Out in the country, at the Belmont Academy, I went to work in a small,
perfectly appointed steam laundry. Another fellow and myself did all the
work from sorting and washing to ironing the white shirts, collars and
cuffs, and the "fancy starch" of the wives of the professors. We worked
like tigers, especially as summer came on and the academy boys took to
the wearing of duck trousers. It consumes a dreadful lot of time to iron
one pair of duck trousers. And there were so many pairs of them. We
sweated our way through long sizzling weeks at a task that was never
done; and many a night, while the students snored in bed, my partner and
I toiled on under the electric light at steam mangle or ironing board.
The hours were long, the work was arduous, despite the fact that we
became past masters in the art of eliminating waste motion. And I was
receiving thirty dollars a month and board--a slight increase over my
coal-shovelling and cannery days, at least to the extent of board, which
cost my employer little (we ate in the kitchen), but which was to me the
equivalent of twenty dollars a month. My robuster strength of added
years, my increased skill, and all I had learned from the books, were
responsible for this increase of twenty dollars. Judging by my rate of
development, I might hope before I died to be a night watchman for sixty
dollars a month, or a policeman actually receiving a hundred dollars with
pickings.
So relentlessly did my partner and I spring into our work throughout the
week that by Saturday night we were frazzled wrecks. I found myself in
the old familiar work-beast condition, toiling longer hours than the
horses toiled, thinking scarcely more frequent thoughts than horses
think. The books were closed to me. I had brought a trunkful to the
laundry, but found myself unable to read them. I fell asleep the moment
I tried to read; and if I did manage to keep my eyes open for several
pages, I could not remember the contents of those pages. I gave over
attempts on heavy study, such as jurisprudence, political economy, and
biology, and tried lighter stuff, such as history. I fell asleep. I
tried literature, and fell asleep. And finally, when I fell asleep over
lively novels, I gave up. I never succeeded in reading one book in all
the time I spent in the laundry.
And when Saturday night came, and the week's work was over until Monday
morning, I knew only one desire besides the desire to sleep, and that was
to get drunk. This was the second time in my life that I had heard the
unmistakable call of John Barleycorn. The first time it had been because
of brain-fag. But I had no over-worked brain now. On the contrary, all
I knew was the dull numbness of a brain that was not worked at all. That
was the trouble. My brain had become so alert and eager, so quickened by
the wonder of the new world the books had discovered to it, that it now
suffered all the misery of stagnancy and inaction.
And I, the long time intimate of John Barleycorn, knew just what he
promised me--maggots of fancy, dreams of power, forgetfulness, anything
and everything save whirling washers, revolving mangles, humming
centrifugal wringers, and fancy starch and interminable processions of
duck trousers moving in steam under my flying iron. And that's it. John
Barleycorn makes his appeal to weakness and failure, to weariness and
exhaustion. He is the easy way out. And he is lying all the time. He
offers false strength to the body, false elevation to the spirit, making
things seem what they are not and vastly fairer than what they are.
But it must not be forgotten that John Barleycorn is protean. As well as
to weakness and exhaustion, does he appeal to too much strength, to
superabundant vitality, to the ennui of idleness. He can tuck in his arm
the arm of any man in any mood. He can throw the net of his lure over
all men. He exchanges new lamps for old, the spangles of illusion for
the drabs of reality, and in the end cheats all who traffic with him.
I didn't get drunk, however, for the simple reason that it was a mile and
a half to the nearest saloon. And this, in turn, was because the call to
get drunk was not very loud in my ears. Had it been loud, I would have
travelled ten times the distance to win to the saloon. On the other
hand, had the saloon been just around the corner, I should have got
drunk. As it was, I would sprawl out in the shade on my one day of rest
and dally with the Sunday papers. But I was too weary even for their
froth. The comic supplement might bring a pallid smile to my face, and
then I would fall asleep.
Although I did not yield to John Barleycorn while working in the laundry,
a certain definite result was produced. I had heard the call, felt the
gnaw of desire, yearned for the anodyne. I was being prepared for the
stronger desire of later years.
And the point is that this development of desire was entirely in my
brain. My body did not cry out for alcohol. As always, alcohol was
repulsive to my body. When I was bodily weary from shovelling coal the
thought of taking a drink had never flickered into my consciousness.
When I was brain-wearied after taking the entrance examinations to the
university, I promptly got drunk. At the laundry I was suffering
physical exhaustion again, and physical exhaustion that was not nearly so
profound as that of the coal-shovelling. But there was a difference.
When I went coal-shovelling my mind had not yet awakened. Between that
time and the laundry my mind had found the kingdom of the mind. While
shovelling coal my mind was somnolent. While toiling in the laundry my
mind, informed and eager to do and be, was crucified.
And whether I yielded to drink, as at Benicia, or whether I refrained, as
at the laundry, in my brain the seeds of desire for alcohol were
germinating.