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.Iwas 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,Ilived 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.)