 Chapter 13 and 14 of John Barley-Corn, or Alcoholic Memoirs, by Jack London. Chapter 13 So I left Benesia, where John Barley-Corn had nearly got me, and ranged wider afield in pursuit of the whisper from the back of life to come and find. And wherever I ranged the way lay along alcohol-drenched roads. Men still congregated in saloons. They were the poor man's clubs, and they were the only clubs to which I had access. I could get acquainted in saloons. I could go into a saloon and talk with any man. In the strange towns and cities I wandered through, the only place for me to go was the saloon. I was no longer a stranger in any town the moment I had entered a saloon. And right here let me break in with experiences no later than last year. I harnessed four horses to a light trap, took Charmian along, and drove for three months and a half over the wildest mountain parts of California and Oregon. Each morning I did my regular day's work of writing fiction. That completed I drove on through the middle of the day and the afternoon to the next stop. But the irregularity of occurrence of stopping places, coupled with widely varying road conditions, made it necessary to plan the day before each day's drive and my work. I must know when I was to start driving in order to start writing in time to finish my day's output. Thus on occasion when the drive was to be long I would be up and at my writing by five in the morning. On easier driving days I might not start writing till nine o'clock. But how to plan? As soon as I arrived in a town and put the horses up on the way from the stable to the hotel I dropped into the saloons. First thing, a drink. Oh, I wanted the drink. But also it must not be forgotten that because of wanting to know things it was in this very way I had learned to want a drink. Well, the first thing, a drink. Have something yourself to the barkeeper, and then, as we drink, my opening query about roads and stopping places on ahead. Let me see, the barkeeper will say. There's the road across Tarwater Divide. That used to be good. I was over it three years ago, but it was blocked this spring. Say, I'll tell you what, I'll ask Jerry. And the barkeeper turns and addresses some man, sitting at a table or leaning against the bar further along, and who may be Jerry or Tom or Bill. Say, Jerry, how about the Tarwater Road? You was down to Wilkins last week. And while Bill or Jerry or Tom is beginning to unlimber his thinking and speaking apparatus, I suggested that he join us in the drink. Then discussions arise about the advisability of this road or that, what the best stopping places may be, what running time I may expect to make, where the best trout streams are, and so forth, in which other men join, and which are punctuated with more drinks. Two or three more saloons, and I accumulate a warm jingle and come pretty close to knowing everybody in town, all about the town and a fair deal about the surrounding country. I know the lawyers, editors, businessmen, local politicians, and the visiting ranchers, hunters, and miners, so that by evening, when Charmian and I stroll down the main street and back, she is astounded by the number of new acquaintances in that totally strange town. And thus is demonstrated a service John Barley-Corn renders, a service by which he increases his power over men, and all over the world, wherever I have gone, during all the years it has been the same. It may be a cabaret in the Latin Quarter, a café in some obscure Italian village, a boozing ken in Sailor Town, and it may be up at the club over Scotch and Soda, but always it will be where John Barley-Corn makes fellowship that I get immediately in touch and meet and know. And in the good days coming, when John Barley-Corn will have been banished out of existence along with the other barbarisms, some other institution that the saloon will have to obtain, some other congregating place of men where strange men and stranger men may get in touch and meet and know. But to return to my narrative. When I turned my back on Benicia, my way led through saloons. I had developed no moral theories against drinking, and I disliked as much as ever the taste of the stuff. But I had grown respectfully suspicious of John Barley-Corn. I could not forget that trick he had played on me, on me, who did not want to die. So I continued to drink, and to keep a sharp eye on John Barley-Corn resolved to resist all future suggestions of self-destruction. In strange towns I made immediate acquaintances in the saloons. When I hoboed and had the price of a bed, a saloon was the only place that would receive me and give me a chair by the fire. I could go into a saloon and wash up, brush my clothes, and comb my hair. And saloons were always so damnably convenient. They were everywhere in my western country. I couldn't go into the dwellings of strangers that way. Their doors were not open to me. No seats were there for me by their fires. Also, churches and preachers I had never known, and from what I didn't know I was not attracted toward them. Besides, there was no glamour about them, no haze of romance, no promise of adventure. They were the sort with whom things never happened. They lived and remained always in the one place, creatures of order and system, narrow, limited, restrained. They were without greatness, without imagination, without camaraderie. It was the good fellows, easy and genial, daring and on occasion mad, that I wanted to know, the fellows generous-hearted and handed and not rabbit-hearted. And here is another complaint I bring against John Barleycorn. It is these good fellows that he gets, the fellows with the fire and the go in them, who have bigness and warmness and the best of the human weaknesses. And John Barleycorn puts out the fire, and soddens the agility, and, when he does not more immediately kill them or make maniacs of them, he coarsens and grossens them, twists and malforms them out of the original goodness and fineness of their natures. Oh, and I speak out of later knowledge. Heaven defend me from the most of the average run of male humans who are not good fellows, the ones cold of heart and cold of head, who don't smoke, drink or swear, or do much of anything else that is brave and resentful and stinging. Because in their feeble fibers there has never been the stirrer and prod of life to well over its boundaries and be devilish and daring. One doesn't meet these insolumes, nor rallying to lost causes, nor flaming on the adventure paths, nor loving as God's own mad lovers. They are too busy keeping their feet dry, conserving their heartbeats, and making unlovely life successes of their spirit mediocrity. And so I draw the indictment home to John Barleycorn. It is just those, the good fellows, the worthwhile, the fellows with the weakness of too much strength, too much spirit, too much fire and flame of fine devilishness that he solicits and ruins. Of course he ruins weaklings, but with them the worst we breed I am not here concerned. My concern is that it is so much of the best we breed whom John Barleycorn destroys. And the reason why these best are destroyed is because John Barleycorn stands in every highway and byway, accessible, law-protected, saluted by the policemen on the beat, speaking to them, leading them by the hand to the places where the good fellows and daring ones foregather and drink deep. With John Barleycorn out of the way these daring ones would still be born and they would do things instead of perishing. Always I encountered the camaraderie of drink. I might be walking down the track to the water tank to lie in wait for a passing freight train when I would chance upon a bunch of alkie-stiffs. An alkie-stiff is a tramp who drinks drugists' alcohol. Immediately, with greeting and salutation, I am taken into the fellowship. The alcohol, shrewdly blended with water, is handed to me and soon I am caught up in the revelry. With maggots crawling in my brain and John Barleycorn whispering to me that life is big, and that we are all brave and fine, free spirits sprawling like careless gods upon the turf and telling the two-by-four cut-and-dried conventional world