Phenomenon of Craving Born Entirely in the Mind, Never the Body — John B.

Chapter 22 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 shortcut. I borrowed the money and paid to enter the senior class of a cramming joint of academy. I was scheduled to graduate right into the university at the end of four months, thus saving two years. 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? He was very 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 a cram. I was told that the university was going to be shut down. And that the university was going to be shut down. He couldn't afford such a scandal. Therefore, I must gracefully depart. 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 previous year's work. 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. I 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 that time I was confident I had discovered the formula for squaring the circle. But I resolutely deferred the working of it out until after the examinations. Then I would show them. 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 brain fag. I didn't want to see a book. I didn't want to think or to lay eyes on anybody who was liable to think. There was but one prescription for such a condition, and I gave it to myself. The Adventure Path. 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 the early morning ebb. Caught the first of the flood up there. And raced along with a spanking breeze. San Pablo Bay was smoking. And the Carquinez Straits off the Selby smelter were smoking too. As I picked up ahead and left astern the old landmarks. I had first learned with Nelson in the unreefed reindeer. Venicia showed before me. I opened the bite of Turner's shipyard, rounded the Solano wharf, and surged along abreast of the patch of tools and the clustering fisherman's arcs where in the old days I had lived and drunk deep. 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 Venicia. The tide favored. The wind was fair and howling. Glorious sailing for a sailor. Bullhead and army points showed ahead. Marking the entrance to Susan Bay, which I knew was smoking. And yet. When I laid eyes on those fishing arcs lying there. In the waterfront tools without debate. On the instance. 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 wanted to get drunk. 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 desire. My overworked and jaded mind wanted to forget. And here the point is drawn to its sharpest. Granted my prodigious brain fag. 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 adventure path. 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 Susan 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 along the arcs. Charlie Legrandt 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. Charlie seized the can and started for Jorgensen Saloon across the railroad tracks. That meant beer. I wanted whiskey. 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 swill. I ran the liquor down and joyed as the maggots in my brain. And clam came in. Nelson's partner before me, handsome as ever, but more reckless, half insane, burning himself out with whiskey. 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 whiskey. 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 went over the memory of him and remembered only the good things of him and sent out the flask to be filled and drank again. 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, Charlie Legrand 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 fresh from the water that day. 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 Charlie 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 fish, running in the teeth of a fierce wind, kicked up a stiff upstanding sea. Soosin Bay was white with wrath and sea lump. 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 loud 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 banks to be a pirate. Six songs as Black Lulu, Flying Cloud, Treat My Daughter Kindily, The Boston Burglar, Come All You Rambling Gambling Men. I wished I was a pirate. I wished I was a pirate. I wished I was a little bird. Shenendoah. And Renzo, boys, Renzo. Hours afterward, in the fires of sunset, where the Sacramento and the San Joaquin tumble their mighty floods together, I took the New York Cut-Off, 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 without butter, and all washed down with pint mugs of thick and heady claret. My salmon boat was a soap, 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, screamed through the rigging, and taut halyards drummed against the mast. Chapter 23 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 adventure path was beset with John Barleycorn. I had wanted to 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 to my books and studies. Long years were to pass, ere I looked back upon that day and realized 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 brain-fag 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 adventure path, I should, as a matter of course, have been drinking. For that is the pity of the adventure path, which is one of John Barleycorn's favorite 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 everything. Ponderous 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 tear myself away from my passionate outpouring in order to eat. And then there was the matter of typewriting. My brother-in-law 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 perform 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 pipe stem 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 someone 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 carpenter's hammer. 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 brainstorm combined to type a thousand words and I was composing thousands of words every day which just had to be typed for the waiting room. 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 things. In the love of all men and women in the matter of man and women love. In fatherhood, in human justice, in art, in the whole host of fond illusions that keep the world turning round. But the waiting editors elected to keep on waiting. My manuscripts made amazing round-trip 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 hard-bought school books for ridiculous sums to second-hand bookmen. I borrowed small sums of money wherever I could and suffered my old father to feed me with the meager returns of his failing strength. 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 realize that I had only touched the hem of knowledge's garment. I still lived on the heights. My waking hours I should have used for sleep were spent with the books. Chapter 24 Out in the country at the Belmont Academy I went to work in a small, perfectly appointed steam laundry. Another fellow in myself did all the work from sorting and washing to ironing the white shirts, collars and cuffs, 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 and many a night while the students snored in bed, my partner and I toiled on under the electric light at steam mangle or ironing board. 