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boys who look. (And to this day, in any town, city, or village,
in which I, in my middle age, find myself, I look on with the eye
trained of old experience, and watch the sweet innocent game
played by the strolling boys and girls who just must stroll when
the spring and summer evenings call.)
The trouble was that in this Arcadian phase of my history, I, who
had come through, case-hardened, from the other side of life, was
timid and bashful. Again and again Louis nerved me up. But I
didn't know girls. They were strange and wonderful to me after my
precocious man's life. I failed of the bold front and the
necessary forwardness when the crucial moment came.
Then Louis would show me how--a certain, eloquent glance of eye, a
smile, a daring, a lifted hat, a spoken word, hesitancies,
giggles, coy nervousnesses--and, behold, Louis acquainted and
nodding me up to be introduced. But when we paired off to stroll
along boy and girl together, I noted that Louis had invariably
picked the good-looker and left to me the little lame sister.
I improved, of course, after experiences too numerous to enter
upon, so that there were divers girls to whom I could lift my hat
and who would walk beside me in the early evenings. But girl's
love did not immediately come to me. I was excited, interested,
and I pursued the quest. And the thought of drink never entered
my mind. Some of Louis' and my adventures have since given me
serious pause when casting sociological generalisations. But it
was all good and innocently youthful, and I learned one
generalisation, biological rather than sociological, namely, that
the "Colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady are sisters under their
skins."
And before long I learned girl's love, all the dear fond
deliciousness of it, all the glory and the wonder. I shall call
her Haydee. She was between fifteen and sixteen. Her little
skirt reached her shoe-tops. We sat side by side in a Salvation
Army meeting. She was not a convert, nor was her aunt who sat on
the other side of her, and who, visiting from the country where at
that time the Salvation Army was not, had dropped in to the
meeting for half an hour out of curiosity. And Louis sat beside
me and observed--I do believe he did no more than observe, because
Haydee was not his style of girl.
We did not speak, but in that great half-hour we glanced shyly at
each other, and shyly avoided or as shyly returned and met each
other's glances more than several times. She had a slender oval
face. Her brown eyes were beautiful. Her nose was a dream, as
was her sweet-lipped, petulant-hinting mouth. She wore a tam-o'-
shanter, and I thought her brown hair the prettiest shade of brown
I had ever seen. And from that single experience of half an hour
I have ever since been convinced of the reality of love at first
sight.
All too soon the aunt and Haydee departed. (This is permissible
at any stage of a Salvation Army meeting.) I was no longer
interested in the meeting, and, after an appropriate interval of a
couple of minutes or less, started to leave with Louis. As we
passed out, at the back of the hall a woman recognised me with her
eyes, arose, and followed me. I shall not describe her. She was
of my own kind and friendship of the old time on the water-front.
When Nelson was shot, he had died in her arms, and she knew me as
his one comrade. And she must tell me how Nelson had died, and I
did want to know; so I went with her across the width of life from
dawning boy's love for a brown-haired girl in a tam-o'-shanter
back to the old sad savagery I had known.
And when I had heard the tale, I hurried away to find Louis,
fearing that I had lost my first love with the first glimpse of
her. But Louis was dependable. Her name was--Haydee. He knew
where she lived. Each day she passed the blacksmith's shop where
he worked, going to or from the Lafayette School. Further, he had
seen her on occasion with Ruth, another schoolgirl, and, still
further, Nita, who sold us red-hots at the candy store, was a
friend of Ruth. The thing to do was to go around to the candy
store and see if we could get Nita to give a note to Ruth to give
to Haydee. If this could be arranged, all I had to do was write
the note.
And it so happened. And in stolen half-hours of meeting I came to
know all the sweet madness of boy's love and girl's love. So far
as it goes it is not the biggest love in the world, but I do dare
to assert that it is the sweetest. Oh, as I look back on it!
Never did girl have more innocent boy-lover than I who had been so
wicked-wise and violent beyond my years. I didn't know the first
thing about girls. I, who had been hailed Prince of the Oyster
Pirates, who could go anywhere in the world as a man amongst men;
who could sail boats, lay aloft in black and storm, or go into the
toughest hang-outs in sailor town and play my part in any rough-
house that started or call all hands to the bar--I didn't know the
first thing I might say or do with this slender little chit of a
girl-woman whose scant skirt just reached her shoe-tops and who
was as abysmally ignorant of life as I was, or thought I was,
profoundly wise.
