. Still farming, my family had moved to a ranch on the bleak sad coast of

San Mateo County, south of San Francisco. It was a wild, primitive countryside in those days; and often I

heard my mother pride herself that we were old American stock and not immigrant Irish and Italians like our

One Sunday morning found me, how or why I cannot now remember, at the Morrisey ranch. A number of

young people had gathered there from the nearer ranches. Besides, the oldsters had been there, drinking since

early dawn, and, some of them, since the night before. The Morriseys were a huge breed, and there were

Suddenly there were screams from the girls and cries of "Fight!" There was a rush. Men hurled themselves

out of the kitchen. Two giants, flushfaced, with greying hair, were locked in each other's arms. One was

Black Matt, who, everybody said, had killed two men in his time. The women screamed softly, crossed

themselves, or prayed brokenly, hiding their eyes and peeping through their fingers. But not I. It is a fair

presumption that I was the most interested spectator. Maybe I would see that wonderful thing, a man killed.

Anyway, I would see a manfight. Great was my disappointment. Black Matt and Tom Morrisey merely held

on to each other and lifted their clumsybooted feet in what seemed a grotesque, elephantine dance. They

were too drunk to fight. Then the peacemakers got hold of them and led them back to cement the new

Soon they were all talking at once, rumbling and roaring as big chested openair men will, when whisky has

whipped their taciturnity. And I, a little shaver of seven, my heart in my mouth, my trembling body strung

tense as a deer's on the verge of flight, peered wonderingly in at the open door and learned more of the

strangeness of men. And I marvelled at Black Matt and Tom Morrisey, sprawled over the table, arms about

The kitchendrinking continued, and the girls outside grew timorous. They knew the drink game, and all

were certain that something terrible was going to happen. They protested that they did not wish to be there

when it happened, and some one suggested going to a big Italian rancho four miles away, where they could

get up a dance. Immediately they paired off, lad and lassie, and started down the sandy road. And each lad

walked with his sweethearttrust a child of seven to listen and to know the love affairs of his countryside.

And behold, I, too, was a lad with a lassie. A little Irish girl of my own age had been paired off with me. We

were the only children in this spontaneous affair. Perhaps the oldest couple might have been twenty. There

were chits of girls, quite grown up, of fourteen and sixteen, walking with their fellows. But we were uniquely

young, this little Irish girl and I, and we walked hand in hand, and, sometimes, under the tutelage of our

elders, with my arm around her waist. Only that wasn't comfortable. And I was very proud, on that bright

Sunday morning, going down the long bleak road among the sandhills. I, too, had my girl, and was a little

The Italian rancho was a bachelor establishment. Our visit was hailed with delight. The red wine was poured

in tumblers for all, and the long diningroom was partly cleared for dancing. And the young fellows drank

and danced with the girls to the strains of an accordion. To me that music was divine. I had never heard

anything so glorious. The young Italian who furnished it would even get up and dance, his arms around his

girl, playing the accordion behind her back. All of which was very wonderful for me, who did not dance, but

who sat at a table and gazed wideeyed at the amazingness of life. I was only a little lad, and there was so

much of life for me to learn. As the time passed, the Irish lads began helping themselves to the wine, and

jollity and high spirits reigned. I noted that some of them staggered and fell down in the dances, and that one

had gone to sleep in a corner. Also, some of the girls were complaining, and wanting to leave, and others of

When our Italian hosts had offered me wine in a general sort of way, I had declined. My beer experience had

been enough for me, and I had no inclination to traffic further in the stuff, or in anything related to it.

Unfortunately, one young Italian, Peter, an impish soul, seeing me sitting solitary, stirred by a whim of the

moment, halffilled a tumbler with wine and passed it to me. He was sitting across the table from me. I

declined. His face grew stern, and he insistently proffered the wine. And then terror descended upon mea

My mother had theories. First, she steadfastly maintained that brunettes and all the tribe of darkeyed

humans were deceitful. Needless to say, my mother was a blonde. Next, she was convinced that the

darkeyed Latin races were profoundly sensitive, profoundly treacherous, and profoundly murderous. Again

and again, drinking in the strangeness and the fearsomeness of the world from her lips, I had heard her state

that if one offended an Italian, no matter how slightly and unintentionally, he was certain to retaliate by

Now, although I had been eager to see Black Matt kill Tom Morrisey that morning, I did not care to furnish to

the dancers the spectacle of a knife sticking in my back. I had not yet learned to distinguish between facts and

theories. My faith was implicit in my mother's exposition of the Italian character. Besides, I had some

glimmering inkling of the sacredness of hospitality. Here was a treacherous, sensitive, murderous Italian,

offering me hospitality. I had been taught to believe that if I offended him he would strike at me with a knife

precisely as a horse kicked out when one got too close to its heels and worried it. Then, too, this Italian, Peter,

had those terrible black eyes I had heard my mother talk about. They were eyes different from the eyes I

knew, from the blues and greys and hazels of my own family, from the pale and genial blues of the Irish.

Perhaps Peter had had a few drinks. At any rate, his eyes were brilliantly black and sparkling with devilry.

They were the mysterious, the unknown, and who was I, a sevenyearold, to analyse them and know their

prankishness? In them I visioned sudden death, and I declined the wine halfheartedly. The expression in his

eyes changed. They grew stern and imperious as he shoved the tumbler of wine closer.

What could I do? I have faced real death since in my life, but never have I known the fear of death as I knew

it then. I put the glass to my lips, and Peter's eyes relented. I knew he would not kill me just then. That was a

relief. But the wine was not. It was cheap, new wine, bitter and sour, made of the leavings and scrapings of

the vineyards and the vats, and it tasted far worse than beer. There is only one way to take medicine, and that

is to take it. And that is the way I took that wine. I threw my head back and gulped it down. I had to gulp

again and hold the poison down, for poison it was to my child's tissues and membranes.

Looking back now, I can realise that Peter was astounded. He halffilled a second tumbler and shoved it

across the table. Frozen with fear, in despair at the fate which had befallen me, I gulped the second glass

down like the first. This was too much for Peter. He must share the infant prodigy he had discovered. He

called Dominick, a young moustached Italian, to see the sight. This time it was a full tumbler that was given

me. One will do anything to live. I gripped myself, mastered the qualms that rose in my throat, and downed

Dominick had never seen an infant of such heroic calibre. Twice again he refilled the tumbler, each time to

the brim, and watched it disappear down my throat. By this time my exploits were attracting attention.

Middleaged Italian labourers, oldcountry peasants who did not talk English, and who could not dance with

the Irish girls, surrounded me. They were swarthy and wild looking; they wore belts and red shirts; and I

knew they carried knives; and they ringed me around like a pirate chorus. And Peter and Dominick made me

Had I lacked imagination, had I been stupid, had I been stubbornly mulish in having my own way, I should

never have got in this pickle. And the lads and lassies were dancing, and there was no one to save me from

my fate. How much I drank I do not know. My memory of it is of an agelong suffering of fear in the midst

of a murderous crew, and of an infinite number of glasses of red wine passing across the bare boards of a

winedrenched table and going down my burning throat. Bad as the wine was, a knife in the back was worse,

Looking back with the drinker's knowledge, I know now why I did not collapse stupefied upon the table. As I

have said, I was frozen, I was paralysed, with fear. The only movement I made was to convey that

neverending procession of glasses to my lips. I was a poised and motionless receptacle for all that quantity

of wine. It lay inert in my fearinert stomach. I was too frightened, even, for my stomach to turn. So all that

Italian crew looked on and marvelled at the infant phenomenon that downed wine with the sangfroid of an

automaton. It is not in the spirit of braggadocio that I dare to assert they had never seen anything like it.

The time came to go. The tipsy antics of the lads had led a majority of the sobererminded lassies to compel

a departure. I found myself, at the door, beside my little maiden. She had not had my experience, so she was

sober. She was fascinated by the titubations of the lads who strove to walk beside their girls, and began to

mimic them. I thought this a great game, and I, too, began to stagger tipsily. But she had no wine to stir up,

while my movements quickly set the fumes rising to my head. Even at the start, I was more realistic than she.

In several minutes I was astonishing myself. I saw one lad, after reeling half a dozen steps, pause at the side

of the road, gravely peer into the ditch, and gravely, and after apparent deep thought, fall into it. To me this

was excruciatingly funny. I staggered to the edge of the ditch, fully intending to stop on the edge. I came to

myself, in the ditch, in process of being hauled out by several anxiousfaced girls.

I didn't care to play at being drunk any more. There was no more fun in me. My eyes were beginning to

swim, and with wideopen mouth I panted for air. A girl led me by the hand on either side, but my legs were

leaden. The alcohol I had drunk was striking my heart and brain like a club. Had I been a weakling of a child,

I am confident that it would have killed me. As it was, I know I was nearer death than any of the scared girls

dreamed. I could hear them bickering among themselves as to whose fault it was; some were weepingfor

themselves, for me, and for the disgraceful way their lads had behaved. But I was not interested. I was

suffocating, and I wanted air. To move was agony. It made me pant harder. Yet those girls persisted in

making me walk, and it was four miles home. Four miles! I remember my swimming eyes saw a small bridge

across the road an infinite distance away. In fact, it was not a hundred feet distant. When I reached it, I sank

down and lay on my back panting. The girls tried to lift me, but I was helpless and suffocating. Their cries of

alarm brought Larry, a drunken youth of seventeen, who proceeded to resuscitate me by jumping on my

chest. Dimly I remember this, and the squalling of the girls as they struggled with him and dragged him

away. And then I knew nothing, though I learned afterward that Larry wound up under the bridge and spent

When I came to, it was dark. I had been carried unconscious for four miles and been put to bed. I was a sick

child, and, despite the terrible strain on my heart and tissues, I continually relapsed into the madness of

delirium. All the contents of the terrible and horrible in my child's mind spilled out. The most frightful

visions were realities to me. I saw murders committed, and I was pursued by murderers. I screamed and raved

and fought. My sufferings were prodigious. Emerging from such delirium, I would hear my mother's voice:

"But the child's brain. He will lose his reason." And sinking back into delirium, I would take the idea with me

and be immured in madhouses, and be beaten by keepers, and surrounded by screeching lunatics.

One thing that had strongly impressed my young mind was the talk of my elders about the dens of iniquity in

San Francisco's Chinatown. In my delirium I wandered deep beneath the ground through a thousand of these

dens, and behind locked doors of iron I suffered and died a thousand deaths. And when I would come upon

my father, seated at table in these subterranean crypts, gambling with Chinese for great stakes of gold, all my

outrage gave vent in the vilest cursing. I would rise in bed, struggling against the detaining hands, and curse

my father till the rafters rang. All the inconceivable filth a child running at large in a primitive countryside

may hear men utter was mine; and though I had never dared utter such oaths, they now poured from me, at

the top of my lungs, as I cursed my father sitting there underground and gambling with longhaired,

It is a wonder that I did not burst my heart or brain that night. A sevenyearold child's arteries and

nervecentres are scarcely fitted to endure the terrific paroxysms that convulsed me. No one slept in the thin,

frame farmhouse that night when John Barleycorn had his will of me. And Larry, under the bridge, had no

delirium like mine. I am confident that his sleep was stupefied and dreamless, and that he awoke next day

merely to heaviness and moroseness, and that if he lives today he does not remember that night, so passing

was it as an incident. But my brain was seared for ever by that experience. Writing now, thirty years

afterward, every vision is as distinct, as sharpcut, every pain as vital and terrible, as on that night.

I was sick for days afterward, and I needed none of my mother's injunctions to avoid John Barleycorn in the

future. My mother had been dreadfully shocked. She held that I had done wrong, very wrong, and that I had

gone contrary to all her teaching. And how was I, who was never allowed to talk back, who lacked the very

words with which to express my psychologyhow was I to tell my mother that it was her teaching that was

directly responsible for my drunkenness? Had it not been for her theories about dark eyes and Italian

character, I should never have wet my lips with the sour, bitter wine. And not until mangrown did I tell her

In those after days of sickness, I was confused on some points, and very clear on others. I felt guilty of sin,

yet smarted with a sense of injustice. It had not been my fault, yet I had done wrong. But very clear was my

resolution never to touch liquor again. No mad dog was ever more afraid of water than was I of alcohol.

Yet the point I am making is that this experience, terrible as it was, could not in the end deter me from

forming John Barleycorn's cheekbyjowl acquaintance. All about me, even then, were the forces moving

me toward him. In the first place, barring my mother, ever extreme in her views, it seemed to me all the

grown ups looked upon the affair with tolerant eyes. It was a joke, something funny that had happened.

There was no shame attached. Even the lads and lassies giggled and snickered over their part in the affair,

narrating with gusto how Larry had jumped on my chest and slept under the bridge, how SoandSo had

slept out in the sandhills that night, and what had happened to the other lad who fell in the ditch. As I say, so

far as I could see, there was no shame anywhere. It had been something ticklishly, devilishly finea bright

and gorgeous episode in the monotony of life and labour on that bleak, foggirt coast.

The Irish ranchers twitted me goodnaturedly on my exploit, and patted me on the back until I felt that I had

done something heroic. Peter and Dominick and the other Italians were proud of my drinking prowess. The

face of morality was not set against drinking. Besides, everybody drank. There was not a teetotaler in the

community. Even the teacher of our little country school, a greying man of fifty, gave us vacations on the

occasions when he wrestled with John Barleycorn and was thrown. Thus there was no spiritual deterrence.

My loathing for alcohol was purely physiological. I didn't like the damned stuff.

This physical loathing for alcohol I have never got over. But I have conquered it. To this day I conquer it

every time I take a drink. The palate never ceases to rebel, and the palate can be trusted to know what is good

for the body. But men do not drink for the effect alcohol produces on the body. What they drink for is the

braineffect; and if it must come through the body, so much the worse for the body.

And yet, despite my physical loathing for alcohol, the brightest spots in my child life were the saloons.

Sitting on the heavy potato wagons, wrapped in fog, feet stinging from inactivity, the horses plodding slowly

along the deep road through the sandhills, one bright vision made the way never too long. The bright vision

was the saloon at Colma, where my father, or whoever drove, always got out to get a drink. And I got out to

warm by the great stove and get a soda cracker. Just one soda cracker, but a fabulous luxury. Saloons were

good for something. Back behind the plodding horses, I would take an hour in consuming that one cracker. I

took the smallest nibbles, never losing a crumb, and chewed the nibble till it became the thinnest and most

delectable of pastes. I never voluntarily swallowed this paste. I just tasted it, and went on tasting it, turning it

over with my tongue, spreading it on the inside of this cheek, then on the inside of the other cheek, until, at

the end, it eluded me and in tiny drops and oozelets, slipped and dribbled down my throat. Horace Fletcher

I liked saloons. Especially I liked the San Francisco saloons. They had the most delicious dainties for the

takingstrange breads and crackers, cheeses, sausages, sardineswonderful foods that I never saw on our

meagre hometable. And once, I remember, a barkeeper mixed me a sweet temperance drink of syrup and

soda water. My father did not pay for it. It was the barkeeper's treat, and he became my ideal of a good, kind

man. I dreamed day dreams of him for years. Although I was seven years old at the time, I can see him now

with undiminished clearness, though I never laid eyes on him but that one time. The saloon was south of

Market Street in San Francisco. It stood on the west side of the street. As you entered, the bar was on the left.

On the right, against the wall, was the free lunch counter. It was a long, narrow room, and at the rear, beyond

the beer kegs on tap, were small, round tables and chairs. The barkeeper was blueeyed, and had fair, silky

hair peeping out from under a black silk skull cap. I remember he wore a brown Cardigan jacket, and I

know precisely the spot, in the midst of the array of bottles, from which he took the bottle of redcoloured

syrup. He and my father talked long, and I sipped my sweet drink and worshipped him. And for years

Despite my two disastrous experiences, here was John Barleycorn, prevalent and accessible everywhere in

the community, luring and drawing me. Here were connotations of the saloon making deep indentations in a

child's mind. Here was a child, forming its first judgments of the world, finding the saloon a delightful and

desirable place. Stores, nor public buildings, nor all the dwellings of men ever opened their doors to me and

let me warm by their fires or permitted me to eat the food of the gods from narrow shelves against the wall.

Their doors were ever closed to me; the saloon's doors were ever open. And always and everywhere I found

saloons, on highway and byway, up narrow alleys and on busy thoroughfares, brightlighted and cheerful,

warm in winter, and in summer dark and cool. Yes, the saloon was a mighty fine place, and it was more than

By the time I was ten years old, my family had abandoned ranching and gone to live in the city. And here, at

ten, I began on the streets as a newsboy. One of the reasons for this was that we needed the money. Another

reason was that I needed the exercise. I had found my way to the free public library, and was reading myself

into nervous prostration. On the poor ranches on which I had lived there had been no books. In ways truly

miraculous, I had been lent four books, marvellous books, and them I had devoured. One was the life of

Garfield; the second, Paul du Chaillu's African travels; the third, a novel by Ouida with the last forty pages

missing; and the fourth, Irving's "Alhambra." This last had been lent me by a schoolteacher. I was not a

forward child. Unlike Oliver Twist, I was incapable of asking for more. When I returned the "Alhambra" to

the teacher I hoped she would lend me another book. And because she did notmost likely she deemed me

unappreciativeI cried all the way home on the threemile tramp from the school to the ranch. I waited and

yearned for her to lend me another book. Scores of times I nerved myself almost to the point of asking her,

And then came the city of Oakland, and on the shelves of that free library I discovered all the great world

beyond the skyline. Here were thousands of books as good as my four wonderbooks, and some were even

better. Libraries were not concerned with children in those days, and I had strange adventures. I remember, in

the catalogue, being impressed by the title, "The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle." I filled an application

blank and the librarian handed me the collected and entirely unexpurgated works of Smollett in one huge

volume. I read everything, but principally history and adventure, and all the old travels and voyages. I read

mornings, afternoons, and nights. I read in bed, I read at table, I read as I walked to and from school, and I

read at recess while the other boys were playing. I began to get the "jerks." To everybody I replied: "Go

And so, at ten, I was out on the streets, a newsboy. I had no time to read. I was busy getting exercise and

learning how to fight, busy learning forwardness, and brass and bluff. I had an imagination and a curiosity

about all things that made me plastic. Not least among the things I was curious about was the saloon. And I

was in and out of many a one. I remember, in those days, on the east side of Broadway, between Sixth and

In the saloons life was different. Men talked with great voices, laughed great laughs, and there was an

atmosphere of greatness. Here was something more than common everyday where nothing happened. Here

life was always very live, and, sometimes, even lurid, when blows were struck, and blood was shed, and big

policemen came shouldering in. Great moments, these, for me, my head filled with all the wild and valiant

fighting of the gallant adventurers on sea and land. There were no big moments when I trudged along the

street throwing my papers in at doors. But in the saloons, even the sots, stupefied, sprawling across the tables

And more, the saloons were right. The city fathers sanctioned them and licensed them. They were not the

terrible places I heard boys deem them who lacked my opportunities to know. Terrible they might be, but

then that only meant they were terribly wonderful, and it is the terribly wonderful that a boy desires to know.

In the same way pirates, and shipwrecks, and battles were terrible; and what healthy boy wouldn't give his

Besides, in saloons I saw reporters, editors, lawyers, judges, whose names and faces I knew. They put the seal

of social approval on the saloon. They verified my own feeling of fascination in the saloon. They, too, must

have found there that something different, that something beyond, which I sensed and groped after. What it

was, I did not know; yet there it must be, for there men focused like buzzing flies about a honey pot. I had no

sorrows, and the world was very bright, so I could not guess that what these men sought was forgetfulness of

Not that I drank at that time. From ten to fifteen I rarely tasted liquor, but I was intimately in contact with

drinkers and drinking places. The only reason I did not drink was because I didn't like the stuff. As the time

passed, I worked as boyhelper on an icewagon, set up pins in a bowling alley with a saloon attached, and

Big jovial Josie Harper ran a road house at Telegraph Avenue and Thirtyninth Street. Here for a year I

delivered an evening paper, until my route was changed to the waterfront and tenderloin of Oakland. The

first month, when I collected Josie Harper's bill, she poured me a glass of wine. I was ashamed to refuse, so I

drank it. But after that I watched the chance when she wasn't around so as to collect from her barkeeper.

The first day I worked in the bowling alley, the barkeeper, according to custom, called us boys up to have a

drink after we had been setting up pins for several hours. The others asked for beer. I said I'd take ginger ale.

The boys snickered, and I noticed the barkeeper favoured me with a strange, searching scrutiny. Nevertheless,

he opened a bottle of ginger ale. Afterward, back in the alleys, in the pauses between games, the boys

enlightened me. I had offended the barkeeper. A bottle of ginger ale cost the saloon ever so much more than a

glass of steam beer; and it was up to me, if I wanted to hold my job, to drink beer. Besides, beer was food. I

could work better on it. There was no food in ginger ale. After that, when I couldn't sneak out of it, I drank

beer and wondered what men found in it that was so good. I was always aware that I was missing something.

What I really liked in those days was candy. For five cents I could buy five "cannonballs"big lumps of

the most delicious lastingness. I could chew and worry a single one for an hour. Then there was a Mexican

who sold big slabs of brown chewing taffy for five cents each. It required a quarter of a day properly to

absorb one of them. And many a day I made my entire lunch off one of those slabs. In truth, I found food

But the time was rapidly drawing near when I was to begin my second series of bouts with John Barleycorn.

When I was fourteen, my head filled with the tales of the old voyagers, my vision with tropic isles and far

searims, I was sailing a small centreboard skiff around San Francisco Bay and on the Oakland Estuary. I

wanted to go to sea. I wanted to get away from monotony and the commonplace. I was in the flower of my

adolescence, athrill with romance and adventure, dreaming of wild life in the wild man world. Little I

So, one day, as I hoisted sail on my skiff, I met Scotty. He was a husky youngster of seventeen, a runaway

apprentice, he told me, from an English ship in Australia. He had just worked his way on another ship to San

Francisco; and now he wanted to see about getting a berth on a whaler. Across the estuary, near where the

whalers lay, was lying the sloopyacht Idler. The caretaker was a harpooner who intended sailing next

voyage on the whale ship Bonanza. Would I take him, Scotty, over in my skiff to call upon the harpooner?

Would I! Hadn't I heard the stories and rumours about the Idler? the big sloop that had come up from the

Sandwich Islands where it had been engaged in smuggling opium. And the harpooner who was caretaker!

How often had I seen him and envied him his freedom. He never had to leave the water. He slept aboard the

Idler each night, while I had to go home upon the land to go to bed. The harpooner was only nineteen years

old (and I have never had anything but his own word that he was a harpooner); but he had been too shining

and glorious a personality for me ever to address as I paddled around the yacht at a wistful distance. Would I

take Scotty, the runaway sailor, to visit the harpooner, on the opium smuggler Idler? WOULD I!

The harpooner came on deck to answer our hail, and invited us aboard. I played the sailor and the man,

fending off the skiff so that it would not mar the yacht's white paint, dropping the skiff astern on a long

We went below. It was the first seainterior I had ever seen. The clothing on the wall smelled musty. But

what of that? Was it not the seagear of men?leather jackets lined with corduroy, blue coats of pilot cloth,

sou'westers, seaboots, oilskins. And everywhere was in evidence the economy of spacethe narrow bunks,

the swinging tables, the incredible lockers. There were the tell tale compass, the sealamps in their gimbals,

the bluebacked charts carelessly rolled and tucked away, the signalflags in alphabetical order, and a

mariner's dividers jammed into the woodwork to hold a calendar. At last I was living. Here I sat, inside my

first ship, a smuggler, accepted as a comrade by a harpooner and a runaway English sailor who said his name

The first thing that the harpooner, aged nineteen, and the sailor, aged seventeen, did to show that they were

men was to behave like men. The harpooner suggested the eminent desirableness of a drink, and Scotty

searched his pockets for dimes and nickels. Then the harpooner carried away a pink flask to be filled in some

blind pig, for there were no licensed saloons in that locality. We drank the cheap rotgut out of tumblers. Was

I any the less strong, any the less valiant, than the harpooner and the sailor? They were men. They proved it

by the way they drank. Drink was the badge of manhood. So I drank with them, drink by drink, raw and

straight, though the damned stuff couldn't compare with a stick of chewing taffy or a delectable

"cannonball." I shuddered and swallowed my gorge with every drink, though I manfully hid all such

Divers times we filled the flask that afternoon. All I had was twenty cents, but I put it up like a man, though

with secret regret at the enormous store of candy it could have bought. The liquor mounted in the heads of all

of us, and the talk of Scotty and the harpooner was upon running the Easting down, gales off the Horn and

pamperos off the Plate, lower topsail breezes, southerly busters, North Pacific gales, and of smashed

"You can't swim in that ice water," said the harpooner confidentially to me. "You double up in a minute and

go down. When a whale smashes your boat, the thing to do is to get your belly across an oar, so that when the

"Sure," I said, with a grateful nod and an air of certitude that I, too, would hunt whales and be in smashed

boats in the Arctic Ocean. And, truly, I registered his advice as singularly valuable information, and filed it

But I couldn't talkat first. Heavens! I was only fourteen, and had never been on the ocean in my life. I

could only listen to the two seadogs, and show my manhood by drinking with them, fairly and squarely,

The liquor worked its will with me; the talk of Scotty and the harpooner poured through the pent space of the

Idler's cabin and through my brain like great gusts of wide, free wind; and in imagination I lived my years to

We unbent. Our inhibitions and taciturnities vanished. We were as if we had known each other for years and

years, and we pledged ourselves to years of future voyagings together. The harpooner told of misadventures

and secret shames. Scotty wept over his poor old mother in Edinburgha lady, he insisted, gently born

who was in reduced circumstances, who had pinched herself to pay the lump sum to the shipowners for his

apprenticeship, whose sacrificing dream had been to see him a merchantman officer and a gentleman, and

who was heartbroken because he had deserted his ship in Australia and joined another as a common sailor

before the mast. And Scotty proved it. He drew her last sad letter from his pocket and wept over it as he read

it aloud. The harpooner and I wept with him, and swore that all three of us would ship on the whaleship

Bonanza, win a big payday, and, still together, make a pilgrimage to Edinburgh and lay our store of money

And, as John Barleycorn heated his way into my brain, thawing my reticence, melting my modesty, talking

through me and with me and as me, my adopted twin brother and alter ego, I, too, raised my voice to show

myself a man and an adventurer, and bragged in detail and at length of how I had crossed San Francisco Bay

in my open skiff in a roaring southwester when even the schooner sailors doubted my exploit. Further, Ior

John Barleycorn, for it was the same thingtold Scotty that he might be a deepsea sailor and know the last

rope on the great deepsea ships, but that when it came to smallboat sailing I could beat him hands down

The best of it was that my assertion and brag were true. With reticence and modesty present, I could never

have dared tell Scotty my smallboat estimate of him. But it is ever the way of John Barleycorn to loosen the

Scotty, or John Barleycorn, or the pair, was very naturally offended by my remarks. Nor was I loath. I could

whip any runaway sailor seventeen years old. Scotty and I flared and raged like young cockerels, until the

harpooner poured another round of drinks to enable us to forgive and make up. Which we did, arms around

each other's necks, protesting vows of eternal friendship just like Black Matt and Tom Morrisey, I

remembered, in the ranch kitchen in San Mateo. And, remembering, I knew that I was at last a mandespite

my meagre fourteen yearsa man as big and manly as those two strapping giants who had quarrelled and

By this time the singing stage was reached, and I joined Scotty and the harpooner in snatches of sea songs

and chanties. It was here, in the cabin of the Idler, that I first heard "Blow the Man Down," "Flying Cloud,"

and "Whisky, Johnny, Whisky." Oh, it was brave. I was beginning to grasp the meaning of life. Here was no

commonplace, no Oakland Estuary, no weary round of throwing newspapers at front doors, delivering ice,

and setting up ninepins. All the world was mine, all its paths were under my feet, and John Barleycorn,

tricking my fancy, enabled me to anticipate the life of adventure for which I yearned.

We were not ordinary. We were three tipsy young gods, incredibly wise, gloriously genial, and without limit

to our powers. Ah! and I say it now, after the yearscould John Barleycorn keep one at such a height, I

should never draw a sober breath again. But this is not a world of free freights. One pays according to an iron

schedulefor every strength the balanced weakness; for every high a corresponding low; for every fictitious

godlike moment an equivalent time in reptilian slime. For every feat of telescoping long days and weeks of

life into mad magnificent instants, one must pay with shortened life, and, ofttimes, with savage usury added.

Intenseness and duration are as ancient enemies as fire and water. They are mutually destructive. They cannot

coexist. And John Barleycorn, mighty necromancer though he be, is as much a slave to organic chemistry as

we mortals are. We pay for every nerve marathon we run, nor can John Barleycorn intercede and fend off the

just payment. He can lead us to the heights, but he cannot keep us there, else would we all be devotees. And

Yet the foregoing is all in after wisdom spoken. It was no part of the knowledge of the lad, fourteen years old,

who sat in the Idler's cabin between the harpooner and the sailor, the air rich in his nostrils with the musty

smell of men's seagear, roaring in chorus: "Yankee ship come down de ribberpull, my bully boys, pull!"

We grew maudlin, and all talked and shouted at once. I had a splendid constitution, a stomach that would

digest scrapiron, and I was still running my marathon in full vigour when Scotty began to fail and fade. His

talk grew incoherent. He groped for words and could not find them, while the ones he found his lips were

unable to form. His poisoned consciousness was leaving him. The brightness went out of his eyes, and he

looked as stupid as were his efforts to talk. His face and body sagged as his consciousness sagged. (A man

cannot sit upright save by an act of will.) Scotty's reeling brain could not control his muscles. All his

correlations were breaking down. He strove to take another drink, and feebly dropped the tumbler on the

floor. Then, to my amazement, weeping bitterly, he rolled into a bunk on his back and immediately snored off

The harpooner and I drank on, grinning in a superior way to each other over Scotty's plight. The last flask

was opened, and we drank it between us, to the accompaniment of Scotty's stertorous breathing. Then the

harpooner faded away into his bunk, and I was left alone, unthrown, on the field of battle.

I was very proud, and John Barleycorn was proud with me. I could carry my drink. I was a man. I had drunk

two men, drink for drink, into unconsciousness. And I was still on my two feet, upright, making my way on

deck to get air into my scorching lungs. It was in this bout on the Idler that I discovered what a good stomach

and a strong head I had for drinka bit of knowledge that was to be a source of pride in succeeding years,

and that ultimately I was to come to consider a great affliction. The fortunate man is the one who cannot take

more than a couple of drinks without becoming intoxicated. The unfortunate wight is the one who can take

many glasses without betraying a sign, who must take numerous glasses in order to get the "kick."

The sun was setting when I came on the Idler's deck. There were plenty of bunks below. I did not need to go

home. But I wanted to demonstrate to myself how much I was a man. There lay my skiff astern. The last of a

strong ebb was running out in channel in the teeth of an ocean breeze of forty miles an hour. I could see the

stiff whitecaps, and the suck and run of the current was plainly visible in the face and trough of each one.

I set sail, cast off, took my place at the tiller, the sheet in my hand, and headed across channel. The skiff

heeled over and plunged into it madly. The spray began to fly. I was at the pinnacle of exaltation. I sang

"Blow the Man Down" as I sailed. I was no boy of fourteen, living the mediocre ways of the sleepy town

called Oakland. I was a man, a god, and the very elements rendered me allegiance as I bitted them to my will.

The tide was out. A full hundred yards of soft mud intervened between the boatwharf and the water. I pulled

up my centreboard, ran full tilt into the mud, took in sail, and, standing in the stern, as I had often done at low

tide, I began to shove the skiff with an oar. It was then that my correlations began to break down. I lost my

balance and pitched headforemost into the ooze. Then, and for the first time, as I floundered to my feet

covered with slime, the blood running down my arms from a scrape against a barnacled stake, I knew that I

was drunk. But what of it? Across the channel two strong sailormen lay unconscious in their bunks where I

had drunk them. I WAS a man. I was still on my legs, if they were kneedeep in mud. I disdained to get back

into the skiff. I waded through the mud, shoving the skiff before me and yammering the chant of my

I paid for it. I was sick for a couple of days, meanly sick, and my arms were painfully poisoned from the

barnacle scratches. For a week I could not use them, and it was a torture to put on and take off my clothes.