to go hang. I was now on shore all the time and living more madly than before. I, too, spent my time on shore with him, only occasionally going for cruises of several days on the bay to help out on short-handed scow schooners. The result was that I was no longer reinvigorated by periods of open-air abstinence and healthy toil. I drank every day, and whenever opportunity offered, I drank to excess. For I still labored under the misconception that the secret of John Barleycorn lay in drinking to bestiality and unconsciousness. I became pretty thoroughly alcohol-soaked during this period. I practically lived in saloons, became a bar room loafer and worse. And right here was John Barleycorn getting me in a more insidious, though no less deadly way than when he nearly sent me out with the tide. I had a few months still to run before I was seventeen. I scorned the thought of a steady job at anything. I felt myself a pretty tough individual in a group of pretty tough men, and I drank because these men drank and because I had to make good with them. I had never had a real boyhood, and in this, my precocious manhood, I was very hard and woefully wise. Though I had never known girls' love even, I had crawled through such depths that I was convinced absolutely that I knew the last word about love and life. And it wasn't a pretty knowledge. Without being pessimistic, I was quite satisfied that life was a rather cheap and ordinary affair. You see, John Barleycorn was blunting me. The old strings and prods of the spirit were no longer sharp. Curiosity was leaving me. What did it matter what lay on the other side of the world? Men and women, without doubt, very much like the men and women I knew, marrying and giving in marriage, and all the petty run of petty human concerns and drinks, too. But the other side of the world was a long way to go for a drink. I had but to step to the corner and get all I wanted at Joe Vigie's. Johnny Heinholt still ran the last chance, and there were saloons on all the corners and between the corners. The whispers from the back of life were growing dim as my mind and body soddened. The old unrest was drowsy. I might as well rot and die here in Oakland as anywhere else. And I should have so rotted and died, and not in very long order, either, at the pace John Barleycorn was leading me, had the matter depended wholly on him. I was learning what it was to have no appetite. I was learning what it was to get up shaky in the morning, with a stomach that quivered, with fingers touched with palsy, and to know the drinker's need for a stiff glass of whiskey neat in order to brace up. Oh, John Barleycorn is a wizard dopster. Brain and body, scorched and jangled and poisoned, returned to be tuned up by the very poison that caused the damage. There is no end to John Barleycorn's tricks. He had tried to invagle me into killing myself. At this period he was doing his best to kill me at a fairly rapid pace. But, not satisfied with that, he tried another dodge. He very nearly got me too, and right there I learned a lesson about him. Become a wiser, a more skillful drinker. I learned there were limits to my gorgeous constitution, and that there were no limits to John Barleycorn. I learned that in a short hour or two he could master my strong head, my broad shoulders and deep chest, put me on my back, and with a devil's grip on my throat, proceed to choke the life out of me. Nelson and I were sitting in the Overland House. It was early in the evening, and the only reason we were there was because we were broke, and it was election time. You see, in election time local politicians, aspirants for office, have a way of making the rounds of the saloons to get votes. One is sitting at a table, in a dry condition, wondering who is going to turn up and buy him a drink, or if his credit is good at some other saloon, and if it's worthwhile a walk that far to find out. When suddenly the saloon doors swing wide, and enters a bevy of well-dressed men, then sows, usually wide, and exhales an atmosphere of prosperity and fellowship. They have smiles and greeting for everybody, for you, without the price of a glass of beer in your pocket, for the timid hobo who lurks in the corner and who certainly hasn't a vote, but who may establish a lodging-house registration. And do you know, when these politicians swing wide the doors and come in, with their broad shoulders, their deep chests, and their generous stomachs, which cannot help making them optimists and masters of life, why you perk right up? It's going to be a warm evening after all, and you know you'll get a souse started at the very least. And, who knows, the gods may be kind, other drinks may come, and the night culminate in glorious greatness. And the next thing you know you are lined up at the bar, pouring drinks down your throat, and learning the gentleman's names and the offices which they hope to fill. It was during this period, when the politicians went their saloon rounds, that I was getting bitter bits of education, and having illusions punctured. I, who had poured and thrilled over the rail splitter, and from canal-boy to president, yes, I was learning how noble politics and politicians are. Well, on this night, broke, thirsty, but with the drinker's faith in the unexpected drink, Nelson and I sat in the overland house, waiting for something to turn up, especially politicians. And there entered Joe Goose, he of the unquenchable thirst, the wicked eyes, the crooked nose, the flowered vest. Come on, fellows, free booze, all you want of it. I didn't want you to miss it. Where we wanted to know. Come on, I'll tell you, as we go along, we haven't a minute to lose. And as we hurried uptown, Joe Goose explained. It's the Hancock Fire Brigade. All you have to do is wear a red shirt and a helmet, and carry a torch. They're going down on the special train to Hayward's to Parade. I think the place was Hayward's. It may have been San Leandro or Niles. And to save me, I can't remember whether the Hancock Fire Brigade was a Republican or a Democratic organization. But anyway, the politicians who ran it were short of torchbearers, and anybody who would parade could get drunk if you wanted to. The town will be wide open, Joe Goose went on. Booze, it'll run like water. The politicians have bought the stocks of the saloons. There'll be no charge. All you got to do is walk right up and call for it. We'll raise hell. At the hall, on 8th Street near Broadway, we got into the fireman's shirts and helmets, were equipped with torches, and growling because we weren't given at least one drink before we started, were herded aboard the train. Oh, these politicians had handled our kind before. At Hayward's, there were no drinks either. Parade first, and earn your booze, was the order of the night. We paraded. Then the saloons were opened. Extra barkeepers had been engaged, and the drinkers jammed six-deep before every drink drenched and unwiped bar. There was no time to wipe the bar, nor wash glasses, nor do anything save fill glasses. The Oakland waterfront can be real thirsty on occasion. This method of jamming and struggling in front of the bar was too slow for us. The drink was ours. The politicians had bought it for us. We'd paraded and earned it, hadn't we? So we made a flank attack around the end of the bar, shoved the protesting barkeepers aside, and helped ourselves to bottles. Outside, we knocked the necks of the bottles off against the concrete curbs and drank. Now Joe Goose and Nelson had learned discretion with straight whiskey drunk in quantity. I hadn't. I still labored under the misconception that one was to drink all he could get, especially when it didn't cost anything. We shared our bottles with others and drank a good portion ourselves while I drank most of all. And I didn't like the stuff. I drank it as I had drunk beer at five and wine at seven. I mastered my qualms and downed it like so much medicine. And when we wanted more bottles, we went into other saloons where the free drink was flowing and helped ourselves. I haven't the slightest idea of how much I drank, whether it was two quarts or five. I do know that