I remember we sat on a bench in the starlight. There was fully a
foot of space between us. We slightly faced each other, our near
elbows on the back of the bench; and once or twice our elbows just
touched. And all the time, deliriously happy, talking in the
gentlest and most delicate terms that might not offend her
sensitive ears, I was cudgelling my brains in an effort to divine
what I was expected to do. What did girls expect of boys, sitting
on a bench and tentatively striving to find out what love was?
What did she expect me to do? Was I expected to kiss her? Did she
expect me to try? And if she did expect me, and I didn't what
would she think of me?
Ah, she was wiser than I--I know it now--the little innocent girl-
woman in her shoe-top skirt. She had known boys all her life.
She encouraged me in the ways a girl may. Her gloves were off and
in one hand, and I remember, lightly and daringly, in mock reproof
for something I had said, how she tapped my lips with a tiny flirt
of those gloves. I was like to swoon with delight. It was the
most wonderful thing that had ever happened to me. And I remember
yet the faint scent that clung to those gloves and that I breathed
in the moment they touched my lips.
Then came the agony of apprehension and doubt. Should I imprison
in my hand that little hand with the dangling, scented gloves
which had just tapped my lips? Should I dare to kiss her there and
then, or slip my arm around her waist? Or dared I even sit closer?
Well, I didn't dare. I did nothing. I merely continued to sit
there and love with all my soul. And when we parted that evening
I had not kissed her. I do remember the first time I kissed her,
on another evening, at parting--a mighty moment, when I took all
my heart of courage and dared. We never succeeded in managing
more than a dozen stolen meetings, and we kissed perhaps a dozen
times--as boys and girls kiss, briefly and innocently, and
wonderingly. We never went anywhere--not even to a matinee. We
once shared together five cents worth of red-hots. But I have
always fondly believed that she loved me. I know I loved her; and
I dreamed day-dreams of her for a year and more, and the memory of
her is very dear.
When I was with people who did not drink, I never thought of
drinking. Louis did not drink. Neither he nor I could afford it;
but, more significant than that, we had no desire to drink. We
were healthy, normal, non-alcoholic. Had we been alcoholic, we
would have drunk whether or not we could have afforded it.
Each night, after the day's work, washed up, clothes changed, and
supper eaten, we met on the street corner or in the little candy
store. But the warm fall weather passed, and on bitter nights of
frost or damp nights of drizzle, the street corner was not a
comfortable meeting-place. And the candy store was unheated.
Nita, or whoever waited on the counter, between waitings lurked in
a back living-room that was heated. We were not admitted to this
room, and in the store it was as cold as out-of-doors.
Louis and I debated the situation. There was only one solution:
the saloon, the congregating-place of men, the place where men
hobnobbed with John Barleycorn. Well do I remember the damp and
draughty evening, shivering without overcoats because we could not
afford them, that Louis and I started out to select our saloon.
Saloons are always warm and comfortable. Now Louis and I did not
go into this saloon because we wanted a drink. Yet we knew that
saloons were not charitable institutions. A man could not make a
lounging-place of a saloon without occasionally buying something
over the bar.
Our dimes and nickels were few. We could ill spare any of them
when they were so potent in paying car-fare for oneself and a
girl. (We never paid car-fare when by ourselves, being content to
walk.) So, in this saloon, we desired to make the most of our
expenditure. We called for a deck of cards and sat down at a
table and played euchre for an hour, in which time Louis treated
once, and I treated once, to beer--the cheapest drink, ten cents
for two. Prodigal! How we grudged it!
We studied the men who came into the place. They seemed all
middle-aged and elderly work-men, most of them Germans, who
flocked by themselves in old-acquaintance groups, and with whom we
could have only the slightest contacts. We voted against that
saloon, and went out cast down with the knowledge that we had lost
an evening and wasted twenty cents for beer that we didn't want.
We made several more tries on succeeding nights, and at last found
our way into the National, a saloon on Tenth and Franklin. Here
was a more congenial crowd. Here Louis met a fellow or two he
knew, and here I met fellows I had gone to school with when a
little lad in knee pants. We talked of old days, and of what had
become of this fellow, and what that fellow was doing now, and of
course we talked it over drinks. They treated, and we drank.
Then, according to the code of drinking, we had to treat. It
hurt, for it meant forty to fifty cents a clatter.
We felt quite enlivened when the short evening was over; but at
the same time we were bankrupt. Our week's spending money was
gone. We decided that that was the saloon for us, and we agreed
to be more circumspect thereafter in our drink-buying. Also, we
had to economise for the rest of the week. We didn't even have
car-fare. We were compelled to break an engagement with two girls
from West Oakland with whom we were attempting to be in love.