I swore, "Never again!" The game wasn't worth it. The price was too stiff. I had no moral qualms. My

revulsion was purely physical. No exalted moments were worth such hours of misery and wretchedness.

When I got back to my skiff, I shunned the Idler. I would cross the opposite side of the channel to go around

her. Scotty had disappeared. The harpooner was still about, but him I avoided. Once, when he landed on the

boatwharf, I hid in a shed so as to escape seeing him. I was afraid he would propose some more drinking,

And yetand here enters the necromancy of John Barleycornthat afternoon's drunk on the Idler had been

a purple passage flung into the monotony of my days. It was memorable. My mind dwelt on it continually. I

went over the details, over and over again. Among other things, I had got into the cogs and springs of men's

actions. I had seen Scotty weep about his own worthlessness and the sad case of his Edinburgh mother who

was a lady. The harpooner had told me terribly wonderful things of himself. I had caught a myriad enticing

and inflammatory hints of a world beyond my world, and for which I was certainly as fitted as the two lads

who had drunk with me. I had got behind men's souls. I had got behind my own soul and found unguessed

Yes, that day stood out above all my other days. To this day it so stands out. The memory of it is branded in

my brain. But the price exacted was too high. I refused to play and pay, and returned to my cannonballs and

taffyslabs. The point is that all the chemistry of my healthy, normal body drove me away from alcohol. The

stuff didn't agree with me. It was abominable. But, despite this, circumstance was to continue to drive me

toward John Barleycorn, to drive me again and again, until, after long years, the time should come when I

would look up John Barleycorn in every haunt of menlook him up and hail him gladly as benefactor and

friend. And detest and hate him all the time. Yes, he is a strange friend, John Barleycorn.

I was barely turned fifteen, and working long hours in a cannery. Month in and month out, the shortest day I

ever worked was ten hours. When to ten hours of actual work at a machine is added the noon hour; the

walking to work and walking home from work; the getting up in the morning, dressing, and eating; the eating

at night, undressing, and going to bed, there remains no more than the nine hours out of the twentyfour

required by a healthy youngster for sleep. Out of those nine hours, after I was in bed and ere my eyes

But many a night I did not knock off work until midnight. On occasion I worked eighteen and twenty hours

on a stretch. Once I worked at my machine for thirtysix consecutive hours. And there were weeks on end

when I never knocked off work earlier than eleven o'clock, got home and in bed at half after midnight, and

was called at halfpast five to dress, eat, walk to work, and be at my machine at seven o'clock whistle blow.

No moments here to be stolen for my beloved books. And what had John Barleycorn to do with such

strenuous, Stoic toil of a lad just turned fifteen? He had everything to do with it. Let me show you. I asked

myself if this were the meaning of lifeto be a workbeast? I knew of no horse in the city of Oakland that

worked the hours I worked. If this were living, I was entirely unenamoured of it. I remembered my skiff,

lying idle and accumulating barnacles at the boatwharf; I remembered the wind that blew every day on the

bay, the sunrises and sunsets I never saw; the bite of the salt air in my nostrils, the bite of the salt water on my

flesh when I plunged overside; I remembered all the beauty and the wonder and the sensedelights of the

world denied me. There was only one way to escape my deadening toil. I must get out and away on the water.

I must earn my bread on the water. And the way of the water led inevitably to John Barleycorn. I did not

know this. And when I did learn it, I was courageous enough not to retreat back to my bestial life at the

I wanted to be where the winds of adventure blew. And the winds of adventure blew the oyster pirate sloops

up and down San Francisco Bay, from raided oysterbeds and fights at night on shoal and flat, to markets in

the morning against city wharves, where peddlers and saloonkeepers came down to buy. Every raid on an

oysterbed was a felony. The penalty was State imprisonment, the stripes and the lockstep. And what of that?

The men in stripes worked a shorter day than I at my machine. And there was vastly more romance in being

an oyster pirate or a convict than in being a machine slave. And behind it all, behind all of me with youth

So I interviewed my Mammy Jennie, my old nurse at whose black breast I had suckled. She was more

prosperous than my folks. She was nursing sick people at a good weekly wage. Would she lend her "white

Then I sought out French Frank, the oyster pirate, who wanted to sell, I had heard, his sloop, the Razzle

Dazzle. I found him lying at anchor on the Alameda side of the estuary near the Webster Street bridge, with

visitors aboard, whom he was entertaining with afternoon wine. He came on deck to talk business. He was

willing to sell. But it was Sunday. Besides, he had guests. On the morrow he would make out the bill of sale

and I could enter into possession. And in the meantime I must come below and meet his friends. They were

two sisters, Mamie and Tess; a Mrs. Hadley, who chaperoned them; "Whisky" Bob, a youthful oyster pirate

of sixteen; and "Spider" Healey, a blackwhiskered wharfrat of twenty. Mamie, who was Spider's niece,

was called the Queen of the Oyster Pirates, and, on occasion, presided at their revels. French Frank was in

love with her, though I did not know it at the time; and she steadfastly refused to marry him.

French Frank poured a tumbler of red wine from a big demijohn to drink to our transaction. I remembered the

red wine of the Italian rancho, and shuddered inwardly. Whisky and beer were not quite so repulsive. But the

Queen of the Oyster Pirates was looking at me, a partemptied glass in her own hand. I had my pride. If I

was only fifteen, at least I could not show myself any less a man than she. Besides, there were her sister, and

Mrs. Hadley, and the young oyster pirate, and the whiskered wharfrat, all with glasses in their hands. Was I

a milkandwater sop? No; a thousand times no, and a thousand glasses no. I downed the tumblerful like a

French Frank was elated by the sale, which I had bound with a twentydollar goldpiece. He poured more

wine. I had learned my strong head and stomach, and I was certain I could drink with them in a temperate

way and not poison myself for a week to come. I could stand as much as they; and besides, they had already

We got to singing. Spider sang "The Boston Burglar" and "Black Lulu." The Queen sang "Then I Wisht I

Were a Little Bird." And her sister Tess sang "Oh, Treat My Daughter Kindily." The fun grew fast and

furious. I found myself able to miss drinks without being noticed or called to account. Also, standing in the

companionway, head and shoulders out and glass in hand, I could fling the wine overboard.

I reasoned something like this: It is a queerness of these people that they like this viletasting wine. Well, let

them. I cannot quarrel with their tastes. My manhood, according to their queer notions, must compel me to

appear to like this wine. Very well. I shall so appear. But I shall drink no more than is unavoidable.

And the Queen began to make love to me, the latest recruit to the oyster pirate fleet, and no mere hand, but a

master and owner. She went upon deck to take the air, and took me with her. She knew, of course, but I never

dreamed, how French Frank was raging down below. Then Tess joined us, sitting on the cabin; and Spider,

and Bob; and at the last, Mrs. Hadley and French Frank. And we sat there, glasses in hand, and sang, while

And I enjoyed it as no one of them was able to enjoy it. Here, in this atmosphere of bohemianism, I could not

but contrast the scene with my scene of the day before, sitting at my machine, in the stifling, shutin air,

repeating, endlessly repeating, at top speed, my series of mechanical motions. And here I sat now, glass in

hand, in warmglowing camaraderie, with the oyster pirates, adventurers who refused to be slaves to petty

routine, who flouted restrictions and the law, who carried their lives and their liberty in their hands. And it

was through John Barleycorn that I came to join this glorious company of free souls, unashamed and

And the afternoon seabreeze blew its tang into my lungs, and curled the waves in midchannel. Before it

came the scow schooners, wingandwing, blowing their horns for the drawbridges to open. Redstacked

tugs tore by, rocking the Razzle Dazzle in the waves of their wake. A sugar barque towed from the

"boneyard" to sea. The sunwash was on the crisping water, and life was big. And Spider sang:

"Oh, it's Lulu, black Lulu, my darling, Oh, it's where have you been so long? Been layin' in jail, Awaitin' for

There it was, the smack and slap of the spirit of revolt, of adventure, of romance, of the things forbidden and

done defiantly and grandly. And I knew that on the morrow I would not go back to my machine at the

cannery. Tomorrow I would be an oyster pirate, as free a freebooter as the century and the waters of San

Francisco Bay would permit. Spider had already agreed to sail with me as my crew of one, and, also, as cook

while I did the deck work. We would outfit our grub and water in the morning, hoist the big mainsail (which

was a bigger piece of canvas than any I had ever sailed under), and beat our way out the estuary on the first of

the seabreeze and the last of the ebb. Then we would slack sheets, and on the first of the flood run down the

bay to the Asparagus Islands, where we would anchor miles off shore. And at last my dream would be

realised: I would sleep upon the water. And next morning I would wake upon the water; and thereafter all my

And the Queen asked me to row her ashore in my skiff, when at sunset French Frank prepared to take his

guests ashore. Nor did I catch the significance of his abrupt change of plan when he turned the task of rowing

his skiff over to Whisky Bob, himself remaining on board the sloop. Nor did I understand Spider's grinning

side remark to me: "Gee! There's nothin' slow about YOU." How could it possibly enter my boy's head that

We met by appointment, early Monday morning, to complete the deal, in Johnny Heinhold's "Last Chance

"a saloon, of course, for the transactions of men. I paid the money over, received the bill of sale, and

French Frank treated. This struck me as an evident custom, and a logical onethe seller, who receives, the

money, to wet a piece of it in the establishment where the trade was consummated. But, to my surprise,

French Frank treated the house. He and I drank, which seemed just; but why should Johnny Heinhold, who

owned the saloon and waited behind the bar, be invited to drink? I figured it immediately that he made a

profit on the very drink he drank. I could, in a way, considering that they were friends and shipmates,

understand Spider and Whisky Bob being asked to drink; but why should the longshoremen, Bill Kelley and

Then there was Pat, the Queen's brother, making a total of eight of us. It was early morning, and all ordered

whisky. What could I do, here in this company of big men, all drinking whisky? "Whisky," I said, with the

careless air of one who had said it a thousand times. And such whisky! I tossed it down. Arrrgh! I can

And I was appalled at the price French Frank had paideighty cents. EIGHTY CENTS! It was an outrage to

my thrifty soul. Eighty centsthe equivalent of eight long hours of my toil at the machine, gone down our

throats, and gone like that, in a twinkling, leaving only a bad taste in the mouth. There was no discussion that

I was anxious to be gone, out into the sunshine, out over the water to my glorious boat. But all hands

lingered. Even Spider, my crew, lingered. No hint broke through my obtuseness of why they lingered. I have

often thought since of how they must have regarded me, the newcomer being welcomed into their company

French Frank, who, unknown to me, had swallowed his chagrin since the day before, now that the money for

the Razzle Dazzle was in his pocket, began to behave curiously toward me. I sensed the change in his

attitude, saw the forbidding glitter in his eyes, and wondered. The more I saw of men, the queerer they

became. Johnny Heinhold leaned across the bar and whispered in my ear s "He's got it in for you. Watch out."

I nodded comprehension of his statement, and acquiescence in it, as a man should nod who knows all about

men. But secretly I was perplexed. Heavens! How was I, who had worked hard and read books of adventure,

and who was only fifteen years old, who had not dreamed of giving the Queen of the Oyster Pirates a second

thought, and who did not know that French Frank was madly and Latinly in love with herhow was I to

guess that I had done him shame? And how was I to guess that the story of how the Queen had thrown him

down on his own boat, the moment I hove in sight, was already the gleeful gossip of the waterfront? And by

the same token, how was I to guess that her brother Pat's offishness with me was anything else than

Whisky Bob got me aside a moment. "Keep your eyes open," he muttered. "Take my tip. French Frank's ugly.

I'm going up river with him to get a schooner for oystering. When he gets down on the beds, watch out. He

says he'll run you down. After dark, any time he's around, change your anchorage and douse your riding light.

Oh, certainly, I savve'd. I nodded my head, and, as one man to another, thanked him for his tip; and drifted

back to the group at the bar. No; I did not treat. I never dreamed that I was expected to treat. I left with

Spider, and my ears burn now as I try to surmise the things they must have said about me.

I asked Spider, in an offhand way, what was eating French Frank. "He's crazy jealous of you," was the

answer. "Do you think so?" I said, and dismissed the matter as not worth thinking about.

But I leave it to any onethe swell of my fifteenyearsold manhood at learning that French Frank, the

adventurer of fifty, the sailor of all the seas of all the world, was jealous of me and jealous over a girl most

romantically named the Queen of the Oyster Pirates. I had read of such things in books, and regarded them as

personal probabilities of a distant maturity. Oh, I felt a rare young devil, as we hoisted the big mainsail that

morning, broke out anchor, and filled away closehauled on the threemile beat to windward out into the

Such was my escape from the killing machinetoil, and my introduction to the oyster pirates. True, the

introduction had begun with drink, and the life promised to continue with drink. But was I to stay away from

it for such reason? Wherever life ran free and great, there men drank. Romance and Adventure seemed

always to go down the street locked arm in arm with John Barleycorn. To know the two, I must know the

third. Or else I must go back to my free library books and read of the deeds of other men and do no deeds of

No; I was not to be deterred from this brave life on the water by the fact that the waterdwellers had queer

and expensive desires for beer and wine and whisky. What if their notions of happiness included the strange

one of seeing me drink? When they persisted in buying the stuff and thrusting it upon me, why, I would drink

it. It was the price I would pay for their comradeship. And I didn't have to get drunk. I had not got drunk the

Sunday afternoon I arranged to buy the Razzle Dazzle, despite the fact that not one of the rest was sober.

Well, I could go on into the future that way, drinking the stuff when it gave them pleasure that I should drink

Gradual as was my development as a heavy drinker among the oyster pirates, the real heavy drinking came

suddenly, and was the result, not of desire for alcohol, but of an intellectual conviction.

The more I saw of the life, the more I was enamoured of it. I can never forget my thrills the first night I took

part in a concerted raid, when we assembled on board the Annierough men, big and unafraid, and

weazened wharfrats, some of them exconvicts, all of them enemies of the law and meriting jail, in

seaboots and seagear, talking in gruff low voices, and "Big" George with revolvers strapped about his

Oh, I know, looking back, that the whole thing was sordid and silly. But I was not looking back in those days

when I was rubbing shoulders with John Barleycorn and beginning to accept him. The life was brave and

Nelson, "Young Scratch" they called him, to distinguish him from "Old Scratch," his father, sailed in the

sloop Reindeer, partners with one "Clam." Clam was a daredevil, but Nelson was a reckless maniac. He was

twenty years old, with the body of a Hercules. When he was shot in Benicia, a couple of years later, the

Nelson could not read or write. He had been "dragged" up by his father on San Francisco Bay, and boats were

second nature with him. His strength was prodigious, and his reputation along the waterfront for violence

was anything but savoury. He had Berserker rages and did mad, terrible things. I made his acquaintance the

first cruise of the Razzle Dazzle, and saw him sail the Reindeer in a blow and dredge oysters all around the

He was some man, this Nelson; and when, passing by the Last Chance saloon, he spoke to me, I felt very

proud. But try to imagine my pride when he promptly asked me in to have a drink. I stood at the bar and

drank a glass of beer with him, and talked manfully of oysters, and boats, and of the mystery of who had put

We talked and lingered at the bar. It seemed to me strange that we lingered. We had had our beer. But who

was I to lead the way outside when great Nelson chose to lean against the bar? After a few minutes, to my

surprise, he asked me to have another drink, which I did. And still we talked, and Nelson evinced no intention

Bear with me while I explain the way of my reasoning and of my innocence. First of all, I was very proud to

be in the company of Nelson, who was the most heroic figure among the oyster pirates and bay adventurers.

Unfortunately for my stomach and mucous membranes, Nelson had a strange quirk of nature that made him

find happiness in treating me to beer. I had no moral disinclination for beer, and just because I didn't like the

taste of it and the weight of it was no reason I should forgo the honour of his company. It was his whim to

drink beer, and to have me drink beer with him. Very well, I would put up with the passing discomfort.

So we continued to talk at the bar, and to drink beer ordered and paid for by Nelson. I think, now, when I

look back upon it, that Nelson was curious. He wanted to find out just what kind of a gink I was. He wanted

After I had drunk half a dozen glasses, my policy of temperateness in mind, I decided that I had had enough

for that time. So I mentioned that I was going aboard the Razzle Dazzle, then lying at the city wharf, a

I said goodbye to Nelson, and went on down the wharf. But, John Barleycorn, to the extent of six glasses,

went with me. My brain tingled and was very much alive. I was uplifted by my sense of manhood. I, a

trulytrue oyster pirate, was going aboard my own boat after hobnobbing in the Last Chance with Nelson,

the greatest oyster pirate of us all. Strong in my brain was the vision of us leaning against the bar and

drinking beer. And curious it was, I decided, this whim of nature that made men happy in spending good

As I pondered this, I recollected that several times other men, in couples, had entered the Last Chance, and

first one, then the other, had treated to drinks. I remembered, on the drunk on the Idler, how Scotty and the

harpooner and myself had raked and scraped dimes and nickels with which to buy the whisky. Then came my

boy code: when on a day a fellow gave another a "cannonball" or a chunk of taffy, on some other day he

That was why Nelson had lingered at the bar. Having bought a drink, he had waited for me to buy one. I

HAD, LET HIM BUY SIX DRINKS AND NEVER ONCE OFFERED TO TREAT. And he was the great

Nelson! I could feel myself blushing with shame. I sat down on the stringerpiece of the wharf and buried my

face in my hands. And the heat of my shame burned up my neck and into my cheeks and forehead. I have

blushed many times in my life, but never have I experienced so terrible a blush as that one.

And sitting there on the stringerpiece in my shame, I did a great deal of thinking and transvaluing of values.

I had been born poor. Poor I had lived. I had gone hungry on occasion. I had never had toys nor playthings

like other children. My first memories of life were pinched by poverty. The pinch of poverty had been

chronic. I was eight years old when I wore my first little undershirt actually sold in a store across the counter.

And then it had been only one little undershirt. When it was soiled I had to return to the awful homemade

things until it was washed. I had been so proud of it that I insisted on wearing it without any outer garment.

For the first time I mutinied against my mothermutinied myself into hysteria, until she let me wear the

Only a man who has undergone famine can properly value food; only sailors and desertdwellers know the

meaning of fresh water. And only a child, with a child's imagination, can come to know the meaning of things

it has been long denied. I early discovered that the only things I could have were those I got for myself. My

meagre childhood developed meagreness. The first things I had been able to get for myself had been cigarette

pictures, cigarette posters, and cigarette albums. I had not had the spending of the money I earned, so I traded

"extra" newspapers for these treasures. I traded duplicates with the other boys, and circulating, as I did, all

It was not long before I had complete every series issued by every cigarette manufacturersuch as the Great

Race Horses, Parisian Beauties, Women of All Nations, Flags of All Nations, Noted Actors, Champion Prize

Fighters, etc. And each series I had three different ways: in the card from the cigarette package, in the poster,

Then I began to accumulate duplicate sets, duplicate albums. I traded for other things that boys valued and

which they usually bought with money given them by their parents. Naturally, they did not have the keen

sense of values that I had, who was never given money to buy anything. I traded for postagestamps, for

minerals, for curios, for birds' eggs, for marbles (I had a more magnificent collection of agates than I have

ever seen any boy possessand the nucleus of the collection was a handful worth at least three dollars,

which I had kept as security for twenty cents I loaned to a messengerboy who was sent to reform school

I'd trade anything and everything for anything else, and turn it over in a dozen more trades until it was

transmuted into something that was worth something. I was famous as a trader. I was notorious as a miser. I

could even make a junkman weep when I had dealings with him. Other boys called me in to sell for them

their collections of bottles, rags, old iron, grain, and gunnysacks, and fivegallon oilcansaye, and gave

And this was the thrifty, closefisted boy, accustomed to slave at a machine for ten cents an hour, who sat on

the stringerpiece and considered the matter of beer at five cents a glass and gone in a moment with nothing

to show for it. I was now with men I admired. I was proud to be with them. Had all my pinching and saving

brought me the equivalent of one of the many thrills which had been mine since I came among the oyster

pirates? Then what was worth whilemoney or thrills? These men had no horror of squandering a nickel, or

many nickels. They were magnificently careless of money, calling up eight men to drink whisky at ten cents a

glass, as French Frank had done. Why, Nelson had just spent sixty cents on beer for the two of us.

Which was it to be? I was aware that I was making a grave decision. I was deciding between money and men,

between niggardliness and romance. Either I must throw overboard all my old values of money and look

upon it as something to be flung about wastefully, or I must throw overboard my comradeship with these men

I retraced my steps up the wharf to the Last Chance, where Nelson still stood outside. "Come on and have a

beer," I invited. Again we stood at the bar and drank and talked, but this time it was I who paid ten cents! a

whole hour of my labour at a machine for a drink of something I didn't want and which tasted rotten. But it

wasn't difficult. I had achieved a concept. Money no longer counted. It was comradeship that counted. "Have

another?" I said. And we had another, and I paid for it. Nelson, with the wisdom of the skilled drinker, said to

the barkeeper, "Make mine a small one, Johnny." Johnny nodded and gave him a glass that contained only a

third as much as the glasses we had been drinking. Yet the charge was the samefive cents.

By this time I was getting nicely jingled, so such extravagance didn't hurt me much. Besides, I was learning.

There was more in this buying of drinks than mere quantity. I got my finger on it. There was a stage when the

beer didn't count at all, but just the spirit of comradeship of drinking together. And, ha!another thing! I,

too, could call for small beers and minimise by two thirds the detestable freightage with which comradeship

"I had to go aboard to get some money," I remarked casually, as we drank, in the hope Nelson would take it

"Oh, well, you didn't have to do that," he answered. "Johnny'll trust a fellow like youwon't you, Johnny!"

Johnny pulled out the book he kept behind the bar, found Nelson's page, and added up the account of several

dollars. At once I became possessed with a desire to have a page in that book. Almost it seemed the final

After a couple more drinks, for which I insisted on paying, Nelson decided to go. We parted true comradely,

and I wandered down the wharf to the Razzle Dazzle. Spider was just building the fire for supper.

Then an idea came to me. Here was another one of them. Now that I had achieved my concept, I might as

well practise it thoroughly. "Come on," I said, "up to Johnny's and have a drink."

Going up the wharf, we met Clam coming down. Clam was Nelson's partner, and he was a fine, brave,

handsome, moustached man of thirtyeverything, in short, that his nickname did not connote. "Come on," I

said, "and have a drink." He came. As we turned into the Last Chance, there was Pat, the Queen's brother,

"What's your hurry?" I greeted him. "We're having a drink. Come on along." "I've just had one," he demurred.

"What of it?we're having one now," I retorted. And Pat consented to join us, and I melted my way into his

good graces with a couple of glasses of beer. Oh! I was learning things that afternoon about John Barleycorn.

There was more in him than the bad taste when you swallowed him. Here, at the absurd cost of ten cents, a

gloomy, grouchy individual, who threatened to become an enemy, was made into a good friend. He became

even genial, his looks were kindly, and our voices mellowed together as we talked waterfront and

"Small beer for me, Johnny," I said, when the others had ordered schooners. Yes, and I said it like the

accustomed drinker, carelessly, casually, as a sort of spontaneous thought that had just occurred to me.

Looking back, I am confident that the only one there who guessed I was a tyro at bardrinking was Johnny

I never let on that I'd heard, but PROUD? Aye, even the barkeeper was giving me a recommendation as a

man. "HE'S BEEN SOUSIN' HERE WITH NELSON ALL AFTERNOON." Magic words! The accolade

I remembered that French Frank had treated Johnny the day I bought the Razzle Dazzle. The glasses were

filled and we were ready to drink. "Have something yourself, Johnny," I said, with an air of having intended

to say it all the time, but of having been a trifle remiss because of the interesting conversation I had been

Johnny looked at me with quick sharpness, divining, I am positive, the strides I was making in my education,

and poured himself whisky from his private bottle. This hit me for a moment on my thrifty side. He had taken

a tencent drink when the rest of us were drinking fivecent drinks! But the hurt was only for a moment. I

"You'd better put me down in the book for this," I said, when we had finished the drink. And I had the

satisfaction of seeing a fresh page devoted to my name and a charge pencilled for a round of drinks

amounting to thirty cents. And I glimpsed, as through a golden haze, a future wherein that page would be

I treated a second time around, and then, to my amazement, Johnny redeemed himself in that matter of the

tencent drink. He treated us around from behind the bar, and I decided that he had arithmetically evened

"Let's go around to the St. Louis House," Spider suggested when we got outside. Pat, who had been

shovelling coal all day, had gone home, and Clam had gone upon the Reindeer to cook supper.

So around Spider and I went to the St. Louis Housemy first visita huge barroom, where perhaps fifty

men, mostly longshoremen, were congregated. And there I met Soup Kennedy for the second time, and Bill

Kelley. And Smith, of the Annie, drifted inhe of the beltbuckled revolvers. And Nelson showed up. And I

met others, including the Vigy brothers, who ran the place, and, chiefest of all, Joe Goose, with the wicked

eyes, the twisted nose, and the flowered vest, who played the harmonica like a roystering angel and went on

the most atrocious tears that even the Oakland waterfront could conceive of and admire.

As I bought drinksothers treated as wellthe thought flickered across my mind that Mammy Jennie

wasn't going to be repaid much on her loan out of that week's earnings of the Razzle Dazzle. "But what of it?"

I thought, or rather, John Barleycorn thought it for me. "You're a man and you're getting acquainted with

men. Mammy Jennie doesn't need the money as promptly as all that. She isn't starving. You know that. She's

And thus it was I learned another trait of John Barleycorn. He inhibits morality. Wrong conduct that it is

impossible for one to do sober, is done quite easily when one is not sober. In fact, it is the only thing one can

do, for John Barleycorn's inhibition rises like a wall between one's immediate desires and longlearned

I dismissed my thought of debt to Mammy Jennie and proceeded to get acquainted at the trifling expense of

some trifling money and a jingle that was growing unpleasant. Who took me on board and put me to bed that

And so I won my manhood's spurs. My status on the waterfront and with the oyster pirates became

immediately excellent. I was looked upon as a good fellow, as well as no coward. And somehow, from the

day I achieved that concept sitting on the stringerpiece of the Oakland City Wharf, I have never cared much

for money. No one has ever considered me a miser since, while my carelessness of money is a source of

So completely did I break with my parsimonious past that I sent word home to my mother to call in the boys

of the neighbourhood and give to them all my collections. I never even cared to learn what boys got what

collections. I was a man now, and I made a clean sweep of everything that bound me to my boyhood.

My reputation grew. When the story went around the waterfront of how French Frank had tried to run me

down with his schooner, and of how I had stood on the deck of the Razzle Dazzle, a cocked doublebarrelled

shotgun in my hands, steering with my feet and holding her to her course, and compelled him to put up his

wheel and keep away, the waterfront decided that there was something in me despite my youth. And I

continued to show what was in me. There were the times I brought the Razzle Dazzle in with a bigger load of

oysters than any other twoman craft; there was the time when we raided far down in Lower Bay, and mine

was the only craft back at daylight to the anchorage off Asparagus Island; there was the Thursday night we

raced for market and I brought the Razzle Dazzle in without a rudder, first of the fleet, and skimmed the

cream of the Friday morning trade; and there was the time I brought her in from Upper Bay under a jib, when

Scotty burned my mainsail. (Yes; it was Scotty of the Idler adventure. Irish had followed Spider on board the

But the things I did on the water only partly counted. What completed everything, and won for me the title of

"Prince of the Oyster Beds," was that I was a good fellow ashore with my money, buying drinks like a man. I

little dreamed that the time would come when the Oakland waterfront, which had shocked me at first would

But always the life was tied up with drinking. The saloons are poor men's clubs. Saloons are congregating

places. We engaged to meet one another in saloons. We celebrated our good fortune or wept our grief in

Can I ever forget the afternoon I met "Old Scratch," Nelson's father? It was in the Last Chance. Johnny

Heinhold introduced us. That Old Scratch was Nelson's father was noteworthy enough. But there was more in

it than that. He was owner and master of the scowschooner Annie Mine, and some day I might ship as a

sailor with him. Still more, he was romance. He was a blueeyed, yellowhaired, rawboned Viking,

bigbodied and strongmuscled despite his age. And he had sailed the seas in ships of all nations in the old

I had heard many weird tales about him, and worshipped him from a distance. It took the saloon to bring us

together. Even so, our acquaintance might have been no more than a handgrip and a word he was a

"Have a drink," I said, with promptitude, after the pause which I had learned good form in drinking dictates.

Of course, while we drank our beer, which I had paid for, it was incumbent on him to listen to me and to talk

to me. And Johnny, like a true host, made the tactful remarks that enabled us to find mutual topics of

conversation. And of course, having drunk my beer, Captain Nelson must now buy beer in turn. This led to

more talking, and Johnny drifted out of the conversation to wait on other customers.

The more beer Captain Nelson and I drank, the better we got acquainted. In me he found an appreciative

listener, who, by virtue of bookreading, knew much about the sealife he had lived. So he drifted back to

his wild young days, and spun many a rare yarn for me, while we downed beer, treat by treat, all through a

blessed summer afternoon. And it was only John Barleycorn that made possible that long afternoon with the

It was Johnny Heinhold who secretly warned me across the bar that I was getting pickled and advised me to

take small beers. But as long as Captain Nelson drank large beers, my pride forbade anything else than large

beers. And not until the skipper ordered his first small beer did I order one for myself. Oh, when we came to a

lingering fond farewell, I was drunk. But I had the satisfaction of seeing Old Scratch as drunk as I. My

youthful modesty scarcely let me dare believe that the hardened old buccaneer was even more drunk.

And afterwards, from Spider, and Pat, and C]am, and Johnny Heinhold, and others, came the tips that Old

Scratch liked me and had nothing but good words for the fine lad I was. Which was the more remarkable,

because he was known as a savage, cantankerous old cuss who never liked anybody. (His very nickname,

"Scratch," arose from a Berserker trick of his, in fighting, of tearing off his opponent's face.) And that I had

won his friendship, all thanks were due to John Barleycorn. I have given the incident merely as an example of

the multitudinous lures and draws and services by which John Barleycorn wins his followers.

And still there arose in me no desire for alcohol, no chemical demand. In years and years of heavy drinking,

drinking did not beget the desire. Drinking was the way of the life I led, the way of the men with whom I

lived. While away on my cruises on the bay, I took no drink along; and while out on the bay the thought of

the desirableness of a drink never crossed my mind. It was not until I tied the Razzle Dazzle up to the wharf

and got ashore in the congregating places of men, where drink flowed, that the buying of drinks for other

men, and the accepting of drinks from other men, devolved upon me as a social duty and a manhood rite.

Then, too, there were the times, lying at the city wharf or across the estuary on the sandspit, when the

Queen, and her sister, and her brother Pat, and Mrs. Hadley came aboard. It was my boat, I was host, and I

could only dispense hospitality in the terms of their understanding of it. So I would rush Spider, or Irish, or

Scotty, or whoever was my crew, with the can for beer and the demijohn for red wine. And again, lying at the

wharf disposing of my oysters, there were dusky twilights when big policemen and plainclothes men stole

on board. And because we lived in the shadow of the police, we opened oysters and fed them to them with

squirts of pepper sauce, and rushed the growler or got stronger stuff in bottles.

Drink as I would, I couldn't come to like John Barleycorn. I valued him extremely well for his associations,

but not for the taste of him. All the time I was striving to be a man amongst men, and all the time I nursed

secret and shameful desires for candy. But I would have died before I'd let anybody guess it. I used to indulge

in lonely debauches, on nights when I knew my crew was going to sleep ashore. I would go up to the Free

Library, exchange my books, buy a quarter's worth of all sorts of candy that chewed and lasted, sneak aboard

the Razzle Dazzle, lock myself in the cabin, go to bed, and lie there long hours of bliss, reading and chewing

candy. And those were the only times I felt that I got my real money's worth. Dollars and dollars, across the

As my drinking grew heavier, I began to note more and more that it was in the drinking bouts the purple

passages occurred. Drunks were always memorable. At such times things happened. Men like Joe Goose

dated existence from drunk to drunk. The longshoremen all looked forward to their Saturday night drunk. We

of the oyster boats waited until we had disposed of our cargoes before we got really started, though a

scattering of drinks and a meeting of a chance friend sometimes precipitated an accidental drunk.