I began the orgy with half-pint drafts and with no water afterward to wash the taste away or to dilute the whiskey. Now the politicians were too wise to leave the town filled with drunks from the waterfront of Oakland. When train time came, there was a roundup of the saloons. Already I was feeling the impact of the whiskey. Nelson and I were hustled out of a saloon and found ourselves in the very last rank of a disorderly parade. I struggled along heroically, my correlations breaking down, my legs tottering under me, my head swimming, my heart pounding, my lungs panting for air. My helplessness was coming on so rapidly that my reeling brain told me I would go down and out and never reach the train if I remained at the rear of the procession. I left the ranks and ran down a pathway beside the road under broad-spreading trees. Nelson pursued me, laughing. Certain things stand out as in memories of nightmare. I remember those trees especially and my desperate running along under them and how, every time I fell, roars of laughter went up from the other drunks. They thought I was merely antichrunk. They did not dream that John Barley-Corn had me by the throat in a death-clutch. But I knew it, and I remember the fleeting bitterness that was mine as I realized that I was in a struggle with death, and that these others did not know. It was as if I were drowning before a crowd of spectators who thought I was cutting up tricks for their entertainment. And running there under the trees I fell and lost consciousness. What happened afterward with one glimmering exception I had to be told. Nelson, with his enormous strength, picked me up and dragged me on and aboard the train. When he had got me into a seat I fought and panted so terribly for air that even with his obtuseness he knew I was in a bad way. And right there, at any moment I know now, I might have died. I often think it is the nearest to death I have ever been. I have only Nelson's description of my behavior to go by. I was scorching up, burning alive internally in an agony of fire and suffocation, and I wanted air. I madly wanted air. My efforts to raise a window were vain, for all the windows in the car were screwed down. Nelson had seen drink-crazed men and thought I wanted to throw myself out. He tried to restrain me, but I fought on. I seized some man's torch and smashed the glass. Now there were pro-Nelson and anti-Nelson factions on the Oakland waterfront, and men of both factions, with more drink in them than was good, filled the car. My smashing of the window was the signal for the aunties. One of them reached for me and dropped me and started the fight, of all of which I have no knowledge, save what was told me afterwards, and a sore jaw next day from the blow that put me out. The man who struck me went down across my body, Nelson followed him, and they say there were a few unbroken windows in the wreckage of the car that followed as the free-for-all fight had its course. This being not cold and motionless was perhaps the best thing that could have happened to me. My violent struggles had only accelerated my already dangerously accelerated heart and increased the need for oxygen in my suffocating lungs. After the fight was over and I came to, I did not come to myself. I was no more myself than a drowning man is who continues to struggle after he has lost consciousness. I have no memory of my actions, but I cried, air, air, so insistently that it dawned on Nelson that I did not contemplate self-destruction. So he cleared the jagged glass from the window ledge and let me stick my head and shoulders out. He realized partially the seriousness of my condition and held me by the waist to prevent me from crawling further out. And for the rest of the run into Oakland I kept my head and shoulders out, fighting like a maniac whenever he tried to draw me inside. In here my one glimmering streak of true consciousness came. My sole recollection from the time I fell under the trees until I awoke the following evening is of my head out of the window, facing the wind caused by the train, cinders striking and burning and blinding me while I breathed with will. All my will was concentrated on breathing, on breathing the air in the hugest lungful gulps I could, pumping the greatest amount of air into my lungs in the shortest possible time. It was that or death, and I was a swimmer and diver, and I knew it. And in the most intolerable agony of prolonged suffocation, during those moments I was conscious, I faced the wind and the cinders and breathed for life. All the rest is blank. I came to the following evening in a waterfront lodging-house. I was alone. No doctor had been called in, and I might well have died there for Nelson and the others, deeming me merely sleeping off my drunk, had let me lie there in a comatose condition for seventeen hours. Many a man, as every doctor knows, has died of the sudden impact of a quart or more of whiskey. Usually one reads of them so dying, strong drinkers on a count of a wager. But I didn't know then. And so I learned, and by no virtue nor prowess, but simply through good fortune and constitution. Again my constitution had triumphed over John Barleycorn. I had escaped from another death-pit, dragged myself through another morass, and perilously acquired the discretion that would enable me to drink wisely for a many another year to come. Heavens, that was twenty years ago, and I am still very much and wisely alive, and I have seen much, done much, lived much, in that intervening score of years, and I shudder when I think how close a shave I ran, how near I was to missing that splendid fifth of a century that has been mine. And, oh, it wasn't John Barleycorn's fault that he didn't get me that night of the Hancock Fire Brigade. End of Chapter 14. Chapters 15 and 16 of John Barleycorn or Alcoholic Memoirs by Jack London This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Chapter 15 It was during the early winter of 1892 that I resolved to go to sea. My Hancock Fire Brigade experience was very little responsible for this. I still drank and frequented saloons, practically lived in saloons. Whiskey was dangerous, in my opinion, but not wrong. Whiskey was dangerous like other dangerous things in the natural world. Men died of whiskey, but then, too, fishermen were capsized and drowned. Hobos fell under trains and were cut to pieces. To cope with winds and waves, railroad trains and bar rooms, one must use judgment. To get drunk after the manner of men was all right, but one must do it with discretion. No more courts of whiskey for me. What really decided me to go to sea was that I had caught my first vision of the Death Road, which John Barleycorn maintains for his devotees. It was not a clear vision, however, and there were two phases of it, somewhat jumbled at the time. It struck me, from watching those with whom I associated, that the life we were living was more destructive than that lived by the average man. John Barleycorn, by inhibiting morality, incited to crime. Everywhere I saw men doing drunk what they would never dream of doing sober, and this wasn't the worst of it. It was the penalty that must be paid. Crime was destructive. Saloon mates I drank with, who were good fellows and harmless, sober, did most violent and lunatic things when they were drunk. And then the police gathered them in and they vanished from our kin. Sometimes I visited them behind the bars and said goodbye, ere they journeyed across the bay to put on the felons' stripes. And time and again I heard the one explanation. If I hadn't been drunk, I wouldn't have done it. And sometimes, under the spell of John Barleycorn, the most frightful things were done. Things that shocked even my case-hardened soul. The other phrase of the death-road was that of the habitual drunkards, who had a way of turning up their toes without apparent provocation. When they took sick, even with trifling afflictions that any ordinary man could pull through, they just pegged out. Sometimes they were found unattended and dead in their beds. On occasion their bodies were dragged out of the water. And sometimes it was just