They were to meet us up town the next evening, and we hadn't the
car-fare necessary to take them home. Like many others
financially embarrassed, we had to disappear for a time from the
gay whirl--at least until Saturday night pay-day. So Louis and I
rendezvoused in a livery stable, and with coats buttoned and
chattering teeth played euchre and casino until the time of our
exile was over.
Then we returned to the National Saloon and spent no more than we
could decently avoid spending for the comfort and warmth.
Sometimes we had mishaps, as when one got stuck twice in
succession in a five-handed game of Sancho Pedro for the drinks.
Such a disaster meant anywhere between twenty-five to eighty
cents, just according to how many of the players ordered ten-cent
drinks. But we could temporarily escape the evil effects of such
disaster, by virtue of an account we ran behind the bar. Of
course, this only set back the day of reckoning and seduced us
into spending more than we would have spent on a cash basis.
(When I left Oakland suddenly for the adventure-path the following
spring, I well remember I owed that saloon-keeper one dollar and
seventy cents. Long after, when I returned, he was gone. I still
owe him that dollar and seventy cents, and if he should chance to
read these lines I want him to know that I'll pay on demand.)
The foregoing incident of the National Saloon I have given in
order again to show the lure, or draw, or compulsion, toward John
Barleycorn in society as at present organised with saloons on all
the corners. Louis and I were two healthy youths. We didn't want
to drink. We couldn't afford to drink. And yet we were driven by
the circumstance of cold and rainy weather to seek refuge in a
saloon, where we had to spend part of our pitiful dole for drink.
It will be urged by some critics that we might have gone to the
Y.M.C.A., to night school, and to the social circles and homes of
young people. The only reply is that we didn't. That is the
irrefragable fact. We didn't. And to-day, at this moment, there
are hundreds of thousands of boys like Louis and me doing just
what Louis and I did with John Barleycorn, warm and comfortable,
beckoning and welcoming, tucking their arms in his and beginning
to teach them his mellow ways.
The jute mills failed of its agreement to increase my pay to a
dollar and a quarter a day, and I, a free-born American boy whose
direct ancestors had fought in all the wars from the old pre-
Revolutionary Indian wars down, exercised my sovereign right of
free contract by quitting the job.
I was still resolved to settle down, and I looked about me. One
thing was clear. Unskilled labour didn't pay. I must learn a
trade, and I decided on electricity. The need for electricians
was constantly growing. But how to become an electrician? I
hadn't the money to go to a technical school or university;
besides, I didn't think much of schools. I was a practical man in
a practical world. Also, I still believed in the old myths which
were the heritage of the American boy when I was a boy.
A canal boy could become a President. Any boy who took employment
with any firm could, by thrift, energy, and sobriety, learn the
business and rise from position to position until he was taken in
as a junior partner. After that the senior partnership was only a
matter of time. Very often--so ran the myth--the boy, by reason
of his steadiness and application, married his employ's daughter.
By this time I had been encouraged to such faith in myself in the
matter of girls that I was quite certain I would marry my
employer's daughter. There wasn't a doubt of it. All the little
boys in the myths did it as soon as they were old enough.
So I bade farewell for ever to the adventure-path, and went out to
the power plant of one of our Oakland street railways. I saw the
superintendent himself, in a private office so fine that it almost
stunned me. But I talked straight up. I told him I wanted to
become a practical electrician, that I was unafraid of work, that
I was used to hard work, and that all he had to do was look at me
to see I was fit and strong. I told him that I wanted to begin
right at the bottom and work up, that I wanted to devote my life
to this one occupation and this one employment.
The superintendent beamed as he listened. He told me that I was
the right stuff for success, and that he believed in encouraging
American youth that wanted to rise. Why, employers were always on
the lookout for young fellows like me, and alas, they found them
all too rarely. My ambition was fine and worthy, and he would see
to it that I got my chance. (And as I listened with swelling
heart, I wondered if it was his daughter I was to marry.)
"Before you can go out on the road and learn the more complicated
and higher details of the profession," he said, "you will, of
course, have to work in the car-house with the men who install and
repair the motors. (By this time I was sure that it was his
daughter, and I was wondering how much stock he might own in the
company.)