In ways, the accidental drunks were the best. Stranger and more exciting things happened at such times. As,

for instance, the Sunday when Nelson and French Frank and Captain Spink stole the stolen salmon boat from

Whisky Bob and Nicky the Greek. Changes had taken place in the personnel of the oyster boats. Nelson had

got into a fight with Bill Kelley on the Annie and was carrying a bullethole through his left hand. Also,

having quarrelled with Clam and broken partnership, Nelson had sailed the Reindeer, his arm in a sling, with

a crew of two deepwater sailors, and he had sailed so madly as to frighten them ashore. Such was the tale of

his recklessness they spread, that no one on the waterfront would go out with Nelson. So the Reindeer,

crewless, lay across the estuary at the sandspit. Beside her lay the Razzle Dazzle with a burned mainsail and

Scotty and me on board. Whisky Bob had fallen out with French Frank and gone on a raid "up river" with

The result of this raid was a brandnew Columbia River salmon boat, stolen from an Italian fisherman. We

oyster pirates were all visited by the searching Italian, and we were convinced, from what we knew of their

movements, that Whisky Bob and Nicky the Greek were the guilty parties. But where was the salmon boat?

Hundreds of Greek and Italian fishermen, up river and down bay, had searched every slough and tule patch

for it. When the owner despairingly offered a reward of fifty dollars, our interest increased and the mystery

One Sunday morning old Captain Spink paid me a visit. The conversation was confidential. He had just been

fishing in his skiff in the old Alameda ferry slip. As the tide went down, he had noticed a rope tied to a pile

under water and leading downward. In vain he had tried to heave up what was fast on the other end. Farther

along, to another pile, was a similar rope, leading downward and unheavable. Without doubt, it was the

missing salmon boat. If we restored it to its rightful owner there was fifty dollars in it for us. But I had queer

ethical notions about honour amongst thieves, and declined to have anything to do with the affair.

But French Frank had quarrelled with Whisky Bob, and Nelson was also an enemy. (Poor Whisky

Bob!without viciousness, good natured, generous, born weak, raised poorly, with an irresistible chemical

demand for alcohol, still prosecuting his vocation of bay pirate, his body was picked up, not long afterward,

beside a dock where it had sunk full of gunshot wounds.) Within an hour after I had rejected Captain Spink's

proposal, I saw him sail down the estuary on board the Reindeer with Nelson. Also, French Frank went by on

It was not long ere they sailed back up the estuary, curiously side by side. As they headed in for the sandspit,

the submerged salmon boat could be seen, gunwales awash and held up from sinking by ropes fast to the

schooner and the sloop. The tide was half out, and they sailed squarely in on the sand, grounding in a row,

Immediately Hans, one of French Frank's sailors, was into a skiff and pulling rapidly for the north shore. The

big demijohn in the sternsheets told his errand. They couldn't wait a moment to celebrate the fifty dollars

they had so easily earned. It is the way of the devotees of John Barleycorn. When good fortune comes, they

drink. When they have no fortune, they drink to the hope of good fortune. If fortune be ill, they drink to

forget it. If they meet a friend, they drink. If they quarrel with a friend and lose him, they drink. If their

lovemaking be crowned with success, they are so happy they needs must drink. If they be jilted, they drink

for the contrary reason. And if they haven't anything to do at all, why, they take a drink, secure in the

knowledge that when they have taken a sufficient number of drinks the maggots will start crawling in their

brains and they will have their hands full with things to do. When they are sober they want to drink; and

Of course, as fellow comrades, Scotty and I were called in for the drinking. We helped to make a hole in that

fifty dollars not yet received. The afternoon, from just an ordinary common summer Sunday afternoon,

became a gorgeous, purple afternoon. We all talked and sang and ranted and bragged, and ever French Frank

and Nelson sent more drinks around. We lay in full sight of the Oakland waterfront, and the noise of our

revels attracted friends. Skiff after skiff crossed the estuary and hauled up on the sandspit, while Hans' work

Then Whisky Bob and Nicky the Greek arrived, sober, indignant, outraged in that their fellow pirates had

raised their plant. French Frank, aided by John Barleycorn, orated hypocritically about virtue and honesty,

and, despite his fifty years, got Whisky Bob out on the sand and proceeded to lick him. When Nicky the

Greek jumped in with a shorthandled shovel to Whisky Bob's assistance, short work was made of him by

Hans. And of course, when the bleeding remnants of Bob and Nicky were sent packing in their skiff, the

By this time, our visitors being numerous, we were a large crowd compounded of many nationalities and

diverse temperaments, all aroused by John Barleycorn, all restraints cast off. Old quarrels revived, ancient

hates flared up. Fight was in the air. And whenever a longshoreman remembered something against a scow

schooner sailor, or vice versa, or an oyster pirate remembered or was remembered, a fist shot out and another

fight was on. And every fight was made up in more rounds of drinks, wherein the combatants, aided and

And, of all times, Soup Kennedy selected this time to come and retrieve an old shirt of his, left aboard the

Reindeer from the trip he sailed with Clam. He had espoused Clam's side of the quarrel with Nelson. Also, he

had been drinking in the St. Louis House, so that it was John Barleycorn who led him to the sandspit in quest

of his old shirt. Few words started the fray. He locked with Nelson in the cockpit of the Reindeer, and in the

mixup barely escaped being brained by an iron bar wielded by irate French Frankirate because a

twohanded man had attacked a one handed man. (If the Reindeer still floats, the dent of the iron bar

But Nelson pulled his bandaged hand, bulletperforated, out of its sling, and, held by us, wept and roared his

Berserker belief that he could lick Soup Kennedy onehanded. And we let them loose on the sand. Once,

when it looked as if Nelson were getting the worst of it, French Frank and John Barleycorn sprang unfairly

into the fight. Scotty protested and reached for French Frank, who whirled upon him and fell on top of him in

a pummelling clinch after a sprawl of twenty feet across the sand. In the course of separating these two, half a

dozen fights started amongst the rest of us. These fights were finished, one way or the other, or we separated

them with drinks, while all the time Nelson and Soup Kennedy fought on. Occasionally we returned to them

and gave advice, such as, when they lay exhausted in the sand, unable to strike a blow, "Throw sand in his

eyes." And they threw sand in each other's eyes, recuperated, and fought on to successive exhaustions.

And now, of all this that is squalid, and ridiculous, and bestial, try to think what it meant to me, a youth not

yet sixteen, burning with the spirit of adventure, fancyfilled with tales of buccaneers and searovers, sacks

of cities and conflicts of armed men, and imaginationmaddened by the stuff I had drunk. It was life raw and

naked, wild and freethe only life of that sort which my birth in time and space permitted me to attain. And

more than that. It carried a promise. It was the beginning. From the sandspit the way led out through the

Golden Gate to the vastness of adventure of all the world, where battles would be fought, not for old shirts

And because I told Scotty what I thought of his letting an old man like French Frank get away with him, we,

too, brawled and added to the festivity of the sandspit. And Scotty threw up his job as crew, and departed in

the night with a pair of blankets belonging to me. During the night, while the oyster pirates lay stupefied in

their bunks, the schooner and the Reindeer floated on the high water and swung about to their anchors. The

In the morning, early, I heard wild cries from the Reindeer, and tumbled out in the chill grey to see a

spectacle that made the waterfront laugh for days. The beautiful salmon boat lay on the hard sand, squashed

flat as a pancake, while on it were perched French Frank's schooner and the Reindeer. Unfortunately two of

the Reindeer's planks had been crushed in by the stout oak stem of the salmon boat. The rising tide had

flowed through the hole, and just awakened Nelson by getting into his bunk with him. I lent a hand, and we

Then Nelson cooked breakfast, and while we ate we considered the situation. He was broke. So was I. The

fifty dollars reward would never be paid for that pitiful mess of splinters on the sand beneath us. He had a

"What d'ye say, you and me?" Nelson queried. "I'll go you," was my answer. And thus I became partners with

"Young Scratch" Nelson, the wildest, maddest of them all. We borrowed the money for an outfit of grub from

Johnny Heinhold, filled our water barrels, and sailed away that day for the oysterbeds.

Nor have I ever regretted those months of mad devilry I put in with Nelson. He COULD sail, even if he did

frighten every man that sailed with him. To steer to miss destruction by an inch or an instant was his joy. To

do what everybody else did not dare attempt to do, was his pride. Never to reef down was his mania, and in

all the time I spent with him, blow high or low, the Reindeer was never reefed. Nor was she ever dry. We

strained her open and sailed her open and sailed her open continually. And we abandoned the Oakland

And all this glorious passage in my life was made possible for me by John Barleycorn. And this is my

complaint against John Barleycorn. Here I was, thirsting for the wild life of adventure, and the only way for

me to win to it was through John Barleycorn's mediation. It was the way of the men who lived the life. Did I

wish to live the life, I must live it the way they did. It was by virtue of drinking that I gained that partnership

and comradeship with Nelson. Had I drunk only the beer he paid for, or had I declined to drink at all, I should

never have been selected by him as a partner. He wanted a partner who would meet him on the social side, as

I abandoned myself to the life, and developed the misconception that the secret of John Barleycorn lay in

going on mad drunks, rising through the successive stages that only an iron constitution could endure to final

stupefaction and swinish unconsciousness. I did not like the taste, so I drank for the sole purpose of getting

drunk, of getting hopelessly, helplessly drunk. And I, who had saved and scraped, traded like a Shylock and

made junkmen weep; I, who had stood aghast when French Frank, at a single stroke, spent eighty cents for

whisky for eight men, I turned myself loose with a more lavish disregard for money than any of them.

I remember going ashore one night with Nelson. In my pocket were one hundred and eighty dollars. It was

my intention, first, to buy me some clothes, after that, some drinks. I needed the clothes. All I possessed were

on me, and they were as follows: a pair of seaboots that providentially leaked the water out as fast as it ran

in, a pair of fiftycent overalls, a fortycent cotton shirt, and a sou'wester. I had no hat, so I had to wear the

sou'wester, and it will be noted that I have listed neither underclothes nor socks. I didn't own any.

To reach the stores where clothes could be bought, we had to pass a dozen saloons. So I bought me the drinks

first. I never got to the clothing stores. In the morning, broke, poisoned, but contented, I came back on board,

and we set sail. I possessed only the clothes I had gone ashore in, and not a cent remained of the one hundred

and eighty dollars. It might well be deemed impossible, by those who have never tried it, that in twelve hours

a lad can spend all of one hundred and eighty dollars for drinks. I know otherwise.

And I had no regrets. I was proud. I had shown them I could spend with the best of them. Amongst strong

men I had proved myself strong. I had clinched again, as I had often clinched, my right to the title of

"Prince." Also, my attitude may be considered, in part, as a reaction from my childhood's meagreness and my

childhood's excessive toil. Possibly my inchoate thought was: Better to reign among boozefighters a prince

than to toil twelve hours a day at a machine for ten cents an hour. There are no purple passages in machine

toil. But if the spending of one hundred and eighty dollars in twelve hours isn't a purple passage, then I'd like

Oh, I skip much of the details of my trafficking with John Barleycorn during this period, and shall only

mention events that will throw light on John Barleycorn's ways. There were three things that enabled me to

pursue this heavy drinking: first, a magnificent constitution far better than the average; second, the healthy

openair life on the water; and third, the fact that I drank irregularly. While out on the water, we never

The world was opening up to me. Already I knew several hundred miles of the waterways of it, and of the

towns and cities and fishing hamlets on the shores. Came the whisper to range farther. I had not found it yet.

There was more behind. But even this much of the world was too wide for Nelson. He wearied for his

beloved Oakland waterfront, and when he elected to return to it we separated in all friendliness.

I now made the old town of Benicia, on the Carquinez Straits, my headquarters. In a cluster of fishermen's

arks, moored in the tules on the waterfront, dwelt a congenial crowd of drinkers and vagabonds, and I joined

them. I had longer spells ashore, between fooling with salmon fishing and making raids up and down bay and

rivers as a deputy fish patrolman, and I drank more and learned more about drinking. I held my own with any

one, drink for drink; and often drank more than my share to show the strength of my manhood. When, on a

morning, my unconscious carcass was disentangled from the nets on the dryingframes, whither I had

stupidly, blindly crawled the night before; and when the water front talked it over with many a giggle and

And when I never drew a sober breath, on one stretch, for three solid weeks, I was certain I had reached the

top. Surely, in that direction, one could go no farther. It was time for me to move on. For always, drunk or

sober, at the back of my consciousness something whispered that this carousing and bayadventuring was not

all of life. This whisper was my good fortune. I happened to be so made that I could hear it calling, always

calling, out and away over the world. It was not canniness on my part. It was curiosity, desire to know, an

unrest and a seeking for things wonderful that I seemed somehow to have glimpsed or guessed. What was this

life for, I demanded, if this were all? No; there was something more, away and beyond. (And, in relation to

my much later development as a drinker, this whisper, this promise of the things at the back of life, must be

noted, for it was destined to play a dire part in my more recent wrestlings with John Barleycorn.)

But what gave immediacy to my decision to move on was a trick John Barleycorn played mea monstrous,

incredible trick that showed abysses of intoxication hitherto undreamed. At one o'clock in the morning, after

a prodigious drunk, I was tottering aboard a sloop at the end of the wharf, intending to go to sleep. The tides

sweep through Carquinez Straits as in a millrace, and the full ebb was on when I stumbled overboard. There

was nobody on the wharf, nobody on the sloop. I was borne away by the current. I was not startled. I thought

the misadventure delightful. I was a good swimmer, and in my inflamed condition the contact of the water

And then John Barleycorn played me his maniacal trick. Some maundering fancy of going out with the tide

suddenly obsessed me. I had never been morbid. Thoughts of suicide had never entered my head. And now

that they entered, I thought it fine, a splendid culminating, a perfect rounding off of my short but exciting

career. I, who had never known girl's love, nor woman's love, nor the love of children; who had never played

in the wide joyfields of art, nor climbed the starcool heights of philosophy, nor seen with my eyes more

than a pinpoint's surface of the gorgeous world; I decided that this was all, that I had seen all, lived all, been

all, that was worth while, and that now was the time to cease. This was the trick of John Barleycorn, laying

Oh, he was convincing. I had really experienced all of life, and it didn't amount to much. The swinish

drunkenness in which I had lived for months (this was accompanied by the sense of degradation and the old

feeling of conviction of sin) was the last and best, and I could see for myself what it was worth. There were

all the brokendown old bums and loafers I had bought drinks for. That was what remained of life. Did I

want to become like them? A thousand times no; and I wept tears of sweet sadness over my glorious youth

going out with the tide. (And who has not seen the weeping drunk, the melancholic drunk? They are to be

found in all the barrooms, if they can find no other listener telling their sorrows to the barkeeper, who is

The water was delicious. It was a man's way to die. John Barleycorn changed the tune he played in my

drinkmaddened brain. Away with tears and regret. It was a hero's death, and by the hero's own hand and

will. So I struck up my deathchant and was singing it lustily, when the gurgle and splash of the current

Below the town of Benicia, where the Solano wharf projects, the Straits widen out into what bayfarers call

the "Bight of Turner's Shipyard." I was in the shoretide that swept under the Solano wharf and on into the

bight. I knew of old the power of the suck which developed when the tide swung around the end of Dead

Man's Island and drove straight for the wharf. I didn't want to go through those piles. It wouldn't be nice, and

I undressed in the water and struck out with a strong, single overhand stroke, crossing the current at

rightangles. Nor did I cease until, by the wharf lights, I knew I was safe to sweep by the end. Then I turned

over and rested. The stroke had been a telling one, and I was a little time in recovering my breath.

I was elated, for I had succeeded in avoiding the suck. I started to raise my deathchant againa purely

extemporised farrago of a drugcrazed youth. "Don't singyet," whispered John Barleycorn. "The Solano

runs all night. There are railroad men on the wharf. They will hear you, and come out in a boat and rescue

you, and you don't want to be rescued." I certainly didn't. What? Be robbed of my hero's death? Never. And I

lay on my back in the starlight, watching the familiar wharflights go by, red and green and white, and

When I was well clear, in midchannel, I sang again. Sometimes I swam a few strokes, but in the main I

contented myself with floating and dreaming long drunken dreams. Before daylight, the chill of the water and

the passage of the hours had sobered me sufficiently to make me wonder what portion of the Straits I was in,

and also to wonder if the turn of the tide wouldn't catch me and take me back ere I had drifted out into San

Next I discovered that I was very weary and very cold, and quite sober, and that I didn't in the least want to

be drowned. I could make out the Selby Smelter on the Contra Costa shore and the Mare Island lighthouse. I

started to swim for the Solano shore, but was too weak and chilled, and made so little headway, and at the

cost of such painful effort, that I gave it up and contented myself with floating, now and then giving a stroke

to keep my balance in the tiderips which were increasing their commotion on the surface of the water. And I

knew fear. I was sober now, and I didn't want to die. I discovered scores of reasons for living. And the more

reasons I discovered, the more liable it seemed that I was going to drown anyway.

Daylight, after I had been four hours in the water, found me in a parlous condition in the tiderips off Mare

Island light, where the swift ebbs from Vallejo Straits and Carquinez Straits were fighting with each other,

and where, at that particular moment, they were fighting the flood tide setting up against them from San

Pablo Bay. A stiff breeze had sprung up, and the crisp little waves were persistently lapping into my mouth,

and I was beginning to swallow salt water. With my swimmer's knowledge, I knew the end was near. And

then the boat camea Greek fisherman running in for Vallejo; and again I had been saved from John

And, in passing, let me note that this maniacal trick John Barleycorn played me is nothing uncommon. An

absolute statistic of the per centage of suicides due to John Barleycorn would be appalling. In my case,

healthy, normal, young, full of the joy of life, the suggestion to kill myself was unusual; but it must be taken

into account that it came on the heels of a long carouse, when my nerves and brain were fearfully poisoned,

and that the dramatic, romantic side of my imagination, drinkmaddened to lunacy, was delighted with the

suggestion. And yet, the older, more morbid drinkers, more jaded with life and more disillusioned, who kill

themselves, do so usually after a long debauch, when their nerves and brains are thoroughly poisonsoaked.

So I left Benicia, where John Barleycorn had nearly got me, and ranged wider afield in pursuit of the whisper

from the back of life to come and find. And wherever I ranged, the way lay along alcoholdrenched roads.

Men still congregated in saloons. They were the poorman's clubs, and they were the only clubs to which I

had access. I could get acquainted in saloons. I could go into a saloon and talk with any man. In the strange

towns and cities I wandered through, the only place for me to go was the saloon. I was no longer a stranger in

And right here let me break in with experiences no later than last year. I harnessed four horses to a light trap,

took Charmian along, and drove for three months and a half over the wildest mountain parts of California and

Oregon. Each morning I did my regular day's work of writing fiction. That completed, I drove on through the

middle of the day and the afternoon to the next stop. But the irregularity of occurrence of stoppingplaces,

coupled with widely varying road conditions, made it necessary to plan, the day before, each day's drive and

my work. I must know when I was to start driving in order to start writing in time to finish my day's output.

Thus, on occasion, when the drive was to be long, I would be up and at my writing by five in the morning.

But how to plan? As soon as I arrived in a town, and put the horses up, on the way from the stable to the hotel

I dropped into the saloons. First thing, a drinkoh, I wanted the drink, but also it must not be forgotten that,

because of wanting to know things, it was in this very way I had learned to want a drink. Well, the first thing,

a drink. "Have something yourself," to the barkeeper. And then, as we drink, my opening query about roads

"Let me see," the barkeeper will say, "there's the road across Tarwater Divide. That used to be good. I was

over it three years ago. But it was blocked this spring. Say, I'll tell you what. I'll ask Jerry" And the

barkeeper turns and addresses some man sitting at a table or leaning against the bar farther along, and who

may be Jerry, or Tom, or Bill. "Say, Jerry, how about the Tarwater road? You was down to Wilkins last

And while Bill or Jerry or Tom is beginning to unlimber his thinking and speaking apparatus, I suggest that

he join us in the drink. Then discussions arise about the advisability of this road or that, what the best

stoppingplaces may be, what running time I may expect to make, where the best trout streams are, and so

Two or three more saloons, and I accumulate a warm jingle and come pretty close to knowing everybody in

town, all about the town, and a fair deal about the surrounding country. I know the lawyers, editors, business

men, local politicians, and the visiting ranchers, hunters, and miners, so that by evening, when Charmian and

I stroll down the main street and back, she is astounded by the number of my acquaintances in that totally

And thus is demonstrated a service John Barleycorn renders, a service by which he increases his power over

men. And over the world, wherever I have gone, during all the years, it has been the same. It may be a cabaret

in the Latin Quarter, a cafe in some obscure Italian village, a boozing ken in sailortown, and it may be up at

the club over Scotch and soda; but always it will be where John Barleycorn makes fellowship that I get

immediately in touch, and meet, and know. And in the good days coming, when John Barleycorn will have

been banished out of existence along with the other barbarisms, some other institution than the saloon will

have to obtain, some other congregating place of men where strange men and stranger men may get in touch,

But to return to my narrative. When I turned my back on Benicia, my way led through saloons. I had

developed no moral theories against drinking, and I disliked as much as ever the taste of the stuff. But I had

grown respectfully suspicious of John Barleycorn. I could not forget that trick he had played on meon me

who did not want to die. So I continued to drink, and to keep a sharp eye on John Barleycorn, resolved to

In strange towns I made immediate acquaintances in the saloons. When I hoboed, and hadn't the price of a

bed, a saloon was the only place that would receive me and give me a chair by the fire. I could go into a

saloon and wash up, brush my clothes, and comb my hair. And saloons were always so damnably convenient.

I couldn't go into the dwellings of strangers that way. Their doors were not open to me; no seats were there

for me by their fires. Also, churches and preachers I had never known. And from what I didn't know I was not

attracted toward them. Besides, there was no glamour about them, no haze of romance, no promise of

adventure. They were the sort with whom things never happened. They lived and remained always in the one

place, creatures of order and system, narrow, limited, restrained. They were without greatness, without

imagination, without camaraderie. It was the good fellows, easy and genial, daring, and, on occasion, mad,

that I wanted to knowthe fellows, generoushearted and handed, and not rabbithearted.

And here is another complaint I bring against John Barleycorn. It is these good fellows that he getsthe

fellows with the fire and the go in them, who have bigness, and warmness, and the best of the human

weaknesses. And John Barleycorn puts out the fire, and soddens the agility, and, when he does not more

immediately kill them or make maniacs of them, he coarsens and grossens them, twists and malforms them

Oh!and I speak out of later knowledgeHeaven forefend me from the most of the average run of male

humans who are not good fellows, the ones cold of heart and cold of head who don't smoke, drink, or swear,

or do much of anything else that is brase, and resentful, and stinging, because in their feeble fibres there has

never been the stir and prod of life to well over its boundaries and be devilish and daring. One doesn't meet

these in saloons, nor rallying to lost causes, nor flaming on the adventurepaths, nor loving as God's own

mad lovers. They are too busy keeping their feet dry, conserving their heartbeats, and making unlovely

And so I draw the indictment home to John Barleycorn. It is just those, the good fellows, the worth while, the

fellows with the weakness of too much strength, too much spirit, too much fire and flame of fine

devilishness, that he solicits and ruins. Of course, he ruins weaklings; but with them, the worst we breed, I am

not here concerned. My concern is that it is so much of the best we breed whom John Barleycorn destroys.

And the reason why these best are destroyed is because John Barleycorn stands on every highway and byway,

accessible, lawprotected, saluted by the policeman on the beat, speaking to them, leading them by the hand

to the places where the good fellows and daring ones forgather and drink deep. With John Barleycorn out of

the way, these daring ones would still be born, and they would do things instead of perishing.

Always I encountered the camaraderie of drink. I might be walking down the track to the watertank to lie in

wait for a passing freighttrain, when I would chance upon a bunch of "alkistiffs." An alkistiff is a tramp

who drinks druggist's alcohol. Immediately, with greeting and salutation, I am taken into the fellowship. The

alcohol, shrewdly blended with water, is handed to me, and soon I am caught up in the revelry, with maggots

crawling in my brain and John Barleycorn whispering to me that life is big, and that we are all brave and

finefree spirits sprawling like careless gods upon the turf and telling the twoby four, cutanddried,

Back in Oakland from my wanderings, I returned to the waterfront and renewed my comradeship with

Nelson, who was now on shore all the time and living more madly than before. I, too, spent my time on shore

with him, only occasionally going for cruises of several days on the bay to help out on shorthanded

The result was that I was no longer reinvigorated by periods of openair abstinence and healthy toil. I drank

every day, and whenever opportunity offered I drank to excess; for I still laboured under the misconception

that the secret of John Barleycorn lay in drinking to bestiality and unconsciousness. I became pretty

thoroughly alcoholsoaked during this period. I practically lived in saloons; became a barroom loafer, and

And right here was John Barleycorn getting me in a more insidious though no less deadly way than when he

nearly sent me out with the tide. I had a few months still to run before I was seventeen; I scorned the thought

of a steady job at anything; I felt myself a pretty tough individual in a group of pretty tough men; and I drank

because these men drank and because I had to make good with them. I had never had a real boyhood, and in

this, my precocious manhood, I was very hard and woefully wise. Though I had never known girl's love even,

I had crawled through such depths that I was convinced absolutely that I knew the last word about love and

life. And it wasn't a pretty knowledge. Without being pessimistic, I was quite satisfied that life was a rather

You see, John Barleycorn was blunting me. The old stings and prods of the spirit were no longer sharp.

Curiosity was leaving me. What did it matter what lay on the other side of the world? Men and women,

without doubt, very much like the men and women I knew; marrying and giving in marriage and all the petty

run of petty human concerns; and drinks, too. But the other side of the world was a long way to go for a

drink. I had but to step to the corner and get all I wanted at Joe Vigy's. Johnny Heinhold still ran the Last

The whispers from the back of life were growing dim as my mind and body soddened. The old unrest was

drowsy. I might as well rot and die here in Oakland as anywhere else. And I should have so rotted and died,

and not in very long order either, at the pace John Barleycorn was leading me, had the matter depended

wholly on him. I was learning what it was to have no appetite. I was learning what it was to get up shaky in

the morning, with a stomach that quivered, with fingers touched with palsy, and to know the drinker's need

for a stiff glass of whisky neat in order to brace up. (Oh! John Barleycorn is a wizard dopester. Brain and

body, scorched and jangled and poisoned, return to be tuned up by the very poison that caused the damage.)

There is no end to John Barleycorn's tricks. He had tried to inveigle me into killing myself. At this period he

was doing his best to kill me at a fairly rapid pace. But, not satisfied with that, he tried another dodge. He

very nearly got me, too, and right there I learned a lesson about himbecame a wiser, a more skilful drinker.

I learned there were limits to my gorgeous constitution, and that there were no limits to John Barleycorn. I

learned that in a short hour or two he could master my strong head, my broad shoulders and deep chest, put

me on my back, and with a devil's grip on my throat proceed to choke the life out of me.

Nelson and I were sitting in the Overland House. It was early in the evening, and the only reason we were

there was because we were broke and it was election time. You see, in election time local politicians,

aspirants for office, have a way of making the rounds of the saloons to get votes. One is sitting at a table, in a

dry condition, wondering who is going to turn up and buy him a drink, or if his credit is good at some other

saloon and if it's worth while to walk that far to find out, when suddenly the saloon doors swing wide, and

enters a bevy of welldressed men, themselves usually wide and exhaling an atmosphere of prosperity and

They have smiles and greetings for everybodyfor you, without the price of a glass of beer in your pocket,

for the timid hobo who lurks in the corner and who certainly hasn't a vote, but who may establish a

lodginghouse registration. And do you know, when these politicians swing wide the doors and come in,

with their broad shoulders, their deep chests, and their generous stomachs which cannot help making them

optimists and masters of life, why, you perk right up. It's going to be a warm evening after all, and you know

Andwho knows?the gods may be kind, other drinks may come, and the night culminate in glorious

greatness. And the next thing you know, you are lined up at the bar, pouring drinks down your throat and

It was during this period, when the politicians went their saloon rounds, that I was getting bitter bits of

education and having illusions puncturedI, who had pored and thrilled over "The Rail Splitter," and

"From Canal Boy to President." Yes, I was learning how noble politics and politicians are.

Well, on this night, broke, thirsty, but with the drinker's faith in the unexpected drink, Nelson and I sat in the

Overland House waiting for something to turn up, especially politicians. And there entered Joe Goosehe of

"Come on. I'll tell you as we go along. We haven't a minute to lose." And as we hurried up town, Joe Goose

explained: "It's the Hancock Fire Brigade. All you have to do is wear a red shirt and a helmet, and carry a

(I think the place was Haywards. It may have been San Leandro or Niles. And, to save me, I can't remember

whether the Hancock Fire Brigade was a republican or a democratic organisation. But anyway, the politicians

who ran it were short of torchbearers, and anybody who would parade could get drunk if he wanted to.)

"The town'll be wide open," Joe Goose went on. "Booze? It'll run like water. The politicians have bought the

stocks of the saloons. There'll be no charge. All you got to do is walk right up and call for it. We'll raise hell."

At the hall, on Eighth Street near Broadway, we got into the firemen's shirts and helmets, were equipped with

torches, and, growling because we weren't given at least one drink before we started, were herded aboard the

train. Oh, those politicians had handled our kind before. At Haywards there were no drinks either. Parade

We paraded. Then the saloons were opened. Extra barkeepers had been engaged, and the drinkers jammed six

deep before every drink drenched and unwiped bar. There was no time to wipe the bar, nor wash glasses,

nor do anything save fill glasses. The Oakland waterfront can be real thirsty on occasion.

This method of jamming and struggling in front of the bar was too slow for us. The drink was ours. The

politicians had bought it for us. We'd paraded and earned it, hadn't we? So we made a flank attack around the

end of the bar, shoved the protesting barkeepers aside, and helped ourselves to bottles.

Outside, we knocked the necks of the bottles off against the concrete curbs, and drank. Now Joe Goose and

Nelson had learned discretion with straight whisky, drunk in quantity. I hadn't. I still laboured under the

misconception that one was to drink all he could getespecially when it didn't cost anything. We shared our

bottles with others, and drank a good portion ourselves, while I drank most of all. And I didn't like the stuff. I

drank it as I had drunk beer at five, and wine at seven. I mastered my qualms and downed it like so much

medicine. And when we wanted more bottles, we went into other saloons where the free drink was flowing,

I haven't the slightest idea of how much I drankwhether it was two quarts or five. I do know that I began

the orgy with half pint draughts and with no water afterward to wash the taste away or to dilute the whisky.

Now the politicians were too wise to leave the town filled with drunks from the waterfront of Oakland.

When train time came, there was a roundup of the saloons. Already I was feeling the impact of the whisky.

Nelson and I were hustled out of a saloon, and found ourselves in the very last rank of a disorderly parade. I

struggled along heroically, my correlations breaking down, my legs tottering under me, my head swimming,

My helplessness was coming on so rapidly that my reeling brain told me I would go down and out and never

reach the train if I remained at the rear of the procession. I left the ranks and ran down a pathway beside the

road under broadspreading trees. Nelson pursued me, laughing. Certain things stand out, as in memories of

nightmare. I remember those trees especially, and my desperate running along under them, and how, every

time I fell, roars of laughter went up from the other drunks. They thought I was merely antic drunk. They did

not dream that John Barleycorn had me by the throat in a deathclutch. But I knew it. And I remember the

fleeting bitterness that was mine as I realised that I was in a struggle with death, and that these others did not

know. It was as if I were drowning before a crowd of spectators who thought I was cutting up tricks for their

And running there under the trees, I fell and lost consciousness. What happened afterward, with one

glimmering exception, I had to be told. Nelson, with his enormous strength, picked me up and dragged me on

and aboard the train. When he had got me into a seat, I fought and panted so terribly for air that even with his

obtuseness he knew I was in a bad way. And right there, at any moment, I know now, I might have died. I

often think it is the nearest to death I have ever been. I have only Nelson's description of my behaviour to go

I was scorching up, burning alive internally, in an agony of fire and suffocation, and I wanted air. I madly

wanted air. My efforts to raise a window were vain, for all the windows in the car were screwed down.

