第53章 CHAPTER XXVII(1)

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 one-half hours of actual sleep.I added this half-hour 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 Iblessed the man who invented alarm clocks.

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 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 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 my house not been well supplied.

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 by myself,to take a drink.

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 thought it worth while 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,who occasionally visited me.He liked whisky,and Irecall 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,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 Iwanted,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--Iwho knew so confidently that I had nothing to fear from John Barleycorn.