paradox.
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 library and did an immense amount of
collateral reading.
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 janitor-work, 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
exploration that the old world of John Barleycorn held no
inducements for me.
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. Saloon-keepers
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 yet–and here is
the point, the custom, and the code–in 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
John Barleycorn
73
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
savage-hearted pawn-broker would consider, he can go to some
saloon-keeper 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 saloon-keeper 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 family–a 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
ninety-five. 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 editors and lifted the loan.
The other place to which I came in trouble was the saloon. This
saloon-keeper 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 saloon-keepers. 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 finds he cannot get along without
him.
But to return to the run of my narrative. Away from the
adventure-path, 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 was fortunate enough
to have it out of the pawnbroker’s possession.
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 a later
period, intellectual intoxication too. has its katzenjammer.)
John Barleycorn
74
CHAPTER XXII
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 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 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 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 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 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 an early morning ebb,