Nelson had seen drinkcrazed men, and thought I wanted to throw myself out. He tried to restrain me, but I

Now there were proNelson and antiNelson factions on the Oakland waterfront, and men of both factions,

with more drink in them than was good, filled the car. My smashing of the window was the signal for the

antis. One of them reached for me, and dropped me, and started the fight, of all of which I have no knowledge

save what was told me afterward, and a sore jaw next day from the blow that put me out. The man who struck

me went down across my body, Nelson followed him, and they say there were few unbroken windows in the

This being knocked cold and motionless was perhaps the best thing that could have happened to me. My

violent struggles had only accelerated my already dangerously accelerated heart, and increased the need for

After the fight was over and I came to, I did not come to myself. I was no more myself than a drowning man

is who continues to struggle after he has lost consciousness. I have no memory of my actions, but I cried "

Air! Air!" so insistently, that it dawned on Nelson that I did not contemplate selfdestruction. So he cleared

the jagged glass from the windowledge and let me stick my head and shoulders out. He realised, partially,

the seriousness of my condition. and held me by the waist to prevent me from crawling farther out. And for

the rest of the run in to Oakland I kept my head and shoulders out, fighting like a maniac whenever he tried to

And here my one glimmering streak of true consciousness came. My sole recollection, from the time I fell

under the trees until I awoke the following evening, is of my head out of the window, facing the wind caused

by the train, cinders striking and burning and blinding me, while I breathed with will. All my will was

concentrated on breathingon breathing the air in the hugest lungfull gulps I could, pumping the greatest

amount of air into my lungs in the shortest possible time. It was that or death, and I was a swimmer and diver,

and I knew it; and in the most intolerable agony of prolonged suffocation, during those moments I was

All the rest is a blank. I came to the following evening, in a waterfront lodginghouse. I was alone. No

doctor had been called in. And I might well have died there, for Nelson and the others, deeming me merely

"sleeping off my drunk," had let me lie there in a comatose condition for seventeen hours. Many a man, as

every doctor knows, has died of the sudden impact of a quart or more of whisky. Usually one reads of them

so dying, strong drinkers, on account of a wager. But I didn't knowthen. And so I learned; and by no virtue

nor prowess, but simply through good fortune and constitution. Again my constitution had triumphed over

John Barleycorn. I had escaped from another deathpit, dragged myself through another morass, and

perilously acquired the discretion that would enable me to drink wisely for many another year to come.

Heavens! That was twenty years ago, and I am still very much and wisely alive; and I have seen much, done

much, lived much, in that intervening score of years; and I shudder when I think how close a shave I ran, how

near I was to missing that splendid fifth of a century that has been mine. And, oh, it wasn't John Barleycorn's

It was during the early winter of 1892 that I resolved to go to sea. My Hancock Fire Brigade experience was

very little responsible for this. I still drank and frequented saloons practically lived in saloons. Whisky was

dangerous, in my opinion, but not wrong. Whisky was dangerous like other dangerous things in the natural

world. Men died of whisky; but then, too, fishermen were capsized and drowned, hoboes fell under trains and

were cut to pieces. To cope with winds and waves, railroad trains, and barrooms, one must use judgment.

To get drunk after the manner of men was all right, but one must do it with discretion. No more quarts of

What really decided me to go to sea was that I had caught my first vision of the deathroad which John

Barleycorn maintains for his devotees. It was not a clear vision, however, and there were two phases of it,

somewhat jumbled at the time. It struck me, from watching those with whom I associated, that the life we

John Barleycorn, by inhibiting morality, incited to crime. Everywhere I saw men doing, drunk, what they

would never dream of doing sober. And this wasn't the worst of it. It was the penalty that must be paid. Crime

was destructive. Saloonmates I drank with, who were good fellows and harmless, sober, did most violent

and lunatic things when they were drunk. And then the police gathered them in and they vanished from our

ken. Sometimes I visited them behind the bars and said goodbye ere they journeyed across the bay to put on

the felon's stripes. And time and again I heard the one explanation "IF I HADN'T BEEN DRUNK I

WOULDN'T A DONE IT." And sometimes, under the spell of John Barleycorn, the most frightful things

The other phase of the deathroad was that of the habitual drunkards, who had a way of turning up their toes

without apparent provocation. When they took sick, even with trifling afflictions that any ordinary man could

pull through, they just pegged out. Sometimes they were found unattended and dead in their beds; on

occasion their bodies were dragged out of the water; and sometimes it was just plain accident, as when Bill

Kelley, unloading cargo while drunk, had a finger jerked off, which, under the circumstances, might just as

So I considered my situation and knew that I was getting into a bad way of living. It made toward death too

quickly to suit my youth and vitality. And there was only one way out of this hazardous manner of living, and

that was to get out. The sealing fleet was wintering in San Francisco Bay, and in the saloons I met skippers,

mates, hunters, boatsteerers, and boatpullers. I met the sealhunter, Pete Holt, and agreed to be his

boatpuller and to sign on any schooner he signed on. And I had to have half a dozen drinks with Pete Holt

And at once awoke all my old unrest that John Barleycorn had put to sleep. I found myself actually bored

with the saloon life of the Oakland waterfront, and wondered what I had ever found fascinating in it. Also,

with this deathroad concept in my brain, I began to grow afraid that something would happen to me before

sailing day, which was set for some time in January. I lived more circumspectly, drank less deeply, and went

home more frequently. When drinking grew too wild, I got out. When Nelson was in his maniacal cups, I

On the 12th of January, 1893, I was seventeen, and the 20th of January I signed before the shipping

commissioner the articles of the Sophie Sutherland, a three topmast sealing schooner bound on a voyage to

the coast of Japan. And of course we had to drink on it. Joe Vigy cashed my advance note, and Pete Holt

treated, and I treated, and Joe Vigy treated, and other hunters treated. Well, it was the way of men, and who

was I, just turned seventeen, that I should decline the way of life of these fine, chesty, mangrown men?

There was nothing to drink on the Sophie Sutherland, and we had fiftyone days of glorious sailing, taking

the southern passage in the northeast trades to Bonin Islands. This isolated group, belonging to Japan, had

been selected as the rendezvous of the Canadian and American sealing fleets. Here they filled their

waterbarrels and made repairs before starting on the hundred days' harrying of the sealherd along the

Those fiftyone days of fine sailing and intense sobriety had put me in splendid fettle. The alcohol had been

worked out of my system, and from the moment the voyage began I had not known the desire for a drink. I

doubt if I even thought once about a drink. Often, of course, the talk in the forecastle turned on drink, and the

men told of their more exciting or humorous drunks, remembering such passages more keenly, with greater

In the forecastle, the oldest man, fat and fifty, was Louis. He was a broken skipper. John Barleycorn had

thrown him, and he was winding up his career where he had begun it, in the forecastle. His case made quite

an impression on me. John Barleycorn did other things beside kill a man. He hadn't killed Louis. He had done

much worse. He had robbed him of power and place and comfort, crucified his pride, and condemned him to

the hardship of the common sailor that would last as long as his healthy breath lasted, which promised to be

We completed our run across the Pacific, lifted the volcanic peaks, jungleclad, of the Bonin Islands, sailed

in among the reefs to the landlocked harbour, and let our anchor rumble down where lay a score or more of

seagypsies like ourselves. The scents of strange vegetation blew off the tropic land. Aborigines, in queer

outrigger canoes, and Japanese, in queerer sampans, paddled about the bay and came aboard. It was my first

foreign land; I had won to the other side of the world, and I would see all I had read in the books come true. I

Victor and Axel, a Swede and a Norwegian, and I planned to keep together. (And so well did we, that for the

rest of the cruise we were known as the "Three Sports.") Victor pointed out a pathway that disappeared up a

wild canyon, emerged on a steep bare lava slope, and thereafter appeared and disappeared, ever climbing,

among the palms and flowers. We would go over that path, he said, and we agreed, and we would see

beautiful scenery, and strange native villages, and find, Heaven alone knew, what adventure at the end. And

Axel was keen to go fishing. The three of us agreed to that, too. We would get a sampan, and a couple of

Japanese fishermen who knew the fishing grounds, and we would have great sport. As for me, I was keen for

And then, our plans made, we rowed ashore over the banks of living coral and pulled our boat up the white

beach of coral sand. We walked across the fringe of beach under the cocoanutpalms and into the little town,

and found several hundred riotous seamen from all the world, drinking prodigiously, singing prodigiously,

dancing prodigiouslyand all on the main street to the scandal of a helpless handful of Japanese police.

Victor and Axel said that we'd have a drink before we started on our long walk. Could I decline to drink with

these two chesty shipmates? Drinking together, glass in hand, put the seal on comradeship. It was the way of

life. Our teetotaler owner captain was laughed at, and sneered at, by all of us because of his teetotalism. I

didn't in the least want a drink, but I did want to be a good fellow and a good comrade. Nor did Louis' case

deter me, as I poured the biting, scorching stuff down my throat. John Barleycorn had thrown Louis to a nasty

fall, but I was young. My blood ran full and red; I had a constitution of iron; and well, youth ever grins

Queer, fierce, alcoholic stuff it was that we drank. There was no telling where or how it had been

manufacturedsome native concoction most likely. But it was hot as fire, pale as water, and quick as death

with its kick. It had been filled into empty "squareface" bottles which had once contained Holland gin, and

which still bore the fitting legend "Anchor Brand." It certainly anchored us. We never got out of the town.

We never went fishing in the sampan. And though we were there ten days, we never trod that wild path along

We met old acquaintances from other schooners, fellows we had met in the saloons of San Francisco before

we sailed. And each meeting meant a drink; and there was much to talk about; and more drinks; and songs to

be sung; and pranks and antics to be performed, until the maggots of imagination began to crawl, and it all

seemed great and wonderful to me, these lusty hardbitten sea rovers, of whom I made one, gathered in

wassail on a coral strand. Old lines about knights at table in the great banquet halls, and of those above the

salt and below the salt, and of Vikings feasting fresh from sea and ripe for battle, came to me; and I knew that

the old times were not dead and that we belonged to that selfsame ancient breed.

By midafternoon Victor went mad with drink, and wanted to fight everybody and everything. I have since

seen lunatics in the violent wards of asylums that seemed to behave in no wise different from Victor's way,

save that perhaps he was more violent. Axel and I interfered as peacemakers, were roughed and jostled in the

mixups, and finally, with infinite precaution and intoxicated cunning, succeeded in inveigling our chum

But no sooner did Victor's feet touch the deck than he began to clean up the ship. He had the strength of

several men, and he ran amuck with it. I remember especially one man whom he got into the chainboxes but

failed to damage through inability to hit him. The man dodged and ducked, and Victor broke all the knuckles

of both his fists against the huge links of the anchor chain. By the time we dragged him out of that, his

madness had shifted to the belief that he was a great swimmer, and the next moment he was overboard and

demonstrating his ability by floundering like a sick porpoise and swallowing much salt water.

We rescued him, and by the time we got him below, undressed, and into his bunk, we were wrecks ourselves.

But Axel and I wanted to see more of shore, and away we went, leaving Victor snoring. It was curious, the

judgment passed on Victor by his shipmates, drinkers themselves. They shook their heads disapprovingly and

muttered: "A man like that oughtn't to drink." Now Victor was the smartest sailor and besttempered

shipmate in the forecastle. He was an allround splendid type of seaman; his mates recognised his worth, and

respected him and liked him. Yet John Barleycorn metamorphosed him into a violent lunatic. And that was

the very point these drinkers made. They knew that drinkand drink with a sailor is always

excessivemade them mad, but only mildly mad. Violent madness was objectionable because it spoiled the

fun of others and often culminated in tragedy. From their standpoint, mild madness was all right. But from

the standpoint of the whole human race, is not all madness objectionable? And is there a greater maker of

But to return. Ashore, snugly ensconced in a Japanese house of entertainment, Axel and I compared bruises,

and over a comfortable drink talked of the afternoon's happenings. We liked the quietness of that drink and

took another. A shipmate dropped in, several shipmates dropped in, and we had more quiet drinks. Finally,

just as we had engaged a Japanese orchestra, and as the first strains of the samisens and taikos were rising,

through the paperwalls came a wild howl from the street. We recognised it. Still howling, disdaining

doorways, with bloodshot eyes and wildly waving muscular arms, Victor burst upon us through the fragile

walls. The old amuck rage was on him, and he wanted blood, anybody's blood. The orchestra fled; so did we.

And after the place was half wrecked, and we had agreed to pay the damage, leaving Victor partly subdued

and showing symptoms of lapsing into a comatose state, Axel and I wandered away in quest of a quieter

drinkingplace. The main street was a madness. Hundreds of sailors rollicked up and down. Because the

chief of police with his small force was helpless, the governor of the colony had issued orders to the captains

What! To be treated in such fashion! As the news spread among the schooners, they were emptied.

Everybody came ashore. Men who had had no intention of coming ashore climbed into the boats. The

unfortunate governor's ukase had precipitated a general debauch for all hands. It was hours after sunset, and

the men wanted to see anybody try to put them on board. They went around inviting the authorities to try to

put them on board. In front of the governor's house they were gathered thickest, bawling seasongs,

circulating square faces, and dancing uproarious Virginia reels and oldcountry dances. The police, including

the reserves, stood in little forlorn groups, waiting for the command the governor was too wise to issue. And I

thought this saturnalia was great. It was like the old days of the Spanish Main come back. It was license; it

was adventure. And I was part of it, a chesty sea rover along with all these other chesty searovers among

The governor never issued the order to clear the streets, and Axel and I wandered on from drink to drink.

After a time, in some of the antics, getting hazy myself, I lost him. I drifted along, making new

acquaintances, downing more drinks, getting hazier and hazier. I remember, somewhere, sitting in a circle

with Japanese fishermen, Kanaka boatsteerers from our own vessels, and a young Danish sailor fresh from

cowboying in the Argentine and with a penchant for native customs and ceremonials. And with due and

proper and most intricate Japanese ceremonial we of the circle drank saki, pale, mild, and lukewarm, from

And, later, I remember the runaway apprenticesboys of eighteen and twenty, of middle class English

families, who had jumped their ships and apprenticeships in various ports of the world and drifted into the

forecastles of the sealing schooners. They were healthy, smoothskinned, cleareyed, and they were

youngyouths like me, learning the way of their feet in the world of men. And they WERE men. No mild

saki for them, but square faces illicitly refilled with corrosive fire that flamed through their veins and burst

into conflagrations in their heads. I remember a melting song they sang, the refrain of which was:

"'Tis but a little golden ring, I give it to thee with pride, Wear it for your mother's sake When you are on the

They wept over it as they sang it, the graceless young scamps who had all broken their mothers' prides, and I

sang with them, and wept with them, and luxuriated in the pathos and the tragedy of it, and struggled to make

glimmering inebriated generalisations on life and romance. And one last picture I have, standing out very

clear and bright in the midst of vagueness before and blackness afterward. Wethe apprentices and Iare

swaying and clinging to one another under the stars. We are singing a rollicking sea song, all save one who

sits on the ground and weeps; and we are marking the rhythm with waving square faces. From up and down

the street come far choruses of seavoices similarly singing, and life is great, and beautiful and romantic, and

And next, after the blackness, I open my eyes in the early dawn to see a Japanese woman, solicitously

anxious, bending over me. She is the port pilot's wife and I am lying in her doorway. I am chilled and

shivering, sick with the aftersickness of debauch. And I feel lightly clad. Those rascals of runaway

apprentices! They have acquired the habit of running away. They have run away with my possessions. My

watch is gone. My few dollars are gone. My coat is gone. So is my belt. And yes, my shoes.

And the foregoing is a sample of the ten days I spent in the Bonin Islands. Victor got over his lunacy,

rejoined Axel and me, and after that we caroused somewhat more discreetly. And we never climbed that lava

One who has been burned by fire must preach about the fire. I might have seen and healthily enjoyed a whole

lot more of the Bonin Islands, if I had done what I ought to have done. But, as I see it, it is not a matter of

what one ought to do, or ought not to do. It is what one DOES do. That is the everlasting, irrefragable fact. I

did just what I did. I did what all those men did in the Bonin Islands. I did what millions of men over the

world were doing at that particular point in time. I did it because the way led to it, because I was only a

human boy, a creature of my environment, and neither an anaemic nor a god. I was just human, and I was

taking the path in the world that men tookmen whom I admired, if you please; fullblooded men, lusty,

breedy, chesty men, free spirits and anything but niggards in the way they foamed life away.

And the way was open. It was like an uncovered well in a yard where children play. It is small use to tell the

brave little boys toddling their way along into knowledge of life that they mustn't play near the uncovered

well. They'll play near it. Any parent knows that. And we know that a certain percentage of them, the livest

and most daring, will fall into the well. The thing to dowe all know itis to cover up the well. The case is

the same with John Barleycorn. All the nosaying and nopreaching in the world will fail to keep men, and

youths growing into manhood, away from John Barleycorn when John Barleycorn is everywhere accessible,

and where John Barleycorn is everywhere the connotation of manliness, and daring, and greatspiritedness.

The only rational thing for the twentiethcentury folk to do is to cover up the well; to make the twentieth

century in truth the twentieth century, and to relegate to the nineteenth century and all the preceding centuries

the things of those centuries, the witchburnings, the intolerances, the fetiches, and, not least among such

North we raced from the Bonin Islands to pick up the sealherd, and north we hunted it for a hundred days

into frosty, mitten weather and into and through vast fogs which hid the sun from us for a week at a time. It

was wild and heavy work, without a drink or thought of drink. Then we sailed south to Yokohama, with a big

I was eager to be ashore and see Japan, but the first day was devoted to ship's work, and not until evening did

we sailors land. And here, by the very system of things, by the way life was organised and men transacted

affairs, John Barleycorn reached out and tucked my arm in his. The captain had given money for us to the

hunters, and the hunters were waiting in a certain Japanese public house for us to come and get it. We rode to

the place in rickshaws. Our own crowd had taken possession of it. Drink was flowing. Everybody had money,

and everybody was treating. After the hundred days of hard toil and absolute abstinence, in the pink of

physical condition, bulging with health, overspilling with spirits that had long been pent by discipline and

circumstance, of course we would have a drink or two. And after that we would see the town.

It was the old story. There were so many drinks to be drunk, and as the warm magic poured through our veins

and mellowed our voices and affections we knew it was no time to make invidious distinctionsto drink

with this shipmate and to decline to drink with that shipmate. We were all shipmates who had been through

stress and storm together, who had pulled and hauled on the same sheets and tackles, relieved one another's

wheels, laid out side by side on the same jibboom when she was plunging into it and looked to see who was

missing when she cleared and lifted. So we drank with all, and all treated, and our voices rose, and we

remembered a myriad kindly acts of comradeship, and forgot our fights and wordy squabbles, and knew one

Well, the night was young when we arrived in that public house, and for all of that first night that public

house was what I saw of Japana drinkingplace which was very like a drinkingplace at home or

We lay in Yokohama harbour for two weeks, and about all we saw of Japan was its drinkingplaces where

sailors congregated. Occasionally, some one of us varied the monotony with a more exciting drunk. In such

fashion I managed a real exploit by swimming off to the schooner one dark midnight and going soundly to

sleep while the waterpolice searched the harbour for my body and brought my clothes out for identification.

Perhaps it was for things like that, I imagined, that men got drunk. In our little round of living what I had

done was a noteworthy event. All the harbour talked about it. I enjoyed several days of fame among the

Japanese boatmen and ashore in the pubs. It was a redletter event. It was an event to be remembered and

narrated with pride. I remember it today, twenty years afterward, with a secret glow of pride. It was a purple

passage, just as Victor's wrecking of the teahouse in the Bonin Islands and my being looted by the runaway

The point is that the charm of John Barleycorn was still a mystery to me. I was so organically a

nonalcoholic that alcohol itself made no appeal; the chemical reactions it produced in me were not

satisfying because I possessed no need for such chemical satisfaction. I drank because the men I was with

drank, and because my nature was such that I could not permit myself to be less of a man than other men at

their favourite pastime. And I still had a sweet tooth, and on privy occasions when there was no man to see,

We hove up anchor to a jolly chanty, and sailed out of Yokohama harbour for San Francisco. We took the

northern passage, and with the stout west wind at our back made the run across the Pacific in thirtyseven

days of brave sailing. We still had a big payday coming to us, and for thirtyseven days, without a drink to

The first statement of each manever an ancient one in homeward bound forecastleswas: "No

boardinghouse sharks in mine." Next, in parentheses, was regret at having spent so much money in

Yokohama. And after that, each man proceeded to paint his favourite phantom. Victor, for instance, said that

immediately he landed in San Francisco he would pass right through the water front and the Barbary Coast,

and put an advertisement in the papers. His advertisement would be for board and room in some simple

workingclass family. "Then," said Victor, "I shall go to some dancingschool for a week or two, just to

meet and get acquainted with the girls and fellows. Then I'll get the run of the different dancing crowds, and

be invited to their homes, and to parties, and all that, and with the money I've got I can last out till next

No; he wasn't going to drink. He knew the way of it, particularly his way of it, wine in, wit out, and his

money would be gone in no time. He had his choice, based on bitter experience, between three days' debauch

among the sharks and harpies of the Barbary Coast and a whole winter of wholesome enjoyment and

Said Axel Gunderson, who didn't care for dancing and social functions: "I've got a good payday. Now I can

go home. It is fifteen years since I've seen my mother and all the family. When I pay off, I shall send my

money home to wait for me. Then I'll pick a good ship bound for Europe, and arrive there with another

payday. Put them together, and I'll have more money than ever in my life before. I'll be a prince at home.

You haven't any idea how cheap everything is in Norway. I can make presents to everybody, and spend my

money like what would seem to them a millionaire, and live a whole year there before I'd have to go back to

"The very thing I'm going to do," declared Red John. "It's three years since I've received a line from home

and ten years since I was there. Things are just as cheap in Sweden, Axel, as in Norway, and my folks are real

country folk and farmers. I'll send my payday home and ship on the same ship with you for around the

And as Axel Gunderson and Red John painted the pastoral delights and festive customs of their respective

countries, each fell in love with the other's home place, and they solemnly pledged to make the journey

together, and to spend, together, six months in the one's Swedish home and six months in the other's

Norwegian home. And for the rest of the voyage they could hardly be pried apart, so infatuated did they

Long John was not a homebody. But he was tired of the forecastle. No boardinghouse sharks in his. He,

too, would get a room in a quiet family, and he would go to a navigation school and study to be a captain.

And so it went. Each man swore that for once he would be sensible and not squander his money. No

boardinghouse sharks, no sailortown, no drink, was the slogan of our forecastle.

The men became stingy. Never was there such economy. They refused to buy anything more from the

slopchest. Old rags had to last, and they sewed patch upon patch, turning out what are called

"homewardbound patches " of the most amazing proportions. They saved on matches, even, waiting till two

As we sailed up the San Francisco waterfront, the moment the port doctors passed us, the boardinghouse

runners were alongside in whitehall boats. They swarmed on board, each drumming for his own

boardinghouse, and each with a bottle of free whisky inside his shirt. But we waved them grandly and

blasphemously away. We wanted none of their boardinghouses and none of their whisky. We were sober,

Came the paying off before the shipping commissioner. We emerged upon the sidewalk, each with a

pocketful of money. About us, like buzzards, clustered the sharks and harpies. And we looked at each other.

We had been seven months together, and our paths were separating. One last farewell rite of comradeship

remained. (Oh, it was the way, the custom.) "Come on, boys," said our sailing master. There stood the

inevitable adjacent saloon. There were a dozen saloons all around. And when we had followed the sailing

master into the one of his choice, the sharks were thick on the sidewalk outside. Some of them even ventured

There we stood at the long barthe sailing master, the mate, the six hunters, the six boatsteerers, and the

five boatpullers. There were only five of the last, for one of our number had been dropped overboard, with a

sack of coal at his feet, between two snow squalls in a driving gale off Cape Jerimo. There were nineteen of

us, and it was to be our last drink together. With seven months of men's work in the world, blow high, blow

low, behind us, we were looking on each other for the last time. We knew it, for sailors' ways go wide. And

the nineteen of us, drank the sailing master's treat. Then the mate looked at us with eloquent eyes and called

another round. We liked the mate just as well as the sailing master, and we liked them both. Could we drink

And Pete Holt, my own hunter (lost next year in the Mary Thomas, with all hands), called a round. The time

passed, the drinks continued to come on the bar, our voices rose, and the maggots began to crawl. There were

six hunters, and each insisted, in the sacred name of comradeship, that all hands drink with him just once.

There were six boatsteerers and five boatpullers and the same logic held with them. There was money in

all our pockets, and our money was as good as any man's, and our hearts were as free and generous.

Nineteen rounds of drinks. What more would John Barleycorn ask in order to have his will with men? They

were ripe to forget their dearly cherished plans. They rolled out of the saloon and into the arms of the sharks

and harpies. They didn't last long. From two days to a week saw the end of their money and saw them being

carted by the boardinghouse masters on board outwardbound ships. Victor was a fine body of a man, and

through a lucky friendship managed to get into the lifesaving service. He never saw the dancingschool nor

placed his advertisement for a room in a workingclass family. Nor did Long John win to navigation school.

By the end of the week he was a transient lumper on a river steamboat. Red John and Axel did not send their

paydays home to the old country. Instead, and along with the rest, they were scattered on board sailing ships

bound for the four quarters of the globe, where they had been placed by the boardinghouse masters, and

where they were working out advance money which they had neither seen nor spent.

What saved me was that I had a home and people to go to. I crossed the bay to Oakland, and, among other

things, took a look at the deathroad. Nelson was goneshot to death while drunk and resisting the officers.

His partner in that affair was lying in prison. Whisky Bob was gone. Old Cole, Old Smoudge, and Bob Smith

were gone. Another Smith, he of the belted guns and the Annie, was drowned. French Frank, they said, was

lurking up river, afraid to come down because of something he had done. Others were wearing the stripes in

San Quentin or Folsom. Big Alec, the King of the Greeks, whom I had known well in the old Benicia days,

and with whom I had drunk whole nights through, had killed two men and fled to foreign parts. Fitzsimmons,

with whom I had sailed on the Fish Patrol, had been stabbed in the lung through the back and had died a

lingering death complicated with tuberculosis. And so it went, a very lively and wellpatronised road, and,

from what I knew of all of them, John Barleycorn was responsible, with the sole exception of Smith of the

My infatuation for the Oakland waterfront was quite dead. I didn't like the looks of it, nor the life. I didn't

care for the drinking, nor the vagrancy of it, and I wandered back to the Oakland Free Library and read the

books with greater understanding. Then, too, my mother said I had sown my wild oats and it was time I

settled down to a regular job. Also, the family needed the money. So I got a job at the jute millsa tenhour

day at ten cents an hour. Despite my increase in strength and general efficiency, I was receiving no more than

when I worked in the cannery several years before. But, then, there was a promise of a rise to a dollar and a

quarter a day after a few months. And here, so far as John Barleycorn is concerned, began a period of

innocence. I did not know what it was to take a drink from month end to month end. Not yet eighteen years

old, healthy and with labourhardened but unhurt muscles, like any young animal I needed diversion,

I strayed into Young Men's Christian Associations. The life there was healthful and athletic, but too juvenile.

For me it was too late. I was not boy, nor youth, despite my paucity of years. I had bucked big with men. I

knew mysterious and violent things. I was from the other side of life so far as concerned the young men I

encountered in the Y.M.C.A. I spoke another language, possessed a sadder and more terrible wisdom. (When

I come to think it over, I realise now that I have never had a boyhood.) At any rate, the Y.M.C.A. young men

were too juvenile for me, too unsophisticated. This I would not have minded, could they have met me and

helped me mentally. But I had got more out of the books than they. Their meagre physical experiences, plus

their meagre intellectual experiences, made a negative sum so vast that it overbalanced their wholesome

In short, I couldn't play with the pupils of a lower grade. All the clean splendid young life that was theirs was

denied me thanks to my earlier tutelage under John Barleycorn. I knew too much too young. And yet, in

the good time coming when alcohol is eliminated from the needs and the institutions of men, it will be the

Y.M.C.A., and similar unthinkably better and wiser and more virile congregatingplaces, that will receive the

men who now go to saloons to find themselves and one another. In the meantime, we live today, here and

I was working ten hours a day in the jute mills. It was humdrum machine toil. I wanted life. I wanted to

realise myself in other ways than at a machine for ten cents an hour. And yet I had had my fill of saloons. I

wanted something new. I was growing up. I was developing unguessed and troubling potencies and

proclivities. And at this very stage, fortunately, I met Louis Shattuck and we became chums.

Louis Shattuck, without one vicious trait, was a real innocently devilish young fellow, who was quite

convinced that he was a sophisticated town boy. And I wasn't a town boy at all. Louis was handsome, and

graceful, and filled with love for the girls. With him it was an exciting and allabsorbing pursuit. I didn't

know anything about girls. I had been too busy being a man. This was an entirely new phase of existence

which had escaped me. And when I saw Louis say goodbye to me, raise his hat to a girl of his acquaintance,

and walk on with her side by side down the sidewalk, I was made excited and envious. I, too, wanted to play

"Well, there's only one thing to do," said Louis, "and that is, you must get a girl."

Which is more difficult than it sounds. Let me show you, at the expense of a slight going aside. Louis did not

know girls in their home life. He had the entree to no girl's home. And of course, I, a stranger in this new

world, was similarly circumstanced. But, further, Louis and I were unable to go to dancingschools, or to

public dances, which were very good places for getting acquainted. We didn't have the money. He was a

blacksmith's apprentice, and was earning but slightly more than I. We both lived at home and paid our way.

When we had done this, and bought our cigarettes, and the inevitable clothes and shoes, there remained to

each of us, for personal spending, a sum that varied between seventy cents and a dollar for the week. We

whacked this up, shared it, and sometimes loaned all of what was left of it when one of us needed it for some

more gorgeous girl adventure, such as carfare out to Blair's Park and backtwenty cents, bang, just like

that; and icecream for twothirty cents; or tamales in a tamaleparlour, which came cheaper and which for

I did not mind this money meagreness. The disdain I had learned for money from the oyster pirates had never

left me. I didn't care overweeningly for it for personal gratification; and in my philosophy I completed the

circle, finding myself as equable with the lack of a tencent piece as I was with the squandering of scores of

But how to get a girl? There was no girl's home to which Louis could take me and where I might be

introduced to girls. I knew none. And Louis' several girls he wanted for himself; and anyway, in the very

human nature of boys' and girls' ways, he couldn't turn any of them over to me. He did persuade them to bring

girl friends for me; but I found them weak sisters, pale and ineffectual alongside the choice specimens he

"You'll have to do like I did," he said finally. "I got these by getting them. You'll have to get one the same

And he initiated me. It must be remembered that Louis and I were hard situated. We really had to struggle to

pay our board and maintain a decent appearance. We met each other in the evening, after the day's work, on

the street corner, or in a little candy store on a side street, our sole frequentingplace. Here we bought our

cigarettes, and, occasionally, a nickel's worth of "redhots." (Oh, yes; Louis and I unblushingly ate

candyall we could get. Neither of us drank. Neither of us ever went into a saloon.)

But the girl. In quite primitive fashion, as Louis advised me, I was to select her and make myself acquainted

with her. We strolled the streets in the early evenings. The girls, like us, strolled in pairs. And strolling girls

will look at strolling boys who look. (And to this day, in any town, city, or village, in which I, in my middle

age, find myself, I look on with the eye trained of old experience, and watch the sweet innocent game played

by the strolling boys and girls who just must stroll when the spring and summer evenings call.)