plain accident, as when Bill Kelly, unloading cargo while drunk, had a finger jerked off, which under the circumstances might just as easily have been his head. So I considered my situation and knew that I was getting into a bad way of living. It made toward death too quickly to suit my youth and vitality. And there was only one way out of this hazardous manner of living, and that was to get out. The sealing fleet was wintering in San Francisco Bay, and in the saloons I met skippers, mates, hunters, boat-steers, and boat-pullers. I met the seal-hunter, Pete Holt, and agreed to be his boat-puller and to sign on any schooner he signed on. And I had to have half a dozen drinks with Pete Holt there and then to seal our agreement. And at once awoke all my old unrest that John Barley-Corn had put to sleep. I found myself actually bored with the saloon life of the Oakland waterfront, and wondered what I had ever found fascinating in it. Also, with this death-road concept in my brain, I began to grow afraid that something would happen to me before sailing-day, which was set for some time in January. I lived more circumspectly, drank more deeply, and went home more frequently. When drinking grew too wild, I got out. When Nelson was in his maniacal cups, I managed to get separated from him. On the 12th of January, 1893, I was 17, and the 20th of January I signed before the shipping commissioner the articles of the Sophie Sutherland, a three-top-mass sealing schooner bound on a voyage to the coast of Japan. And of course we had to drink on it. Joe Vigie cashed my advance note, and Pete Holt treated, and I treated, and Joe Vigie treated, and other hunters treated. Well, it was the way of men, and who was I? Just turn 17, that I should decline the way of life of these fine, chesty, man-grown men. End of Chapter 15 Chapter 16 There was nothing to drink on the Sophie Sutherland, and we had fifty-one days of glorious sailing, taking the southern passage in the northeast trades to Bonin Islands. This isolated group belonging to Japan had been selected as the rendezvous of the Canadian and American sealing fleets. Here they filled their water barrels and made repairs before starting on the hundred days harrying of the seal herd along the northern coast of Japan to Bering Sea. Those fifty-one days of fine sailing and intense sobriety had put me in splendid fettle. The alcohol had been worked out of my system, and from the moment the voyage began, I had not known the desire for a drink. I doubt if I even thought once about a drink. Often, of course, the talk and the folks will turn to drink, and the men told of them more exciting or humorous drunks, remembering such passages more keenly with greater delight than all the other passages of their adventurous lives. In the folksle, the oldest man, fat and fifty, was Lewis. He was a broken skipper. John Barleycorn had thrown him, and he was winding up his career where he had begun it, in the folksle. His case made quite an impression on me. John Barleycorn did other things besides kill a man. He hadn't killed Lewis. He had done much worse. He had robbed him of power and place and comfort, crucified his pride, and condemned him to the hardship of the common sailor that would last as long as his healthy breath lasted, which promised to be for a long time. We completed our run across the Pacific, lifted the volcanic peaks, jungle-clad of the Bonin Islands, sailed in among the reefs to the landlocked harbor, and let our ankle rumble down where lay a score or more of sea gypsies like ourselves. The scents of strange vegetation blew off the tropic land. Aborigines in queer outrigger canoes and Japanese in queerer sampans paddled about the bay and came aboard. It was my first foreign land. I had won to the other side of the world, and I would see all I had read in the books come true. I was wild to get ashore. Victor and Axel, a Swede and a Norwegian, and I planned to keep together. And so well did we that for the rest of the crews we were known as the Three Sports. Victor pointed out a pathway that disappeared up a wild canyon, emerged on a steep bare lava slope, and thereafter appeared and disappeared, ever climbing among the palms and flowers. We would go over that path, he said, and we agreed, and we would see beautiful scenery and strange native villages and find, heaven alone knew, what adventure at the end. And Axel was keen to go fishing. The three of us agreed to that, too. We would get a sampan and a couple of Japanese fishermen who knew the fishing grounds and we would have great sport. As for me, I was keen for anything. And then our plans made, we rode ashore over the banks of living coral and pulled our boat up the white beach of coral sand. We walked across the fringe of beach under the coconut palms and into the little town and found several hundred riotous seamen from all the world drinking prodigiously, singing prodigiously, dancing prodigiously, and all on the main street to the scandal of a helpless handful of Japanese police. Victor and Axel said that we'd have a drink before we started on our long walk. Could I decline to drink with these two chesty shipmates? Drinking together glass in hand put the seal on comradeship. It was the way of life. Our tea totaller, owner Captain, was laughed at and sneered at by all of us because of his tea totalism. I didn't in the least want to drink, but I did want to be a good fellow and a good comrade. Nor did Lewis's case deter me as I poured the biting, scorching stuff down my throat. John Barleycorn had thrown Lewis to a nasty fall, but I was young. My blood ran full and red. I had a constitution of iron, and, well, youth ever grinned scornfully at the wreckage of age. Queer, fierce alcoholic stuff it was that we drank. There was no telling where or how it had been manufactured. Some native concoction most likely, but it was hot as fire, pale as water, and quick as death with its kick. It had been filled into empty square face bottles which had once contained Holland gin, and which still bore the fitting legend anchor brand. It certainly anchored us. We never got out of the town. We never went fishing in the sandpan, and though we were there ten days, we never trod that wild path along the lava cliffs and among the flowers. We met old acquaintances from other schooners, fellows we had met in the saloons of San Francisco before we sailed, and each meeting meant a drink. And there was much to talk about, and more drinks, and songs to be sung, and pranks and antics to be performed, until the maggots of imagination began to crawl. And it all seemed great and wonderful to me these lusty, hard-bitten sea rovers of whom I made one gathered and was sailed on a coral strand. Old lines about nights at table in the great banquet halls, and of those above the salt and below the salt, and of Vikings feasting fresh from sea and ripe for a battle came to me. And I knew that the old times were not dead and that we belonged to that self-same ancient breed. By mid-afternoon Victor went mad with drink, and wanted to fight everybody and everything. I have since seen lunatics in the violent wards of asylums that seemed to behave in no wise different from Victor's way, save that perhaps he was more violent. Axel and I interfered as peacemakers, were roughed and jostled in the mix-ups, and finally, with infinite precaution and intoxicated cunning, succeeded in invagaling our chum down to the boat and in rowing him aboard our schooner. But no sooner did Victor's feet touch the deck than he began to clean up the ship. He had the strength of several men, and he ran amuck with it. I remember especially one man whom he got into the chain-boxes, but failed to damage through inability to hit him. The man dodged and ducked, and Victor broke all the knuckles of both his fists against the huge links of the anchor chain. By the time we dragged him out of that, his madness had shifted to the belief that he was a great swimmer, and the next moment he was overboard in demonstrating his ability by floundering like a sick porpoise and swallowing much seawater. We rescued him, and by the time we got him below, undressed