 Chapter 26, 27 and 28 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 26. Having burned my ship, I plunged into writing. I am afraid I always was an extremist. Early and late I was at it. Writing, typing, studying grammar, studying, writing in all the forms of writing, and studying the writers who succeeded in order to find out how they succeeded. I managed on five hours sleep in the twenty-four and came pretty close to working the nineteen waking hours left to me. My light burned till two and three in the morning, which led a good neighbor woman into a bit of sentimental Sherlock Holmes deduction. Ever seeing me in the daytime, she concluded that I was a gambler, and that the light in my window was placed there by my mother to guide her erring son home. The trouble with the beginner at the writing game is the long dry spells, when there is never an editor's check and everything pawnable is pawned. I wore my summer suit pretty well through that winter, and the following summer experienced the longest dryest spell of all. In the period when salaried men are gone on vacation and manuscripts lie in editorial offices until vacation is over. My difficulty was that I had no one to advise me. I didn't know a soul who had written or who had ever tried to write. I didn't even know one reporter. Also, to succeed at the writing game, I found I had to unlearn about everything the teachers and professors of literature of the high school and university had taught me. I was very indignant about this at the time, though now I can understand it. They did not know the trick of successful writing in the years 1895 and 1896. They knew all about Snowbound and Sartore Sartis, but the American editors of 1899 did not want such truck. They wanted the 1899 truck and offered to pay so well for it that the teachers and professors of literature would have quit their jobs could they have supplied it. I struggled on, stood off the butcher and the grocer, pawned my watch and bicycle and my father's Macintosh, and I worked. I really did work and went on short commons of sleep. Critics have complained about the swift education one of my characters, Martin Eden, achieved. In three years from a sailor with a common school education, I made a successful writer of him. The critics say this is impossible, yet I was Martin Eden. At the end of three working years, two of which were spent in high school and the university, and one spent at writing, and all three in studying immensely and intensely, I was publishing stories in magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly, was correcting proofs of my first book issued by Houghton Mifflin Company, was selling sociological articles to Cosmopolitan and McClure's, had declined and the associate editorship proffered me by Telegraph from New York City and was getting ready to marry. Now the foregoing means work, especially the last year of it, when I was learning my trade as a writer, and in that year, running short on sleep and taking my brain to its limit, I neither drank nor cared to drink. So far as I was concerned, alcohol did not exist. I did suffer from brain fag on occasion, but alcohol never suggested itself as an ameliorative. Heavens, editorial, acceptances, and checks were all the amelioratives I needed. A thin envelope from an editor in the morning's mail was more stimulating than half a dozen cocktails. And if a check of decent amount came out of the envelope, such incident in itself was a whole drunk. Furthermore, at that time in my life I did not know what a cocktail was. I remember, when my first book was published, several Alaskans who were members of the Bohemian Club entertained me one evening at the club in San Francisco. We sat in most wonderful leather chairs, and drinks were ordered. Never had I heard such an ordering of liqueurs and of high balls of particular brands of Scotch. I didn't know what a liqueur or a high ball was, and I didn't know that Scotch meant whiskey. I knew only poor men's drinks, the drinks of the frontier and of sailor town, cheap beer and cheaper whiskey that was just called whiskey and nothing else. I was embarrassed to make a choice, and the steward nearly collapsed when I ordered claret as an after-dinner drink. Chapter 27 As I succeeded with my writing, my standard of living rose and my horizon broadened. I confined myself to writing and typing a thousand words a day, including Sundays and holidays. And I still studied hard, but not so hard as formally. I allowed myself five and one hours of actual sleep. I added this half hour because I was compelled. Financial success permitted me more time for exercise. I rode my wheel more, chiefly because it was permanently out of pawn. And I boxed and fenced, walked on my hands, jumped high and broad, put the shot and tossed the caber, and went swimming. And I learned that more sleep is required for physical exercise than for mental exercise. There were tired nights bodily when I slept six hours, and on occasion of very severe exercise I actually slept seven hours. But such sleep orgies were not frequent. There was so much to learn, so much to be done, that I felt wicked when I slept seven hours. And I blessed the man who invented alarm clocks. And still no desire to drink. I possessed too many fine faiths, was living at too keen a pitch. I was a socialist, intent on saving the world, and alcohol could not give me the fervors that were mine from my ideas and ideals. My voice, on account of my successful writing, had added weight, or so I thought. At any rate, my reputation as a writer drew me audiences that my reputation as a speaker never could have drawn. I was invited before clubs and organizations of all sorts to deliver my message. I fought the good fight, and went on studying and writing, and was very busy. Up to this time I had had a very restricted circle of friends, but now I began to go about. I was invited out, especially to dinner, and I made many friends and acquaintances whose economic lives were easier than mine had been. And many of them drank. In their own houses they drank and offered me drink. They were not drunkards any of them. They just drank temperately, and I drank temperately with them, as an act of comradeship and accepted hospitality. I did not care for it, neither wanted it, nor did not want it, and so small was the impression made by it that I do not remember my first cocktail nor my first scotch highball. Well, I had a house. When one is asked into other houses he naturally asks others into his house. Behold the rising standard of living. Having been given drink in other houses I could expect nothing else of myself than to give drink in my own house. So I laid in a supply of beer and whiskey and table-claret. Never since that has my house not been well equipped. And still, through all this period I did not care in the slightest for John Barley-Corn. I drank when others drank and with them as a social act. And I had so little choice in the matter that I drank whatever they drank. If they elected whiskey, then whiskey it was for me. If they drank root beer or sasperilla, I drank root beer or sasperilla with them. And when there were no friends in the house, why I didn't drink anything? Whiskey decanters were always in the room where I wrote, and for months and years I never knew what it was when by myself to take a drink. When out at dinner I noticed the kindly genial glow of the preliminary cocktail. It seemed a very fitting and gracious thing. Yet so little did I stand in need of it, with my own high intensity and vitality, that I never thought it worthwhile to have a cocktail before my own meal when I ate alone. On the other hand, I well remember a very brilliant man, somewhat older than I, who occasionally visited me. He liked whiskey, and I recall sitting whole afternoons in my den, drinking steadily with him, drink for a drink, until he was mildly lighted up, and I was slightly aware that I had drunk some whiskey. Now why did I do this? I don't know, save that the old schooling held, the training of the old days and nights, glass and