The trouble was that in this Arcadian phase of my history, I, who had come through, casehardened, from the

other side of life, was timid and bashful. Again and again Louis nerved me up. But I didn't know girls. They

were strange and wonderful to me after my precocious man's life. I failed of the bold front and the necessary

Then Louis would show me howa certain, eloquent glance of eye, a smile, a daring, a lifted hat, a spoken

word, hesitancies, giggles, coy nervousnessesand, behold, Louis acquainted and nodding me up to be

introduced. But when we paired off to stroll along boy and girl together, I noted that Louis had invariably

I improved, of course, after experiences too numerous to enter upon, so that there were divers girls to whom I

could lift my hat and who would walk beside me in the early evenings. But girl's love did not immediately

come to me. I was excited, interested, and I pursued the quest. And the thought of drink never entered my

mind. Some of Louis' and my adventures have since given me serious pause when casting sociological

generalisations. But it was all good and innocently youthful, and I learned one generalisation, biological

rather than sociological, namely, that the "Colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady are sisters under their skins."

And before long I learned girl's love, all the dear fond deliciousness of it, all the glory and the wonder. I shall

call her Haydee. She was between fifteen and sixteen. Her little skirt reached her shoetops. We sat side by

side in a Salvation Army meeting. She was not a convert, nor was her aunt who sat on the other side of her,

and who, visiting from the country where at that time the Salvation Army was not, had dropped in to the

meeting for half an hour out of curiosity. And Louis sat beside me and observedI do believe he did no

We did not speak, but in that great halfhour we glanced shyly at each other, and shyly avoided or as shyly

returned and met each other's glances more than several times. She had a slender oval face. Her brown eyes

were beautiful. Her nose was a dream, as was her sweetlipped, petulanthinting mouth. She wore a tamo'

shanter, and I thought her brown hair the prettiest shade of brown I had ever seen. And from that single

experience of half an hour I have ever since been convinced of the reality of love at first sight.

All too soon the aunt and Haydee departed. (This is permissible at any stage of a Salvation Army meeting.) I

was no longer interested in the meeting, and, after an appropriate interval of a couple of minutes or less,

started to leave with Louis. As we passed out, at the back of the hall a woman recognised me with her eyes,

arose, and followed me. I shall not describe her. She was of my own kind and friendship of the old time on

the waterfront. When Nelson was shot, he had died in her arms, and she knew me as his one comrade. And

she must tell me how Nelson had died, and I did want to know; so I went with her across the width of life

from dawning boy's love for a brownhaired girl in a tamo'shanter back to the old sad savagery I had

And when I had heard the tale, I hurried away to find Louis, fearing that I had lost my first love with the first

glimpse of her. But Louis was dependable. Her name wasHaydee. He knew where she lived. Each day she

passed the blacksmith's shop where he worked, going to or from the Lafayette School. Further, he had seen

her on occasion with Ruth, another schoolgirl, and, still further, Nita, who sold us redhots at the candy store,

was a friend of Ruth. The thing to do was to go around to the candy store and see if we could get Nita to give

a note to Ruth to give to Haydee. If this could be arranged, all I had to do was write the note.

And it so happened. And in stolen halfhours of meeting I came to know all the sweet madness of boy's love

and girl's love. So far as it goes it is not the biggest love in the world, but I do dare to assert that it is the

sweetest. Oh, as I look back on it! Never did girl have more innocent boylover than I who had been so

wickedwise and violent beyond my years. I didn't know the first thing about girls. I, who had been hailed

Prince of the Oyster Pirates, who could go anywhere in the world as a man amongst men; who could sail

boats, lay aloft in black and storm, or go into the toughest hangouts in sailor town and play my part in any

rough house that started or call all hands to the barI didn't know the first thing I might say or do with this

slender little chit of a girlwoman whose scant skirt just reached her shoetops and who was as abysmally

I remember we sat on a bench in the starlight. There was fully a foot of space between us. We slightly faced

each other, our near elbows on the back of the bench; and once or twice our elbows just touched. And all the

time, deliriously happy, talking in the gentlest and most delicate terms that might not offend her sensitive

ears, I was cudgelling my brains in an effort to divine what I was expected to do. What did girls expect of

boys, sitting on a bench and tentatively striving to find out what love was? What did she expect me to do?

Was I expected to kiss her? Did she expect me to try? And if she did expect me, and I didn't what would she

Ah, she was wiser than II know it nowthe little innocent girl woman in her shoetop skirt. She had

known boys all her life. She encouraged me in the ways a girl may. Her gloves were off and in one hand, and

I remember, lightly and daringly, in mock reproof for something I had said, how she tapped my lips with a

tiny flirt of those gloves. I was like to swoon with delight. It was the most wonderful thing that had ever

happened to me. And I remember yet the faint scent that clung to those gloves and that I breathed in the

Then came the agony of apprehension and doubt. Should I imprison in my hand that little hand with the

dangling, scented gloves which had just tapped my lips? Should I dare to kiss her there and then, or slip my

Well, I didn't dare. I did nothing. I merely continued to sit there and love with all my soul. And when we

parted that evening I had not kissed her. I do remember the first time I kissed her, on another evening, at

partinga mighty moment, when I took all my heart of courage and dared. We never succeeded in managing

more than a dozen stolen meetings, and we kissed perhaps a dozen timesas boys and girls kiss, briefly and

innocently, and wonderingly. We never went anywherenot even to a matinee. We once shared together

five cents worth of redhots. But I have always fondly believed that she loved me. I know I loved her; and I

dreamed daydreams of her for a year and more, and the memory of her is very dear.

When I was with people who did not drink, I never thought of drinking. Louis did not drink. Neither he nor I

could afford it; but, more significant than that, we had no desire to drink. We were healthy, normal,

nonalcoholic. Had we been alcoholic, we would have drunk whether or not we could have afforded it.

Each night, after the day's work, washed up, clothes changed, and supper eaten, we met on the street corner or

in the little candy store. But the warm fall weather passed, and on bitter nights of frost or damp nights of

drizzle, the street corner was not a comfortable meetingplace. And the candy store was unheated. Nita, or

whoever waited on the counter, between waitings lurked in a back livingroom that was heated. We were not

Louis and I debated the situation. There was only one solution: the saloon, the congregatingplace of men,

the place where men hobnobbed with John Barleycorn. Well do I remember the damp and draughty evening,

shivering without overcoats because we could not afford them, that Louis and I started out to select our

saloon. Saloons are always warm and comfortable. Now Louis and I did not go into this saloon because we

wanted a drink. Yet we knew that saloons were not charitable institutions. A man could not make a

Our dimes and nickels were few. We could ill spare any of them when they were so potent in paying carfare

for oneself and a girl. (We never paid carfare when by ourselves, being content to walk.) So, in this saloon,

we desired to make the most of our expenditure. We called for a deck of cards and sat down at a table and

played euchre for an hour, in which time Louis treated once, and I treated once, to beerthe cheapest drink,

We studied the men who came into the place. They seemed all middleaged and elderly workmen, most of

them Germans, who flocked by themselves in oldacquaintance groups, and with whom we could have only

the slightest contacts. We voted against that saloon, and went out cast down with the knowledge that we had

We made several more tries on succeeding nights, and at last found our way into the National, a saloon on

Tenth and Franklin. Here was a more congenial crowd. Here Louis met a fellow or two he knew, and here I

met fellows I had gone to school with when a little lad in knee pants. We talked of old days, and of what had

become of this fellow, and what that fellow was doing now, and of course we talked it over drinks. They

treated, and we drank. Then, according to the code of drinking, we had to treat. It hurt, for it meant forty to

We felt quite enlivened when the short evening was over; but at the same time we were bankrupt. Our week's

spending money was gone. We decided that that was the saloon for us, and we agreed to be more circumspect

thereafter in our drinkbuying. Also, we had to economise for the rest of the week. We didn't even have

carfare. We were compelled to break an engagement with two girls from West Oakland with whom we were

attempting to be in love. They were to meet us up town the next evening, and we hadn't the carfare

necessary to take them home. Like many others financially embarrassed, we had to disappear for a time from

the gay whirlat least until Saturday night payday. So Louis and I rendezvoused in a livery stable, and

with coats buttoned and chattering teeth played euchre and casino until the time of our exile was over.

Then we returned to the National Saloon and spent no more than we could decently avoid spending for the

comfort and warmth. Sometimes we had mishaps, as when one got stuck twice in succession in a

fivehanded game of Sancho Pedro for the drinks. Such a disaster meant anywhere between twentyfive to

eighty cents, just according to how many of the players ordered tencent drinks. But we could temporarily

escape the evil effects of such disaster, by virtue of an account we ran behind the bar. Of course, this only set

back the day of reckoning and seduced us into spending more than we would have spent on a cash basis.

(When I left Oakland suddenly for the adventurepath the following spring, I well remember I owed that

saloonkeeper one dollar and seventy cents. Long after, when I returned, he was gone. I still owe him that

dollar and seventy cents, and if he should chance to read these lines I want him to know that I'll pay on

The foregoing incident of the National Saloon I have given in order again to show the lure, or draw, or

compulsion, toward John Barleycorn in society as at present organised with saloons on all the corners. Louis

and I were two healthy youths. We didn't want to drink. We couldn't afford to drink. And yet we were driven

by the circumstance of cold and rainy weather to seek refuge in a saloon, where we had to spend part of our

pitiful dole for drink. It will be urged by some critics that we might have gone to the Y.M.C.A., to night

school, and to the social circles and homes of young people. The only reply is that we didn't. That is the

irrefragable fact. We didn't. And today, at this moment, there are hundreds of thousands of boys like Louis

and me doing just what Louis and I did with John Barleycorn, warm and comfortable, beckoning and

welcoming, tucking their arms in his and beginning to teach them his mellow ways.

The jute mills failed of its agreement to increase my pay to a dollar and a quarter a day, and I, a freeborn

American boy whose direct ancestors had fought in all the wars from the old pre Revolutionary Indian wars

I was still resolved to settle down, and I looked about me. One thing was clear. Unskilled labour didn't pay. I

must learn a trade, and I decided on electricity. The need for electricians was constantly growing. But how to

become an electrician? I hadn't the money to go to a technical school or university; besides, I didn't think

much of schools. I was a practical man in a practical world. Also, I still believed in the old myths which were

A canal boy could become a President. Any boy who took employment with any firm could, by thrift, energy,

and sobriety, learn the business and rise from position to position until he was taken in as a junior partner.

After that the senior partnership was only a matter of time. Very oftenso ran the myththe boy, by reason

of his steadiness and application, married his employ's daughter. By this time I had been encouraged to such

faith in myself in the matter of girls that I was quite certain I would marry my employer's daughter. There

wasn't a doubt of it. All the little boys in the myths did it as soon as they were old enough.

So I bade farewell for ever to the adventurepath, and went out to the power plant of one of our Oakland

street railways. I saw the superintendent himself, in a private office so fine that it almost stunned me. But I

talked straight up. I told him I wanted to become a practical electrician, that I was unafraid of work, that I

was used to hard work, and that all he had to do was look at me to see I was fit and strong. I told him that I

wanted to begin right at the bottom and work up, that I wanted to devote my life to this one occupation and

The superintendent beamed as he listened. He told me that I was the right stuff for success, and that he

believed in encouraging American youth that wanted to rise. Why, employers were always on the lookout for

young fellows like me, and alas, they found them all too rarely. My ambition was fine and worthy, and he

would see to it that I got my chance. (And as I listened with swelling heart, I wondered if it was his daughter I

"Before you can go out on the road and learn the more complicated and higher details of the profession," he

said, "you will, of course, have to work in the carhouse with the men who install and repair the motors. (By

this time I was sure that it was his daughter, and I was wondering how much stock he might own in the

"But," he said, "as you yourself so plainly see, you couldn't expect to begin as a helper to the carhouse

electricians. That will come when you have worked up to it. You will really begin at the bottom. In the

carhouse your first employment will be sweeping up, washing the windows, keeping things clean. And after

you have shown yourself satisfactory at that, then you may become a helper to the carhouse electricians."

I didn't see how sweeping and scrubbing a building was any preparation for the trade of electrician; but I did

know that in the books all the boys started with the most menial tasks and by making good ultimately won to

"But," said the superintendent, "as you and I have already agreed, you must begin at the bottom. Not

immediately can you in any capacity enter the carhouse. Before that you must pass through the

My heart went down slightly and for the moment as I saw the road lengthen between his daughter and me;

then it rose again. I would be a better electrician with knowledge of steam engines. As an oiler in the great

engineroom I was confident that few things concerning steam would escape me. Heavens! My career shone

"But," said the superintendent, "you could not expect to enter immediately into the engineroom. There must

be preparation for that. And through the fireroom, of course. Come, you see the matter clearly, I know. And

you will see that even the mere handling of coal is a scientific matter and not to be sneered at. Do you know

that we weigh every pound of coal we burn? Thus, we learn the value of the coal we buy; we know to a tee

the last penny of cost of every item of production, and we learn which firemen are the most wasteful, which

firemen, out of stupidity or carelessness, get the least out of the coal they fire." The superintendent beamed

again. "You see how very important the little matter of coal is, and by as much as you learn of this little

matter you will become that much better a workmanmore valuable to us, more valuable to yourself. Now,

I was taken out and shown my duties. Also, I was told the terms of my employmenta tenhour day, every

day in the month including Sundays and holidays, with one day off each month, with a salary of thirty dollars

a month. It wasn't exciting. Years before, at the cannery, I had earned a dollar a day for a tenhour day. I

consoled myself with the thought that the reason my earning capacity had not increased with my years and

strength was because I had remained an unskilled labourer. But it was different now. I was beginning to work

for skill, for a trade, for career and fortune, and the superintendent's daughter.

And I was beginning in the right wayright at the beginning. That was the thing. I was passing coal to the

firemen, who shovelled it into the furnaces, where its energy was transformed into steam, which, in the

engineroom, was transformed into the electricity with which the electricians worked. This passing coal was

surely the very beginningunless the superintendent should take it into his head to send me to work in the

mines from which the coal came in order to get a completer understanding of the genesis of electricity for

Work! I, who had worked with men, found that I didn't know the first thing about real work. A tenhour day!

I had to pass coal for the day and night shifts, and, despite working through the noonhour, I never finished

my task before eight at night. I was working a twelveto thirteenhour day, and I wasn't being paid overtime

I might as well give the secret away right here. I was doing the work of two men. Before me, one mature

ablebodied labourer had done the day shift and another equally mature ablebodied labourer had done the

nightshift. They had received forty dollars a month each. The superintendent, bent on an economical

administration, had persuaded me to do the work of both men for thirty dollars a month. I thought he was

making an electrician of me. In truth and fact, he was saving fifty dollars a month operating expenses to the

But I didn't know I was displacing two men. Nobody told me. On the contrary, the superintendent warned

everybody not to tell me. How valiantly I went at it that first day. I worked at top speed, filling the iron

wheelbarrow with coal, running it on the scales and weighing the load, then trundling it into the fireroom

Work! I did more than the two men whom I had displaced. They had merely wheeled in the coal and dumped

it on the plates. But while I did this for the day coal, the night coal I had to pile against the wall of the

fireroom. Now the fireroom was small. It had been planned for a night coalpasser. So I had to pile the

night coal higher and higher, buttressing up the heap with stout planks. Toward the top of the heap I had to

I dripped with sweat, but I never ceased from my stride, though I could feel exhaustion coming on. By ten

o'clock in the morning, so much of my body's energy had I consumed, I felt hungry and snatched a thick

doubleslice of bread and butter from my dinner pail. This I devoured, standing, grimed with coaldust, my

knees trembling under me. By eleven o'clock, in this fashion I had consumed my whole lunch. But what of it?

I realised that it would enable me to continue working through the noon hour. And I worked all the afternoon.

Darkness came on, and I worked under the electric lights. The day fireman went off and the night fireman

At halfpast eight, famished, tottering, I washed up, changed my clothes, and dragged my weary body to the

car. It was three miles to where I lived, and I had received a pass with the stipulation that I could sit down as

long as there were no paying passengers in need of a seat. As I sank into a corner outside seat I prayed that no

passenger might require my seat. But the car filled up, and, halfway in, a woman came on board, and there

was no seat for her. I started to get up, and to my astonishment found that I could not. With the chill wind

blowing on me, my spent body had stiffened into the seat. It took me the rest of the run in to unkink my

complaining joints and muscles and get into a standing position on the lower step. And when the car stopped

I hobbled two blocks to the house and limped into the kitchen. While my mother started to cook, I plunged

into bread and butter; but before my appetite was appeased, or the steak fried, I was sound asleep. In vain my

mother strove to shake me awake enough to eat the meat. Failing in this, with the assistance of my father she

managed to get me to my room, where I collapsed dead asleep on the bed. They undressed me and covered

me up. In the morning came the agony of being awakened. I was terribly sore, and, worst of all, my wrists

were swelling. But I made up for my lost supper, eating an enormous breakfast, and when I hobbled to catch

Work! Let any youth just turned eighteen try to outshovel two mangrown coalshovellers. Work! Long

before midday I had eaten the last scrap of my huge lunch. But I was resolved to show them what a husky

young fellow determined to rise could do. The worst of it was that my wrists were swelling and going back

on me. There are few who do not know the pain of walking on a sprained ankle. Then imagine the pain of

Work! More than once I sank down on the coal where no one could see me, and cried with rage, and

mortification, and exhaustion, and despair. That second day was my hardest, and all that enabled me to

survive it and get in the last of the night coal at the end of thirteen hours was the day fireman, who bound

both my wrists with broad leather straps. So tightly were they buckled that they were like slightly flexible

plaster casts. They took the stresses and pressures which hitherto had been borne by my wrists, and they were

And in this fashion I continued to learn to be an electrician. Night after night I limped home, fell asleep

before I could eat my supper, and was helped into bed and undressed. Morning after morning, always with

I no longer read my library books. I made no dates with the girls. I was a proper work beast. I worked, and

ate, and slept, while my mind slept all the time. The whole thing was a nightmare. I worked every day,

including Sunday, and I looked far ahead to my one day off at the end of a month, resolved to lie abed all that

The strangest part of this experience was that I never took a drink nor thought of taking a drink. Yet I knew

that men under hard pressure almost invariably drank. I had seen them do it, and in the past had often done it

myself. But so sheerly non alcoholic was I that it never entered my mind that a drink might be good for me.

I instance this to show how entirely lacking from my makeup was any predisposition toward alcohol. And

the point of this instance is that later on, after more years had passed, contact with John Barleycorn at last did

I had often noticed the day fireman staring at me in a curious way. At last, one day, he spoke. He began by

swearing me to secrecy. He had been warned by the superintendent not to tell me, and in telling me he was

risking his job. He told me of the day coalpasser and the night coalpasser, and of the wages they had

received. I was doing for thirty dollars a month what they had received eighty dollars for doing. He would

have told me sooner, the fireman said, had he not been so certain that I would break down under the work and

quit. As it was, I was killing myself, and all to no good purpose. I was merely cheapening the price of labour,

Being an American boy, and a proud American boy, I did not immediately quit. This was foolish of me, I

know; but I resolved to continue the work long enough to prove to the superintendent that I could do it

without breaking down. Then I would quit, and he would realise what a fine young fellow he had lost.

All of which I faithfully and foolishly did. I worked on until the time came when I got in the last of the night

coal by six o'clock. Then I quit the job of learning electricity by doing more than two men's work for a boy's

Fortunately, I had not stayed by the job long enough to injure myselfthough I was compelled to wear

straps on my wrists for a year afterward. But the effect of this work orgy in which I had indulged was to

sicken me with work. I just wouldn't work. The thought of work was repulsive. I didn't care if I never settled

down. Learning a trade could go hang. It was a whole lot better to royster and frolic over the world in the way

I had previously done. So I headed out on the adventurepath again, starting to tramp East by beating my

But behold! As soon as I went out on the adventurepath I met John Barleycorn again. I moved through a

world of strangers, and the act of drinking together made one acquainted with men and opened the way to

adventures. It might be in a saloon with jingled townsmen, or with a genial railroad man well lighted up and

armed with pocket flasks, or with a bunch of alki stiffs in a hangout. Yes; and it might be in a prohibition

state, such as Iowa was in 1894, when I wandered up the main street of Des Moines and was variously invited

by strangers into various blind pigsI remember drinking in barbershops, plumbing establishments, and

Always it was John Barleycorn. Even a tramp, in those halcyon days, could get most frequently drunk. I

remember, inside the prison at Buffalo, how some of us got magnificently jingled, and how, on the streets of

Buffalo after our release, another jingle was financed with pennies begged on the maindrag.

I had no call for alcohol, but when I was with those who drank, I drank with them. I insisted on travelling or

loafing with the livest, keenest men, and it was just these live, keen ones that did most of the drinking. They

were the more comradely men, the more venturous, the more individual. Perhaps it was too much

temperament that made them turn from the commonplace and humdrum to find relief in the lying and

fantastic sureties of John Barleycorn. Be that as it may, the men I liked best, desired most to be with, were

In the course of my tramping over the United States I achieved a new concept. As a tramp, I was behind the

scenes of societyaye, and down in the cellar. I could watch the machinery work. I saw the wheels of the

social machine go around, and I learned that the dignity of manual labour wasn't what I had been told it was

by the teachers, preachers, and politicians. The men without trades were helpless cattle. If one learned a trade,

he was compelled to belong to a union in order to work at his trade. And his union was compelled to bully

and slug the employers' unions in order to hold up wages or hold down hours. The employers' unions

likewise bullied and slugged. I couldn't see any dignity at all. And when a workman got old, or had an

accident, he was thrown into the scrapheap like any wornout machine. I saw too many of this sort who

So my new concept was that manual labour was undignified, and that it didn't pay. No trade for me, was my

decision, and no superintendent's daughters. And no criminality, I also decided. That would be almost as

disastrous as to be a labourer. Brains paid, not brawn, and I resolved never again to offer my muscles for sale

I returned to California with the firm intention of developing my brain. This meant school education. I had

gone through the grammar school long ago, so I entered the Oakland High School. To pay my way I worked

as a janitor. My sister helped me, too; and I was not above mowing anybody's lawn or taking up and beating

carpets when I had half a day to spare. I was working to get away from work, and I buckled down to it with a

Boy and girl love was left behind, and, along with it, Haydee and Louis Shattuck, and the early evening

strolls. I hadn't the time. I joined the Henry Clay Debating Society. I was received into the homes of some of

the members, where I met nice girls whose skirts reached the ground. I dallied with little home clubs wherein

we discussed poetry and art and the nuances of grammar. I joined the socialist local where we studied and

orated political economy, philosophy, and politics. I kept half a dozen membership cards working in the free

And for a year and a half on end I never took a drink, nor thought of taking a drink. I hadn't the time, and I

certainly did not have the inclination. Between my janitorwork, my studies, and innocent amusements such

as chess, I hadn't a moment to spare. I was discovering a new world, and such was the passion of my

Come to think of it, I did enter a saloon. I went to see Johnny Heinhold in the Last Chance, and I went to

borrow money. And right here is another phase of John Barleycorn. Saloonkeepers are notoriously good

fellows. On an average they perform vastly greater generosities than do business men. When I simply had to

have ten dollars, desperate, with no place to turn, I went to Johnny Heinhold. Several years had passed since I

had been in his place or spent a cent across his bar. And when I went to borrow the ten dollars I didn't buy a

drink, either. And Johnny Heinhold let me have the ten dollars without security or interest.

More than once, in the brief days of my struggle for an education, I went to Johnny Heinhold to borrow

money. When I entered the university, I borrowed forty dollars from him, without interest, without security,

without buying a drink. And yetand here is the point, the custom, and the codein the days of my

prosperity, after the lapse of years, I have gone out of my way by many a long block to spend across Johnny

Heinhold's bar deferred interest on the various loans. Not that Johnny Heinhold asked me to do it, or expected

me to do it. I did it, as I have said, in obedience to the code I had learned along with all the other things

connected with John Barleycorn. In distress, when a man has no other place to turn, when he hasn't the

slightest bit of security which a savagehearted pawnbroker would consider, he can go to some

saloonkeeper he knows. Gratitude is inherently human. When the man so helped has money again, depend

upon it that a portion will be spent across the bar of the saloonkeeper who befriended him.

Why, I recollect the early days of my writing career, when the small sums of money I earned from the

magazines came with tragic irregularity, while at the same time I was staggering along with a growing

familya wife, children, a mother, a nephew, and my Mammy Jennie and her old husband fallen on evil

days. There were two places at which I could borrow money; a barber shop and a saloon. The barber charged

me five per cent. per month in advance. That is to say, when I borrowed one hundred dollars, he handed me

ninetyfive. The other five dollars he retained as advance interest for the first month. And on the second

month I paid him five dollars more, and continued so to do each month until I made a ten strike with the

The other place to which I came in trouble was the saloon. This saloonkeeper I had known by sight for a

couple of years. I had never spent my money in his saloon, and even when I borrowed from him I didn't

spend any money. Yet never did he refuse me any sum I asked of him. Unfortunately, before I became

prosperous, he moved away to another city. And to this day I regret that he is gone. It is the code I have

learned. The right thing to do, and the thing I'd do right now did I know where he is, would be to drop in on

occasion and spend a few dollars across his bar for old sake's sake and gratitude.

This is not to exalt saloonkeepers. I have written it to exalt the power of John Barleycorn and to illustrate

one more of the myriad ways by which a man is brought in contact with John Barleycorn until in the end he

But to return to the run of my narrative. Away from the adventurepath, up to my ears in study, every

moment occupied, I lived oblivious to John Barleycorn's existence. Nobody about me drank. If any had

drunk, and had they offered it to me, I surely would have drunk. As it was, when I had spare moments I spent

them playing chess, or going with nice girls who were themselves students, or in riding a bicycle whenever I

What I am insisting upon all the time is this: in me was not the slightest trace of alcoholic desire, and this

despite the long and severe apprenticeship I had served under John Barleycorn. I had come back from the

other side of life to be delighted with this Arcadian simplicity of student youths and student maidens. Also, I

had found my way into the realm of the mind, and I was intellectually intoxicated. (Alas! as I was to learn at

Three years was the time required to go through the high school. I grew impatient. Also, my schooling was

becoming financially impossible. At such rate I could not last out, and I did greatly want to go to the state

university. When I had done a year of high school, I decided to attempt a short cut. I borrowed the money and

paid to enter the senior class of a "cramming joint" or academy. I was scheduled to graduate right into the

And how I did cram! I had two years' new work to do in a third of a year. For five weeks I crammed, until

simultaneous quadratic equations and chemical formulas fairly oozed from my ears. And then the master of

the academy took me aside. He was very sorry, but he was compelled to give me back my tuition fee and to

ask me to leave the school. It wasn't a matter of scholarship. I stood well in my classes, and did he graduate

me into the university he was confident that in that institution I would continue to stand well. The trouble was

that tongues were gossiping about my case. What! In four months accomplished two years' work! It would be

a scandal, and the universities were becoming severer in their treatment of accredited prep schools. He

I did. And I paid back the borrowed money, and gritted my teeth, and started to cram by myself. There were

three months yet before the university entrance examinations. Without laboratories, without coaching, sitting

in my bedroom, I proceeded to compress that two years' work into three months and to keep reviewed on the

Nineteen hours a day I studied. For three months I kept this pace, only breaking it on several occasions. My

body grew weary, my mind grew weary, but I stayed with it. My eyes grew weary and began to twitch, but

they did not break down. Perhaps, toward the last, I got a bit dotty. I know that at the time I was confident, I

had discovered the formula for squaring the circle; but I resolutely deferred the working of it out until after

Came the several days of the examinations, during which time I scarcely closed my eyes in sleep, devoting

every moment to cramming and reviewing. And when I turned in my last examination paper I was in full

possession of a splendid case of brainfag. I didn't want to see a book. I didn't want to think or to lay eyes on

There was but one prescription for such a condition, and I gave it to myselfthe adventurepath. I didn't

wait to learn the result of my examinations. I stowed a roll of blankets and some cold food into a borrowed

whitehall boat and set sail. Out of the Oakland Estuary I drifted on the last of an early morning ebb, caught

the first of the flood up bay, and raced along with a spanking breeze. San Pablo Bay was smoking, and the

Carquinez Straits off the Selby Smelter were smoking, as I picked up ahead and left astern the old landmarks

Benicia showed before me. I opened the bight of Turner's Shipyard, rounded the Solano wharf, and surged

along abreast of the patch of tules and the clustering fishermen's arks where in the old days I had lived and

And right here something happened to me, the gravity of which I never dreamed for many a long year to

come. I had had no intention of stopping at Benicia. The tide favoured, the wind was fair and

howlingglorious sailing for a sailor. Bull Head and Army Points showed ahead, marking the entrance to

Suisun Bay which I knew was smoking. And yet, when I laid eyes on those fishing arks lying in the

waterfront tules, without debate, on the instant, I put down my tiller, came in on the sheet, and headed for

the shore. On the instant, out of the profound of my brain fag, I knew what I wanted. I wanted to drink. I

The call was imperative. There was no uncertainty about it. More than anything else in the world, my frayed

and frazzled mind wanted surcease from weariness in the way it knew surcease would come. And right here

is the point. For the first time in my life I consciously, deliberately, desired to get drunk. It was a new, a

totally different manifestation of John Barleycorn's power. It was not a body need for alcohol. It was a mental

And here the point is drawn to its sharpest. Granted my prodigious brainfag, nevertheless, had I never drunk

in the past, the thought would never have entered my mind to get drunk now. Beginning with physical

intolerance for alcohol, for years drinking only for the sake of comradeship and because alcohol was

everywhere on the adventurepath, I had now reached the stage where my brain cried out, not merely for a

drink, but for a drunk. And had I not been so long used to alcohol, my brain would not have so cried out. I

should have sailed on past Bull Head, and in the smoking white of Suisun Bay, and in the wine of wind that

filled my sail and poured through me, I should have forgotten my weary brain and rested and refreshed it.

So I sailed in to shore, made all fast, and hurried up among the arks. Charley Le Grant fell on my neck. His

wife, Lizzie, folded me to her capacious breast. Billy Murphy, and Joe Lloyd, and all the survivors of the old

guard, got around me and their arms around me. Charley seized the can and started for Jorgensen's saloon

across the railroad tracks. That meant beer. I wanted whisky, so I called after him to bring a flask.

Many times that flask journeyed across the railroad tracks and back. More old friends of the old free and easy

times dropped in, fishermen, Greeks, and Russians, and French. They took turns in treating, and treated all

around in turn again. They came and went, but I stayed on and drank with all. I guzzled. I swilled. I ran the

And Clam came in, Nelson's partner before me, handsome as ever, but more reckless, half insane, burning

himself out with whisky. He had just had a quarrel with his partner on the sloop Gazelle, and knives had been

drawn, and blows struck, and he was bent on maddening the fever of the memory with more whisky. And

while we downed it, we remembered Nelson and that he had stretched out his great shoulders for the last long

sleep in this very town of Benicia; and we wept over the memory of him, and remembered only the good

They wanted me to stay over, but through the open door I could see the brave wind on the water, and my ears

were filled with the roar of it. And while I forgot that I had plunged into the books nineteen hours a day for

three solid months, Charley Le Grant shifted my outfit into a big Columbia River salmon boat. He added

charcoal and a fisherman's brazier, a coffee pot and frying pan, and the coffee and the meat, and a black bass

They had to help me down the rickety wharf and into the salmon boat. Likewise they stretched my boom and

sprit until the sail set like a board. Some feared to set the sprit; but I insisted, and Charley had no doubts. He

knew me of old, and knew that I could sail as long as I could see. They cast off my painter. I put the tiller up,

filled away before it, and with dizzy eyes checked and steadied the boat on her course and waved farewell.