and into his bunk, we were wrecks ourselves. But Axel and I wanted to see more of shore, and away we went, leaving Victor snoring. It was curious the judgment passed on Victor by his shipmates, drinkers themselves. They shook their heads disapprovingly and muttered, a man like that oughtn't to drink. Now Victor was the smartest sailor and best tempered shipmate in the folksal. He was an all-around splendid type of seaman. His mates recognized his worth and respected him and liked him. Yet John Barleycorn metamorphosed him into a violent lunatic. And that was the very point these drinkers made. They knew that drink, and drink with a sailor is always excessive, made them mad, but only mildly mad. Violent madness was objectionable because it spoiled the fun of others and often culminated in tragedy. From their standpoint mild madness was all right, but from the standpoint of the whole human race is not all madness objectionable? And is there a greater maker of madness of all sorts than John Barleycorn? But to return, a shore snugly ensconced in a Japanese house of entertainment, Axel and I compared bruises, and over a comfortable drink, talked of the afternoon's happenings. We liked the quietness of that drink and took another. A shipmate dropped in, several shipmates dropped in, and we had more quiet drinks. Finally, just as we had engaged a Japanese orchestra, and as the first strains of the Samasens and Taikos were rising, through the paper walls came a wild howl from the street. We recognized it. Still howling, disdaining doorway, with bloodshot eyes and wildly waving muscular arms, Victor burst upon us through the fragile walls. The old amok rage was on him, and he wanted blood, anybody's blood. The orchestra fled, so did we. We went through doorways, and we went through paper walls, anything to get away. And after the place was half-wrecked, and we had agreed to pay the damage, leaving Victor partly subdued and showing symptoms of lapsing into a comatose state, Axel and I wandered away in quest of a quieter drinking-place. The main street was a madness. Hundreds of sailors rollicked up and down. Because the chief of police with his small force was helpless, the governor of the colony had issued orders to the captains to have all their men on board by sunset. What? To be treated in such a fashion? As the news spread among the schooners, they were emptied. Everybody came ashore. Men who had had no intention of coming ashore climbed into the boats. The unfortunate governor's ukes had precipitated a general debauch for all hands. It was hours after sunset, and the men wanted to see anybody try to put them on board. They went around inviting the authorities to try to put them on board. In front of the governor's house they were gathered thickest, bawling sea songs, circulating square faces, and dancing uproarious Virginia reels and old country dances. The police, including the reserves, stood in little forlorn groups, waiting for the command the governor was too wise to issue. And I thought this Saturnalia was great. It was like the old days of the Spanish Maine comeback. It was license. It was adventure. And I was part of it. A chesty sea rover along with all these other chesty sea rovers among the paper houses of Japan. The governor never issued the order to clear the streets, and Axel and I wandered on from drink to drink. After a time, in some of the antics, getting hazy myself, I lost him. I drifted along making new acquaintances, downing more drinks, getting hazier and hazier. I remember somewhere sitting in a circle with Japanese fishermen. Kanaka boat steers from our own vessels and a young Danish sailor fresh from cowboying in the Argentine and with a penchant for native customs and ceremonials. And with due and proper and most intricate Japanese ceremonial, we of the circle drank sake, pale, mild, and lukewarm from tiny porcelain bowls. And later I remember the runaway apprentices, boys of 18 and 20, of middle-class English families, who had jumped their ships and apprenticeships in various ports of the world and drifted into the folk souls of the ceiling schooners. They were healthy, smooth-skinned, clear-eyed, and they were young, use like me learning the way of their feet in the world of men. And they were men, no mild sackie for them, but square faces illicitly refilled with corrosive fire that flamed through their veins and burst into conflagrations in their heads. I remember a melting song they sang, the refrain of which was, "'Tis but a little golden ring, I give it to thee with pride. Wear it for your mother's sake, when you are on the tide.' They wept over it as they sang it, the graceless young scamps who had all broken their mother's prides, and I sang with them and wept with them and luxuriated in the pathos and the tragedy of it, and struggled to make glimmering, inebriated generalizations on life and romance. And one last picture I have standing out very clear and bright in the midst of vagueness before and blackness afterwards. We, the apprentices and I, are swaying and clinging to one another under the stars. We are singing a rollicking sea song, all save one who sits on the ground and weeps, and we are marking the rhythm with waving square faces. From up and down the street come far choruses of sea voices similarly singing, and life is great and beautiful and romantic and magnificently mad. And next after the blackness I open my eyes in the early dawn to see a Japanese woman, solicitously anxious, bending over me. She is the port pilot's wife, and I am lying in her doorway. I am chilled and shivering, sick with the after-sickness of debauch. And I feel lightly clad, these brascals of runaway apprentices. They have acquired the habit of running away. They have run away with my possessions. My watch is gone. My few dollars are gone. My coat is gone. So is my belt. And yes, my shoes. And the foregoing is a sample of the ten days I spent in the Bonin Islands. Victor got over his lunacy, rejoined Axel and me, and after that we corralled somewhat more discreetly. And we never climbed that lava path among the flowers. The town and the square faces were all we knew. One who has been burned by fire must preach about the fire. I might have seen and healthily enjoyed a whole lot more of the Bonin Islands if I had done what I ought to have done. But as I see it, it is not a matter of what one ought to do or ought not to do, it is what one does do. That is the everlasting, irrefragable fact. I did just what I did. I did what all those men did in the Bonin Islands. I did what millions of men over the world were doing at that particular point in time. I did it because the way led to it, because I was only a human boy, a creature of my environment, and neither an anemic nor a god. I was just human, and I was taking the path in the world that men took. Men whom I admired, if you please, full-blooded men, lusty, greedy, chesty men, free spirits, and anything but niggers in the way they foamed life away. And the way was open. It was like an uncovered well in a yard where children play. It is small use to tell the brave little boys, toddling their way along with knowledge of life, that they mustn't play near the uncovered well. They will play near it. Any parent knows that, and we know that a certain percentage of them, the livest and most daring, will fall into the well. The thing to do, we all know it, is to cover up the well. The case is the same with John Barley-Corn. All the no-saying and no-preaching in the world will fail to keep men and use growing into manhood away from John Barley-Corn when John Barley-Corn is everywhere accessible, and where John Barley-Corn is everywhere the connotation of manliness and daring and great spiritedness. The only rational thing for the 20th century folk to do is to cover up the well. To make the 20th century in truth the 20th century, and to relate to the 19th century and all the preceding centuries, the things of those centuries, the witch-burnings, the intolerances, the fetishes, and not least among such barbarisms, John Barley-Corn. End of Chapter 16 Chapter 17 and 18 of John Barley-Corn, or