hand with men, the drinking ways of drink and drinkers. Besides, I no longer feared John Barleycorn. Mine was that most dangerous stage when a man believes himself John Barleycorn's master. I had proved it to my satisfaction in the long years of work and study. I could drink when I wanted, refrain when I wanted, drink without getting drunk, and to cap everything I was thoroughly conscious that I had no liking for the stuff. During this period I drank precisely for the same reason I had drunk with Scotty and the Harpooner and with the Oyster Pirates, because it was an act that men performed with whom I wanted to behave as a man. These brilliant ones, these adventurers of the mind, drank. Very well, there was no reason I should not drink with them, I who knew so confidently that I had nothing to fear from John Barleycorn. And the foregoing was my attitude of mind for years. Occasionally I got well jingled, but such occasions were rare. It interfered with my work, and I permitted nothing to interfere with my work. I remember when spending several months in the East End of London, during which time I wrote a book and adventured much amongst the worst of the slum classes, that I got drunk several times and was mightily wroth with myself because it interfered with my writing. Yet these very times were because I was out on the adventure path where John Barleycorn is always to be found. Then too, with the certitude of long training and unholy intimacy, there were occasions when I engaged in drinking hours with men. Of course, this was on the adventure path in various parts of the world, and it was a matter of pride. It is a queer man pride that leads one to drink with men in order to show as strong a head as they. But this queer man pride is not theory, it is fact. For instance, a wild ban of young revolutionists invited me as the guest of honour to a beer bust. It is the only technical beer bust I ever attended. I did not know the true inwardness of the affair when I accepted. I imagined that the talk would be wild and high, that some of them might drink more than they might, and that I would drink discreetly. But it seemed these beer busts were a diversion of these high-spirited young fellows whereby they wild away the tedium of existence by making fools of their bedders. As I learned afterward they had got their previous guest of honour a brilliant young radical unskilled in drinking, quite pipped. When I found myself with them and the situation dawned on me up rose my queer man pride. I'd show them the young rascals. I'd show them who was husky and chesty, who had the vitality in the constitution, the stomach and the head, who could make most of a swine of himself and show at least. These unlicked cubs who thought they could out-drink me! You see, it was an endurance test, and no man likes to give another best. Faw! It was steam beer. I had learned more expensive brews. Not for years had I drunk steam beer, but when I had, I had drunk with men, and I guessed I could show these youngsters some ability in beer-guzzling. And the drinking began, and I had to drink with the best of them. Some of them might lag, but the guest of honour was not permitted to lag. And all my esteered nights of midnight oil, all the books I had read, all the wisdom I had gathered, went glimmering before the ape and tiger in me that crawled up from the abysm of my heredity, adivistic, competitive, and brutal, lustful with strength and desire to out-swine the swine. And when the session broke up, I was still on my feet, and I walked, erect, unswaying, which was more than can be said of some of my hosts. I recall one of them in indignant tears on the street corner, weeping as he pointed out my sober condition. Little he dreamed the iron clutch, born of old training, with which I held to my consciousness in my swimming brain, kept control of my muscles and my qualms, kept my voice unbroken and easy, and my thoughts consecutive and logical. Yes, and mixed up with it all, I was privily a grin. They hadn't made a fool of me in that drinking-boat, and I was proud of myself for the achievement. Darn it, I am still proud, so strangely is man compounded. But I didn't write my thousand words next morning. I was sick, poisoned. It was a day of wretchedness. In the afternoon I had to give a public speech. I gave it, and I am confident it was as bad as I felt. Some of my hosts were there in the front rows to mark any signs on me of the night before. I don't know what signs they marked, but I marked signs on them and took consolation in the knowledge that they were just as sick as I. Never again I swore, and I have never been invagled into another beer-bust. For that matter that was my last drinking-boat of any sort. Oh, I have drunk ever since, but with more wisdom, more discretion, and never in a competitive spirit. It is thus that the seasoned drinker grows seasoned. To show that at this period in my life drinking was wholly a matter of companionship, I remember crossing the Atlantic in the old Teutonic. It chanced at the start that I chummed with an English cable operator and a younger member of a Spanish shipping firm. Now the only thing they drank was horse's-nick, a long, soft, cool drink with an apple-peel or an orange-peel floating in it. And for that whole voyage I drank horse's-nicks with my two companions. On the other hand, had they drunk whiskey, I should have drunk whiskey with them. From this it must not be concluded that I was merely weak. I didn't care. I had no morality in the matter. I was strong with youth and unafraid, and alcohol was an utterly negligible question as far as I was concerned. Chapter 28 Not yet was I ready to tuck my arms in John Barley-Corns. The older I got, the greater my success, the more money I earned, the wider was the command of the world that became mine, and the more prominently did John Barley-Corn bulk in my life. And still I maintained no more than a nodding acquaintance with him. I drank for the sake of sociability and went alone I did not drink. Sometimes I got jingled, but I considered such jingles the mild price I paid for sociability. To show how unripe I was for John Barley-Corn when, at this time, I descended into my slough of despond, I never dreamed of turning to John Barley-Corn for a helping hand. I had life troubles and 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 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 muck of the waterfront and the folk soul 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 porter houses 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 high 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 Barley corn. Never the remotest whisper arose in my consciousness that John Barley corn 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 whiskey 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 porter houses 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 unsaying, so ultra-revolutionary that I retarded the socialist development in the United States by five years. In passing I wished 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 tarry 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 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 today but never again shall I read them with that old glory of youthful passion when I hacked 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 Barley Corn. Love, socialism, the people healthy figments of man's mind were the things that cured and saved me. If ever a man was not a born alcoholic I believed 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 Barley Corn. End of Chapter 28 Chapters 29 and 30 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 29 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 and arrantly healthful life and passed life insurance examinations with flying colors. In its inception, now that I look back upon it, this need for alcohol was a mental need, a nerve need, a good spirit's 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. First while, worthwhile fun and stunts seemed no longer worthwhile. And it was a torment