The tide had turned, and the fierce ebb, running in the teeth of a fiercer wind, kicked up a stiff, upstanding

sea. Suisun Bay was white with wrath and sealump. But a salmon boat can sail, and I knew how to sail a

salmon boat. So I drove her into it, and through it, and across, and maundered aloud and chanted my disdain

for all the books and schools. Cresting seas filled me a foot or so with water, but I laughed at it sloshing about

my feet, and chanted my disdain for the wind and the water. I hailed myself a master of life, riding on the

back of the unleashed elements, and John Barleycorn rode with me. Amid dissertations on mathematics and

philosophy and spoutings and quotations, I sang all the old songs learned in the days when I went from the

cannery to the oyster boats to be a piratesuch songs as: "Black Lulu," "Flying Cloud," "Treat my Daughter

Kindily," "The Boston Burglar," "Come all you Rambling, Gambling Men," "I Wisht I was a Little Bird,"

Hours afterward, in the fires of sunset, where the Sacramento and the San Joaquin tumble their muddy floods

together, I took the New York CutOff, skimmed across the smooth landlocked water past Black Diamond,

on into the San Joaquin, and on to Antioch, where, somewhat sobered and magnificently hungry, I laid

alongside a big potato sloop that had a familiar rig. Here were old friends aboard, who fried my black bass in

olive oil. Then, too, there was a meaty fisherman's stew, delicious with garlic, and crusty Italian bread

My salmon boat was asoak, but in the snug cabin of the sloop dry blankets and a dry bunk were mine; and

we lay and smoked and yarned of old days, while overhead the wind screamed through the rigging and taut

My cruise in the salmon boat lasted a week, and I returned ready to enter the university. During the week's

cruise I did not drink again. To accomplish this I was compelled to avoid looking up old friends, for as ever

the adventurepath was beset with John Barleycorn. I had wanted the drink that first day, and in the days that

followed I did not want it. My tired brain had recuperated. I had no moral scruples in the matter. I was not

ashamed nor sorry because of that first day's orgy at Benicia, and I thought no more about it, returning gladly

Long years were to pass ere I looked back upon that day and realised its significance. At the time, and for a

long time afterward, I was to think of it only as a frolic. But still later, in the slough of brainfag and

intellectual weariness, I was to remember and know the craving for the anodyne that resides in alcohol.

In the meantime, after this one relapse at Benicia, I went on with my abstemiousness, primarily because I

didn't want to drink. And next, I was abstemious because my way led among books and students where no

drinking was. Had I been out on the adventurepath, I should as a matter of course have been drinking. For

that is the pity of the adventurepath, which is one of John Barleycorn's favourite stamping grounds.

I completed the first half of my freshman year, and in January of 1897 took up my courses for the second

half. But the pressure from lack of money, plus a conviction that the university was not giving me all that I

wanted in the time I could spare for it, forced me to leave. I was not very disappointed. For two years I had

studied, and in those two years, what was far more valuable, I had done a prodigious amount of reading.

Then, too, my grammar had improved. It is true, I had not yet learned that I must say "It is I"; but I no longer

was guilty of a double negative in writing, though still prone to that error in excited speech.

I decided immediately to embark on my career. I had four preferences: first, music; second, poetry; third, the

writing of philosophic, economic, and political essays; and, fourth, and last, and least, fiction writing. I

resolutely cut out music as impossible, settled down in my bedroom, and tackled my second, third, and fourth

choices simultaneously. Heavens, how I wrote! Never was there a creative fever such as mine from which the

patient escaped fatal results. The way I worked was enough to soften my brain and send me to a madhouse.

I wrote, I wrote everythingponderous essays, scientific and sociological short stories, humorous verse,

verse of all sorts from triolets and sonnets to blank verse tragedy and elephantine epics in Spenserian stanzas.

On occasion I composed steadily, day after day, for fifteen hours a day. At times I forgot to eat, or refused to

And then there was the matter of typewriting. My brotherinlaw owned a machine which he used in the

daytime. In the night I was free to use it. That machine was a wonder. I could weep now as I recollect my

wrestlings with it. It must have been a first model in the year one of the typewriter era. Its alphabet was all

capitals. It was informed with an evil spirit. It obeyed no known laws of physics, and overthrew the hoary

axiom that like things performed to like things produce like results. I'll swear that machine never did the same

thing in the same way twice. Again and again it demonstrated that unlike actions produce like results.

How my back used to ache with it! Prior to that experience, my back had been good for every violent strain

put upon it in a none too gentle career. But that typewriter proved to me that I had a pipestem for a back.

Also, it made me doubt my shoulders. They ached as with rheumatism after every bout. The keys of that

machine had to be hit so hard that to one outside the house it sounded like distant thunder or some one

breaking up the furniture. I had to hit the keys so hard that I strained my first fingers to the elbows, while the

ends of my fingers were blisters burst and blistered again. Had it been my machine I'd have operated it with a

The worst of it was that I was actually typing my manuscripts at the same time I was trying to master that

machine. It was a feat of physical endurance and a brain storm combined to type a thousand words, and I was

composing thousands of words every day which just had to be typed for the waiting editors.

Oh, between the writing and the typewriting I was well aweary. I had brain and nerve fag, and body fag as

well, and yet the thought of drink never suggested itself. I was living too high to stand in need of an anodyne.

All my waking hours, except those with that infernal typewriter, were spent in a creative heaven. And along

with this I had no desire for drink because I still believed in many thingsin the love of all men and women

in the matter of man and woman love; in fatherhood; in human justice; in artin the whole host of fond

But the waiting editors elected to keep on waiting. My manuscripts made amazing roundtrip records

between the Pacific and the Atlantic. It might have been the weirdness of the typewriting that prevented the

editors from accepting at least one little offering of mine. I don't know, and goodness knows the stuff I wrote

was as weird as its typing. I sold my hardbought school books for ridiculous sums to secondhand

bookmen. I borrowed small sums of money wherever I could, and suffered my old father to feed me with the

It didn't last long, only a few weeks, when I had to surrender and go to work. Yet I was unaware of any need

for the drink anodyne. I was not disappointed. My career was retarded, that was all. Perhaps I did need further

preparation. I had learned enough from the books to realise that I had only touched the hem of knowledge's

garment. I still lived on the heights. My waking hours, and most of the hours I should have used for sleep,

Out in the country, at the Belmont Academy, I went to work in a small, perfectly appointed steam laundry.

Another fellow and myself did all the work from sorting and washing to ironing the white shirts, collars and

cuffs, and the "fancy starch" of the wives of the professors. We worked like tigers, especially as summer

came on and the academy boys took to the wearing of duck trousers. It consumes a dreadful lot of time to

iron one pair of duck trousers. And there were so many pairs of them. We sweated our way through long

sizzling weeks at a task that was never done; and many a night, while the students snored in bed, my partner

The hours were long, the work was arduous, despite the fact that we became past masters in the art of

eliminating waste motion. And I was receiving thirty dollars a month and boarda slight increase over my

coalshovelling and cannery days, at least to the extent of board, which cost my employer little (we ate in the

kitchen), but which was to me the equivalent of twenty dollars a month. My robuster strength of added years,

my increased skill, and all I had learned from the books, were responsible for this increase of twenty dollars.

Judging by my rate of development, I might hope before I died to be a night watchman for sixty dollars a

So relentlessly did my partner and I spring into our work throughout the week that by Saturday night we were

frazzled wrecks. I found myself in the old familiar workbeast condition, toiling longer hours than the horses

toiled, thinking scarcely more frequent thoughts than horses think. The books were closed to me. I had

brought a trunkful to the laundry, but found myself unable to read them. I fell asleep the moment I tried to

read; and if I did manage to keep my eyes open for several pages, I could not remember the contents of those

pages. I gave over attempts on heavy study, such as jurisprudence, political economy, and biology, and tried

lighter stuff, such as history. I fell asleep. I tried literature, and fell asleep. And finally, when I fell asleep

over lively novels, I gave up. I never succeeded in reading one book in all the time I spent in the laundry.

And when Saturday night came, and the week's work was over until Monday morning, I knew only one desire

besides the desire to sleep, and that was to get drunk. This was the second time in my life that I had heard the

unmistakable call of John Barleycorn. The first time it had been because of brainfag. But I had no

overworked brain now. On the contrary, all I knew was the dull numbness of a brain that was not worked at

all. That was the trouble. My brain had become so alert and eager, so quickened by the wonder of the new

world the books had discovered to it, that it now suffered all the misery of stagnancy and inaction.

And I, the long time intimate of John Barleycorn, knew just what he promised memaggots of fancy,

dreams of power, forgetfulness, anything and everything save whirling washers, revolving mangles,

humming centrifugal wringers, and fancy starch and interminable processions of duck trousers moving in

steam under my flying iron. And that's it. John Barleycorn makes his appeal to weakness and failure, to

weariness and exhaustion. He is the easy way out. And he is lying all the time. He offers false strength to the

body, false elevation to the spirit, making things seem what they are not and vastly fairer than what they are.

But it must not be forgotten that John Barleycorn is protean. As well as to weakness and exhaustion, does he

appeal to too much strength, to superabundant vitality, to the ennui of idleness. He can tuck in his arm the

arm of any man in any mood. He can throw the net of his lure over all men. He exchanges new lamps for old,

the spangles of illusion for the drabs of reality, and in the end cheats all who traffic with him.

I didn't get drunk, however, for the simple reason that it was a mile and a half to the nearest saloon. And this,

in turn, was because the call to get drunk was not very loud in my ears. Had it been loud, I would have

travelled ten times the distance to win to the saloon. On the other hand, had the saloon been just around the

corner, I should have got drunk. As it was, I would sprawl out in the shade on my one day of rest and dally

with the Sunday papers. But I was too weary even for their froth. The comic supplement might bring a pallid

Although I did not yield to John Barleycorn while working in the laundry, a certain definite result was

produced. I had heard the call, felt the gnaw of desire, yearned for the anodyne. I was being prepared for the

And the point is that this development of desire was entirely in my brain. My body did not cry out for

alcohol. As always, alcohol was repulsive to my body. When I was bodily weary from shovelling coal the

thought of taking a drink had never flickered into my consciousness. When I was brainwearied after taking

the entrance examinations to the university, I promptly got drunk. At the laundry I was suffering physical

exhaustion again, and physical exhaustion that was not nearly so profound as that of the coalshovelling. But

there was a difference. When I went coal shovelling my mind had not yet awakened. Between that time and

the laundry my mind had found the kingdom of the mind. While shovelling coal my mind was somnolent.

While toiling in the laundry my mind, informed and eager to do and be, was crucified.

And whether I yielded to drink, as at Benicia, or whether I refrained, as at the laundry, in my brain the seeds

After the laundry my sister and her husband grubstaked me into the Klondike. It was the first gold rush into

that region, the early fall rush of 1897. I was twentyone years old, and in splendid physical condition. I

remember, at the end of the twentyeight mile portage across Chilcoot from Dyea Beach to Lake

Linderman, I was packing up with the Indians and outpacking many an Indian. The last pack into

Linderman was three miles. I backtripped it four times a day, and on each forward trip carried one hundred

and fifty pounds. This means that over the worst trails I daily travelled twentyfour miles, twelve of which

Yes, I had let career go hang, and was on the adventurepath again in quest of fortune. And of course, on the

adventurepath, I met John Barleycorn. Here were the chesty men again, rovers and adventurers, and while

they didn't mind a grub famine, whisky they could not do without. Whisky went over the trail, while the flour

As good fortune would have it, the three men in my party were not drinkers. Therefore I didn't drink save on

rare occasions and disgracefully when with other men. In my personal medicine chest was a quart of whisky.

I never drew the cork till six months afterward, in a lonely camp, where, without anaesthetics, a doctor was

compelled to operate on a man. The doctor and the patient emptied my bottle between them and then

Back in California a year later, recovering from scurvy, I found that my father was dead and that I was the

head and the sole breadwinner of a household. When I state that I had passed coal on a steamship from

Behring Sea to British Columbia, and travelled in the steerage from there to San Francisco, it will be

Times were hard. Work of any sort was difficult to get. And work of any sort was what I had to take, for I

was still an unskilled labourer. I had no thought of career. That was over and done with. I had to find food for

two mouths beside my own and keep a roof over our headsyes, and buy a winter suit, my one suit being

decidedly summery. I had to get some sort of work immediately. After that, when I had caught my breath, I

Unskilled labour is the first to feel the slackness of hard times, and I had no trades save those of sailor and

laundryman. With my new responsibilities I didn't dare go to sea, and I failed to find a job at laundrying. I

failed to find a job at anything. I had my name down in five employment bureaux. I advertised in three

newspapers. I sought out the few friends I knew who might be able to get me work; but they were either

The situation was desperate. I pawned my watch, my bicycle, and a mackintosh of which my father had been

very proud and which he had left to me. It was and is my sole legacy in this world. It had cost fifteen dollars,

and the pawnbroker let me have two dollars on it. Andoh, yesa waterfront comrade of earlier years

drifted along one day with a dress suit wrapped in newspapers. He could give no adequate explanation of how

he had come to possess it, nor did I press for an explanation. I wanted the suit myself. No; not to wear. I

traded him a lot of rubbish which, being unpawnable, was useless to me. He peddled the rubbish for several

dollars, while I pledged the dresssuit with my pawnbroker for five dollars. And for all I know the

But I couldn't get any work. Yet I was a bargain in the labour market. I was twentytwo years old, weighed

one hundred and sixtyfive pounds stripped, every pound of which was excellent for toil; and the last traces

of my scurvy were vanishing before a treatment of potatoes chewed raw. I tackled every opening for

employment. I tried to become a studio model, but there were too many finebodied young fellows out of

jobs. I answered advertisements of elderly invalids in need of companions. And I almost became a sewing

machine agent, on commission, without salary. But poor people don't buy sewing machines in hard times, so

Of course, it must be remembered that along with such frivolous occupations I was trying to get work as wop,

lumper, and roustabout. But winter was coming on, and the surplus labour army was pouring into the cities.

Also I, who had romped along carelessly through the countries of the world and the kingdom of the mind,

I sought odd jobs. I worked days, and halfdays, at anything I could get. I mowed lawns, trimmed hedges,

took up carpets, beat them, and laid them again. Further, I took the civil service examinations for mail carrier

and passed first. But alas! there was no vacancy, and I must wait. And while I waited, and in between the odd

jobs I managed to procure, I started to earn ten dollars by writing a newspaper account of a voyage I had

made, in an open boat down the Yukon, of nineteen hundred miles in nineteen days. I didn't know the first

thing about the newspaper game, but I was confident I'd get ten dollars for my article.

But I didn't. The first San Francisco newspaper to which I mailed it never acknowledged receipt of the

manuscript, but held on to it. The longer it held on to it the more certain I was that the thing was accepted.

And here is the funny thing. Some are born to fortune, and some have fortune thrust upon them. But in my

case I was clubbed into fortune, and bitter necessity wielded the club. I had long since abandoned all thought

of writing as a career. My honest intention in writing that article was to earn ten dollars. And that was the

limit of my intention. It would help to tide me along until I got steady employment. Had a vacancy occurred

But the vacancy did not occur, nor did a steady job; and I employed the time between odd jobs with writing a

twentyone thousandword serial for the "Youth's Companion." I turned it out and typed it in seven days. I

It took some time for it to go and come, and in the meantime I tried my hand at short stories. I sold one to the

"Overland Monthly " for five dollars. The "Black Cat" gave me forty dollars for another. The "Overland

Monthly " offered me seven dollars and a half, pay on publication, for all the stories I should deliver. I got my

bicycle, my watch, and my father's mackintosh out of pawn and rented a typewriter. Also, I paid up the bills I

owed to the several groceries that allowed me a small credit. I recall the Portuguese groceryman who never

permitted my bill to go beyond four dollars. Hopkins, another grocer, could not be budged beyond five

And just then came the call from the post office to go to work. It placed me in a most trying predicament. The

sixtyfive dollars I could earn regularly every month was a terrible temptation. I couldn't decide what to do.

And I'll never be able to forgive the postmaster of Oakland. I answered the call, and I talked to him like a

man. I frankly told him the situation. It looked as if I might win out at writing. The chance was good, but not

certain. Now, if he would pass me by and select the next man on the eligible list and give me a call at the next

Having burned my ship, I plunged into writing. I am afraid I always was an extremist. Early and late I was at

itwriting, typing, studying grammar, studying writing and all the forms of writing, and studying the writers

who succeeded in order to find out how they succeeded. I managed on five hours' sleep in the twentyfour,

and came pretty close to working the nineteen waking hours left to me. My light burned till two and three in

the morning, which led a good neighbour woman into a bit of sentimental SherlockHolmes deduction.

Never seeing me in the daytime, she concluded that I was a gambler, and that the light in my window was

The trouble with the beginner at the writing game is the long, dry spells, when there is never an editor's

cheque and everything pawnable is pawned. I wore my summer suit pretty well through that winter, and the

following summer experienced the longest, dryest spell of all, in the period when salaried men are gone on

My difficulty was that I had no one to advise me. I didn't know a soul who had written or who had ever tried

to write. I didn't even know one reporter. Also, to succeed at the writing game, I found I had to unlearn about

everything the teachers and professors of literature of the high school and university had taught me. I was

very indignant about this at the time; though now I can understand it. They did not know the trick of

successful writing in the years 1895 and 1896. They knew all about "Snow Bound" and "Sartor Resartus"; but

the American editors of 1899 did not want such truck. They wanted the 1899 truck, and offered to pay so well

for it that the teachers and professors of literature would have quit their jobs could they have supplied it.

I struggled along, stood off the butcher and the grocer, pawned my watch and bicycle and my father's

mackintosh, and I worked. I really did work, and went on short commons of sleep. Critics have complained

about the swift education one of my characters, Martin Eden, achieved. In three years, from a sailor with a

common school education, I made a successful writer of him. The critics say this is impossible. Yet I was

Martin Eden. At the end of three working years, two of which were spent in high school and the university

and one spent at writing, and all three in studying immensely and intensely, I was publishing stories in

magazines such as the "Atlantic Monthly," was correcting proofs of my first book (issued by Houghton,

Mifflin Co.), was selling sociological articles to "Cosmopolitan" and "McClure's," had declined an associate

editorship proffered me by telegraph from New York City, and was getting ready to marry.

Now the foregoing means work, especially the last year of it, when I was learning my trade as a writer. And

in that year, running short on sleep and tasking my brain to its limit, I neither drank nor cared to drink. So far

as I was concerned, alcohol did not exist. I did suffer from brainfag on occasion, but alcohol never

suggested itself as an ameliorative. Heavens! Editorial acceptances and cheques were all the amelioratives I

needed. A thin envelope from an editor in the morning's mail was more stimulating than half a dozen

cocktails. And if a cheque of decent amount came out of the envelope, such incident in itself was a whole

Furthermore, at that time in my life I did not know what a cocktail was. I remember, when my first book was

published, several Alaskans, who were members of the Bohemian Club, entertained me one evening at the

club in San Francisco. We sat in most wonderful leather chairs, and drinks were ordered. Never had I heard

such an ordering of liqueurs and of highballs of particular brands of Scotch. I didn't know what a liqueur or a

highball was, and I didn't know that "Scotch" meant whisky. I knew only poor men's drinks, the drinks of the

frontier and of sailortowncheap beer and cheaper whisky that was just called whisky and nothing else. I

was embarrassed to make a choice, and the steward nearly collapsed when I ordered claret as an after dinner

As I succeeded with my writing, my standard of living rose and my horizon broadened. I confined myself to

writing and typing a thousand words a day, including Sundays and holidays; and I still studied hard, but not

so hard as formerly. I allowed myself five and onehalf hours of actual sleep. I added this halfhour because

I was compelled. Financial success permitted me more time for exercise. I rode my wheel more, chiefly

because it was permanently out of pawn; and I boxed and fenced, walked on my hands, jumped high and

broad, put the shot and tossed the caber, and went swimming. And I learned that more sleep is required for

physical exercise than for mental exercise. There were tired nights, bodily, when I slept six hours; and on

occasion of very severe exercise I actually slept seven hours. But such sleep orgies were not frequent. There

was so much to learn, so much to be done, that I felt wicked when I slept seven hours. And I blessed the man

And still no desire to drink. I possessed too many fine faiths, was living at too keen a pitch. I was a socialist,

intent on saving the world, and alcohol could not give me the fervours that were mine from my ideas and

ideals. My voice, on account of my successful writing, had added weight, or so I thought. At any rate, my

reputation as a writer drew me audiences that my reputation as a speaker never could have drawn. I was

invited before clubs and organisations of all sorts to deliver my message. I fought the good fight, and went on

Up to this time I had had a very restricted circle of friends. But now I began to go about. I was invited out,

especially to dinner, and I made many friends and acquaintances whose economic lives were easier than mine

had been. And many of them drank. In their own houses they drank and offered me drink. They were not

drunkards any of them. They just drank temperately, and I drank temperately with them as an act of

comradeship and accepted hospitality. I did not care for it, neither wanted it nor did not want it, and so small

was the impression made by it that I do not remember my first cocktail nor my first Scotch highball.

Well, I had a house. When one is asked into other houses, he naturally asks others into his house. Behold the

rising standard of living. Having been given drink in other houses, I could expect nothing else of myself than

to give drink in my own house. So I laid in a supply of beer and whisky and table claret. Never since that has

And still, through all this period, I did not care in the slightest for John Barleycorn. I drank when others

drank, and with them, as a social act. And I had so little choice in the matter that I drank whatever they drank.

If they elected whisky, then whisky it was for me. If they drank root beer or sarsaparilla, I drank root beer or

sarsaparilla with them. And when there were no friends in the house, why, I didn't drink anything. Whisky

decanters were always in the room where I wrote, and for months and years I never knew what it was, when

When out at dinner I noticed the kindly, genial glow of the preliminary cocktail. It seemed a very fitting and

gracious thing. Yet so little did I stand in need of it, with my own high intensity and vitality, that I never

On the other hand, I well remember a very brilliant man, somewhat older than I, who occasionally visited me.

He liked whisky, and I recall sitting whole afternoons in my den, drinking steadily with him, drink for drink,

until he was mildly lighted up and I was slightly aware that I had drunk some whisky. Now why did I do this?

I don't know, save that the old schooling held, the training of the old days and nights glass in hand with men,

Besides, I no longer feared John Barleycorn. Mine was that most dangerous stage when a man believes

himself John Barleycorn's master. I had proved it to my satisfaction in the long years of work and study. I

could drink when I wanted, refrain when I wanted, drink without getting drunk, and to cap everything I was

thoroughly conscious that I had no liking for the stuff. During this period I drank precisely for the same

reason I had drunk with Scotty and the harpooner and with the oyster piratesbecause it was an act that men

performed with whom I wanted to behave as a man. These brilliant ones, these adventurers of the mind,

drank. Very well. There was no reason I should not drink with themI who knew so confidently that I had

And the foregoing was my attitude of mind for years. Occasionally I got well jingled, but such occasions

were rare. It interfered with my work, and I permitted nothing to interfere with my work. I remember, when

spending several months in the East End of London, during which time I wrote a book and adventured much

amongst the worst of the slum classes, that I got drunk several times and was mightily wroth with myself

because it interfered with my writing. Yet these very times were because I was out on the adventurepath

Then, too, with the certitude of long training and unholy intimacy, there were occasions when I engaged in

drinking bouts with men. Of course, this was on the adventurepath in various parts of the world, and it was a

matter of pride. It is a queer manpride that leads one to drink with men in order to show as strong a head as

For instance, a wild band of young revolutionists invited me as the guest of honour to a beer bust. It is the

only technical beer bust I ever attended. I did not know the true inwardness of the affair when I accepted. I

imagined that the talk would be wild and high, that some of them might drink more than they ought, and that

I would drink discreetly. But it seemed these beer busts were a diversion of these highspirited young fellows

whereby they whiled away the tedium of existence by making fools of their betters. As I learned afterward,

they had got their previous guest of honour, a brilliant young radical, unskilled in drinking, quite pipped.

When I found myself with them, and the situation dawned on me, up rose my queer manpride. I'd show

them, the young rascals. I'd show them who was husky and chesty, who had the vitality and the constitution,

the stomach and the head, who could make most of a swine of himself and show it least. These unlicked cubs

You see, it was an endurance test, and no man likes to give another best. Faugh! it was steam beer. I had

learned more expensive brews. Not for years had I drunk steam beer; but when I had, I had drunk with men,

and I guessed I could show these youngsters some ability in beerguzzling. And the drinking began, and I

had to drink with the best of them. Some of them might lag, but the guest of honour was not permitted to lag.

And all my austere nights of midnight oil, all the books I had read, all the wisdom I had gathered, went

glimmering before the ape and tiger in me that crawled up from the abysm of my heredity, atavistic,

And when the session broke up I was still on my feet, and I walked, erect, unswayingwhich was more than

can be said of some of my hosts. I recall one of them in indignant tears on the street corner, weeping as he

pointed out my sober condition. Little he dreamed the iron clutch, born of old training, with which I held to

my consciousness in my swimming brain, kept control of my muscles and my qualms, kept my voice

unbroken and easy and my thoughts consecutive and logical. Yes, and mixed up with it all I was privily

agrin. They hadn't made a fool of me in that drinking bout. And I was proud of myself for the achievement.

But I didn't write my thousand words next morning. I was sick, poisoned. It was a day of wretchedness. In the

afternoon I had to give a public speech. I gave it, and I am confident it was as bad as I felt. Some of my hosts

were there in the front rows to mark any signs on me of the night before. I don't know what signs they

marked, but I marked signs on them and took consolation in the knowledge that they were just as sick as I.

Never again, I swore. And I have never been inveigled into another beer bust. For that matter, that was my

last drinking bout of any sort. Oh, I have drunk ever since, but with more wisdom, more discretion, and never

To show that at this period in my life drinking was wholly a matter of companionship, I remember crossing

the Atlantic in the old Teutonic. It chanced, at the start, that I chummed with an English cable operator and a

younger member of a Spanish shipping firm. Now the only thing they drank was "horse's neck"a long, soft,

cool drink with an apple peel or an orange peel floating in it. And for that whole voyage I drank horse's,

necks with my two companions. On the other hand, had they drunk whisky, I should have drunk whisky with

them. From this it must not be concluded that I was merely weak. I didn't care. I had no morality in the

matter. I was strong with youth, and unafraid, and alcohol was an utterly negligible question so far as I was

Not yet was I ready to tuck my arm in John Barleycorn's. The older I got, the greater my success, the more

money I earned, the wider was the command of the world that became mine and the more prominently did

John Barleycorn bulk in my life. And still I maintained no more than a nodding acquaintance with him. I

drank for the sake of sociability, and when alone I did not drink. Sometimes I got jingled, but I considered

To show how unripe I was for John Barleycorn, when, at this time, I descended into my slough of despond, I

never dreamed of turning to John Barleycorn for a helping hand. I had life troubles and heart troubles which

are neither here nor there in this narrative. But, combined with them, were intellectual troubles which are

Mine was no uncommon experience. I had read too much positive science and lived too much positive life. In

the eagerness of youth I had made the ancient mistake of pursuing Truth too relentlessly. I had torn her veils

from her, and the sight was too terrible for me to stand. In brief, I lost my fine faiths in pretty well everything

except humanity, and the humanity I retained faith in was a very stark humanity indeed.

This long sickness of pessimism is too well known to most of us to be detailed here. Let it suffice to state that

I had it very bad. I meditated suicide coolly, as a Greek philosopher might. My regret was that there were too

many dependent directly upon me for food and shelter for me to quit living. But that was sheer morality.

The things I had fought for and burned my midnight oil for had failed me. SuccessI despised it.

Recognitionit was dead ashes. Society, men and women above the ruck and the muck of the waterfront

and the forecastleI was appalled by their unlovely mental mediocrity. Love of womanit was like all the

rest. MoneyI could sleep in only one bed at a time, and of what worth was an income of a hundred

porterhouses a day when I could eat only one? Art, culturein the face of the iron facts of biology such

From the foregoing it can be seen how very sick I was. I was born a fighter. The things I had fought for had

proved not worth the fight. Remained the PEOPLE. My fight was finished, yet something was left still to

But while I was discovering this one last tie to bind me to life, in my extremity, in the depths of despond,

walking in the valley of the shadow, my ears were deaf to John Barleycorn. Never the remotest whisper arose

in my consciousness that John Barleycorn was the anodyne, that he could lie me along to live. One way only

was uppermost in my thoughtmy revolver, the crashing eternal darkness of a bullet. There was plenty of

whisky in the house for my guests. I never touched it. I grew afraid of my revolver afraid during the

period in which the radiant, flashing vision of the PEOPLE was forming in my mind and will. So obsessed

was I with the desire to die that I feared I might commit the act in my sleep, and I was compelled to give my

revolver away to others who were to lose it for me where my subconscious hand might not find it.

But the PEOPLE saved me. By the PEOPLE was I handcuffed to life. There was still one fight left in me, and

here was the thing for which to fight. I threw all precaution to the winds, threw myself with fiercer zeal into

the fight for socialism, laughed at the editors and publishers who warned me and who were the sources of my

hundred porterhouses a day, and was brutally careless of whose feelings I hurt and of how savagely I hurt

them. As the "well balanced radicals" charged at the time, my efforts were so strenuous, so unsafe and

unsane, so ultrarevolutionary, that I retarded the socialist development in the United States by five years. In

passing, I wish to remark, at this late date, that it is my fond belief that I accelerated the socialist development

It was the PEOPLE, and no thanks to John Barleycorn, who pulled me through my long sickness. And when I

was convalescent came the love of woman to complete the cure and lull my pessimism asleep for many a

long day, until John Barleycorn again awoke it. But in the meantime, I pursued Truth less relentlessly,

refraining from tearing her last veils aside even when I clutched them in my hand. I no longer cared to look

upon Truth naked. I refused to permit myself to see a second time what I had once seen. And the memory of

And I was very happy. Life went well with me, I took delight in little things. The big things I declined to take

too seriously. I still read the books, but not with the old eagerness. I still read the books today, but never

again shall I read them with that old glory of youthful passion when I harked to the call from over and beyond

that whispered me on to win to the mystery at the back of life and behind the stars.

The point of this chapter is that, in the long sickness that at some time comes to most of us, I came through

without any appeal for aid to John Barleycorn. Love, socialism, the PEOPLE healthful figments of man's

mindwere the things that cured and saved me. If ever a man was not a born alcoholic, I believe that I am

that man. And yetwell, let the succeeding chapters tell their tale, for in them will be shown how I paid for

my previous quarter of a century of contact with everaccessible John Barleycorn.

After my long sickness my drinking continued to be convivial. I drank when others drank and I was with

them. But, imperceptibly, my need for alcohol took form and began to grow. It was not a body need. I boxed,

swam, sailed, rode horses, lived in the open an arrantly healthful life, and passed life insurance examinations

with flying colours. In its inception, now that I look back upon it, this need for alcohol was a mental need, a

It was something like this. Physiologically, from the standpoint of palate and stomach, alcohol was, as it had

always been, repulsive. It tasted no better than beer did when I was five, than bitter claret did when I was

seven. When I was alone, writing or studying, I had no need for it. ButI was growing old, or wise, or both,

or senile as an alternative. When I was in company I was less pleased, less excited, with the things said and

done. Erstwhile worthwhile fun and stunts seemed no longer worth while; and it was a torment to listen to

the insipidities and stupidities of women, to the pompous, arrogant sayings of the little halfbaked men. It is

the penalty one pays for reading the books too much, or for being oneself a fool. In my case it does not matter

which was my trouble. The trouble itself was the fact. The condition of the fact was mine. For me the life,

I had climbed too high among the stars, or, maybe, I had slept too hard. Yet I was not hysterical nor in any

way overwrought. My pulse was normal. My heart was an amazement of excellence to the insurance doctors.

My lungs threw the said doctors into ecstasies. I wrote a thousand words every day. I was punctiliously exact

in dealing with all the affairs of life that fell to my lot. I exercised in joy and gladness. I slept at night like a

Well, as soon as I got out in the company of others I was driven to melancholy and spiritual tears. I could

neither laugh with nor at the solemn utterances of men I esteemed ponderous asses; nor could I laugh, nor

engage in my oldtime lightsome persiflage, with the silly superficial chatterings of women, who, underneath

all their silliness and softness, were as primitive, direct, and deadly in their pursuit of biological destiny as the

monkeys women were before they shed their furry coats and replaced them with the furs of other animals.

