clatter of many tables, where I gaze at old friends across the
golden brims of long-stemmed Rhine-wine glasses.
And so I pondered my problem. I should not care to revisit all
these fair places of the world except in the fashion I visited
them before. GLASS IN HAND! There is a magic in the phrase. It
means more than all the words in the dictionary can be made to
mean. It is a habit of mind to which I have been trained all my
life. It is now part of the stuff that composes me. I like the
bubbling play of wit, the chesty laughs, the resonant voices of
men, when, glass in hand, they shut the grey world outside and
prod their brains with the fun and folly of an accelerated pulse.
No, I decided; I shall take my drink on occasion. With all the
books on my shelves, with all the thoughts of the thinkers shaded
by my particular temperament, I decided coolly and deliberately
that I should continue to do what I had been trained to want to
do. I would drink–but oh, more skilfully, more discreetly, than
ever before. Never again would I be a peripatetic conflagration.
Never again would I invoke the White Logic. I had learned how not
to invoke him.
The White Logic now lies decently buried alongside the Long
Sickness. Neither will afflict me again. It is many a year since
I laid the Long Sickness away; his sleep is sound. And just as
sound is the sleep of the White Logic. And yet, in conclusion, I
can well say that I wish my forefathers had banished John
Barleycorn before my time. I regret that John Barleycorn
flourished everywhere in the system of society in which I was
born, else I should not have made his acquaintance, and I was long
trained in his acquaintance.
John Barleycorn