Years ago, I came upon an old and hoary tavern when I as a fashion of
refugee was flying from strong drink. Its name, as shown on the creaking
sign-board, was The Black Lion Inn. My coming was the fruit of no plan;
the hostelry was strange to me, and my arrival, casual and desultory,
one of those accidents which belong with the experiences of folk who,
whipped of a bad appetite and running from rum, are seeking only to be
solitary and win a vacation for their selfrespect. This latter commodity
in my own poor case had been sadly overworked, and called for rest and
an opportunity of recuperation. Wherefore, going quietly and without
word from the great city, I found this ancient inn with a purpose to
turn presently sober. Also by remaining secluded for a space I would
permit the memory of those recent dubious exploits of the cup to become
a bit dimmed in the bosom of my discouraged relatives.
It turned a most fortunate blunder, this blundering discovery of the
aged inn, for it was here I met the Jolly Doctor who, by saving me from
my fate of a drunkard, a fate to which I was hopelessly surrendered,
will dwell ever in my thoughts as a greatest benefactor.
There is that about an appetite for alcohol I can not understand. In my
personal instance there is reason to believe it was inherited. And yet
my own father never touched a drop and lived and died the uncompromising
enemy of the bowl. It was from my grandsire, doubtless, I had any
hankering after rum, for I have heard a sigh or two of how that dashing
military gentleman so devoted himself to it that he fairly perished for
very faithfulness as far away as eighty odd long years.
Once when my father and I were roaming the snow-filled woods with our
guns--I was a lad of twelve--having heard little of that ancestor, I
asked him what malady carried off my grandsire. My father did not reply
at once, but stalked silently ahead, rifle caught under arm, the snow
crunching beneath his heavy boots. Then he flung a sentence over his
shoulder.
“Poor whiskey more than anything else,” said my father.
Even at the unripe age of twelve I could tell how the subject was
unpleasant to my parent and did not press it. I saved my curiosity until
evening when my mother and I were alone. My mother, to whom I re-put the
query, informed me in whispers how she had been told--for she never met
him, he being dead and gone before her day--my grandsire threw away his
existence upon the bottle.
The taste for strong waters so developed in my grandsire would seem like
a quartz-ledge to have “dipped” beneath my father to strike the family
surface with all its old-time richness in myself. I state this the more
secure of its truth because I was instantly and completely a drunkard,
waiving every preliminary stage as a novice, from the moment of my first
glass.
It was my first day of the tavern when I met the Jolly Doctor. The
tavern was his home--for he lived a perilous bachelor--and had been
many years; and when, being in a shaken state, I sent down from the
apartments I had taken and requested the presence of a physician, he
came up to me. He had me right and on my feet in the course of a
few hours, and then I began to look him in the face and make his
acquaintance.
As I abode in the tavern for a considerable space, we put in many
friendly hours together. The Jolly Doctor was a round, strong, active
body of a man, virile and with an atmosphere almost hypnotic. His
forehead was good, his jaw hard, his nose arched, while his gray-blue
eyes, half sour, half humorous and deeply wise of the world, gleamed in
his head with the shine of beads.
One evening while we were together about the fireplace of my parlor, I
was for having up a bottle of sherry.
“Before you give the order,” said the Jolly Doctor, restraining me with
a friendly yet semiprofessional gesture, “let me say a word. Let me ask
whether you have an intention or even a hope of one day--no matter how
distant--quitting alcohol?” Without pausing for my answer, the Jolly
Doctor went on. “You are yet a young man; I suppose you have seen thirty
years. It has been my experience, albeit I’m but fifteen years your
senior and not therefore as old as a hill, that no man uproots a habit
after he has reached middle age. While climbing, mentally, physically,
nervously, the slope of his years and adding to, not taking from,
his strength, a man may so far re-draw himself as to make or break an
appetite--the appetite of strong drink--if you will. But let him attain
the summit of his strength, reach as it were the crest of his days and
begin to travel down the easy long descent toward the grave, and every
chance of change has perished beyond his reach. You are thirty; and to
make it short, my friend, you must, considering what bottle tendencies
lie latent within you, stop now and stop hard, or you are lost forever.”
To say I was impressed is not to exaggerate. I was frank enough to
confess, however, that privately I held no hope of change. Several years
before, I had become convinced, after a full survey of myself and the
close study of my inclinations, that I was born to live and die, like my
grandsire, the victim of drink. I was its thrall, bound to it as I
lay in my cradle; there existed no gate of escape. This I told;
not joyously, I promise you, or as one reciting good fortune; not
argumentatively and as reason for the forthcoming of asked-for wine; but
because it was true and made, as I held it, a reason for going in this
matter of tipple with freest rein since dodge or balk my fate I might
not.
At the close my Jolly Doctor shook his head in negative.