to listen to the incipities 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 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 scene 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. On the other hand, it must be stated that on rare occasions, on very rare occasions, I did meet rare souls or fools like me with whom I could spend magnificent hours among the stars or in the paradise of fools. I was married to a rare soul or a fool who never bored me and who was always a source of new and unending surprise and delight. But I could not spend all my hours solely in her company, nor would it have been fair nor wise to compel her to spend all her hours in my company. Besides, I had written a string of successful books and society demands some portion of the recreative hours of a fellow that writes books. And any normal man of himself and his needs demands some hours of his fellow men. And now we begin to come to it. How to face the social intercourse game with the glamour gone? John Barleycorn The ever-patient one had waited a quarter of a century and more for me to reach my hand out in need of him. His thousand tricks had failed, thanks to my constitution and good luck, but he had more tricks in his bag. A cocktail or two, or several, I found, cheered me up for the foolishness of foolish people. A cocktail or several before dinner enabled me to laugh wholeheartedly at things which had long since ceased being laughable. The cocktail was a prod, a spur, a kick to my jaded mind and bored spirits. It recredest the laughter and the song and put a lilt into my own imagination so that I could laugh and sing and say foolish things with the liveliest of them, or platitudes with verve and intensity to the satisfaction of the pompous, mediocre ones who knew no other way to talk. A poor companion without a cocktail I became a very good companion with one. I achieved a false exhilaration, drugged myself to merriment, and the thing began so imperceptibly that I, old intimate of John Barleycorn, never dreamed wither it was leading me. I was beginning to call for music and wine. Soon I should be calling for matter music and more wine. It was at this time I became aware of waiting with expectancy for the pre-dinner cocktail. I wanted it, and I was conscious that I wanted it. I remember, while war corresponding in the Far East, of being irresistibly attracted to a certain home. Besides accepting all invitation to dinner, I made a point of dropping in almost every afternoon. Now the hostess was a charming woman, but it was not for her sake that I was under her roof so frequently. It happened that she made by far the finest cocktail procurable in that large city where drink mixing on the part of the foreign population was indeed an art. Up at the club, down at the hotels, and in other private houses, no such cocktails were created. Her cocktails were subtle. They were masterpieces. They were the least repulsive to the palette and carried the most kick. And yet I desired her cocktails only for sociability's sake to key myself to sociable moods. When I rode away from that city across hundreds of miles of rice fields and mountains, and through months of campaigning and on with the victorious Japanese into Manchuria, I did not drink. Several bottles of whiskey were always to be found on the backs of my pack horses. Yet I never broached a bottle for myself, never took a drink by myself, and never knew a desire to take such a drink. Oh, if a white man came into my camp, I opened a bottle, and we drank together according to the way of men. Just as he would open a bottle and drink with me if I came into his camp. I carried that whiskey for social purposes, and I so charged it up to my expense account to the newspaper for which I worked. Only in retrospect can I mark the almost imperceptible growth of my desire. There were little hints then that I did not take, little straws in the wind that I did not see, little incidents the gravity of which I did not realize. For instance, for some years it had been my practice each winter to cruise for six or eight weeks on San Francisco Bay. My stout sloop yacht, the Spray, had a comfortable cabin and a coal stove. A Korean boy did the cooking, and I usually took a friend or so along to share the joys of the cruise. Also, I took my machine along and did my thousand words a day. On the particular trip I have in mind, Cloudsley and Toddy came along. This was Toddy's first trip. On previous trips Cloudsley had elected to drink beer, so I had kept the yacht supplied with beer and had drunk beer with him. But on this cruise the situation was different. Toddy was so nicknamed because of his diabolical cleverness in concocting Toddy's. So I brought whiskey along, a couple of gallons. Alas, many another gallon I bought. For Cloudsley and I got into the habit of drinking a certain hot Toddy that actually tasted delicious going down and that carried the most exhilarating kick imaginable. I liked those Toddies. I grew to look forward to the making of them. We drank them regularly, one before breakfast, one before dinner, one before supper, and a final one when we went to bed. We never got drunk, but I will say that four times a day we were very genial. And when, in the middle of the cruise, Toddy was called back to San Francisco on business, Cloudsley and I saw to it that the Korean boy mixed Toddy's regularly for us according to formula. But that was only on the boat. Back on the land in my house I took no breakfast eye-opener, no bed-going nightcap, and I haven't drunk hot Toddy's since, and that was many a year ago. But the point is, I liked those Toddies. The geniality of which they were provocative was marvelous. They were eloquent proselytites for John Barleycorn in their own small insidious way. They were tickles of the something destined to grow into daily and deadly desire. And I didn't know. Never dreamed. I, who had lived with John Barleycorn for so many years and laughed at all his unavailing attempts to win me. Chapter 30 Part of the process of recovering from my long sickness was to find a light in little things, in things unconnected with books and problems, in play, in games of tag in the swimming pool, in flying kites, in fooling with horses, in working out mechanical puzzles. As a result, I grew tired of the city. On the ranch, in the valley of the moon, I found my paradise. I gave up living in cities. All the cities held for me were music, the theater, and Turkish baths. And all went well with me. I worked hard, played hard, and was very happy. I read more fiction and less fact. I did not study a tithe as much as I had studied in the past. I still took an interest in the fundamental problems of existence, but it was a very cautious interest. For I had burned my fingers that time I clutched at the veils of truth and wrestled them from her. There was a bit of lie in this attitude of mine, a bit of hypocrisy, but the lie and the hypocrisy were those of a man desiring to live. I deliberately blinded myself to what I took to be the savage interpretation of biological fact. After all, I was merely forswearing a bad habit, foregoing a bad frame of mind. And I repeat, I was very happy. And I add that in all my days measuring them with cold, considerative judgment, this was far and away beyond all other periods the happiest period of my life. But the time was at hand rimless and reasonless so far as I can see when I was to begin to pay for my score of years of dallying with John Barley-Corn. Occasionally guest journey to the ranch and remained a few days. Some did not drink. But to those who did drink the absence of all alcohol on the ranch was a hardship. I could not violate my sense of hospitality by compelling them to endure this hardship. I ordered in a stock for my guests. I was never interested enough in cocktails to know how they were made. So I got a barkeeper in Oakland to make them in bulk and ship them to me. When I had no guests I didn't drink. But I began to notice when I finished my morning's work that I was glad if there was a guest for then I could