"But," he said, "as you yourself so plainly see, you couldn't
expect to begin as a helper to the car-house electricians. That
will come when you have worked up to it. You will really begin at
the bottom. In the car-house your first employment will be
sweeping up, washing the windows, keeping things clean. And after
you have shown yourself satisfactory at that, then you may become
a helper to the car-house electricians."
I didn't see how sweeping and scrubbing a building was any
preparation for the trade of electrician; but I did know that in
the books all the boys started with the most menial tasks and by
making good ultimately won to the ownership of the whole concern.
"When shall I come to work?" I asked, eager to launch on this
dazzling career.
"But," said the superintendent, "as you and I have already agreed,
you must begin at the bottom. Not immediately can you in any
capacity enter the car-house. Before that you must pass through
the engine-room as an oiler."
My heart went down slightly and for the moment as I saw the road
lengthen between his daughter and me; then it rose again. I would
be a better electrician with knowledge of steam engines. As an
oiler in the great engine-room I was confident that few things
concerning steam would escape me. Heavens! My career shone more
dazzling than ever.
"When shall I come to work?" I asked gratefully.
"But," said the superintendent, "you could not expect to enter
immediately into the engine-room. There must be preparation for
that. And through the fire-room, of course. Come, you see the
matter clearly, I know. And you will see that even the mere
handling of coal is a scientific matter and not to be sneered at.
Do you know that we weigh every pound of coal we burn? Thus, we
learn the value of the coal we buy; we know to a tee the last
penny of cost of every item of production, and we learn which
firemen are the most wasteful, which firemen, out of stupidity or
carelessness, get the least out of the coal they fire." The
superintendent beamed again. "You see how very important the
little matter of coal is, and by as much as you learn of this
little matter you will become that much better a workman--more
valuable to us, more valuable to yourself. Now, are you prepared
to begin?"
"Any time," I said valiantly. "The sooner the better."
"Very well," he answered. "You will come to-morrow morning at
seven o'clock."
I was taken out and shown my duties. Also, I was told the terms
of my employment--a ten-hour day, every day in the month including
Sundays and holidays, with one day off each month, with a salary
of thirty dollars a month. It wasn't exciting. Years before, at
the cannery, I had earned a dollar a day for a ten-hour day. I
consoled myself with the thought that the reason my earning
capacity had not increased with my years and strength was because
I had remained an unskilled labourer. But it was different now.
I was beginning to work for skill, for a trade, for career and
fortune, and the superintendent's daughter.
And I was beginning in the right way--right at the beginning.
That was the thing. I was passing coal to the firemen, who
shovelled it into the furnaces, where its energy was transformed
into steam, which, in the engine-room, was transformed into the
electricity with which the electricians worked. This passing coal
was surely the very beginning-unless the superintendent should
take it into his head to send me to work in the mines from which
the coal came in order to get a completer understanding of the
genesis of electricity for street railways.
Work! I, who had worked with men, found that I didn't know the
first thing about real work. A ten-hour day! I had to pass coal
for the day and night shifts, and, despite working through the
noon-hour, I never finished my task before eight at night. I was
working a twelve-to thirteen-hour day, and I wasn't being paid
overtime as in the cannery.
I might as well give the secret away right here. I was doing the
work of two men. Before me, one mature able-bodied labourer had
done the day shift and another equally mature able-bodied labourer
had done the night-shift. They had received forty dollars a month
each. The superintendent, bent on an economical administration,
had persuaded me to do the work of both men for thirty dollars a
month. I thought he was making an electrician of me. In truth
and fact, he was saving fifty dollars a month operating expenses
to the company.
But I didn't know I was displacing two men. Nobody told me. On
the contrary, the superintendent warned everybody not to tell me.
How valiantly I went at it that first day. I worked at top speed,
filling the iron wheelbarrow with coal, running it on the scales
and weighing the load, then trundling it into the fire-room and
dumping it on the plates before the fires.
Work! I did more than the two men whom I had displaced. They had
merely wheeled in the coal and dumped it on the plates. But while
I did this for the day coal, the night coal I had to pile against
the wall of the fire-room. Now the fire-room was small. It had
been planned for a night coal-passer. So I had to pile the night
coal higher and higher, buttressing up the heap with stout planks.
Toward the top of the heap I had to handle the coal a second time,
tossing it up with a shovel.