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 over my coal shoveling and cannery days, at least to the extent of board, which cost my employer little 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 development I might hope before I died to be a night watchman for sixty dollars a month or a policeman actually receiving a hundred dollars with pickings. So relentlessly did my partner and I spring into our work throughout the week that by Saturday night I was in work beast 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 I could not remember the contents of these 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. And 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 of brain fag. 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 me maggots of fancy dreams of power forgetfulness anything and everything save whirling washers revolving mangles humming centrifugal ringers and fancy starch and internal 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 steam 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 ah-wee of idleness. He is the 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 in 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. I was 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 smile to my face and then I would fall asleep. 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 stronger desire of later years. 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 When I was bodily weary from shoveling coal the thought of taking a drink had never flickered into my consciousness. When I was brain wearied 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 as that of the coal shoveling. But there was a difference. When I went coal shoveling my mind had not yet awakened. Between that time and the laundry my mind had found the kingdom of the mind. While shoveling coal my mind was somnolent. While tolling 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 of desire for alcohol were germinating. Chapter 25 After the laundry my sister and her husband grub-staked me into the Klondike. It was the first gold rush into that region, the early fall rush of 1897. I was 21 years old and in splendid physical condition. I remember at the end of the 28 mile portage across Chilkoot from Daya Beach to Lake Linderman I was packing up with the Indians and out-packing many an Indian. The last pack into Linderman was three miles. I back-tripped it four times a day and on each forward trip carried 150 pounds. This means that over the worst trails I daily travelled 24 miles, 12 of which were under a burden of 150 pounds. Yes, I had let career go hang and was on the adventure path again in quest of fortune. And of course on the adventure path I met John Barleycorn. Here were the chesty men again, rovers and adventurers, and while they didn't mind a grub famine, whiskey they could not do without. Whiskey went over the trail while the flour lay cached and untouched by the trail side. 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 whiskey. I never drew the quart till six months afterward in a lonely camp where, without anesthetics a doctor was compelled to operate on a man. The doctor and the patient emptied my bottle between them and then proceeded to the operation. 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 Bering Sea to British Columbia and traveled in the steerage from there to San Francisco it will be understood that I brought nothing back from the Klondike but my scurvy. 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 laborer. I had no thought of career that was over and done with. I had to find food for two mouths besides my own and keep a roof over our heads. Yes, 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 might think about my future. Unskilled labor is the first to feel the slackness of hard times I had no trades save those of sailor and laundryman. With my new responsibilities I didn't care to go to sea and I failed to find a job at laundering. I failed to find a job at anything. I had my name down in five employment bureau. 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 uninterested or unable to find anything for me. The situation was desperate. I pawned my watch, my bicycle, and a Macintosh 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 $15 and the pawnbroker let me have $2 on it. And, oh yes, a 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 dress suit with my pawnbroker for $5. And for all I knew the pawnbroker still has the suit. I had never intended to redeem it. But I couldn't get any work. Yet I was a bargain in the labor market. I was only two years old, weighed 165 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 fine-bodied young fellows out of jobs. And I almost became a sewing machine agent on commission without salary. But poor people don't buy sewing machines in hard times so I was forced to forgo that employment. 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 labor 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 was not a member of any union. I sought odd jobs. I worked days and half days at anything I could get. I mowed lawns, 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 because it had been held onto it. The longer it held onto it the more certain I was that the thing was accepted. But 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 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 in the post office at that time I should have jumped at it. But the vacancy did not occur nor did a steady job. I was left between odd jobs with writing a twenty one thousand word serial for the youth's companion. I turned it out and typed it in seven days. I fancy that was what was the matter with it for it came back. 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 Macintosh out of pawn and rented a typewriter. I had a few of those stories that allowed me a small credit. I recall the Portuguese grocery man who never permitted my bill to go beyond four dollars. Hopkins and other grocer could not be budged beyond five dollars. And just then came the call from the post office to go to work. The most 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 be fired. Now, if he would pass me by and select the next man on the eligible list and give me a call at the next vacancy but he shut me off with Then you don't want the position? But I do, I protested. Don't you see if you will pass me over this time? If you want it, you will take it, because for me the cursed brutality of the man made me angry. Very well, I said, I won't take it. Chapter 26 Having burned my ship, I plunged into writing. I am afraid I always was an extremist. Early and late I was at it. Writing, typing, and studying the writers who succeeded in order to find out how they succeeded. I managed on five hours sleep in the twenty-four 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 neighbor woman into a bit of sentimental Sherlock Holmes deduction. Never seeing me in the daytime she concluded that I was a gambler and that the light in my window was placed there by my mother to guide her erring son home. The trouble with the beginner at the writing game is the long dry spells when there is never an editor's check and everything pawnable is pawned. I wore my summer suit and the following summer experienced the longest driest spell of all in the period when salaried men are gone on vacation and manuscripts lie in editorial offices until vacation is over. My difficulty was that I had no one to advise