drink a cocktail with him. Now I was so clean of alcohol that even a single cocktail was provocative of pitch. A single cocktail would glow the mind and tickle a laugh for the few minutes prior to sitting down to table and starting the delightful process of eating. On the other hand, such was the strength of my stomach, of my alcoholic resistance that the single cocktail was only the glimmer of a glow, the faintest tickle of a laugh. One day a friend frankly and shamelessly suggested a second cocktail. I drank the second with him. The glow was appreciably longer and warmer, the laughter deeper and more resonant. One does not forget such experiences. Sometime I almost think that it was because I was so very happy that I started on my real drinking. I remember one day Charmian and I took a long ride over the mountains on our horses. The servants had been dismissed for the day and we returned late at night to a jolly chafing-dish supper. Oh, it was good to be alive that night while the supper was preparing. The two of us alone in the kitchen, I personally was at the top of life. Such things as the books and ultimate truth did not exist. My body was gloriously healthy and healthily tired from the long ride. It had been a splendid day. The night was splendid. I was with the woman who was my mate, picnicking in gleeful abandon. I had no troubles. The bills were all paid and a surplus of money was rolling in on me. The future ever widened before me. And right there, in the kitchen, delicious things bubbled in the chafing-dish, our laughter bubbled and my stomach was keen with a most delicious edge of appetite. I felt so good that somehow, somewhere, in me arose an insatiable greed to feel better. I was so happy that I wanted to pitch my happiness even higher. And I knew the way. Ten thousand contacts with John Barleycorn had taught me. Several times I wandered out of the kitchen to the cocktail bottle and each time I left it diminished by one man's size cocktail. The result was splendid. I wasn't jingled. I wasn't lighted up. But I was warmed. I glowed. My happiness was pyramided. Munificent as life was to me, I added to that munificence. It was a great hour, one of my greatest. But I paid for it long afterwards as you will see. One does not forget such experiences and in human stupidity cannot be brought to realize that there is no immutable law which decrees that same things shall produce same results. For they don't. Else would the thousandth pipe of opium be provocative of similar delights to the first. Else would one cocktail instead of several produce an equivalent glow after a year of cocktails. One day just before I ate midday dinner after my morning's writing was done when I had no guest I took a cocktail by myself. Thereafter when there were no guests I took this daily pre-dinner cocktail and right there John Barley Corn had me. I was beginning to drink regularly. I was beginning to drink alone. And I was beginning to drink not for hospitality's sake not for the sake of the taste but for the effect of the drink. I wanted that daily pre-dinner cocktail and it never crossed my mind that there was any reason I should not have it. I paid for it. I could pay for a thousand cocktails each day if I wanted. And what was a cocktail? One cocktail. To me who had on so many occasions for so many years had drunk inordinate quantities of stiffer stuff and been unharmed. The program of my ranch life was as follows each morning at 8.30 having been reading or correcting proofs in bed since four or five I went to my desk. Odds and ends of correspondence and notes occupied me till nine and at nine sharp invariably I began my writing. By eleven sometimes a few minutes earlier or later my thousand words were finished. Another half hour at cleaning up my desk and my day's work was done so that 11.30 I got into a hammock under the trees with my mail bag and the morning newspaper. At 12.30 I ate dinner and in the afternoon I swam and rode. One morning at 11.30 before I got into the hammock I took a cocktail. I repeated this on subsequent mornings of course taking another cocktail just before I ate at 12.30 Soon I found myself seated at my desk in the midst of my thousand words looking forward to that 11.30 cocktail. At last now I was thoroughly conscious that I desired alcohol. But what of it? I wasn't afraid of John Barleycorn. I had associated with him too long. I was wise in the matter of drink. I was discreet. Never again would I drink to excess. I knew the dangers and the pitfalls of John Barleycorn the various ways by which he had tried to kill me in the past. But all that was past. Long past. Never again would I drink myself to stupefaction. Never again would I get drunk. All I wanted and all I would take was just enough to glow and warm me to kick geniality alive in me and put laughter in my throat and stir the maggots of imagination slightly in my brain. Oh, I was thoroughly master of myself and of John Barleycorn. End of Chapter 30 Chapters 31 and 32 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 31 But the same stimulus to the human organism will not continue to produce the same response. By and by I discovered there was no kick at all in one cocktail. One cocktail left me dead. There was no glow, no laughter tickle. Two or three cocktails were required to produce the original effect of one and I wanted that effect. I drank my first cocktail at eleven thirty when I took the morning's mail into the hammock and I drank my second cocktail an hour later just before I ate. I got into the habit of crawling out of the hammock ten minutes earlier so as to find time and decency for two more cocktails ere I ate. This became schedule. Three cocktails in the hour that intervened between my desk and dinner. And these are two of the deadliest drinking habits regular drinking and solitary drinking. I was always willing to drink when anyone was around. I drank by myself when no one was around. Then I made another step. When I had for a guest a man of limited drinking caliber I took two drinks to his one. One drink with him the other drink without him and of which he did not know. I stole that other drink and worse than that I began the habit of drinking alone when there was a guest a man, a comrade with whom I could have drunk. But John Barley-Corn furnished the extenuation. It was a wrong thing to trip a guest up with excess of hospitality and get him drunk. If I persuaded him with his limited caliber into drinking up with me I'd surely get him drunk. What could I do but steal that every second drink or else deny myself the kick equivalent to what he got out of half the number. Please remember as I recite this development of my drinking that I am no fool, no weakling. As the world measures such things I am a success. I dare to say a success more conspicuous than the success of the average successful man and a success that required a pretty fair amount of brains and willpower. My body is a strong body. It has survived where weaklings died like flies. And yet these things which I am relating happened to my body and to me. I am a fact. My drinking is a fact. My drinking is a thing that has happened and is not theory nor speculation. And as I see it it but lays the emphasis on the power of John Barley corn. A savagery that we still permit to exist. A deadly institution that lingers from the mad old brutal days and that takes its heavy toll of youth and strength and high spirit and of very much of all of the best we breed. To return after a boisterous afternoon in the swimming pool followed by a glorious ride on horseback over the mountains or up or down the valley of the moon I found myself so keyed and splendid that I desired to be more highly keyed to feel more splendid. I knew the way. A cocktail before supper was not the way. Two or three, at the very least was what was needed. I took them. Why not? It was living. I had always dearly loved to live. This also became part of the daily schedule. Then too I was perpetually finding excuses for extra cocktails. It might be the assembling of a particularly