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
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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 ruck and the muck of the
water-front and the forecastle–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 whisky 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 zeal 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
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myself to see a second time what I had once seen. And the memory
of what I had that time seen I resolutely blotted 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 to-day, but never again shall I read them with that
old glory of youthful passion when I harked 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–
healthful 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.
CHAPTER XXIX
After my long sickness my drinking continued to be convivial. I
drank when others drank and I was with them. But, imperceptibly,
my need for alcohol took form and began to grow. It was not a
body need. I boxed, swam, sailed, rode horses, lived in the open
an arrantly healthful life, and passed life insurance examinations
with flying colours. In its inception, now that I look back upon
it, this need for alcohol was a mental need, a nerve need, a good-
spirits need. How can I explain?
It was something like this. Physiologically, from the standpoint
of palate and stomach, alcohol was, as it had always been,
repulsive. It tasted no better than beer did when I was five,
than bitter claret did when I was seven. When I was alone,
writing or studying, I had no need for it. But–I was growing
old, or wise, or both, or senile as an alternative. When I was in
company I was less pleased, less excited, with the things said and
done. Erstwhile worth-while fun and stunts seemed no longer worth
while; and it was a torment to listen to the insipidities and
stupidities of women, to the pompous, arrogant sayings of the
little half-baked men. It is the penalty one pays for reading the
books too much, or for being oneself a fool. In my case it does
not matter which was my trouble. The trouble itself was the fact.
The condition of the fact was mine. For me the life, and light,
and sparkle of human intercourse were dwindling.
I had climbed too high among the stars, or, maybe, I had slept too
hard. Yet I was not hysterical nor in any way overwrought. My
pulse was normal. My heart was an amazement of excellence to the
insurance doctors. My lungs threw the said doctors into
ecstasies. I wrote a thousand words every day. I was
punctiliously exact in dealing with all the affairs of life that
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fell to my lot. I exercised in joy and gladness. I slept at
night like a babe. But–
Well, as soon as I got out in the company of others I was driven
to melancholy and spiritual tears. I could neither laugh with nor
at the solemn utterances of men I esteemed ponderous asses; nor
could I laugh, nor engage in my old-time lightsome persiflage,
with the silly superficial chatterings of women, who, underneath
all their silliness and softness, were as primitive, direct, and
deadly in their pursuit of biological destiny as the monkeys women
were before they shed their furry coats and replaced them with the
furs of other animals.
And I was not pessimistic. I swear I was not pessimistic. I was
merely bored. I had seen the same show too often, listened too
often to the same songs and the same jokes. I knew too much about
the box office receipts. I knew the cogs of the machinery behind
the scenes so well that the posing on the stage, and the laughter
and the song, could not drown the creaking of the wheels behind.
It doesn’t pay to go behind the scenes and see the angel-voiced
tenor beat his wife. Well, I’d been behind, and I was paying for
it. Or else I was a fool. It is immaterial which was my
situation. The situation is what counts, and the situation was
that social intercourse for me was getting painful and difficult.