I dripped with sweat, but I never ceased from my stride, though I
could feel exhaustion coming on. By ten o'clock in the morning,
so much of my body's energy had I consumed, I felt hungry and
snatched a thick double-slice of bread and butter from my dinner
pail. This I devoured, standing, grimed with coal-dust, my knees
trembling under me. By eleven o'clock, in this fashion I had
consumed my whole lunch. But what of it? I realised that it would
enable me to continue working through the noon hour. And I worked
all the afternoon. Darkness came on, and I worked under the
electric lights. The day fireman went off and the night fireman
came on. I plugged away.
At half-past eight, famished, tottering, I washed up, changed my
clothes, and dragged my weary body to the car. It was three miles
to where I lived, and I had received a pass with the stipulation
that I could sit down as long as there were no paying passengers
in need of a seat. As I sank into a corner outside seat I prayed
that no passenger might require my seat. But the car filled up,
and, half-way in, a woman came on board, and there was no seat for
her. I started to get up, and to my astonishment found that I
could not. With the chill wind blowing on me, my spent body had
stiffened into the seat. It took me the rest of the run in to
unkink my complaining joints and muscles and get into a standing
position on the lower step. And when the car stopped at my corner
I nearly fell to the ground when I stepped off.
I hobbled two blocks to the house and limped into the kitchen.
While my mother started to cook, I plunged into bread and butter;
but before my appetite was appeased, or the steak fried, I was
sound asleep. In vain my mother strove to shake me awake enough
to eat the meat. Failing in this, with the assistance of my
father she managed to get me to my room, where I collapsed dead
asleep on the bed. They undressed me and covered me up. In the
morning came the agony of being awakened. I was terribly sore,
and, worst of all, my wrists were swelling. But I made up for my
lost supper, eating an enormous breakfast, and when I hobbled to
catch my car I carried a lunch twice as big as the one the day
before.
Work! Let any youth just turned eighteen try to out-shovel two
man-grown coal-shovellers. Work! Long before midday I had eaten
the last scrap of my huge lunch. But I was resolved to show them
what a husky young fellow determined to rise could do. The worst
of it was that my wrists were swelling and going back on me.
There are few who do not know the pain of walking on a sprained
ankle. Then imagine the pain of shovelling coal and trundling a
loaded wheelbarrow with two sprained wrists.
Work! More than once I sank down on the coal where no one could
see me, and cried with rage, and mortification, and exhaustion,
and despair. That second day was my hardest, and all that enabled
me to survive it and get in the last of the night coal at the end
of thirteen hours was the day fireman, who bound both my wrists
with broad leather straps. So tightly were they buckled that they
were like slightly flexible plaster casts. They took the stresses
and pressures which hitherto had been borne by my wrists, and they
were so tight that there was no room for the inflammation to rise
in the sprains.
And in this fashion I continued to learn to be an electrician.
Night after night I limped home, fell asleep before I could eat my
supper, and was helped into bed and undressed. Morning after
morning, always with huger lunches in my dinner pail, I limped out
of the house on my way to work.
I no longer read my library books. I made no dates with the
girls. I was a proper work beast. I worked, and ate, and slept,
while my mind slept all the time. The whole thing was a
nightmare. I worked every day, including Sunday, and I looked far
ahead to my one day off at the end of a month, resolved to lie
abed all that day and just sleep and rest up.
The strangest part of this experience was that I never took a
drink nor thought of taking a drink. Yet I knew that men under
hard pressure almost invariably drank. I had seen them do it, and
in the past had often done it myself. But so sheerly non-
alcoholic was I that it never entered my mind that a drink might
be good for me. I instance this to show how entirely lacking from
my make-up was any predisposition toward alcohol. And the point
of this instance is that later on, after more years had passed,
contact with John Barleycorn at last did induce in me the
alcoholic desire.
I had often noticed the day fireman staring at me in a curious
way. At last, one day, he spoke. He began by swearing me to
secrecy. He had been warned by the superintendent not to tell me,
and in telling me he was risking his job. He told me of the day
coal-passer and the night coal-passer, and of the wages they had
received. I was doing for thirty dollars a month what they had
received eighty dollars for doing. He would have told me sooner,
the fireman said, had he not been so certain that I would break
down under the work and quit. As it was, I was killing myself,
and all to no good purpose. I was merely cheapening the price of
labour, he argued, and keeping two men out of a job.
Being an American boy, and a proud American boy, I did not
immediately quit. This was foolish of me, I know; but I resolved
to continue the work long enough to prove to the superintendent
that I could do it without breaking down. Then I would quit, and
he would realise what a fine young fellow he had lost.