jolly crowd. A touch of anger against my architect or against a thieving stone mason working on my barn. The death of my favorite horse in a barbed wire fence. Or news of good fortune in the morning mail from my dealings with editors and publishers. It was immaterial what the excuse might be. Once the desire had germinated in me the thing was I wanted alcohol. At last, after a score and more of years of dallying and of not wanting now I wanted it. And my strength was my weakness. I required two, three or four drinks to get an effect commensurate with the effect the average man got out of one drink. One rule I observed. I never took a drink until my day's work of writing a thousand words was done. And when done the cocktails reared a wall of inhibition in my brain between the day's work done and the rest of the day of fun to come. My work ceased from my consciousness. No thought of it flickered in my brain till next morning at nine o'clock when I sat at my desk and began my next thousand words. This was a desirable condition of mine to achieve. I conserved my energy by means of this alcoholic inhibition. John Barleycorn was not so black as he was painted. He did a fellow many a good turn and this was one of them. And I turned out work that was helpful and wholesome and sincere. It was never pessimistic the way of life I had learned in my long sickness. I knew the illusions were right and I exalted the illusions. Oh, I still turn out the same sort of work stuff that is clean, alive, optimistic and that makes toward life. And I am always assured by the critics of my superabundant and abounding vitality and of how thoroughly I am deluded by these very illusions I exploit. And while on this digression let me repeat the question I have repeated to myself ten thousand times. Why did I drink? What need was there for it? I was happy. Was it because I was too happy? I was strong. Was it because I was too strong? Did I possess too much vitality? I don't know why I drank. I cannot answer though I can voice the suspicion that ever grows in me. I had been in too familiar contact with John Barley Corn through too many years. A left-handed man by long practice can become a right-handed man. Had I a non-alcoholic by long practice become an alcoholic? I was so happy. I had won through my long sickness to the satisfying love of woman. I earned more money with less endeavor. I glowed with health. I slept like a babe. I continued to write successful books and in sociological controversy I saw my opponents confuted with the facts of the times that daily reared new buttresses to my intellectual position. From day's end to day's end I never knew sorrow, disappointment, nor regret. I was happy all the time. Life was one unending song. I begrudged the very hours of blessed sleep because by that much was I robbed of the joy that would have been mine had I remained awake. And yet I drank. And John Barley Corn, all unguessed by me, was setting the stage for a sickness all his own. The more I drank, the more I was required to drink to get an equivalent effect. When I left the valley of the moon and went to the city and dined out, a cocktail served at table was a worn and worthless thing. There was no pre-dinner kicking it. On my way to dinner I was compelled to accumulate the kick. Two cocktails, three, and if I met some fellows, four or five or six, it didn't matter within several. Once I was in a rush I had no time decently to accumulate the several drinks. A brilliant idea came to me. I told the barkeeper to mix me a double cocktail. Thereafter, whenever I was in a hurry, I ordered double cocktails. It saved time. One result of this regular heavy drinking was to jade me. My mind grew so accustomed to spring and liven by artificial means that without artificial means it refused to spring and liven. Alcohol became more and more imperative in order to meet people, in order to become sociably fit. I had to get the kick and the hit of the stuff, the crawl of the maggots, the genial brain glow, the laughter tickle, the touch of devilishness and sting, the smile over the face of things, ere I could join my fellows and make one with them. Another result was that John Barley Corn was beginning to trip me up. He was thrusting my long sickness back upon me, invagaling me into again pursuing truth and snatching her veils away from her, tricking me into looking reality stark in the face. But this came on gradually. My thoughts were growing harsh again, though they grew harsh slowly. Sometimes warning thoughts crossed my mind. Where was this steady drinking leading? But trust John Barley Corn to silence such questions. Come on and have a drink, and I'll tell you all about it, is his way. And it works. For instance, the following is a case in point, and one which John Barley Corn never wearied of reminding me. I had suffered an accident which required a ticklish operation. One morning, a week after I had come off the table, I lay on my hospital bed weak and weary. The sunburn of my face, what little of it could be seen through a scraggly growth of beard, had faded to a sickly yellow. My doctor stood at my bedside on the verge of departure. He glared disapprovingly at the cigarette I was smoking. That's what you ought to quit, he lectured. It will get you in the end. I looked. He was about my own age, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, eyes sparkling and ready-cheeked with health. A finer specimen of manhood one would not ask. I used to smoke, he went on. Cigars, but I gave even them up, and look at me. The man was arrogant and rightly arrogant. With conscious well-being. And within a month he was dead. It was no accident. Half a dozen different bugs of long scientific names had attacked and destroyed him. The complications were astonishing and painful. And for days before he died, the screams of agony of that splendid manhood could be heard for a block around. He died screaming. You see, said John Barley-Corn, he took care of himself. He even stopped smoking cigars. And that's what he got for it. Pretty rotten, eh? But the bugs will jump. There's no forefending them. Your magnificent doctor took every precaution yet they got him. When the bug jumps, you can't tell where it will land. It may be you. Look what he missed. Will you miss all I can give you only to have a bug jump on you and drag you down? There is no equity in life. It's all a lottery. But I put the lying smile on the face of life and laugh at the facts. Smile with me and laugh. You'll get yours in the end, but in the meantime, laugh. It's a pretty dark world. I illuminate it for you. It's a rotten world when things can happen such as happened to your doctor. There's only one thing to do. Take another drink and forget it. And, of course, I took another drink for the inhibition that accompanied it. I took another drink every time John Barley Corn reminded me of what had happened. Yet I drank rationally, intelligently. I saw to it that the quality of the stuff was of the best. I sought the kick and the inhibition and avoided the penalties of poor quality and of drunkenness. It is to be remarked in passing that when a man begins to drink rationally and intelligently that he betrays a grave symptom of how far along the road he has traveled. But I continued to observe my rule of never taking my first drink of the day until the last word of my thousand words was written. On occasion, however, I took a day's vacation from my writing. At such times, since it was no violation of my rule, I didn't mind how early in the day I took that first drink. And persons who have never been through the drinking game wonder how the drinking habit grows. Chapter 32 When the snark sailed on her long cruise from San Francisco, there was nothing to drink on board. Or rather, we were all of us unaware that there was anything to drink, nor did we discover it for many a month. This sailing with a dry boat was malice of forethought on my part. I had played John Barley-Corn a trick, and it showed that I was listening ever so slightly to the faint warnings that were