“No man knows his destiny,” said he, “until the game’s played out. Come,
let me prescribe for you. The drug I have in mind has cured folk; I
should add, too, that for some it carries neither power nor worth.
Still, it will do no harm, and since we may have a test of its virtues
within three days; at the worst you will be called upon to surrender no
more than seventy-two hours to sobriety.” This last was delivered like a
cynic.
On my side, I not only thanked the Jolly Doctor for his concern, but
hastened to assure him I would willingly make pact to abstain from
alcohol not three days, but three weeks or three months, were it
necessary to pleasure his experiment. My bent for drink was in that
degree peculiar that I was not so much its disciple who must worship
constantly and every day, as one of those who are given to sprees. Often
and of choice I was a stranger to so much as the odor of rum for weeks
on end. Then would come other weeks of tumult and riot and drunkenness.
The terms of trial for his medicine would be easily and comfortably
undergone by me. He had my promise of three days free of rum.
The Jolly Doctor went to his room; returning, he placed on the table a
little bottle of liquid, reddish in color and bitter of taste.
“Red cinchona, it is,” said the Jolly Doctor; “cinchona rubra, or
rather the fluid extract of that bark. It is not a tincture; there is no
alcohol about it. The remedy is well known and I oft marvel it has had
no wider vogue. As I’ve told you, and on the principle, probably,
that one man’s poison is another man’s food, it does not always cure.
However, we will give you a teaspoonful once in three hours and observe
the effect in your particular case.”
There shall be little more related on this point of dypsomania and its
remedy. I took the prescription for a trio of days. At the expiration I
sate me solemnly down and debated within myself whether or no I
craved strong drink, with the full purpose of calling for it if I did.
Absolutely, the anxiety was absent; and since I had resolved not to
force the bottle upon myself, but to give the Jolly Doctor and his drug
all proper show to gain a victory, I made no alcohol demands. All this
was years ago, and from that hour until now, when I write these lines,
I’ve neither taken nor wanted alcohol. I’ve gone freely where it was,
and abode for hours at tables when others poured and tossed it off; for
myself I’ve craved none and taken none.
Toward the last of my stay, there came to dwell at the hostelry a goodly
circle; one for a most part chance-sown. For days it had been snowing
with a free, persistent hand; softly, industriously, indomitably fell
the flakes, straight down and unflurried of a wind, until the cold light
element lay about the tavern for a level depth of full three feet. It
was the sort of weather in which one should read Whittier’s Snow-Bound.
Our circle, as snow-pent and held within door we drew about the tavern
fire, offered a chequered citizenry. On the earliest occasion of our
comradeship, while the snow sifted about the old-fashioned panes and
showed through them with the whiteness of milk, I cast my eye over the
group to collect for myself a mental picture of my companions.
At the right hand of the Jolly Doctor, solid in his arm chair, sat a Red
Nosed Gentleman. He showed prosperous of this world’s goods and owned to
a warm weakness for burgundy. He was particular to keep ever a bottle
at his elbow, and constantly supported his interest in what was current
with a moderate glass.
In sharpest contrast to the Red Nosed Gentleman there should be
mentioned a gray old gentleman of sour and forbidding eye. The Jolly
Doctor, who had known him for long, gave me in a whisper his story. This
Sour Gentleman, like the Red Nosed Gentleman, had half retired from the
cares of business. The Red Nosed Gentleman in his later days had been
a stock speculator, as in sooth had the Sour Gentleman, and each would
still on occasion carry a few thousand shares for a week or two and then
swoop on a profit with quite the eagerness of any hawk on any hen.
Not to be overlooked, in a corner nearest the chimney was a seamed white
old figure, tall and spare, yet with vigorous thews still strung in the
teeth of his all but four score years. He was referred to during our
amiable captivity, and while we sate snow-locked about the mighty
fire-place, as the Old Cattleman.
Half comrade and half ward, our Old Cattleman had with him a taciturn,
grave individual, to whom he gave the title of “Sioux Sam,” and whose
father, he informed us, had been a French trader from St. Louis, while
his mother was a squaw of the tribe that furnished the first portion of
his name.
As we brought arm chairs about the fire-place on our first snow-bound
evening, moved possibly by the Red Nosed Gentleman’s burgundy, which
that florid person had urged upon his attention, the Jolly Doctor set
the little community a good story-telling example.
“This story, I should premise,” said the Jolly Doctor, mollifying
certain rawnesses of his throat with a final glass of the Red Nosed
Gentleman’s burgundy, “belongs to no experience of my own. I shall tell
it as it was given me. It speaks broadly of the west and of the folk of
cows and the Indians, and was set uppermost in my memory by the presence
of our western friends.” Here the Jolly Doctor indicated the Old
Cattleman and that product of the French fur trader and his Indian wife,
Sioux Sam, by a polite wave of his glass. Then tossing off the last of
his burgundy he, without tedious preliminary, struck into his little
history.