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 arm around her waist? Or dared I even sit closer?
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 parting–a 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
times–as boys and girls kiss, briefly and innocently, and
wonderingly. We never went anywhere–not even to a matinee. We
once shared together five cents worth of red-hots. But I have
always fondly believed that she loved me. I know I loved her; and
I dreamed day-dreams of her for a year and more, and the memory of
her is very dear.
CHAPTER XIX
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, non-alcoholic. 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 meeting-place. And the candy store was unheated.
Nita, or whoever waited on the counter, between waitings lurked in
a back living-room that was heated. We were not admitted to this
room, and in the store it was as cold as out-of-doors.
Louis and I debated the situation. There was only one solution:
the saloon, the congregating-place 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
lounging-place of a saloon without occasionally buying something
over the bar.
John Barleycorn
65
Our dimes and nickels were few. We could ill spare any of them
when they were so potent in paying car-fare for oneself and a
girl. (We never paid car-fare 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 beer–the cheapest drink, ten cents
for two. Prodigal! How we grudged it!
We studied the men who came into the place. They seemed all
middle-aged and elderly work-men, most of them Germans, who
flocked by themselves in old-acquaintance 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 lost
an evening and wasted twenty cents for beer that we didn’t want.
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 fifty cents a clatter.
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 drink-buying. Also, we
had to economise for the rest of the week. We didn’t even have
car-fare. 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
car-fare necessary to take them home. Like many others
financially embarrassed, we had to disappear for a time from the
gay whirl–at least until Saturday night pay-day. 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 five-handed game of Sancho Pedro for the drinks.
Such a disaster meant anywhere between twenty-five to eighty
cents, just according to how many of the players ordered ten-cent
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 adventure-path the following
spring, I well remember I owed that saloon-keeper 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 demand.)
John Barleycorn
66
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 to-day, 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.
CHAPTER XX
The jute mills failed of its agreement to increase my pay to a
dollar and a quarter a day, and I, a free-born American boy whose
direct ancestors had fought in all the wars from the old pre-
Revolutionary Indian wars down, exercised my sovereign right of
free contract by quitting the job.
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 the heritage of the American boy when I was a boy.
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 often–so ran the myth–the 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 adventure-path, 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