All of which I faithfully and foolishly did. I worked on until
the time came when I got in the last of the night coal by six
o'clock. Then I quit the job of learning electricity by doing
more than two men's work for a boy's wages, went home, and
proceeded to sleep the clock around.
Fortunately, I had not stayed by the job long enough to injure
myself--though I was compelled to wear straps on my wrists for a
year afterward. But the effect of this work orgy in which I had
indulged was to sicken me with work. I just wouldn't work. The
thought of work was repulsive. I didn't care if I never settled
down. Learning a trade could go hang. It was a whole lot better
to royster and frolic over the world in the way I had previously
done. So I headed out on the adventure-path again, starting to
tramp East by beating my way on the railroads.
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.)
Three years was the time required to go through the high school.
I grew impatient. Also, my schooling was becoming financially
impossible. At such rate I could not last out, and I did greatly
want to go to the state university. When I had done a year of
high school, I decided to attempt a short cut. I borrowed the
money and paid to enter the senior class of a "cramming joint" or
academy. I was scheduled to graduate right into the university at
the end of four months, thus saving two years.
And how I did cram! I had two years' new work to do in a third of
a year. For five weeks I crammed, until simultaneous quadratic
equations and chemical formulas fairly oozed from my ears. And
then the master of the academy took me aside. He was very sorry,
but he was compelled to give me back my tuition fee and to ask me
to leave the school. It wasn't a matter of scholarship. I stood
well in my classes, and did he graduate me into the university he
was confident that in that institution I would continue to stand
well. The trouble was that tongues were gossiping about my case.
What! In four months accomplished two years' work! It would be a
scandal, and the universities were becoming severer in their
treatment of accredited prep schools. He couldn't afford such a
scandal, therefore I must gracefully depart.
I did. And I paid back the borrowed money, and gritted my teeth,
and started to cram by myself. There were three months yet before
the university entrance examinations. Without laboratories,
without coaching, sitting in my bedroom, I proceeded to compress
that two years' work into three months and to keep reviewed on the
previous year's work.
Nineteen hours a day I studied. For three months I kept this
pace, only breaking it on several occasions. My body grew weary,
my mind grew weary, but I stayed with it. My eyes grew weary and
began to twitch, but they did not break down. Perhaps, toward the
last, I got a bit dotty. I know that at the time I was confident,
I had discovered the formula for squaring the circle; but I
resolutely deferred the working of it out until after the
examinations. Then I would show them.
Came the several days of the examinations, during which time I
scarcely closed my eyes in sleep, devoting every moment to
cramming and reviewing. And when I turned in my last examination
paper I was in full possession of a splendid case of brain-fag. I
didn't want to see a book. I didn't want to think or to lay eyes
on anybody who was liable to think.
There was but one prescription for such a condition, and I gave it
to myself--the adventure-path. I didn't wait to learn the result
of my examinations. I stowed a roll of blankets and some cold
food into a borrowed whitehall boat and set sail. Out of the
Oakland Estuary I drifted on the last of an early morning ebb,
caught the first of the flood up bay, and raced along with a
spanking breeze. San Pablo Bay was smoking, and the Carquinez
Straits off the Selby Smelter were smoking, as I picked up ahead
and left astern the old landmarks I had first learned with Nelson
in the unreefer Reindeer.
Benicia showed before me. I opened the bight of Turner's
Shipyard, rounded the Solano wharf, and surged along abreast of
the patch of tules and the clustering fishermen's arks where in
the old days I had lived and drunk deep.
And right here something happened to me, the gravity of which I
never dreamed for many a long year to come. I had had no
intention of stopping at Benicia. The tide favoured, the wind was
fair and howling--glorious sailing for a sailor. Bull Head and
Army Points showed ahead, marking the entrance to Suisun Bay which
I knew was smoking. And yet, when I laid eyes on those fishing
arks lying in the water-front tules, without debate, on the
instant, I put down my tiller, came in on the sheet, and headed
for the shore. On the instant, out of the profound of my brain-
fag, I knew what I wanted. I wanted to drink. I wanted to get
drunk.
The call was imperative. There was no uncertainty about it. More
than anything else in the world, my frayed and frazzled mind
wanted surcease from weariness in the way it knew surcease would
come. And right here is the point. For the first time in my life
I consciously, deliberately, desired to get drunk. It was a new,
a totally different manifestation of John Barleycorn's power. It
was not a body need for alcohol. It was a mental desire. My
over-worked and jaded mind wanted to forget.