Alcoholic Memoirs, by Jack London This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Chapter 17 North we raced from the bone-in islands to pick up the seal-herd, and north we hunted it for a hundred days into frosty, mitten weather and into and through vast fogs which hid the sun from us for a week at a time. It was wild and heavy work without a drink or thought of drink. Then we sailed south to Yokohama with a big catch of skins in our salt and a heavy payday coming. I was eager to be ashore and see Japan, but the first day was devoted to ship's work, and not until evening did we sailors land. And here, by the very system of things, by the way life was organized and men transacted affairs, John Barley-Corn reached out and tucked my arm in his. The captain had given money for us to the hunters, and the hunters were waiting in a certain Japanese public house for us to come and get it. We rode to the place in rickshaws. Our own crowd had taken possession of it. Drink was flowing. Everybody had money, and everybody was treating. After the hundred days of hard toil and absolute abstinence, in the pink of physical condition bulging with health, overspilling with spirits that had long been pent by discipline and circumstance, of course we would have a drink or two, and after that we would see the town. It was the old story. There were so many drinks to be drunk, and as the warm magic poured through our veins and mellowed our voices and affections, we knew it was no time to make invidious distinctions. To drink with this shipmate and to decline to drink with that shipmate. We were all shipmates who had been through stress and storm together, who had pulled and hauled on the same sheets and tackles, relieved one another's wheels, laid out side by side on the same jib-boom when she was plunging into it, and looked to see who was missing when she cleared and lifted. So we drank with all, and all treated, and our voices rose, and we remembered a myriad kindly acts of comrade ship and forgot our fights and wordy squabbles, and knew one another for the best fellows in the world. Well, the night was young when we arrived in that public house, and for all of that first night that public house was what I saw of Japan, a drinking place which was very like a drinking place at home or anywhere else over the world. We lay in Yokohama Harbor for two weeks, and about all we saw of Japan was its drinking places where sailors congregated. Occasionally, some one of us varied the monotony with a more exciting drunk. In such fashion I managed a real exploit by swimming off to the schooner one dark midnight and going soundly to sleep while the water police searched the harbor for my body and brought my clothes out for identification. Perhaps it was for things like that I imagined that men got drunk. In our little round of living what I had done was a noteworthy event. All the harbor talked about it. I enjoyed several days of fame among the Japanese boatmen and ashore in the pubs. It was a red-letter event. It was an event to be remembered and narrated with pride. I remember it today, twenty years afterward with a secret glow of pride. It was a purple passage just as Victor's wrecking of the tea house in the bone-in islands and my being looted by the runaway apprentices were purple passages. The point is that the charm of John Barley-Corn was still a mystery to me. I was so organically a non-alcoholic that alcohol itself made no appeal. The chemical reactions it produced in me were not satisfying because I possessed no need for such chemical satisfaction. I drank because the men I was with drank. And because my nature was such that I could not permit myself to be less of a man than other men at their favorite pastime, and I still had a sweet tooth, and on privy occasions when there was no man to see bought candy and blissfully devoured it. We hove up anchor to a jolly shanty and sailed out of Yokohama Harbour for San Francisco. We took the northern passage and with the stout west wind at our back made the run across the Pacific in thirty-seven days of brave sailing. We still had a big payday coming to us and for thirty-seven days, without a drink to addle our mental processes, we incessantly planned the spending of our money. The first statement of each man, ever an ancient one in homeward bound folksiles, was No boarding house sharks in mine. Next, in parentheses, was regret at having spent so much money in Yokohama. And after that each man proceeded to paint his favorite phantom. Victor, for instance, said that immediately he landed in San Francisco he would pass right through the waterfront and the Barbary Coast and put an advertisement in the papers. His advertisement would be for board and room in some simple working-class family. Then, said Victor, I shall go to some dancing school for a week or two just to meet and get acquainted with the girls and fellows. Then I'll get the run of the different dancing crowds and be invited to their homes and to parties and all that. And with the money I've got, I can last out till next January when I'll go ceiling again. No, he wasn't going to drink. He knew the way of it, particularly his way of it, wine in, wit out, and his money would be gone in no time. He had his choice based on bitter experience between three days debauch amongst the sharps and harpies of the Barbary Coast and a whole winter of wholesome enjoyment and sociability. And there wasn't any doubt of the way he was going to choose. Said Axel Gundersen, who didn't care for dancing and social functions, I've got a good payday. Now I can go home. It's fifteen years since I've seen my mother and all the family. When I pay off, I shall send my money home to wait for me. Then I'll pick a good ship bound for Europe and arrive there with another payday. Put them together and I'll have more money than ever in my life before. I'll be a prince at home. You haven't any idea how cheap everything is in Norway. I can make presents to everybody and spend my money like what would seem to them a millionaire and live a whole year there before I'd have to go back to sea. The very thing I'm going to do, declared Red John, it's three years since I've received a line from home and ten years since I was there. Things are just as cheap in Sweden, Axel, as in Norway, and my folks are real country folk and farmers. I'll send my payday home and ship on the same ship with you for around the horn. We'll pick a good one. And as Axel Gundersson and Red John painted the pastoral delights and festive customs of their respective countries, each fell in love with the other's home place, and they solemnly pledged to make the journey together and to spend together six months in the one Swedish home and six months in the other's Norwegian home. And for the rest of the voyage they could hardly be pried apart, so infatuated did they become with discussing their plans. Long John was not a homebody, but he was tired of the folksel. No boarding house sharks in his. He too would get a room in a quiet family. And he would go to a navigation school and study to be a captain. And so it went. Each man swore that for once he would be sensible and not squander his money. No boarding house sharks. No sailor town. No drink. Was the slogan of our folksel. The men became stingy. Never was there such economy. They refused to buy anything more from the slop chest. Old rags had to last. And they sewed patch upon patch, turning out what are called homeward-bound patches of the most amazing proportions. They saved on matches, even, waiting till two or three were ready to light their pipes from the same match. As we sailed up the San Francisco waterfront, the moment the port doctors passed us, the boarding house runners were alongside in White Hall boats. They swarmed on board, each drumming for his own boarding house. And each with a bottle of free whiskey inside his shirt. But we waved them grandly and blasphemously away. We wanted none of their boarding houses and none of their whiskey. We were sober, thrifty sailor men with better use for our money. We were sober, thrifty sailor men with better use for our money. Came the