beginning to arise in my consciousness. Of course I veiled the situation to myself and excused myself to John Barley-Corn. And I was very scientific about it. I said that I would drink only while in ports. During the dry sea stretches my system would be cleansed of the alcohol that soaked it, so that when I reached a port I should be in shape to enjoy John Barley-Corn more thoroughly. His bite would be sharper, his kick keener, and more delicious. We were twenty-seven days on the traverse between San Francisco and Honolulu. After the first day out the thought of a drink never troubled me. This I take to show how intrinsically I am not an alcoholic. Sometimes during the traverse looking ahead and anticipating the delightful LANE luncheons and dinners of Hawaii, I had been there a couple of times before, I thought naturally of the drinks that would precede those meals. I did not think of those drinks with any yearning, with any irk at the length of the voyage. I merely thought they would be nice and jolly, part of the atmosphere of a proper meal. Thus once again I proved to my complete satisfaction that I was John Barley-Corn's master. I could drink when I wanted, refrain when I wanted. Therefore I would continue to drink when I wanted. Some five months were spent in the various islands of the Hawaiian group. Being ashore, I drank. I even drank a bit more than I had been accustomed to drink in California prior to the voyage. The people of Hawaii seem to drink a bit more on the average than the people in more temperate latitudes. I do not intend to pun and can awkwardly revise the statement to, latitudes more remote from the equator. Yet Hawaii is only subtropical. The deeper I got into the tropics, the deeper I found men drank. The deeper I drank myself. From Hawaii we sailed for the marquesas. The traverse occupied sixty days. For sixty days we never raised land a sail nor a steamer smoke. But early in those sixty days the cook, giving an overhauling to the galley, made a find. Down in the bottom of a deep locker he found a dozen bottles of angelica and muscatel. These had come down from the kitchen cellar of the ranch along with the home preserved fruits and jellies. Six months in the galley heat had affected some sort of a change in the thick sweet wine. I imagined. I took a taste. Delicious! And thereafter, once each day at twelve o'clock, after our observations were worked up and the snarks position charted I drank half a tumbler of the stuff. It had a rare kick to it. It warmed the cockles of my geniality and put a fairer face on the truly fair face of the sea. Each morning below sweating out my thousand words I found myself looking forward to that twelve o'clock event of the day. The trouble was I had to share the stuff and the length of the traverse was doubtful. I regretted that there were more than a dozen bottles. And when they were gone I even regretted that I had shared any of it. I was thirsty for the alcohol and eager to arrive in the marqueses. So it was that I reached the marqueses the possessor of a real man's size thirst. And in the marqueses were several white men, a lot of sickly natives, much magnificent scenery, plenty of trade rum, and immense quantity of absinthe, but neither whiskey nor gin. The trade rum scorched the skin off one's mouth. I know because I tried it. But I had ever been plastic and accepted the absinthe. The trouble with the stuff was that I had to take such inordinate quantities in order to feel the slightest effect. From the marqueses I sailed with sufficient absinthe in ballast to last me to Tahiti, where I outfitted with scotch and American whiskey. And thereafter there were no dry stretches between ports. But please do not misunderstand. There was no drunkenness, as drunkenness is ordinarily understood. No staggering enrolling around, no befuddlement of the senses. The skilled and seasoned drinker with a strong constitution never descends to anything like that. He drinks to feel good, to get a pleasant jingle, and no more than that. The things he carefully avoids are the nausea of overdrinking, the after-effect of overdrinking, the helplessness and loss of pride of overdrinking. What the skilled and seasoned drinker achieves is a discreet and canny semi-intoxication. And he does it by the twelve-month around without any apparent penalty. There are hundreds of thousands of men of this sort in the United States today, in clubs, hotels, and in their own homes. Men who are never drunk and who, though most of them will indignantly deny it, are rarely sober, and all of them fondly believe, as I fondly believed, that they are beating the game. On the sea stretches I was fairly abstemious, but ashore I drank more. I seemed to need more anyway in the tropics. This is a common experience because excessive consumption of alcohol in the tropics by white men is a notorious fact. The tropics is no place for white-skinned men. Their skin pigment does not protect them against the excessive white light of the sun. The alternate violet rays and other high-velocity and invisible rays from the upper end of the spectrum rip and tear through their tissues, just as the x-ray ripped and tore through the tissues of so many experimenters before they learned the danger. White men in the tropics undergo radical changes of nature. They become savage, merciless. They commit monstrous acts of cruelty that they would never dream of committing in their original temperate climate. They become nervous, irritable, and less moral. And they drink as they never drank before. Drinking is one form of the many forms of degeneration that's set in when white men are exposed too long to too much white light. The increase of alcoholic consumption is automatic. The tropics is no place for a long sojourn. They seem doomed to die anyway and the heavy drinking expedites the progress. They don't reason about it, they just do it. The sun-sickness got me despite the fact that I had been in the tropics for only a couple of years. I drank heavily during this time, but right here I wished to forestall misunderstanding. The drinking was not the cause of the sickness nor of the abandonment of the voyage. I was strong as a bull and for many months I fought the sun-sickness and tearing my surface and nervous tissues to pieces. All through the new hebrides and the solomons and up among the atolls on the line during this period under a tropic sun rotten with malaria and suffering from a few minor afflictions such as biblical leprosy with the silvery skin I did the work of five men. To navigate a vessel through the reefs and shoals and passages and unlighted coasts of the coral seas is a man's work in itself. I was the only navigator on board. There was no one to check me up on the working out of my observations nor with whom I could advise in the ticklish darkness among uncharted reefs and shoals. And I stood all watches. There was no seaman on board whom I could trust to stand a mate's watch. I was mate as well as captain. Twenty-four hours a day were the watches I stood at sea catching catnaps when I might. Third, I was doctor and let me say right here that the doctor's job in the snark at that time was a man's job. All on board suffered from malaria the real tropical malaria that can kill in three months. All on board suffered from perforating ulcers and from the maddening itch of Ngari Ngari. A Japanese cook went insane from his two numerous afflictions. One of my Polynesian sailors lay at death's door with black water fever. Oh yes, it was a full man's job. And I dosed and doctored and pulled teeth and dragged my patients through mild little things like tomein poisoning. Fourth, I was a writer. I sweated out my thousand words a day. Every day, except when the shock of fever smoked me or a couple of nasty squalls smoked the snark in the morning. Fifth, I was a traveler and a writer eager to see things and to gather material into my notebooks. And sixth, I was master and owner of the craft that was visiting strange places where visitors are rare and where visitors are made much of. So here I had