And here the point is drawn to its sharpest. Granted my
prodigious brain-fag, nevertheless, had I never drunk in the past,
the thought would never have entered my mind to get drunk now.
Beginning with physical intolerance for alcohol, for years
drinking only for the sake of comradeship and because alcohol was
everywhere on the adventure-path, I had now reached the stage
where my brain cried out, not merely for a drink, but for a drunk.
And had I not been so long used to alcohol, my brain would not
have so cried out. I should have sailed on past Bull Head, and in
the smoking white of Suisun Bay, and in the wine of wind that
filled my sail and poured through me, I should have forgotten my
weary brain and rested and refreshed it.
So I sailed in to shore, made all fast, and hurried up among the
arks. Charley Le Grant fell on my neck. His wife, Lizzie, folded
me to her capacious breast. Billy Murphy, and Joe Lloyd, and all
the survivors of the old guard, got around me and their arms
around me. Charley seized the can and started for Jorgensen's
saloon across the railroad tracks. That meant beer. I wanted
whisky, so I called after him to bring a flask.
Many times that flask journeyed across the railroad tracks and
back. More old friends of the old free and easy times dropped in,
fishermen, Greeks, and Russians, and French. They took turns in
treating, and treated all around in turn again. They came and
went, but I stayed on and drank with all. I guzzled. I swilled.
I ran the liquor down and joyed as the maggots mounted in my
brain.
And Clam came in, Nelson's partner before me, handsome as ever,
but more reckless, half insane, burning himself out with whisky.
He had just had a quarrel with his partner on the sloop Gazelle,
and knives had been drawn, and blows struck, and he was bent on
maddening the fever of the memory with more whisky. And while we
downed it, we remembered Nelson and that he had stretched out his
great shoulders for the last long sleep in this very town of
Benicia; and we wept over the memory of him, and remembered only
the good things of him, and sent out the flask to be filled and
drank again.
They wanted me to stay over, but through the open door I could see
the brave wind on the water, and my ears were filled with the roar
of it. And while I forgot that I had plunged into the books
nineteen hours a day for three solid months, Charley Le Grant
shifted my outfit into a big Columbia River salmon boat. He added
charcoal and a fisherman's brazier, a coffee pot and frying pan,
and the coffee and the meat, and a black bass fresh from the water
that day.
They had to help me down the rickety wharf and into the salmon
boat. Likewise they stretched my boom and sprit until the sail
set like a board. Some feared to set the sprit; but I insisted,
and Charley had no doubts. He knew me of old, and knew that I
could sail as long as I could see. They cast off my painter. I
put the tiller up, filled away before it, and with dizzy eyes
checked and steadied the boat on her course and waved farewell.
The tide had turned, and the fierce ebb, running in the teeth of a
fiercer wind, kicked up a stiff, upstanding sea. Suisun Bay was
white with wrath and sea-lump. But a salmon boat can sail, and I
knew how to sail a salmon boat. So I drove her into it, and
through it, and across, and maundered aloud and chanted my disdain
for all the books and schools. Cresting seas filled me a foot or
so with water, but I laughed at it sloshing about my feet, and
chanted my disdain for the wind and the water. I hailed myself a
master of life, riding on the back of the unleashed elements, and
John Barleycorn rode with me. Amid dissertations on mathematics
and philosophy and spoutings and quotations, I sang all the old
songs learned in the days when I went from the cannery to the
oyster boats to be a pirate--such songs as: "Black Lulu," "Flying
Cloud," "Treat my Daughter Kind-i-ly," "The Boston Burglar," "Come
all you Rambling, Gambling Men," "I Wisht I was a Little Bird,"
"Shenandoah," and "Ranzo, Boys, Ranzo."
Hours afterward, in the fires of sunset, where the Sacramento and
the San Joaquin tumble their muddy floods together, I took the New
York Cut-Off, skimmed across the smooth land-locked water past
Black Diamond, on into the San Joaquin, and on to Antioch, where,
somewhat sobered and magnificently hungry, I laid alongside a big
potato sloop that had a familiar rig. Here were old friends
aboard, who fried my black bass in olive oil. Then, too, there
was a meaty fisherman's stew, delicious with garlic, and crusty
Italian bread without butter, and all washed down with pint mugs
of thick and heady claret.
My salmon boat was a-soak, but in the snug cabin of the sloop dry
blankets and a dry bunk were mine; and we lay and smoked and
yarned of old days, while overhead the wind screamed through the
rigging and taut halyards drummed against the mast.