paying off before the shipping commissioner. We emerged upon the sidewalk, each with a pocketful of money. And we looked at each other. We had been seven months together and our paths were separating. One last farewell rite of comradeship remained. Oh, it was the way, the custom. Come on boys, said our sailing master. There stood the inevitable adjacent saloon. There were a dozen saloons all around. And when we had followed the sailing master into the one of his choice, the sharks were thick on the sidewalk outside. Some of them even ventured inside, but we would have nothing to do with them. Then we stood at the long bar, the sailing master, the mate, the six hunters, the six boat steers, and the five boat pullers. There were only five of the last for one of our number had been dropped overboard with a sack of coal at his feet between two snow squalls in a driving gale off Cape Jeremo. There were 19 of us and it was to be our last drink together. With seven months of men's work in the world, blow high, blow low behind us, we were looking on each other for the last time. We knew it, for sailors' ways go wide. And the 19 of us drank the sailing master's treat. Then the mate looked at us with eloquent eyes and called another round. We liked the mate just as well as the sailing master and we liked them both. Could we drink with one and not the other? And Pete Holt, my own hunter, lost next year in the Mary Thomas with all hands, called around. The time passed, the drinks continued to come on the bar. Our voices rose and the maggots began to crawl. There were six hunters and each insisted in the sacred name of comradeship that all hands drink with him just once. There were six boat steerers and five boat pullers and the same logic held with them. There was money in all our pockets and our money was as good as any man's and our hearts were as free and generous. Nineteen rounds of drinks. What more would John Barley-Corn ask in order to have his will with men? They were ripe to forget their clearly cherished plans. They rolled out of the saloon and into the arms of the sharks and harpies. They didn't last long. From two days to a week saw the end of their money and saw them being carted by the boarding house masters on board outward bound ships. Victor was a fine body of a man and through a lucky friendship managed to get into the life-saving service. He never saw the dancing school nor placed his advertisement for a room in a working-class family. Nor did Long John win to Navigation School. By the end of the week he was a transient lumper on a river steamboat. Red John and Axel did not send their paydays home to the old country. Instead and along with the rest they were scattered on board sailing ships bound for the four quarters of the globe where they had been placed by the boarding house masters and where they were working out advanced money which they had neither seen nor spent. What saved me was that I had a home and people to go to. I crossed the bay to Oakland and among other things took a look at the death road. Nelson was gone shot to death while drunk and resisting the officers. His partner in that affair was lying in prison. Whiskey Bob was gone. Old Cole Old Smooge and Bob Smith were gone. Another Smith he of the belted guns and the Annie was drowned. French Frank they said was lurking upriver afraid to come down because of something he had done. Others were wearing the stripes in San Quentin or Folsom. Big Alec the King of the Greeks in the old Benicia days and with whom I had drunk whole nights through had killed two men and fled to foreign parts. Fitzsimmons with whom I had sailed on the fish patrol had been stabbed in the lung through the back and had died a lingering death complicated with tuberculosis. And so it went a very lively and well patronized road and from what I knew of all of them John Barley Corn was responsible with the sole exception of Smith of the Annie. End of Chapter 17 Chapter 18 My infatuation for the Oakland waterfront was quite dead. I didn't like the looks of it nor the life. I didn't care for the drinking nor the vagrancy of it and I wandered back to the Oakland Free Library and read the books with great understanding. Then too my mother said I had sown my wild oats and it was time I settled down to a regular job. Also the family needed the money. So I got a job at the jute mills a 10 hour day at 10 cents an hour. Despite my increase in strength and general efficiency I was receiving no more than when I worked in the cannery several years before. But then there was a promise of a rise to a dollar and a quarter a day after a few months. And here John Barley corn is concerned began a period of innocence. I did not know what it was to take a drink from month end to month end. Not yet 18 years old healthy and with labor hardened but unhurt muscles like any young animal I needed diversion excitement something beyond the books and the mechanical toil. Into young men's Christian associations. The life there was healthful and athletic but too juvenile. For me it was too late. I was not boy nor youth despite my paucity of years. I had bucked big with men. I knew mysterious and violent things. I was from the other side of life so far as concerned the young men I encountered in the YMCA. I spoke another language possessed a sadder and more terrible wisdom. When I come to think it over I realize now that I have never had a boyhood. At any rate the YMCA young men were too juvenile for me too unsophisticated. This I would not have minded could they have met me and helped me mentally. But I had got more out of the books than they. Their meager physical experiences plus their meager intellectual experiences made a negative sum so vast that it over balanced their wholesome morality and healthful sports. In short I couldn't play with the pupils of a lower grade. All the clean splendid young life that was theirs was denied me thanks to my earlier tutelage under John Barley corn. I knew too much too young. And yet in the good time coming when alcohol is eliminated from the needs and the institutions of men it will be the YMCA and similar unthinkably better and wiser and more virile congregating places that will receive the men who now go to saloons to find themselves and one another. In the meantime we live today here and now and we discuss today here and now. I was working 10 hours a day in the juke mills. It was humdrum machine toil. I wanted life. I wanted to realize myself in other ways than add a machine for 10 cents an hour. And yet I had had my fill of saloons. I wanted something new. I was growing up. I was developing unguessed and troubling potencies and proclivities. And at this very stage fortunately I met Louis Shattuck and we became chums. Louis Shattuck without one vicious trait was a real innocently devilish young fellow who was quite convinced that he was a sophisticated town boy. And I wasn't a town boy at all. Louis was handsome and graceful and filled with love for the girls. With him it was an exciting and all absorbing pursuit. I didn't know anything about girls. I had been too busy being a man. This was an entirely new phase of existence which had escaped me. And when I saw Louis say good-bye to me, raise his hat to a girl of his acquaintance and walk on with her side by side down the sidewalk, I was made excited and envious. I too wanted to play this game. Well, there's only one thing to do, said Louis, and that is you must get a girl. Which is more difficult than it sounds. Let me show you at the expense of a slight going aside. Louis did not know girls in their home life. He had the entree to know girls' home. And of course I, a stranger to this new world, was similarly circumstance. But first, Louis and I were unable to go to dancing schools or to public dances which were very good places for getting acquainted. We didn't have the money. He was a blacksmith's apprentice and was earning but slightly more than I. We both lived at home and paid our way. When we had done this and bought our cigarettes and the inevitable clothes and shoes, there remained to each of us for personal spending a sum that varied between 