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 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 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 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 profound as that of the
coal-shovelling. 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
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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 XXV
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 twenty-one years old, and in splendid
physical condition. I remember, at the end of the twenty-eight-
mile portage across Chilcoot from Dyea 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 one hundred and
fifty pounds. This means that over the worst trails I daily
travelled twenty-four miles, twelve of which were under a burden
of one hundred and fifty 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, whisky they
could not do without. Whisky 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 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 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
bread-winner 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 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
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 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 labour is the first to feel the slackness of hard times,
and I had no trades save those of sailor and laundryman. With my
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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 uninterested or unable to
find anything for me.
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. And–oh, yes–a water-front 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
five dollars. And for all I know 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 labour
market. I was twenty-two years old, weighed one hundred and
sixty-five 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. 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 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 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, 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, 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
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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 in the post office at
that time, I should have jumped at it.