And I was not pessimistic. I swear I was not pessimistic. I was merely bored. I had seen the same show too

often, listened too often to the same songs and the same jokes. I knew too much about the box office receipts.

I knew the cogs of the machinery behind the scenes so well that the posing on the stage, and the laughter and

It doesn't pay to go behind the scenes and see the angelvoiced tenor beat his wife. Well, I'd been behind, and

I was paying for it. Or else I was a fool. It is immaterial which was my situation. The situation is what counts,

and the situation was that social intercourse for me was getting painful and difficult. On the other hand, it

must be stated that on rare occasions, on very rare occasions, I did meet rare souls, or fools like me, with

whom I could spend magnificent hours among the stars, or in the paradise of fools. I was married to a rare

soul, or a fool, who never bored me and who was always a source of new and unending surprise and delight.

Nor would it have been fair, nor wise, to compel her to spend all her hours in my company. Besides, I had

written a string of successful books, and society demands some portion of the recreative hours of a fellow that

writes books. And any normal man, of himself and his needs, demands some hours of his fellow men.

And now we begin to come to it. How to face the social intercourse game with the glamour gone? John

Barleycorn. The ever patient one had waited a quarter of a century and more for me to reach my hand out in

need of him. His thousand tricks had failed, thanks to my constitution and good luck, but he had more tricks

in his bag. A cocktail or two, or several, I found, cheered me up for the foolishness of foolish people. A

cocktail, or several, before dinner, enabled me to laugh wholeheartedly at things which had long since

ceased being laughable. The cocktail was a prod, a spur, a kick, to my jaded mind and bored spirits. It

recrudesced the laughter and the song, and put a lilt into my own imagination so that I could laugh and sing

and say foolish things with the liveliest of them, or platitudes with verve and intensity to the satisfaction of

A poor companion without a cocktail, I became a very good companion with one. I achieved a false

exhilaration, drugged myself to merriment. And the thing began so imperceptibly that I, old intimate of John

Barleycorn, never dreamed whither it was leading me. I was beginning to call for music and wine; soon I

It was at this time I became aware of waiting with expectancy for the predinner cocktail. I WANTED it, and

I was CONSCIOUS that I wanted it. I remember, while warcorresponding in the Far East, of being

irresistibly attracted to a certain home. Besides accepting all invitations to dinner, I made a point of dropping

in almost every afternoon. Now, the hostess was a charming woman, but it was not for her sake that I was

under her roof so frequently. It happened that she made by far the finest cocktail procurable in that large city

where drinkmixing on the part of the foreign population was indeed an art. Up at the club, down at the

hotels, and in other private houses, no such cocktails were created. Her cocktails were subtle. They were

masterpieces. They were the least repulsive to the palate and carried the most "kick." And yet, I desired her

cocktails only for sociability's sake, to key myself to sociable moods. When I rode away from that city, across

hundreds of miles of ricefields and mountains, and through months of campaigning, and on with the

victorious Japanese into Manchuria, I did not drink. Several bottles of whisky were always to be found on the

backs of my packhorses. Yet I never broached a bottle for myself, never took a drink by myself, and never

knew a desire to take such a drink. Oh, if a white man came into my camp, I opened a bottle and we drank

together according to the way of men, just as he would open a bottle and drink with me if I came into his

camp. I carried that whisky for social purposes, and I so charged it up in my expense account to the

Only in retrospect can I mark the almost imperceptible growth of my desire. There were little hints then that I

did not take, little straws in the wind that I did not see, little incidents the gravity of which I did not realise.

For instance, for some years it had been my practice each winter to cruise for six or eight weeks on San

Francisco Bay. My stout sloop yacht, the Spray, had a comfortable cabin and a coal stove. A Korean boy did

the cooking, and I usually took a friend or so along to share the joys of the cruise. Also, I took my machine

along and did my thousand words a day. On the particular trip I have in mind, Cloudesley and Toddy came

along. This was Toddy's first trip. On previous trips Cloudesley had elected to drink beer; so I had kept the

But on this cruise the situation was different. Toddy was so nicknamed because of his diabolical cleverness in

concocting toddies. So I brought whisky alonga couple of gallons. Alas! Many another gallon I bought, for

Cloudesley and I got into the habit of drinking a certain hot toddy that actually tasted delicious going down

I liked those toddies. I grew to look forward to the making of them. We drank them regularly, one before

breakfast, one before dinner, one before supper, and a final one when we went to bed. We never got drunk.

But I will say that four times a day we were very genial. And when, in the middle of the cruise, Toddy was

called back to San Francisco on business, Cloudesley and I saw to it that the Korean boy mixed toddies

But that was only on the boat. Back on the land, in my house, I took no before breakfast eyeopener, no

bedgoing nightcap. And I haven't drunk hot toddies since, and that was many a year ago. But the point is, I

LIKED those toddies. The geniality of which they were provocative was marvellous. They were eloquent

proselyters for John Barleycorn in their own small insidious way. They were tickles of the something

destined to grow into daily and deadly desire. And I didn't know, never dreamedI, who had lived with John

Barleycorn for so many years and laughed at all his unavailing attempts to win me.

Part of the process of recovering from my long sickness was to find delight in little things, in things

unconnected with books and problems, in play, in games of tag in the swimming pool, in flying kites, in

fooling with horses, in working out mechanical puzzles. As a result, I grew tired of the city. On the ranch, in

the Valley of the Moon, I found my paradise. I gave up living in cities. All the cities held for me were music,

And all went well with me. I worked hard, played hard, and was very happy. I read more fiction and less fact.

I did not study a tithe as much as I had studied in the past. I still took an interest in the fundamental problems

of existence, but it was a very cautious interest; for I had burned my fingers that time I clutched at the veils of

Truth and wrested them from her. There was a bit of lie in this attitude of mine, a bit of hypocrisy; but the lie

and the hypocrisy were those of a man desiring to live. I deliberately blinded myself to what I took to be the

savage interpretation of biological fact. After all, I was merely forswearing a bad habit, forgoing a bad frame

of mind. And I repeat, I was very happy. And I add, that in all my days, measuring them with cold,

considerative judgment, this was, far and away beyond all other periods, the happiest period of my life.

But the time was at hand, rhymeless and reasonless so far as I can see, when I was to begin to pay for my

score of years of dallying with John Barleycorn. Occasionally guests journeyed to the ranch and remained a

few days. Some did not drink. But to those who did drink, the absence of all alcohol on the ranch was a

hardship. I could not violate my sense of hospitality by compelling them to endure this hardship. I ordered in

I was never interested enough in cocktails to know how they were made. So I got a barkeeper in Oakland to

make them in bulk and ship them to me. When I had no guests I didn't drink. But I began to notice, when I

finished my morning's work, that I was glad if there were a guest, for then I could drink a cocktail with him.

Now I was so clean of alcohol that even a single cocktail was provocative of pitch. A single cocktail would

glow the mind and tickle a laugh for the few minutes prior to sitting down to table and starting the delightful

process of eating. On the other hand, such was the strength of my stomach, of my alcoholic resistance, that

the single cocktail was only the glimmer of a glow, the faintest tickle of a laugh. One day, a friend frankly

and shamelessly suggested a second cocktail. I drank the second one with him. The glow was appreciably

longer and warmer, the laughter deeper and more resonant. One does not forget such experiences. Sometimes

I almost think that it was because I was so very happy that I started on my real drinking.

I remember one day Charmian and I took a long ride over the mountains on our horses. The servants had been

dismissed for the day, and we returned late at night to a jolly chafingdish supper. Oh, it was good to be alive

that night while the supper was preparing, the two of us alone in the kitchen. I, personally, was at the top of

life. Such things as the books and ultimate truth did not exist. My body was gloriously healthy, and healthily

tired from the long ride. It had been a splendid day. The night was splendid. I was with the woman who was

my mate, picnicking in gleeful abandon. I had no troubles. The bills were all paid, and a surplus of money

was rolling in on me. The future everwidened before me. And right there, in the kitchen, delicious things

bubbled in the chafingdish, our laughter bubbled, and my stomach was keen with a most delicious edge of

I felt so good, that somehow, somewhere, in me arose an insatiable greed to feel better. I was so happy that I

wanted to pitch my happiness even higher. And I knew the way. Ten thousand contacts with John Barleycorn

had taught me. Several times I wandered out of the kitchen to the cocktail bottle, and each time I left it

diminished by one man's size cocktail. The result was splendid. I wasn't jingled, I wasn't lighted up; but I was

warmed, I glowed, my happiness was pyramided. Munificent as life was to me, I added to that munificence. It

was a great hourone of my greatest. But I paid for it, long afterwards, as you will see. One does not forget

such experiences, and, in human stupidity, cannot be brought to realise that there is no immutable law which

decrees that same things shall produce same results. For they don't, else would the thousandth pipe of opium

be provocative of similar delights to the first, else would one cocktail, instead of several, produce an

One day, just before I ate midday dinner, after my morning's writing was done, when I had no guest, I took a

cocktail by myself. Thereafter, when there were no guests, I took this daily predinner cocktail. And right

there John Barleycorn had me. I was beginning to drink regularly. I was beginning to drink alone. And I was

beginning to drink, not for hospitality's sake, not for the sake of the taste, but for the effect of the drink.

I WANTED that daily predinner cocktail. And it never crossed my mind that there was any reason I should

not have it. I paid for it. I could pay for a thousand cocktails each day if I wanted. And what was a

cocktailone cocktailto me who on so many occasions for so many years had drunk inordinate quantities

The programme of my ranch life was as follows: Each morning, at eightthirty, having been reading or

correcting proofs in bed since four or five, I went to my desk. Odds and ends of correspondence and notes

occupied me till nine, and at nine sharp, invariably, I began my writing. By eleven, sometimes a few minutes

earlier or later, my thousand words were finished. Another halfhour at cleaning up my desk, and my day's

work was done, so that at eleventhirty I got into a hammock under the trees with my mailbag and the

morning newspaper. At twelve thirty I ate dinner and in the afternoon I swam and rode.

One morning, at eleventhirty, before I got into the hammock, I took a cocktail. I repeated this on subsequent

mornings, of course, taking another cocktail just before I ate at twelve thirty. Soon I found myself, seated at

my desk in the midst of my thousand words, looking forward to that eleventhirty cocktail.

At last, now, I was thoroughly conscious that I desired alcohol. But what of it? I wasn't afraid of John

Barleycorn. I had associated with him too long. I was wise in the matter of drink. I was discreet. Never again

would I drink to excess. I knew the dangers and the pitfalls of John Barleycorn, the various ways by which he

had tried to kill me in the past. But all that was past, long past. Never again would I drink myself to

stupefaction. Never again would I get drunk. All I wanted, and all I would take, was just enough to glow and

warm me, to kick geniality alive in me and put laughter in my throat and stir the maggots of imagination

slightly in my brain. Oh, I was thoroughly master of myself, and of John Barleycorn.

But the same stimulus to the human organism will not continue to produce the same response. By and by I

discovered there was no kick at all in one cocktail. One cocktail left me dead. There was no glow, no laughter

tickle. Two or three cocktails were required to produce the original effect of one. And I wanted that effect. I

drank my first cocktail at eleventhirty when I took the morning's mail into the hammock, and I drank my

second cocktail an hour later just before I ate. I got into the habit of crawling out of the hammock ten minutes

earlier so as to find time and decency for two more cocktails ere I ate. This became schedulethree cocktails

in the hour that intervened between my desk and dinner. And these are two of the deadliest drinking habits:

I was always willing to drink when any one was around. I drank by myself when no one was around. Then I

made another step. When I had for guest a man of limited drinking calibre, I took two drinks to his oneone

drink with him, the other drink without him and of which he did not know. I STOLE that other drink, and,

worse than that, I began the habit of drinking alone when there was a guest, a man, a comrade, with whom I

could have drunk. But John Barleycorn furnished the extenuation. It was a wrong thing to trip a guest up with

excess of hospitality and get him drunk. If I persuaded him, with his limited calibre, into drinking up with

me, I'd surely get him drunk. What could I do but steal that every second drink, or else deny myself the kick

Please remember, as I recite this development of my drinking, that I am no fool, no weakling. As the world

measures such things, I am a successI dare to say a success more conspicuous than the success of the

average successful man, and a success that required a pretty fair amount of brains and will power. My body is

a strong body. It has survived where weaklings died like flies. And yet these things which I am relating

happened to my body and to me. I am a fact. My drinking is a fact. My drinking is a thing that has happened,

and is no theory nor speculation; and, as I see it, it but lays the emphasis on the power of John Barleycorna

savagery that we still permit to exist, a deadly institution that lingers from the mad old brutal days and that

takes its heavy toll of youth and strength, and high spirit, and of very much of all of the best we breed.

To return. After a boisterous afternoon in the swimming pool, followed by a glorious ride on horseback over

the mountains or up or down the Valley of the Moon, I found myself so keyed and splendid that I desired to

be more highly keyed, to feel more splendid. I knew the way. A cocktail before supper was not the way. Two

or three, at the very least, was what was needed. I took them. Why not? It was living. I had always dearly

Then, too, I was perpetually finding excuses for extra cocktails. It might be the assembling of a particularly

jolly crowd; a touch of anger against my architect or against a thieving stonemason working on my barn; the

death of my favourite horse in a barbed wire fence; or news of good fortune in the morning mail from my

dealings with editors and publishers. It was immaterial what the excuse might be, once the desire had

germinated in me. The thing was: I WANTED alcohol. At last, after a score and more of years of dallying

and of not wanting, now I wanted it. And my strength was my weakness. I required two, three, or four drinks

to get an effect commensurate with the effect the average man got out of one drink.

One rule I observed. I never took a drink until my day's work of writing a thousand words was done. And,

when done, the cocktails reared a wall of inhibition in my brain between the day's work done and the rest of

the day of fun to come. My work ceased from my consciousness. No thought of it flickered in my brain till

next morning at nine o'clock when I sat at my desk and began my next thousand words. This was a desirable

condition of mind to achieve. I conserved my energy by means of this alcoholic inhibition. John Barleycorn

was not so black as he was painted. He did a fellow many a good turn, and this was one of them.

And I turned out work that was healthful, and wholesome, and sincere. It was never pessimistic. The way to

life I had learned in my long sickness. I knew the illusions were right, and I exalted the illusions. Oh, I still

turn out the same sort of work, stuff that is clean, alive, optimistic, and that makes toward life. And I am

always assured by the critics of my super abundant and abounding vitality, and of how thoroughly I am

And while on this digression, let me repeat the question I have repeated to myself ten thousand times. WHY

DID I DRINK? What need was there for it? I was happy. Was it because I was too happy? I was strong. Was

it because I was too strong? Did I possess too much vitality? I don't know why I drank. I cannot answer,

though I can voice the suspicion that ever grows in me. I had been in toofamiliar contact with John

Barleycorn through too many years. A lefthanded man, by long practice, can become a righthanded man.

I was so happy. I had won through my long sickness to the satisfying love of woman. I earned more money

with less endeavour. I glowed with health. I slept like a babe. I continued to write successful books, and in

sociological controversy I saw my opponents confuted with the facts of the times that daily reared new

buttresses to my intellectual position. From day's end to day's end I never knew sorrow, disappointment, nor

regret. I was happy all the time. Life was one unending song. I begrudged the very hours of blessed sleep

because by that much was I robbed of the joy that would have been mine had I remained awake. And yet I

drank. And John Barleycorn, all unguessed by me, was setting the stage for a sickness all his own.

The more I drank the more I was required to drink to get an equivalent effect. When I left the Valley of the

Moon, and went to the city, and dined out, a cocktail served at table was a wan and worthless thing. There

was no predinner kick in it. On my way to dinner I was compelled to accumulate the kicktwo cocktails,

three, and, if I met some fellows, four or five, or six, it didn't matter within several. Once, I was in a rush. I

had no time decently to accumulate the several drinks. A brilliant idea came to me. I told the barkeeper to

mix me a double cocktail. Thereafter, whenever I was in a hurry, I ordered double cocktails. It saved time.

One result of this regular heavy drinking was to jade me. My mind grew so accustomed to spring and liven by

artificial means that without artificial means it refused to spring and liven. Alcohol became more and more

imperative in order to meet people, in order to become sociably fit. I had to get the kick and the hit of the

stuff, the crawl of the maggots, the genial brain glow, the laughter tickle, the touch of devilishness and sting,

the smile over the face of things, ere I could join my fellows and make one with them.

Another result was that John Barleycorn was beginning to trip me up. He was thrusting my long sickness

back upon me, inveigling me into again pursuing Truth and snatching her veils away from her, tricking me

into looking reality stark in the face. But this came on gradually. My thoughts were growing harsh again,

Sometimes warning thoughts crossed my mind. Where was this steady drinking leading? But trust John

Barleycorn to silence such questions. "Come on and have a drink and I'll tell you all about it," is his way. And

it works. For instance, the following is a case in point, and one which John Barleycorn never wearied of

I had suffered an accident which required a ticklish operation. One morning, a week after I had come off the

table, I lay on my hospital bed, weak and weary. The sunburn of my face, what little of it could be seen

through a scraggly growth of beard, had faded to a sickly yellow. My doctor stood at my bedside on the verge

"That's what you ought to quit," he lectured. "It will get you in the end. Look at me."

I looked. He was about my own age, broadshouldered, deep chested, eyes sparkling, and ruddycheeked

"I used to smoke," he went on. "Cigars. But I gave even them up. And look at me."

The man was arrogant, and rightly arrogant, with conscious well being. And within a month he was dead. It

was no accident. Half a dozen different bugs of long scientific names had attacked and destroyed him. The

complications were astonishing and painful, and for days before he died the screams of agony of that splendid

"You see," said John Barleycorn. "He took care of himself. He even stopped smoking cigars. And that's what

he got for it. Pretty rotten, eh? But the bugs will jump. There's no forefending them. Your magnificent doctor

took every precaution, yet they got him. When the bug jumps you can't tell where it will land. It may be you.

Look what he missed. Will you miss all I can give you, only to have a bug jump on you and drag you down?

There is no equity in life. It's all a lottery. But I put the lying smile on the face of life and laugh at the facts.

Smile with me and laugh. You'll get yours in the end, but in the meantime laugh. It's a pretty dark world. I

illuminate it for you. It's a rotten world, when things can happen such as happened to your doctor. There's

And, of course, I took another drink for the inhibition that accompanied it. I took another drink every time

John Barleycorn reminded me of what had happened. Yet I drank rationally, intelligently. I saw to it that the

quality of the stuff was of the best. I sought the kick and the inhibition, and avoided the penalties of poor

quality and of drunkenness. It is to be remarked, in passing, that when a man begins to drink rationally and

intelligently that he betrays a grave symptom of how far along the road he has travelled.

But I continued to observe my rule of never taking my first drink of the day until the last word of my

thousand words was written. On occasion, however, I took a day's vacation from my writing. At such times,

since it was no violation of my rule, I didn't mind how early in the day I took that first drink. And persons

who have never been through the drinking game wonder how the drinking habit grows!

When the Snark sailed on her long cruise from San Francisco there was nothing to drink on board. Or, rather,

we were all of us unaware that there was anything to drink, nor did we discover it for many a month. This

sailing with a "dry " boat was malice aforethought on my part. I had played John Barleycorn a trick. And it

showed that I was listening ever so slightly to the faint warnings that were beginning to arise in my

Of course, I veiled the situation to myself and excused myself to John Barleycorn. And I was very scientific

about it. I said that I would drink only while in ports. During the dry seastretches my system would be

cleansed of the alcohol that soaked it, so that when I reached a port I should be in shape to enjoy John

Barleycorn more thoroughly. His bite would be sharper, his kick keener and more delicious.

We were twentyseven days on the traverse between San Francisco and Honolulu. After the first day out, the

thought of a drink never troubled me. This I take to show how intrinsically I am not an alcoholic. Sometimes,

during the traverse, looking ahead and anticipating the delightful lanai luncheons and dinners of Hawaii (I

had been there a couple of times before), I thought, naturally, of the drinks that would precede those meals. I

did not think of those drinks with any yearning, with any irk at the length of the voyage. I merely thought

Thus, once again I proved to my complete satisfaction that I was John Barleycorn's master. I could drink

when I wanted, refrain when I wanted. Therefore I would continue to drink when I wanted.

Some five months were spent in the various islands of the Hawaiian group. Being ashore, I drank. I even

drank a bit more than I had been accustomed to drink in California prior to the voyage. The people in Hawaii

seemed to drink a bit more, on the average, than the people in more temperate latitudes. I do not intend the

pun, and can awkwardly revise the statement to "latitudes more remote from the equator;" Yet Hawaii is only

subtropical. The deeper I got into the tropics, the deeper I found men drank, the deeper I drank myself.

From Hawaii we sailed for the Marquesas. The traverse occupied sixty days. For sixty days we never raised

land, a sail, nor a steamer smoke. But early in those sixty days the cook, giving an overhauling to the galley,

made a find. Down in the bottom of a deep locker he found a dozen bottles of angelica and muscatel. These

had come down from the kitchen cellar of the ranch along with the homepreserved fruits and jellies. Six

months in the galley heat had effected some sort of a change in the thick sweet winebranded it, I imagine.

I took a taste. Delicious! And thereafter, once each day, at twelve o'clock, after our observations were worked

up and the Snark's position charted, I drank half a tumbler of the stuff. It had a rare kick to it. It warmed the

cockles of my geniality and put a fairer face on the truly fair face of the sea. Each morning, below, sweating

out my thousand words, I found myself looking forward to that twelve o'clock event of the day.

The trouble was I had to share the stuff, and the length of the traverse was doubtful. I regretted that there

were not more than a dozen bottles. And when they were gone I even regretted that I had shared any of it. I

So it was that I reached the Marquesas the possessor of a real man's size thirst. And in the Marquesas were

several white men, a lot of sickly natives, much magnificent scenery, plenty of trade rum, an immense

quantity of absinthe, but neither whisky nor gin. The trade rum scorched the skin off one's mouth. I know,

because I tried it. But I had ever been plastic, and I accepted the absinthe. The trouble with the stuff was that I

From the Marquesas I sailed with sufficient absinthe in ballast to last me to Tahiti, where I outfitted with

Scotch and American whisky, and thereafter there were no dry stretches between ports. But please do not

misunderstand. There was no drunkenness, as drunkenness is ordinarily understoodno staggering and

rolling around, no befuddlement of the senses. The skilled and seasoned drinker, with a strong constitution,

never descends to anything like that. He drinks to feel good, to get a pleasant jingle, and no more than that.

The things he carefully avoids are the nausea of overdrinking, the aftereffect of overdrinking, the

What the skilled and seasoned drinker achieves is a discreet and canny semiintoxication. And he does it by

the twelvemonth around without any apparent penalty. There are hundreds of thousands of men of this sort

in the United States today, in clubs, hotels, and in their own homesmen who are never drunk, and who,

though most of them will indignantly deny it, are rarely sober. And all of them fondly believe, as I fondly

On the seastretches I was fairly abstemious; but ashore I drank more. I seemed to need more, anyway, in the

tropics. This is a common experience, for the excessive consumption of alcohol in the tropics by white men is

a notorious fact. The tropics is no place for whiteskinned men. Their skinpigment does not protect them

against the excessive white light of the sun. The ultraviolet rays, and other highvelocity and invisible rays

from the upper end of the spectrum, rip and tear through their tissues, just as the Xray ripped and tore

White men in the tropics undergo radical changes of nature. They become savage, merciless. They commit

monstrous acts of cruelty that they would never dream of committing in their original temperate climate.

They become nervous, irritable, and less moral. And they drink as they never drank before. Drinking is one

form of the many forms of degeneration that set in when white men are exposed too long to too much white

light. The increase of alcoholic consumption is automatic. The tropics is no place for a long sojourn. They

seem doomed to die anyway, and the heavy drinking expedites the process. They don't reason about it. They

The sun sickness got me, despite the fact that I had been in the tropics only a couple of years. I drank heavily

during this time, but right here I wish to forestall misunderstanding. The drinking was not the cause of the

sickness, nor of the abandonment of the voyage. I was strong as a bull, and for many months I fought the sun

sickness that was ripping and tearing my surface and nervous tissues to pieces. All through the New Hebrides

and the Solomons and up among the atolls on the Line, during this period under a tropic sun, rotten with

malaria, and suffering from a few minor afflictions such as Biblical leprosy with the silvery skin, I did the

To navigate a vessel through the reefs and shoals and passages and unlighted coasts of the coral seas is a

man's work in itself. I was the only navigator on board. There was no one to check me up on the working out

of my observations, nor with whom I could advise in the ticklish darkness among uncharted reefs and shoals.

And I stood all watches. There was no seaman on board whom I could trust to stand a mate's watch. I was

mate as well as captain. Twentyfour hours a day were the watches I stood at sea, catching catnaps when I

might. Third, I was doctor. And let me say right here that the doctor's job on the Snark at that time was a

man's job. All on board suffered from malariathe real, tropical malaria that can kill in three months. All on

board suffered from perforating ulcers and from the maddening itch of ngaringari. A Japanese cook went

insane from his too numerous afflictions. One of my Polynesian sailors lay at death's door with blackwater

fever. Oh, yes, it was a full man's job, and I dosed and doctored, and pulled teeth, and dragged my patients

Fourth, I was a writer. I sweated out my thousand words a day, every day, except when the shock of fever

smote me, or a couple of nasty squalls smote the Snark, in the morning. Fifth, I was a traveller and a writer,

eager to see things and to gather material into my notebooks. And, sixth, I was master and owner of the craft

that was visiting strange places where visitors are rare and where visitors are made much of. So here I had to

hold up the social end, entertain on board, be entertained ashore by planters, traders, governors, captains of

war vessels, kinkyheaded cannibal kings, and prime ministers sometimes fortunate enough to be clad in

Of course I drank. I drank with my guests and hosts. Also, I drank by myself. Doing the work of five men, I

thought, entitled me to drink. Alcohol was good for a man who overworked. I noted its effect on my small

crew, when, breaking their backs and hearts at heaving up anchor in forty fathoms, they knocked off gasping

and trembling at the end of half an hour and had new life put into them by stiff jolts of rum. They caught their

breaths, wiped their mouths, and went to it again with a will. And when we careened the Snark and had to

work in the water to our necks between shocks of fever, I noted how raw trade rum helped the work along.

And here again we come to another side of manysided John Barleycorn. On the face of it, he gives

something for nothing. Where no strength remains he finds new strength. The wearied one rises to greater

effort. For the time being there is an actual accession of strength. I remember passing coal on an ocean

steamer through eight days of hell, during which time we coal passers were kept to the job by being fed with

whisky. We toiled half drunk all the time. And without the whisky we could not have passed the coal.

This strength John Barleycorn gives is not fictitious strength. It is real strength. But it is manufactured out of

the sources of strength, and it must ultimately be paid for, and with interest. But what weary human will look

so far ahead? He takes this apparently miraculous accession of strength at its face value. And many an

overworked business and professional man, as well as a harried common labourer, has travelled John

I went to Australia to go into hospital and get tinkered up, after which I planned to go on with the voyage.

And during the long weeks I lay in hospital, from the first day I never missed alcohol. I never thought about

it. I knew I should have it again when I was on my feet. But when I regained my feet I was not cured of my

major afflictions. Naaman's silvery skin was still mine. The mysterious sunsickness, which the experts of

Australia could not fathom, still ripped and tore my tissues. Malaria still festered in me and put me on my

back in shivering delirium at the most unexpected moments, compelling me to cancel a double lecture tour

So I abandoned the Snark voyage and sought a cooler climate. The day I came out of hospital I took up

drinking again as a matter of course. I drank wine at meals. I drank cocktails before meals. I drank Scotch

highballs when anybody I chanced to be with was drinking them. I was so thoroughly the master of John

Barleycorn I could take up with him or let go of him whenever I pleased, just as I had done all my life.

After a time, for cooler climate, I went down to southermost Tasmania in fortythree South. And I found

myself in a place where there was nothing to drink. It didn't mean anything. I didn't drink. It was no hardship.

I soaked in the cool air, rode horseback, and did my thousand words a day save when the fever shock came in

And for fear that the idea may still lurk in some minds that my preceding years of drinking were the cause of

my disabilities, I here point out that my Japanese cabin boy, Nakata, still with me, was rotten with fever, as

was Charmian, who in addition was in the slough of a tropical neurasthenia that required several years of

temperate climates to cure, and that neither she nor Nakata drank or ever had drunk.

When I returned to Hobart Town, where drink was obtainable, I drank as of old. The same when I arrived

back in Australia. On the contrary, when I sailed from Australia on a tramp steamer commanded by an

abstemious captain, I took no drink along, and had no drink for the fortythree days' passage. Arrived in

Ecuador, squarely under the equatorial sun, where the humans were dying of yellow fever, smallpox, and the

plague, I promptly drank again every drink of every sort that had a kick in it. I caught none of these

Enamoured of the tropics, despite the damage done me, I stopped in various places, and was a long while

getting back to the splendid, temperate climate of California. I did my thousand words a day, travelling or

stopping over, suffered my last faint fever shock, saw my silvery skin vanish and my suntorn tissues

Back on the ranch, in the Valley of the Moon, I resumed my steady drinking. My programme was no drink in

the morning; first drink time came with the completion of my thousand words. Then, between that and the

midday meal, were drinks numerous enough to develop a pleasant jingle. Again, in the hour preceding the

evening meal, I developed another pleasant jingle. Nobody ever saw me drunk, for the simple reason that I

never was drunk. But I did get a jingle twice each day; and the amount of alcohol I consumed every day, if

loosed in the system of one unaccustomed to drink, would have put such a one on his back and out.

It was the old proposition. The more I drank, the more I was compelled to drink in order to get an effect. The

time came when cocktails were inadequate. I had neither the time in which to drink them nor the space to

accommodate them. Whisky had a more powerful jolt. It gave quicker action with less quantity. Bourbon or

rye, or cunningly aged blends, constituted the pre midday drinking. In the late afternoon it was Scotch and

My sleep, always excellent, now became not quite so excellent. I had been accustomed to read myself back

asleep when I chanced to awake. But now this began to fail me. When I had read two or three of the small

hours away and was as wide awake as ever, I found that a drink furnished the soporific effect. Sometimes two

So short a period of sleep then intervened before early morning rising that my system did not have time to

work off the alcohol. As a result I awoke with mouth parched and dry, with a slight heaviness of head, and

with a mild nervous palpitation in the stomach. In fact I did not feel good. I was suffering from the morning

sickness of the steady, heavy drinker. What I needed was a pickmeup, a bracer. Trust John Barleycorn,

once he has broken down a man's defences! So it was a drink before breakfast to put me right for

breakfastthe old poison of the snake that has bitten one! Another custom begun at this time was that of the

pitcher of water by the bedside to furnish relief to my scorched and sizzling membranes.

I achieved a condition in which my body was never free from alcohol. Nor did I permit myself to be away

from alcohol. If I travelled to outoftheway places, I declined to run the risk of finding them dry. I took a

quart, or several quarts, along in my grip. In the past I had been amazed by other men guilty of this practice.

Now I did it myself unblushingly. And when I got out with the fellows, I cast all rules by the board. I drank

I was carrying a beautiful alcoholic conflagration around with me. The thing fed on its own heat and flamed

the fiercer. There was no time, in all my waking time, that I didn't want a drink. I began to anticipate the

completion of my daily thousand words by taking a drink when only five hundred words were written. It was

The gravity of this I realised too well. I made new rules. Resolutely I would refrain from drinking until my

work was done. But a new and most diabolical complication arose. The work refused to be done without

drinking. It just couldn't be done. I had to drink in order to do it. I was beginning to fight now. I had the

craving at last, and it was mastering me. I would sit at my desk and dally with pad and pen, but words refused

to flow. My brain could not think the proper thoughts because continually it was obsessed with the one

thought that across the room in the liquor cabinet stood John Barleycorn. When, in despair, I took my drink,

In my town house, in Oakland, I finished the stock of liquor and wilfully refused to purchase more. It was no

use, because, unfortunately, there remained in the bottom of the liquor cabinet a case of beer. In vain I tried to

write. Now beer is a poor substitute for strong waters: besides, I didn't like beer, yet all I could think of was

that beer so singularly accessible in the bottom of the cabinet. Not until I had drunk a pint of it did the words

begin to reel off, and the thousand were reeled off to the tune of numerous pints. The worst of it was that the

beer caused me severe heartburn; but despite the discomfort I soon finished off the case.