70 cents and a dollar for the week. We whacked this up, shared it, and sometimes loaned all of what was left of it when one of us needed it for some more gorgeous girl adventure, such as car fare out to Blair's Park and back 20 cents bang just like that and a nice cream for two 30 cents or tamales in a tamale parlor which came cheaper and which for two cost only 20 cents. I did not mind this money meagerness. The disdain I had learned for money from the oyster pirates had never left me. I didn't care overwhelmingly for it for personal gratification and philosophy I completed the circle finding myself as equitable with the lack of a 10 cent piece as I was with the squandering of scores of dollars in calling all men and hangers on up to the bar to drink with me. But how to get a girl? There was no girl's home to which Lewis could take me and where I might be introduced I knew none and Lewis's several girls he wanted for himself and anyway in the very human nature of boys and girls ways he couldn't turn any of them over to me he did persuade them to bring girlfriends for me but I found them weak sisters pale and ineffectual alongside the choice specimens he had you'll have to do like I did he said finally I got there by getting them you'll have to get one the same way and he initiated me it must be remembered that Lewis and I were hard situated we really had to struggle to pay our board and maintain a decent appearance we met each other in the evening after the day's work on the street corner in a little candy store on a side street our soul-frequenting place here we bought our cigarettes and occasionally a nickel's worth of red hots oh yes Lewis and I unblushingly ate candy all we could get neither of us drank neither of us ever went into a saloon but the girl in quite primitive fashion as Lewis advised me I was to select her and make myself acquainted with her we strolled the streets in the early evenings the girls like us strolled in pairs and strolling girls will look at strolling boys who look and to this day in any town city or village in which I find myself I look on with the eye trained of old experience and watch the sweet innocent game played by the strolling boys and girls who just must stroll when the spring and summer evenings call the trouble was that in this Arcadian phase of my history I who had come through this hardened from the other side of life was timid and bashful again and again Lewis nerfed me up but I didn't know girls they were strange and wonderful to me after my precious man's life I failed of the bold front and the necessary forwardness when the crucial moment came then Lewis would show me how a certain eloquent glance of eye a smile a daring a lifted hat a spoken word hesitancies giggles coy nervousness and behold Lewis acquainted and nodding me up to be introduced but when we paired off to stroll along boy and girl together I noted that Lewis invariably picked the good looker and left me the lame sister I improved of course after experiences too numerous to enter upon so that there were diverse girls to whom I could lift my hat and who would walk beside me in the early evenings but girls love did not immediately come to me I was excited interested and I pursued the quest and the thought of drink never entered my mind some of Lewis's and my adventures have since given me serious pause when casting sociological generalizations but it was all good and innocently youthful and I learned one thing in generalization biological rather than sociological namely that the colonels lady and Judy O'Grady are sisters under their skins and before long I learned girls love all the dear fond deliciousness of it all the glory and the wonder I shall call her Hady she was between 15 and 16 her little skirt reached her shoe tops we sat side by side in a salvation army meeting she was not a convert nor was her aunt who sat on the other side of her and who visiting from the country when at that time the salvation army was not had dropped into the meeting hour out of curiosity and Lewis sat beside me and observed I do believe he did no more than observe because Hady was not his style of girl we did not speak but in that great half hour we glanced shyly at each other and shyly avoided or as shyly returned and met each other's glances more than several times she had a slender oval face her brown eyes were beautiful her nose was a dream as was her sweet lipped petulant hinting mouth she wore a tamashanter and I thought her brown hair the prettiest shade of brown I had ever seen and from that single experience of half an hour I have ever since been convinced of the reality of love at first sight all too soon the aunt and Hady departed this is permissible at any stage of a salvation army meeting I was no longer interested in the meeting and after an appropriate interval of a couple of minutes or less started to leave with Lewis and passed out at the back of the hall a woman recognized me with her eyes arose and followed me I shall not describe her she was of my own kind and friendship of the old time on the waterfront when Nelson was shot he had died in her arms and she knew me as his one comrade and she must tell me how Nelson had died and I did want to know when I met with her across the width of life from dawning boys' love for a brown-haired girl in a Tamashanter back to the old sad savagery I had known and when I had heard the tale I hurried away to find Lewis fearing that I had lost my first love with the first glimpse of her but Lewis was dependable her name was she lived each day she passed the blacksmith's shop where he worked going to and from the Lafayette school further he had seen her on occasion with Ruth another school girl and still further Nita who sold us red hots at the candy store was a friend of Ruth at Nita to give a note to Ruth to give to Haiti if this could be arranged all I had to do was write the note and it so happened and in stolen half hours of meeting I came to know all the sweet madness of boys' love and girls' love so far as it goes it is not the biggest love to assert that it is the sweetest oh as I look back on it never did girl have more innocent boy lover than I who had been so wicked wise and violent beyond my years I didn't know the first thing about girls I who had been hailed Prince of the Oyster Pirates who could go anywhere in the world as a man amongst men who could sail boats lay aloft in black and storm or go into the toughest hangouts in Sailor Town and play my part in any rough house that started or call all hands to the bar I didn't know the first thing I might say or do with this slender little chit of a girl woman whose scant skirt just reached her shoe tops and who was as abysmally ignorant of life as I was or thought I was profoundly wise I remembered we sat on a bench in the starlight there was fully a foot of space between us we slightly faced each other our near elbows on the back of the bench and once or twice just touched and all the time deliriously happy talking in the gentlest and most delicate terms that might not offend her sensitive ears I was cudgling my brains in an effort to divine what I was expected to do what did girls expect of boys sitting on a bench actively striving to find out what love was what did she expect me to do was I expected to kiss her did she expect me to try and if she did expect me and I didn't what would she think of me ah, she was wiser than I I know it now the little innocent girl woman in her shoe top skirt she had known boys all her life she encouraged me in the ways a girl may her gloves were off and in one hand and I remember lightly and daringly in mockery proof for something I had said how she tapped my lips with a tiny flirt of those gloves I was light to swoon with delight it was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to me and I remember yet the faint scent that clung to those gloves and that I breathed in the moment they touched my lips then came the agony of apprehension and doubt should I imprison 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 daydreams of her for a year or more and the memory of her is very dear End of Chapter 18