me. I didn't know a soul who had written 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. In 1896 they knew all about Snowbound and Sartore Sartis 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 stood off the butcher and the grocer pawned my watch and bicycle and my father's Macintosh 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 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 issued by Houghton Mifflin Company was selling sociological articles to Cosmopolitan and McClure's had declined and the 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 taking 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 brain fag on occasion but alcohol never suggested itself as an ameliorative heavens editorial acceptances and checks 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 check of decent amount came out of the envelope such incident in itself was a whole drunk furthermore at that time in my life I did not know what a cocktail was I remember a couple of friends 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 scotch meant whiskey I knew only poor men's drinks the drinks of the frontier and of sailor town cheap beer and cheaper whiskey that was just called whiskey and nothing else I was embarrassed to make a choice and the steward nearly collapsed when I ordered claret as an after dinner drink chapter 27 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 formally I allowed myself five and one hours of actual sleep I added this half hour because I was compelled financial success permitted me 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 who invented alarm clocks and still no desire to drink I possessed too many fine faiths I was looking at too keen a pitch I was a socialist intent on saving the world and alcohol could not give me the fervors 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 would not be I was invited before clubs and organizations of all sorts to deliver my message I fought the good fight and went on studying and writing and was very busy 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 my 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 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 table claret never since that has my house not been well equipped 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 whiskey then whiskey 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 whiskey decanters were always in the room where I wrote and for months and years I never knew what it was when by myself to take a drink when out at dinner I noticed the kindly glow-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 thought it worthwhile to have a cocktail before my own meal when I ate alone on the other hand I well remember a very brilliant man somewhat older than I he liked whiskey 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 whiskey 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 the drinking ways of drink and drinkers 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 pirates because 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 them I who knew so confidently that I had nothing to fear from John Barleycorn 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 adventure path where John Barleycorn is always to be found then too with the certitude of long training and unholy intimacy there were occasions when I engaged in drinking hours with men of course this was on the adventure path in various parts of the world and it was a matter of pride it is a queer man pride that leads one to drink with men in order to show as strong a head as they but this queer man pride is not theory it is fact for instance a wild band of young revolutionists invited me as the guest of honor 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 was so high and high that some of them might drink more than they might and that I would drink discreetly but it seemed these beer busts were a diversion of these high spirited young fellows whereby they wiled away the tedium of existence by making fools of their betters as I learned afterward they had got their previous guest of honor a brilliant young radical quite pipped when I found myself with them and the situation dawned on me up rose my queer man pride 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 at least one licked cubs who thought they could out drink me 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 beer guzzling and the drinking began and I had to drink with the best of them some of them might lag but the guest of honor was not permitted to lag and all my esteer 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 head a heredity atavistic competitive and brutal lustful with strength and desire to out swine the swine and when the session broke up I was still on my feet and I walked erect unswaying which was more than can be said of some of my hosts 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 only a grin they hadn't made a fool of me in that drinking bout and I was proud of myself for the achievement darn it I am still proud so strangely is man compounded but I didn't write my thousand words next morning I was sick poisoned it was a day of wretchedness in the afternoon I gave 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 in a competitive spirit it is thus that the seasoned drinker grows seasoned 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 whiskey I should have drunk whiskey 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 was an utterly negligible question as far as I was concerned chapter 28 not yet was I ready to tuck my arms 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 such jingles the mild price I paid for sociability 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 indeed germane 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 what really saved me was the one remaining illusion the people the things I had fought for and burned my midnight oil for had failed me success I despised it recognition it was dead ashes society men and women above the rock and muck of the waterfront and the folk soul I was appalled by their unlovely mental mediocrity love of woman it was like all the rest money I 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 culture in the face of the iron facts of biology such things were ridiculous the exponents of such things only the more ridiculous 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 fight for the people 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 thought my revolver the crashing eternal darkness of a bullet there was plenty of whiskey 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 zale 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 ultra revolutionary 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 in the United States by at least five minutes 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 what I had that time seen I resolutely cut ahead from my mind 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 hacked 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 healthy figments of man's mind were the things that cured and saved me if ever a man was not a born alcoholic I believe that I am that man and yet well 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 ever accessible John Barleycorn