to hold up the social end, entertain on board, be entertained ashore by planters, traders, governors, captains of war vessels, kinky-headed cannibal kings and prime ministers sometimes fortunate enough to be clad in cotton shifts. Of course I drank. I drank with my guests and hosts. Also I drank by myself. Doing the work of five men I thought and titled me to drink. Alcohol was good for a man who overworked. I noted its effect on my small crew when, breaking their backs and hearts at heaving up anchor in forty fathoms, they knocked off gasping and trembling at the end of half an hour and had new life put into them by stiff jolts of rum. They caught their breaths, wiped their mouths and went to it again with a will. And when we careened the snark and had to work in the water to our necks between shocks of fever, I noted how raw trade rum helped the work along. And here again we come to another side of many-sided John Barleycorn. On the face of it he gives something for nothing. Where no strength remains, he finds new strength. The wearied one rises to greater effort, for the time being there is an actual accession of strength. I remember passing coal on an ocean steamer through eight days of hell, during which time we coal-passers were kept to the job by being fed with whiskey. We toiled half drunk all the time. And without the whiskey we could not have passed the coal. This strength John Barleycorn gives is not fictitious strength. It is real strength. But it is manufactured out of the sources of strength. And it must ultimately be paid for and with interest. But what weary human will look so far ahead? He takes this apparently miraculous accession of strength at its face value. And many an overworked business and professional man as well as a harried common laborer has traveled John Barleycorn's death-road because of this mistake. End of Chapter 32 Chapters 33, 34 and 35 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 33 I went to Australia to go into hospital and get tinkered up, after which I planned to go on with the voyage. And during the long weeks I went to the hospital. From the first day I never missed alcohol. I never thought about it. I knew I should have it again when I was on my feet. But when I regained my feet I was not cured of my major afflictions. Naaman's silvery skin was still mine. The mysterious sun-sickness which the experts of Australia could not fathom ripped and tore my tissues. Malaria still festered in me and put me on my back in shivering delirium at the most unexpected moments, compelling me to cancel a double lecture tour which had been arranged. So I abandoned the snark voyage and sought a cooler climate. The day I came out of hospital I took up drinking again at dinner of course. I drank wine at meals. I drank cocktails before meals. I drank scotch high balls when anybody I chanced to be with was drinking them. I was so thoroughly the master of John Barleycorn I could take up with him or let go of him whenever I pleased just as I had done all my life. After a time for cooler climate I went down to southernmost Tasmania in 43 South and I found myself in a place where there was nothing to drink. It didn't mean anything. I didn't drink. It was no hardship. I soaked in the cool air, rode horseback and did my thousand words a day save when the fever shock came in the morning. And for fear that the idea may still lurk in some minds that my proceeding years of drinking were the cause of my disabilities I hear point out that my Japanese cabin boy Nakata still with me was rotten with fever as was Charmian who in addition was in the slough of a tropical Neurostenia that required several years of temperate climates to cure and that neither she nor Nakata drank or ever had drunk. When I returned to Hobartown where drink was obtainable I drank as of old the same when I arrived back in Australia on the contrary when I sailed from Australia on a tramp steamer commanded by an abstemious captain I took no drink along and had no drink for the 43 days passage arrived in Ecuador squarely under the equatorial sun where the humans were dying of yellow fever smallpox and the plague I promptly drank again every drink of every sort I kicked in it I caught none of these diseases neither did Charmian nor Nakata who did not drink unerrant of the tropics despite the damage done me I stopped in various places and was a long while getting back to the splendid temperate climate of California I did my thousand words a day traveling or stopping over suffered my last faint fever shock saw my silvery skin vanish and my sun-torn tissues healthily knit again and drank as a broad-shouldered chesty man made drink Chapter 34 Back on the ranch in the valley of the moon I resumed my steady drinking my program was no drink in the morning first drink time came with the completion of my thousand words then between that and the midday meal were drinks numerous enough to develop a pleasant jingle again in the hour preceding the evening meal I developed another pleasant jingle nobody ever saw me drunk for the simple reason that I never was drunk but I did get a jingle twice each day and the amount of alcohol I consumed every day if loosed in the system of one uncustom to drink would have put such a one on his back and out it was the old proposition the more I drank the more I was compelled to drink in order to get in effect the time came when cocktails were inadequate I had neither the time in which to drink them nor the space to accommodate them whiskey had a more powerful jolt it gave quicker action with less quantity bourbon or rye or cunningly aged blends constituted the pre-midday drinking in the afternoon it was scotch and soda my sleep always excellent now became not quite so excellent I had been accustomed to read myself back asleep when I chanced to awake but now this began to fail me when I had read two or three of the small hours away and was as wide awake as ever I found that a drink furnished the soporific effect sometimes two or three drinks were required so short a period of sleep then intervened before early morning rising that my system did not have time to work off the alcohol as a result I awoke with mouth parched and dry with a slight heaviness of head and with a mild nervous palpitation in the stomach in fact I did not feel good I was suffering from the morning sickness of the steady heavy drinker what I needed was a pick me up a bracer trust John Barley corn once he has broken down a man's defenses so it was a drink before breakfast to put me right for breakfast the old poison of the snake that has bitten one another custom began at this time was that of the pitcher of water by the bedside to furnish relief to my scorched and sizzling membranes I achieved a condition in which my body was never free from alcohol nor did I permit myself to be away from alcohol if I traveled to out-of-the-way places I declined to run the risk of finding them dry I took a court or several courts along in my grip in the past I had been amazed by other men guilty of this practice now I did it myself unblushingly and when I got out with the fellows I cast all rules by the board I drank when they drank what they drank and in the same way as they drank I was carrying a beautiful alcoholic conflagration around with me the thing fed on its own heat and flamed the fiercer there was no time in all my waking time that I didn't want a drink I began to anticipate the completion of my daily thousand words by taking a drink when only 500 words were written it was not long until I prefaced the beginning of the thousand words with a drink the gravity of this I realized too well I made new rules resolutely I would refrain from drinking until my work was done but a new and most diabolical complication arose the work refused to be done without drinking it just couldn't be done I had to drink in order to do it I was beginning to fight now I had the craving at last and it was mastering me I would sit at my desk and dally with pad and pen but words refused to flow my brain could not think the proper thoughts