The liquor cabinet was now bare. I did not replenish it. By truly heroic perseverance I finally forced myself to

write the daily thousand words without the spur of John Barleycorn. But all the time I wrote I was keenly

aware of the craving for a drink. And as soon as the morning's work was done, I was out of the house and

away downtown to get my first drink. Merciful goodness!if John Barleycorn could get such sway over

me, a nonalcoholic, what must be the sufferings of the true alcoholic, battling against the organic demands

of his chemistry while those closest to him sympathise little, understand less, and despise and deride him!

But the freight has to be paid. John Barleycorn began to collect, and he collected not so much from the body

as from the mind. The old long sickness, which had been purely an intellectual sickness, recrudesced. The old

ghosts, long laid, lifted their heads again. But they were different and more deadly ghosts. The old ghosts,

intellectual in their inception, had been laid by a sane and normal logic. But now they were raised by the

White Logic of John Barleycorn, and John Barleycorn never lays the ghosts of his raising. For this sickness

of pessimism, caused by drink, one must drink further in quest of the anodyne that John Barleycorn promises

How to describe this White Logic to those who have never experienced it! It is perhaps better first to state

how impossible such a description is. Take Hasheesh Land, for instance, the land of enormous extensions of

time and space. In past years I have made two memorable journeys into that far land. My adventures there are

seared in sharpest detail on my brain. Yet I have tried vainly, with endless words, to describe any tiny

I use all the hyperbole of metaphor, and tell what centuries of time and profounds of unthinkable agony and

horror can obtain in each interval of all the intervals between the notes of a quick jig played quickly on the

piano. I talk for an hour, elaborating that one phase of Hasheesh Land, and at the end I have told them

nothing. And when I cannot tell them this one thing of all the vastness of terrible and wonderful things, I

But let me talk with some other traveller in that weird region, and at once am I understood. A phrase, a word,

conveys instantly to his mind what hours of words and phrases could not convey to the mind of the

nontraveller. So it is with John Barleycorn's realm where the White Logic reigns. To those untravelled there,

the traveller's account must always seem unintelligible and fantastic. At the best, I may only beg of the

For there are fatal intuitions of truth that reside in alcohol. Philip sober vouches for Philip drunk in this

matter. There seem to be various orders of truth in this world. Some sorts of truth are truer than others. Some

sorts of truth are lies, and these sorts are the very ones that have the greatest usevalue to life that desires to

realise and live. At once, O untravelled reader, you see how lunatic and blasphemous is the realm I am trying

to describe to you in the language of John Barleycorn's tribe. It is not the language of your tribe, all of whose

members resolutely shun the roads that lead to death and tread only the roads that lead to life. For there are

roads and roads, and of truth there are orders and orders. But have patience. At least, through what seems no

more than verbal yammerings, you may, perchance, glimpse faint far vistas of other lands and tribes.

Alcohol tells truth, but its truth is not normal. What is normal is healthful. What is healthful tends toward life.

Normal truth is a different order, and a lesser order, of truth. Take a dray horse. Through all the vicissitudes

of its life, from first to last, somehow, in unguessably dim ways, it must believe that life is good; that the

drudgery in harness is good; that death, no matter how blindinstinctively apprehended, is a dread giant; that

life is beneficent and worth while; that, in the end, with fading life, it will not be knocked about and beaten

and urged beyond its sprained and spavined best; that old age, even, is decent, dignified, and valuable, though

old age means a ribby scarecrow in a hawker's cart, stumbling a step to every blow, stumbling dizzily on

through merciless servitude and slow disintegration to the endthe end, the apportionment of its parts (of its

subtle flesh, its pink and springy bone, its juices and ferments, and all the sensateness that informed it) to the

chicken farm, the hide house, the gluerendering works, and the bonemeal fertiliser factory. To the last

stumble of its stumbling end this dray horse must abide by the mandates of the lesser truth that is the truth of

This dray horse, like all other horses, like all other animals, including man, is lifeblinded and sensestruck.

It will live, no matter what the price. The game of life is good, though all of life may be hurt, and though all

lives lose the game in the end. This is the order of truth that obtains, not for the universe, but for the live

things in it if they for a little space will endure ere they pass. This order of truth, no matter how erroneous it

may be, is the sane and normal order of truth, the rational order ftruth that life must believe in order to live.

To man, alone among the animals, has been given the awful privilege of reason. Man, with his brain, can

penetrate the intoxicating show of things and look upon the universe brazen with indifference toward him and

his dreams. He can do this, but it is not well for him to do it. To live, and live abundantly, to sting with life, to

be alive (which is to be what he is), it is good that man be lifeblinded and sensestruck. What is good is

true. And this is the order of truth, lesser though it be, that man must know and guide his actions by with

unswerving certitude that it is absolute truth and that in the universe no other order of truth can obtain. It is

good that man should accept at face value the cheats of sense and snares of flesh and through the fogs of

sentiency pursue the lures and lies of passion. It is good that he shall see neither shadows nor futilities, nor be

And man does this. Countless men have glimpsed that other and truer order of truth and recoiled from it.

Countless men have passed through the long sickness and lived to tell of it and deliberately to forget it to the

end of their days. They lived. They realised life, for life is what they were. They did right.

And now comes John Barleycorn with the curse he lays upon the imaginative man who is lusty with life and

desire to live. John Barleycorn sends his White Logic, the argent messenger of truth beyond truth, the

antithesis of life, cruel and bleak as interstellar space, pulseless and frozen as absolute zero, dazzling with the

frost of irrefragable logic and unforgettable fact. John Barleycorn will not let the dreamer dream, the liver

live. He destroys birth and death, and dissipates to mist the paradox of being, until his victim cries out, as in

"The City of Dreadful Night": "Our life's a cheat, our death a black abyss." And the feet of the victim of such

Back to personal experiences and the effects in the past of John Barleycorn's White Logic on me. On my

lovely ranch in the Valley of the Moon, brainsoaked with many months of alcohol, I am oppressed by the

cosmic sadness that has always been the heritage of man. In vain do I ask myself why I should be sad. My

nights are warm. My roof does not leak. I have food galore for all the caprices of appetite. Every creature

comfort is mine. In my body are no aches nor pains. The good old fleshmachine is running smoothly on.

Neither brain nor muscle is overworked. I have land, money, power, recognition from the world, a

consciousness that I do my meed of good in serving others, a mate whom I love, children that are of my own

fond flesh. I have done, and am doing, what a good citizen of the world should do. I have built houses, many

houses, and tilled many a hundred acres. And as for trees, have I not planted a hundred thousand?

Everywhere, from any window of my house, I can gaze forth upon these trees of my planting, standing

My life has indeed fallen in pleasant places. Not a hundred men in a million have been so lucky as I. Yet,

with all this vast good fortune, am I sad. And I am sad because John Barleycorn is with me. And John

Barleycorn is with me because I was born in what future ages will call the dark ages before the ages of

rational civilisation. John Barleycorn is with me because in all the unwitting days of my youth John

Barleycorn was accessible, calling to me and inviting me on every corner and on every street between the

corners. The pseudocivilisation into which I was born permitted everywhere licensed shops for the sale of

soul poison. The system of life was so organised that I (and millions like me) was lured and drawn and

Wander with me through one mood of the myriad moods of sadness into which one is plunged by John

Barleycorn. I ride out over my beautiful ranch. Between my legs is a beautiful horse. The air is wine. The

grapes on a score of rolling hills are red with autumn flame. Across Sonoma Mountain wisps of sea fog are

stealing. The afternoon sun smoulders in the drowsy sky. I have everything to make me glad I am alive. I am

filled with dreams and mysteries. I am all sun and air and sparkle. I am vitalised, organic. I move, I have the

power of movement, I command movement of the live thing I bestride. I am possessed with the pomps of

being, and know proud passions and inspirations. I have ten thousand august connotations. I am a king in the

And yet, with jaundiced eye I gaze upon all the beauty and wonder about me, and with jaundiced brain

consider the pitiful figure I cut in this world that endured so long without me and that will again endure

without me. I remember the men who broke their hearts and their backs over this stubborn soil that now

belongs to me. As if anything imperishable could belong to the perishable! These men passed. I, too, shall

pass. These men toiled, and cleared, and planted, gazed with aching eyes, while they rested their

labourstiffened bodies on these same sunrises and sunsets, at the autumn glory of the grape, and at the

fogwisps stealing across the mountain. And they are gone. And I know that I, too, shall some day, and soon,

Gone? I am going now. In my jaw are cunning artifices of the dentists which replace the parts of me already

gone. Never again will I have the thumbs of my youth. Old fights and wrestlings have injured them

irreparably. That punch on the head of a man whose very name is forgotten settled this thumb finally and for

ever. A slipgrip at catchascatchcan did for the other. My lean runner's stomach has passed into the

limbo of memory. The joints of the legs that bear me up are not so adequate as they once were, when, in wild

nights and days of toil and frolic, I strained and snapped and ruptured them. Never again can I swing dizzily

aloft and trust all the proud quick that is I to a single ropeclutch in the driving blackness of storm. Never

I am aware that within this disintegrating body which has been dying since I was born I carry a skeleton, that

under the rind of flesh which is called my face is a bony, noseless death's head. All of which does not shudder

me. To be afraid is to be healthy. Fear of death makes for life. But the curse of the White Logic is that it does

not make one afraid. The worldsickness of the White Logic makes one grin jocosely into the face of the

I look about me as I ride and on every hand I see the merciless and infinite waste of natural selection. The

White Logic insists upon opening the longclosed books, and by paragraph and chapter states the beauty and

wonder I behold in terms of futility and dust. About me is murmur and hum, and I know it for the gnat

I return across the ranch. Twilight is on, and the hunting animals are out. I watch the piteous tragic play of

life feeding on life. Here is no morality. Only in man is morality, and man created ita code of action that

makes toward living and that is of the lesser order of truth. Yet all this I knew before, in the weary days of my

long sickness. These were the greater truths that I so successfully schooled myself to forget; the truths that

were so serious that I refused to take them seriously, and played with gently, oh! so gently, as sleeping dogs

at the back of consciousness which I did not care to waken. I did but stir them, and let them lie. I was too

wise, too wicked wise, to wake them. But now White Logic willynilly wakes them for me, for White Logic,

"Let the doctors of all the schools condemn me, "White Logic whispers as I ride along. "What of it? I am

truth. You know it. You cannot combat me. They say I make for death. What of it? It is truth. Life lies in

order to live. Life is a perpetual lie telling process. Life is a mad dance in the domain of flux, wherein

appearances in mighty tides ebb and flow, chained to the wheels of moons beyond our ken. Appearances are

ghosts. Life is ghost land, where appearances change, transfuse, permeate each the other and all the others,

that are, that are not, that always flicker, fade, and pass, only to come again as new appearances, as other

appearances. You are such an appearance, composed of countless appearances out of the past. All an

appearance can know is mirage. You know mirages of desire. These very mirages are the unthinkable and

incalculable congeries of appearances that crowd in upon you and form you out of the past, and that sweep

you on into dissemination into other unthinkable and incalculable congeries of appearances to people the

ghost land of the future. Life is apparitional, and passes. You are an apparition. Through all the apparitions

that preceded you and that compose the parts of you, you rose gibbering from the evolutionary mire, and

gibbering you will pass on, interfusing, permeating the procession of apparitions that will succeed you."

And of course it is all unanswerable, and as I ride along through the evening shadows I sneer at that Great

Fetish which Comte called the world. And I remember what another pessimist of sentiency has uttered:

"Transient are all. They, being born, must die, and, being dead, are glad to be at rest."

But here through the dusk comes one who is not glad to be at rest. He is a workman on the ranch, an old man,

an immigrant Italian. He takes his hat off to me in all servility, because, forsooth, I am to him a lord of life. I

am food to him, and shelter, and existence. He has toiled like a beast all his days, and lived less comfortably

than my horses in their deepstrawed stalls. He is labourcrippled. He shambles as he walks. One shoulder is

twisted higher than the other. His hands are gnarled claws, repulsive, horrible. As an apparition he is a pretty

"His brain is so stupid that he does not know he is an apparition," the White Logic chuckles to me. "He is

sensedrunk. He is the slave of the dream of life. His brain is filled with superrational sanctions and

obsessions. He believes in a transcendent overworld. He has listened to the vagaries of the prophets, who

have given to him the sumptuous bubble of Paradise. He feels inarticulate selfaffinities, with selfconjured

non realities. He sees penumbral visions of himself titubating fantastically through days and nights of space

and stars. Beyond the shadow of any doubt he is convinced that the universe was made for him, and that it is

his destiny to live for ever in the immaterial and supersensuous realms he and his kind have builded of the

"But you, who have opened the books and who share my awful confidenceyou know him for what he is,

brother to you and the dust, a cosmic joke, a sport of chemistry, a garmented beast that arose out of the ruck

of screaming beastliness by virtue and accident of two opposable great toes. He is brother as well to the

gorilla and the chimpanzee. He thumps his chest in anger, and roars and quivers with cataleptic ferocity. He

knows monstrous, atavistic promptings, and he is composed of all manner of shreds of abysmal and forgotten

"Yet he dreams he is immortal," I argue feebly. "It is vastly wonderful for so stupid a clod to bestride the

"Pah!" is the retort. "Would you then shut the books and exchange places with this thing that is only an

"Then your ideal of happiness is a jellylike organism floating in a tideless, tepid twilight sea, eh?"

"One step removed from the annihilating bliss of Buddha's Nirvana," the White Logic adds. "Oh well, here's

the house. Cheer up and take a drink. We know, we illuminated, you and I, all the folly and the farce."

And in my bookwalled den, the mausoleum of the thoughts of men, I take my drink, and other drinks, and

roust out the sleeping dogs from the recesses of my brain and hallo them on over the walls of prejudice and

"Drink," says the White Logic. "The Greeks believed that the gods gave them wine so that they might forget

Well do I remember that flaming Jew's "With the last breath all is done: joy, love, sorrow, macaroni, the

theatre, limetrees, raspberry drops, the power of human relations, gossip, the barking of dogs, champagne."

"Ah, well, Liu Ling was wiser than you," the White Logic girds. "You remember him?"

I nod my headLiu Ling, a hard drinker, one of the group of bibulous poets who called themselves the

Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove and who lived in China many an ancient century ago.

"It was Liu Ling," prompts the White Logic, "who declared that to a drunken man the affairs of this world

appear but as so much duckweed on a river. Very well. Have another Scotch, and let semblance and

And while I pour and sip my Scotch, I remember another Chinese philosopher, Chuang Tzu, who, four

centuries before Christ, challenged this dreamland of the world, saying: "How then do I know but that the

dead repent of having previously clung to life? Those who dream of the banquet, wake to lamentation and

sorrow. Those who dream of lamentation and sorrow, wake to join the hunt. While they dream, they do not

know that they dream. Some will even interpret the very dream they are dreaming; and only when they awake

do they know it was a dream.... Fools think they are awake now, and flatter themselves they know if they are

really princes or peasants. Confucius and you are both dreams; and I who say you are dreamsI am but a

"Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzu, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and

purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of following my fancies as a butterfly, and was unconscious of my

individuality as a man. Suddenly, I awaked, and there I lay, myself again. Now I do not know whether I was

then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man."

"Come," says the White Logic, "and forget these Asian dreamers of old time. Fill your glass and let us look at

the parchments of the dreamers of yesterday who dreamed their dreams on your own warm hills."

I pore over the abstract of title of the vineyard called Tokay on the rancho called Petaluma. It is a sad long list

of the names of men, beginning with Manuel Micheltoreno, one time Mexican "Governor,

CommanderinChief, and Inspector of the Department of the Californias," who deeded ten square leagues

of stolen Indian land to Colonel Don Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo for services rendered his country and for

Immediately this musty record of man's land lust assumes the formidableness of a battlethe quick

struggling with the dust. There are deeds of trust, mortgages, certificates of release, transfers, judgments,

foreclosures, writs of attachment, orders of sale, tax liens, petitions for letters of administration, and decrees

of distribution. It is like a monster ever unsubdued, this stubborn land that drowses in this Indian summer

weather and that survives them all, the men who scratched its surface and passed.

Who was this James King of William, so curiously named? The oldest surviving settler in the Valley of the

Moon knows him not. Yet only sixty years ago he loaned Mariano G. Vallejo eighteen thousand dollars on

security of certain lands including the vineyard yet to be and to be called Tokay. Whence came Peter

O'Connor, and whither vanished, after writing his little name of a day on the woodland that was to become a

vineyard? Appears Louis Csomortanyi, a name to conjure with. He lasts through several pages of this record

Comes old American stock, thirsting across the Great American Desert, mulebacking across the Isthmus,

windjamming around the Horn, to write brief and forgotten names where ten thousand generations of wild

Indians are equally forgottennames like Halleck, Hastings, Swett, Tait, Denman, Tracy, Grimwood,

The names begin to appear fast and furiously, flashing from legal page to legal page and in a flash vanishing.

But ever the persistent soil remains for others to scrawl themselves across. Come the names of men of whom

I have vaguely heard but whom I have never known. Kohler and Frohlingwho built the great stone winery

on the vineyard called Tokay, but who built upon a hill up which other vineyardists refused to haul their

grapes. So Kohler and Frohling lost the land; the earthquake of 1906 threw down the winery; and I now live

La Mottehe broke the soil, planted vines and orchards, instituted commercial fish culture, built a mansion

renowned in its day, was defeated by the soil, and passed. And my name of a day appears. On the site of his

orchards and vineyards, of his proud mansion, of his very fish ponds, I have scrawled myself with half a

Cooper and Greenlawon what is called the Hill Ranch they left two of their dead, "Little Lillie" and "Little

David," who rest today inside a tiny square of handhewn palings. Also, Gooper and Greenlaw in their time

cleared the virgin forest from three fields of forty acres. Today I have those three fields sown with Canada

Haskaa dim legendary figure of a generation ago, who went back up the mountain and cleared six acres of

brush in the tiny valley that took his name. He broke the soil, reared stone walls and a house, and planted

apple trees. And already the site of the house is undiscoverable, the location of the stone walls may be

deduced from the configuration of the landscape, and I am renewing the battle, putting in angora goats to

browse away the brush that has overrun Haska's clearing and choked Haska's apple trees to death. So I, too,

scratch the land with my brief endeavour and flash my name across a page of legal script ere I pass and the

"And pray what is a vital lie but a lie?" the White Logic challenges. "Come. Fill your glass and let us

examine these vital liars who crowd your bookshelves. Let us dabble in William James a bit."

"A man of health," I say. "From him we may expect no philosopher's stone, but at least we will find a few

"Rationality gelded to sentiment," the White Logic grins. "At the end of all his thinking he still clung to the

sentiment of immortality. Facts transmuted in the alembic of hope into terms of faith. The ripest fruit of

reason the stultification of reason. From the topmost peak of reason James teaches to cease reasoning and to

have faith that all is well and will be wellthe old, oh, ancient old, acrobatic flip of the metaphysicians

whereby they reasoned reason quite away in order to escape the pessimism consequent upon the grim and

"Is this flesh of yours you? Or is it an extraneous something possessed by you? Your bodywhat is it? A

machine for converting stimuli into reactions. Stimuli and reactions are remembered. They constitute

experience. Then you are in your consciousness these experiences. You are at any moment what you are

thinking at that moment. Your I is both subject and object; it predicates things of itself and is the things

predicated. The thinker is the thought, the knower is what is known, the possessor is the things possessed.

"After all, as you know well, man is a flux of states of consciousness, a flow of passing thoughts, each

thought of self another self, a myriad thoughts, a myriad selves, a continual becoming but never being, a

willofthewisp flitting of ghosts in ghostland. But this, man will not accept of himself. He refuses to

accept his own passing. He will not pass. He will live again if he has to die to do it.

"He shuffles atoms and jets of light, remotest nebulae, drips of water, prickpoints of sensation,

slimeoozings and cosmic bulks, all mixed with pearls of faith, love of woman, imagined dignities,

frightened surmises, and pompous arrogances, and of the stuff builds himself an immortality to startle the

heavens and baffle the immensities. He squirms on his dunghill, and like a child lost in the dark among

goblins, calls to the gods that he is their younger brother, a prisoner of the quick that is destined to be as free

as theymonuments of egotism reared by the epiphenomena; dreams and the dust of dreams, that vanish

"It is nothing new, these vital lies men tell themselves, muttering and mumbling them like charms and

incantations against the powers of Night. The voodoos and medicine men and the devil devil doctors were

the fathers of metaphysics. Night and the Noseless One were ogres that beset the way of light and life. And

the metaphysicians would win by if they had to tell lies to do it. They were vexed by the brazen law of the

Ecclesiast that men die like the beasts of the field and their end is the same. Their creeds were their schemes,

their religions their nostrums, their philosophies their devices, by which they halfbelieved they would outwit

"Boglights, vapours of mysticism, psychic overtones, soul orgies, wailings among the shadows, weird

gnosticisms, veils and tissues of words, gibbering subjectivisms, gropings and maunderings, ontological

fantasies, panpsychic hallucinationsthis is the stuff, the phantasms of hope, that fills your bookshelves.

Look at them, all the sad wraiths of sad mad men and passionate rebels your Schopenhauers, your

I obey, for my brain is now well acrawl with the maggots of alcohol, and as I drink to the sad thinkers on

"Abstain not! Life and Love like night and day Offer themselves to us on their own terms, Not ours. Accept

"No," I answer, while the maggots madden me. "I know you for what you are, and I am unafraid. Under your

mask of hedonism you are yourself the Noseless One and your way leads to the Night. Hedonism has no

"But if you would not this poor life fulfil, Lo, you are free to end it when you will, Without the fear of

And I laugh my defiance; for now, and for the moment, I know the White Logic to be the archimpostor of

them all, whispering his whispers of death. And he is guilty of his own unmasking, with his own genial

chemistry turning the tables on himself, with his own maggots biting alive the old illusions, resurrecting and

making to sound again the old voice from beyond of my youth, telling me again that still are mine the

And the dinner gong sounds to the reversed bottom of my glass. Jeering at the White Logic, I go out to join

my guests at table, and with assumed seriousness to discuss the current magazines and the silly doings of the

world's day, whipping every trick and ruse of controversy through all the paces of paradox and persiflage.

And, when the whim changes, it is most easy and delightfully disconcerting to play with the respectable and

cowardly bourgeois fetishes and to laugh and epigram at the flitting godghosts and the debaucheries and

The clown's the thing! The clown! If one must be a philosopher, let him be Aristophanes. And no one at the

table thinks I am jingled. I am in fine fettle, that is all. I tire of the labour of thinking, and, when the table is

finished, start practical jokes and set all playing at games, which we carry on with bucolic boisterousness.

And when the evening is over and goodnight said, I go back through my bookwalled den to my sleeping

porch and to myself and to the White Logic which, undefeated, has never left me. And as I fall to fuddled

"I heard Youth calling in the night: 'Gone is my former worlddelight; For there is naught my feet may stay;

The morn suffuses into day, It dare not stand a moment still But must the world with light fulfil. More

evanescent than the rose My sudden rainbow comes and goes, Plunging bright ends across the sky Yea, I

The foregoing is a sample roaming with the White Logic through the dusk of my soul.

To the best of my power I have striven to give the reader a glimpse of a man's secret dwelling when it is

shared with John Barleycorn. And the reader must remember that this mood, which he has read in a quarter of

an hour, is but one mood of the myriad moods of John Barleycorn, and that the procession of such moods

My alcoholic reminiscences draw to a close. I can say, as any strong, chesty drinker can say, that all that

leaves me alive to day on the planet is my unmerited luckthe luck of chest, and shoulders, and

constitution. I dare to say that a not large percentage of youths, in the formative stage of fifteen to seventeen,

could have survived the stress of heavy drinking that I survived between my fifteenth and seventeenth years;

that a not large percentage of men could have punished the alcohol I have punished in my manhood years and

lived to tell the tale. I survived, through no personal virtue, but because I did not have the chemistry of a

dipsomaniac and because I possessed an organism unusually resistant to the ravages of John Barleycorn. And,

surviving, I have watched the others die, not so lucky, down all the long sad road.

It was my unmitigated and absolute good fortune, good luck, chance, call it what you will, that brought me

through the fires of John Barleycorn. My life, my career, my joy in living, have not been destroyed. They

have been scorched, it is true; like the survivors of forlorn hopes, they have by unthinkably miraculous ways

And like such a survivor of old red war who cries out, "Let there be no more war!" so I cry out, "Let there be

no more poison fighting by our youths!" The way to stop war is to stop it. The way to stop drinking is to

stop it. The way China stopped the general use of opium was by stopping the cultivation and importation of

opium. The philosophers, priests, and doctors of China could have preached themselves breathless against

opium for a thousand years, and the use of opium, so long as opium was ever accessible and obtainable,

We have with great success made a practice of not leaving arsenic and strychnine, and typhoid and

tuberculosis germs lying around for our children to be destroyed by. Treat John Barleycorn the same way.

Stop him. Don't let him lie around, licensed and legal, to pounce upon our youth. Not of alcoholics nor for

alcoholics do I write, but for our youths, for those who possess no more than the adventurestings and the

genial predispositions, the social manimpulses, which are twisted all awry by our barbarian civilisation

which feeds them poison on all the corners. It is the healthy, normal boys, now born or being born, for whom

It was for this reason, more than any other, and more ardently than any other, that I rode down into the Valley

of the Moon, all ajingle, and voted for equal suffrage. I voted that women might vote, because I knew that

they, the wives and mothers of the race, would vote John Barleycorn out of existence and back into the

historical limbo of our vanished customs of savagery. If I thus seem to cry out as one hurt, please remember

that I have been sorely bruised and that I do dislike the thought that any son or daughter of mine or yours

The women are the true conservators of the race. The men are the wastrels, the adventurelovers and

gamblers, and in the end it is by their women that they are saved. About man's first experiment in chemistry

was the making of alcohol, and down all the generations to this day man has continued to manufacture and

drink it. And there has never been a day when the women have not resented man's use of alcohol, though they

have never had the power to give weight to their resentment. The moment women get the vote in any

community, the first thing they proceed to do is to close the saloons. In a thousand generations to come men

of themselves will not close the saloons. As well expect the morphine victims to legislate the sale of

The women know. They have paid an incalculable price of sweat and tears for man's use of alcohol. Ever

jealous for the race, they will legislate for the babes of boys yet to be born; and for the babes of girls, too, for

And it will be easy. The only ones that will be hurt will be the topers and seasoned drinkers of a single

generation. I am one of these, and I make solemn assurance, based upon long traffic with John Barleycorn,

that it won't hurt me very much to stop drinking when no one else drinks and when no drink is obtainable. On

the other hand, the overwhelming proportion of young men are so normally nonalcoholic, that, never having

had access to alcohol, they will never miss it. They will know of the saloon only in the pages of history, and

they will think of the saloon as a quaint old custom similar to bullbaiting and the burning of witches.

Of course, no personal tale is complete without bringing the narrative of the person down to the last moment.

But mine is no tale of a reformed drunkard. I was never a drunkard, and I have not reformed.

It chanced, some time ago, that I made a voyage of one hundred and fortyeight days in a windjammer

around the Horn. I took no private supply of alcohol along, and, though there was no day of those one

hundred and fortyeight days that I could not have got a drink from the captain, I did not take a drink. I did

not take a drink because I did not desire a drink. No one else drank on board. The atmosphere for drinking

was not present, and in my system there was no organic need for alcohol. My chemistry did not demand

So there arose before me a problem, a clear and simple problem: THIS IS SO EASY, WHY NOT KEEP IT

UP WHEN YOU GET BACK ON LAND? I weighed this problem carefully. I weighed it for five months, in

a state of absolute noncontact with alcohol. And out of the data of past experience, I reached certain

In the first place, I am convinced that not one man in ten thousand or in a hundred thousand is a genuine,

chemical dipsomaniac. Drinking, as I deem it, is practically entirely a habit of mind. It is unlike tobacco, or

cocaine, or morphine, or all the rest of the long list of drugs. The desire for alcohol is quite peculiarly mental

in its origin. It is a matter of mental training and growth, and it is cultivated in social soil. Not one drinker in

a million began drinking alone. All drinkers begin socially, and this drinking is accompanied by a thousand

social connotations such as I have described out of my own experience in the first part of this narrative. These

social connotations are the stuff of which the drink habit is largely composed. The part that alcohol itself

plays is inconsiderable when compared with the part played by the social atmosphere in which it is drunk.

The human is rarely born these days, who, without long training in the social associations of drinking, feels

the irresistible chemical propulsion of his system toward alcohol. I do assume that such rare individuals are

On this long, fivemonths' voyage, I found that among all my bodily needs not the slightest shred of a bodily

need for alcohol existed. But this I did find: my need was mental and social. When I thought of alcohol, the

connotation was fellowship. When I thought of fellowship, the connotation was alcohol. Fellowship and

Thus, when reading in my deck chair or when talking with others, practically any mention of any part of the

world I knew instantly aroused the connotation of drinking and good fellows. Big nights and days and

moments, all purple passages and freedoms, thronged my memory. "Venice" stares at me from the printed

page, and I remember the cafe tables on the sidewalks. "The Battle of Santiago," some one says, and I

answer, "Yes, I've been over the ground." But I do not see the ground, nor Kettle Hill, nor the Peace Tree.

What I see is the Cafe Venus, on the plaza of Santiago, where one hot night I drank and talked with a dying

The East End of London, I read, or some one says; and first of all, under my eyelids, leap the visions of the

shining pubs, and in my ears echo the calls for "two of bitter" and "three of Scotch." The Latin Quarterat

once I am in the student cabarets, bright faces and keen spirits around me, sipping cool, well dripped

absinthe while our voices mount and soar in Latin fashion as we settle God and art and democracy and the

In a pampero off the River Plate we speculate, if we are disabled, of running in to Buenos Ayres, the "Paris of

America," and I have visions of bright congregating places of men, of the jollity of raised glasses, and of song

and cheer and the hum of genial voices. When we have picked up the Northeast Trades in the Pacific we try

to persuade our dying captain to run for Honolulu, and while I persuade I see myself again drinking cocktails

on the cool lanais and fizzes out at Waikiki where the surf rolls in. Some one mentions the way wild ducks

are cooked in the restaurants of San Francisco, and at once I am transported to the light and clatter of many

tables, where I gaze at old friends across the golden brims of longstemmed Rhinewine glasses.

And so I pondered my problem. I should not care to revisit all these fair places of the world except in the

fashion I visited them before. GLASS IN HAND! There is a magic in the phrase. It means more than all the

words in the dictionary can be made to mean. It is a habit of mind to which I have been trained all my life. It

is now part of the stuff that composes me. I like the bubbling play of wit, the chesty laughs, the resonant

voices of men, when, glass in hand, they shut the grey world outside and prod their brains with the fun and

No, I decided; I shall take my drink on occasion. With all the books on my shelves, with all the thoughts of

the thinkers shaded by my particular temperament, I decided coolly and deliberately that I should continue to

do what I had been trained to want to do. I would drinkbut oh, more skilfully, more discreetly, than ever

before. Never again would I be a peripatetic conflagration. Never again would I invoke the White Logic. I

The White Logic now lies decently buried alongside the Long Sickness. Neither will afflict me again. It is

many a year since I laid the Long Sickness away; his sleep is sound. And just as sound is the sleep of the

White Logic. And yet, in conclusion, I can well say that I wish my forefathers had banished John Barleycorn

before my time. I regret that John Barleycorn flourished everywhere in the system of society in which I was

born, else I should not have made his acquaintance, and I was long trained in his acquaintance.