But behold! As soon as I went out on the adventure-path I met John
Barleycorn again. I moved through a world of strangers, and the act of
drinking together made one acquainted with men and opened the way to
adventures. It might be in a saloon with jingled townsmen, or with a
genial railroad man well lighted up and armed with pocket flasks, or with
a bunch of alki stiffs in a hang-out. Yes; and it might be in a
prohibition state, such as Iowa was in 1894, when I wandered up the main
street of Des Moines and was variously invited by strangers into various
blind pigs--I remember drinking in barber-shops, plumbing establishments,
and furniture stores.
Always it was John Barleycorn. Even a tramp, in those halcyon days,
could get most frequently drunk. I remember, inside the prison at
Buffalo, how some of us got magnificently jingled, and how, on the
streets of Buffalo after our release, another jingle was financed with
pennies begged on the main-drag.
I had no call for alcohol, but when I was with those who drank, I drank
with them. I insisted on travelling or loafing with the livest, keenest
men, and it was just these live, keen ones that did most of the drinking.
They were the more comradely men, the more venturous, the more
individual. Perhaps it was too much temperament that made them turn from
the commonplace and humdrum to find relief in the lying and fantastic
sureties of John Barleycorn. Be that as it may, the men I liked best,
desired most to be with, were invariably to be found in John Barleycorn's
company.
In the course of my tramping over the United States I achieved a new
concept. As a tramp, I was behind the scenes of society--aye, and down
in the cellar. I could watch the machinery work. I saw the wheels of
the social machine go around, and I learned that the dignity of manual
labour wasn't what I had been told it was by the teachers, preachers, and
politicians. The men without trades were helpless cattle. If one
learned a trade, he was compelled to belong to a union in order to work
at his trade. And his union was compelled to bully and slug the
employers' unions in order to hold up wages or hold down hours. The
employers' unions like-wise bullied and slugged. I couldn't see any
dignity at all. And when a workman got old, or had an accident, he was
thrown into the scrap-heap like any worn-out machine. I saw too many of
this sort who were making anything but dignified ends of life.
So my new concept was that manual labour was undignified, and that it
didn't pay. No trade for me, was my decision, and no superintendent's
daughters. And no criminality, I also decided. That would be almost as
disastrous as to be a labourer. Brains paid, not brawn, and I resolved
never again to offer my muscles for sale in the brawn market. Brain, and
brain only, would I sell.
I returned to California with the firm intention of developing my brain.
This meant school education. I had gone through the grammar school long
ago, so I entered the Oakland High School. To pay my way I worked as a
janitor. My sister helped me, too; and I was not above mowing anybody's
lawn or taking up and beating carpets when I had half a day to spare. I
was working to get away from work, and I buckled down to it with a grim
realisation of the paradox.
Boy and girl love was left behind, and, along with it, Haydee and Louis
Shattuck, and the early evening strolls. I hadn't the time. I joined
the Henry Clay Debating Society. I was received into the homes of some
of the members, where I met nice girls whose skirts reached the ground.
I dallied with little home clubs wherein we discussed poetry and art and
the nuances of grammar. I joined the socialist local where we studied
and orated political economy, philosophy, and politics. I kept half a
dozen membership cards working in the free library and did an immense
amount of collateral reading.
And for a year and a half on end I never took a drink, nor thought of
taking a drink. I hadn't the time, and I certainly did not have the
inclination. Between my janitor-work, my studies, and innocent
amusements such as chess, I hadn't a moment to spare. I was discovering
a new world, and such was the passion of my exploration that the old
world of John Barleycorn held no inducements for me.
Come to think of it, I did enter a saloon. I went to see Johnny Heinhold
in the Last Chance, and I went to borrow money. And right here is
another phase of John Barleycorn. Saloon-keepers are notoriously good
fellows. On an average they perform vastly greater generosities than do
business men. When I simply had to have ten dollars, desperate, with no
place to turn, I went to Johnny Heinhold. Several years had passed since
I had been in his place or spent a cent across his bar. And when I went
to borrow the ten dollars I didn't buy a drink, either. And Johnny
Heinhold let me have the ten dollars without security or interest.
More than once, in the brief days of my struggle for an education, I went
to Johnny Heinhold to borrow money. When I entered the university, I
borrowed forty dollars from him, without interest, without security,
without buying a drink. And yet--and here is the point, the custom, and
the code--in the days of my prosperity, after the lapse of years, I have
gone out of my way by many a long block to spend across Johnny Heinhold's
bar deferred interest on the various loans. Not that Johnny Heinhold
asked me to do it, or expected me to do it. I did it, as I have said, in
obedience to the code I had learned along with all the other things
connected with John Barleycorn. In distress, when a man has no other
place to turn, when he hasn't the slightest bit of security which a
savage-hearted pawn-broker would consider, he can go to some
saloon-keeper he knows. Gratitude is inherently human. When the man so
helped has money again, depend upon it that a portion will be spent
across the bar of the saloon-keeper who befriended him.
Why, I recollect the early days of my writing career, when the small sums
of money I earned from the magazines came with tragic irregularity, while
at the same time I was staggering along with a growing family--a wife,
children, a mother, a nephew, and my Mammy Jennie and her old husband
fallen on evil days. There were two places at which I could borrow
money; a barber shop and a saloon. The barber charged me five per cent.
per month in advance. That is to say, when I borrowed one hundred
dollars, he handed me ninety-five. The other five dollars he retained as
advance interest for the first month. And on the second month I paid him
five dollars more, and continued so to do each month until I made a ten
strike with the editors and lifted the loan.
The other place to which I came in trouble was the saloon. This
saloon-keeper I had known by sight for a couple of years. I had never
spent my money in his saloon, and even when I borrowed from him I didn't
spend any money. Yet never did he refuse me any sum I asked of him.
Unfortunately, before I became prosperous, he moved away to another city.
And to this day I regret that he is gone. It is the code I have learned.
The right thing to do, and the thing I'd do right now did I know where he
is, would be to drop in on occasion and spend a few dollars across his
bar for old sake's sake and gratitude.
This is not to exalt saloon-keepers. I have written it to exalt the
power of John Barleycorn and to illustrate one more of the myriad ways by
which a man is brought in contact with John Barleycorn until in the end
he finds he cannot get along without him.
But to return to the run of my narrative. Away from the adventure-path,
up to my ears in study, every moment occupied, I lived oblivious to John
Barleycorn's existence. Nobody about me drank. If any had drunk, and
had they offered it to me, I surely would have drunk. As it was, when I
had spare moments I spent them playing chess, or going with nice girls
who were themselves students, or in riding a bicycle whenever I was
fortunate enough to have it out of the pawnbroker's possession.
What I am insisting upon all the time is this: in me was not the
slightest trace of alcoholic desire, and this despite the long and severe
apprenticeship I had served under John Barleycorn. I had come back from
the other side of life to be delighted with this Arcadian simplicity of
student youths and student maidens. Also, I had found my way into the
realm of the mind, and I was intellectually intoxicated. (Alas! as I was
to learn at a later period, intellectual intoxication too, has its
katzenjammer.)