because continually it was obsessed with the one thought that across the room in the liquor cabinet stood John Barley corn when in despair I took my drink at once my brain loosened up and began to roll off the thousand words in my townhouse in Oakland I finished the stock of liquor and willfully refused to purchase more it was no use because fortunately there remained in the bottom of the liquor cabinet a case of beer in vain I tried to write now beer is a poor substitute for strong waters besides I didn't like beer yet all I could think of was that beer so singularly accessible in the bottom of the cabinet not until I had drunk a pint of it did the words begin to reel off and the thousand were reeled off to the tune of numerous pints the worst of it was that the beer caused me severe heartburn but despite the discomfort I soon finished off the case the liquor cabinet was now bare not replenish it by truly heroic perseverance I finally forced myself to write the daily thousand words without the spur of John Barley coin but all the time I wrote I was keenly aware of the craving for a drink and as soon as the morning's work was done I was out of the house and away downtown to get my first drink merciful goodness if John Barley could get such sway over me a non-alcoholic what must be the sufferings of the true alcoholic battling against the organic demands of his chemistry while those closest to him sympathize little understand less and despise and deride him Chapter 35 but the freight has to be paid John Barley coin began to collect and he collected not so much from the body as from the mind the old long sickness which had been purely an intellectual sickness the old ghost long laid lifted their heads again but they were different and more deadly ghosts the old ghosts intellectual in their inception had been laid by a sane and normal logic but now they were raised by the white logic of John Barley coin and John Barley coin never lays the ghosts of his raising for this sickness of pessimism caused by drink one must drink further in quest of the anodyne that John Barley coin promises but never delivers how to describe this white logic to those who have never experienced it it is perhaps better to state how impossible such a description is take hashish land for instance the land of enormous extensions of time and space in past years I have made two memorable journeys into that far land my adventures there are seared in sharpest detail on my brain yet I have tried vainly with endless words to describe any tiny particular phase to persons who have not traveled there I use all the hyperbole of metaphor and tell what centuries to time and profounds of unthinkable agony and horror can obtain in each interval of all the intervals between the notes of a quick jig played quickly on the piano I talk for an hour elaborating that one phase of hashish land and at the end I have told them nothing and when I cannot tell them this one thing of all the vastness of terrible and wonderful things I know I have failed to give them the slightest concept of hashish land but let me talk with some other traveler in that weird region and at once am I understood a phrase, a word conveys instantly to his mind what hours of words and phrases could not convey to the mind of the non-traveler so it is with John Barley Corn's realm where the white logic reigns to those untraveled there the traveler's account must always seem unintelligible and fantastic at the best I may only beg of the untraveled ones to strive to take on faith the narrative I shall relate for there are fatal intuitions of truth that reside in alcohol Philip Solber vouches for Philip drunk in this matter there seem to be various orders of truth in this world some sorts of truth are truer than others some sorts of truth are lies and these sorts are the very ones that have the greatest use value of life that desires to realize and live at once oh untraveled reader you see how lunatic and blasphemous is the realm I am trying to describe to you in the language of John Barley Corn's tribe it is not the language of your tribe all of whose members resolutely shun the roads that lead to death and tread only the roads that lead to life for there are roads and roads and of truth there are orders and orders but have patience at least through what seems no more than verbal yammerings you may per chance glimpse faint far vistas of other lands and tribes alcohol tells truth but its truth is not normal what is normal is healthful what is healthful tends towards life normal truth is a different order and a lesser order of truth take a drae horse through all the vicissitudes of its life from first to last somehow in unguessably dim days it must believe that life is good that the drudgery in harness is good that death no matter how blind instinctively apprehended is a dread giant that life is beneficent and worthwhile that in the end with fading life it will not be knocked about and beaten and urged beyond and sprained and spavoned best that old age even is decent dignified and valuable though old age means a ribby scare crow in a hawker's cart stumbling a step to every blow stumbling dizzily on through merciless servitude and slow disintegration to the end the apportionment of its parts of its subtle flesh its pink and springy bone its juices and ferments and all the sensateness that informed it to the chicken farm the hide house the glue rendering works and the bone meal fertilizer factory to the last stumble of its stumbling end this drae horse must abide by the mandates of the lesser truth that is the truth of life and that makes life possible to persist this drae horse like all other horses like all other animals including man is life blinded and sense struck it will live no matter what the price the game of life is good though all of life may be hurt and though all lives lose the game in the end this is the order of truth that obtains not for the universe but for the live things in it if they for a little space will endure ere they pass this order of truth no matter how erroneous it may be is the sane and normal order of truth the rational order of truth that life must believe in order to live to man alone among the animals has been given the awful privilege of reason man with his brain can penetrate the intoxicating show of things and look upon the universe brazen with indifference toward him and his dreams he can do this but it is not well for him to do it to live and live abundantly to sting with life to be alive which is to be what he is it is good that man be life blinded and sense struck what is good is true and this is the order of truth lesser though it be that man must know and guide his actions by with unswerving certitude that it is absolute truth and that in the universe no other order of truth can obtain it is good that man accept at face value the cheats of sense and snares of flesh and through the fogs of sentiency pursue the lures and lies of passion it is good that he shall see neither shadows nor futilities nor be appalled by his lusts and rapacities and man does this countless men have glimpsed that other and truer order of truth and recoiled from it countless men have passed through the long sickness and lived to tell of it and deliberately to forget it to the end of their days they lived they realized life for life is what they were they did right now comes John Barley corn with the curse he lays upon the imaginative man who is lusty with life and desire to live John Barley corn sends his white logic the Argent messenger of truth beyond truth the antithesis of life cruel and bleak as interstellar space pulseless and frozen as absolute zero dazzling with the frost of irrefragable logic and unforgettable fact John Barley corn will not let the dreamer dream the liver live he destroys birth and death and dissipates to mist the paradox of being until his victim cries out as in the city of dreadful night our life's a cheat our death a black abyss and the feet of the victim of such dreadful intimacy take hold of the way of death End of Chapter 35