My cruise in the salmon boat lasted a week, and I returned ready
to enter the university. During the week's cruise I did not drink
in which I, in my middle age, find myself, I look on with the eye
trained of old experience, and watch the sweet innocent game
played by the strolling boys and girls who just must stroll when
the spring and summer evenings call.)
The trouble was that in this Arcadian phase of my history, I, who
had come through, case-hardened, from the other side of life, was
timid and bashful. Again and again Louis nerved me up. But I
didn't know girls. They were strange and wonderful to me after my
precocious man's life. I failed of the bold front and the
necessary forwardness when the crucial moment came.
Then Louis would show me how--a certain, eloquent glance of eye, a
smile, a daring, a lifted hat, a spoken word, hesitancies,
giggles, coy nervousnesses--and, behold, Louis acquainted and
nodding me up to be introduced. But when we paired off to stroll
along boy and girl together, I noted that Louis had invariably
picked the good-looker and left to me the little lame sister.
I improved, of course, after experiences too numerous to enter
upon, so that there were divers girls to whom I could lift my hat
and who would walk beside me in the early evenings. But girl's
love did not immediately come to me. I was excited, interested,
and I pursued the quest. And the thought of drink never entered
my mind. Some of Louis' and my adventures have since given me
serious pause when casting sociological generalisations. But it
was all good and innocently youthful, and I learned one
generalisation, biological rather than sociological, namely, that
the "Colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady are sisters under their
skins."
And before long I learned girl's love, all the dear fond
deliciousness of it, all the glory and the wonder. I shall call
her Haydee. She was between fifteen and sixteen. Her little
skirt reached her shoe-tops. We sat side by side in a Salvation
Army meeting. She was not a convert, nor was her aunt who sat on
the other side of her, and who, visiting from the country where at
that time the Salvation Army was not, had dropped in to the
meeting for half an hour out of curiosity. And Louis sat beside
me and observed--I do believe he did no more than observe, because
Haydee was not his style of girl.
We did not speak, but in that great half-hour we glanced shyly at
each other, and shyly avoided or as shyly returned and met each
other's glances more than several times. She had a slender oval
face. Her brown eyes were beautiful. Her nose was a dream, as
was her sweet-lipped, petulant-hinting mouth. She wore a tam-o'-
shanter, and I thought her brown hair the prettiest shade of brown
I had ever seen. And from that single experience of half an hour
I have ever since been convinced of the reality of love at first
sight.
All too soon the aunt and Haydee departed. (This is permissible
at any stage of a Salvation Army meeting.) I was no longer
interested in the meeting, and, after an appropriate interval of a
couple of minutes or less, started to leave with Louis. As we
passed out, at the back of the hall a woman recognised me with her
eyes, arose, and followed me. I shall not describe her. She was
of my own kind and friendship of the old time on the water-front.
When Nelson was shot, he had died in her arms, and she knew me as
his one comrade. And she must tell me how Nelson had died, and I
did want to know; so I went with her across the width of life from
dawning boy's love for a brown-haired girl in a tam-o'-shanter
back to the old sad savagery I had known.
And when I had heard the tale, I hurried away to find Louis,
fearing that I had lost my first love with the first glimpse of
her. But Louis was dependable. Her name was--Haydee. He knew
where she lived. Each day she passed the blacksmith's shop where
he worked, going to or from the Lafayette School. Further, he had
seen her on occasion with Ruth, another schoolgirl, and, still
further, Nita, who sold us red-hots at the candy store, was a
friend of Ruth. The thing to do was to go around to the candy
store and see if we could get Nita to give a note to Ruth to give
to Haydee. If this could be arranged, all I had to do was write
the note.
And it so happened. And in stolen half-hours of meeting I came to
know all the sweet madness of boy's love and girl's love. So far
as it goes it is not the biggest love in the world, but I do dare
to assert that it is the sweetest. Oh, as I look back on it!
Never did girl have more innocent boy-lover than I who had been so
wicked-wise and violent beyond my years. I didn't know the first
thing about girls. I, who had been hailed Prince of the Oyster
Pirates, who could go anywhere in the world as a man amongst men;
who could sail boats, lay aloft in black and storm, or go into the
toughest hang-outs in sailor town and play my part in any rough-
house that started or call all hands to the bar--I didn't know the
first thing I might say or do with this slender little chit of a
girl-woman whose scant skirt just reached her shoe-tops and who
was as abysmally ignorant of life as I was, or thought I was,
profoundly wise.
I remember we sat on a bench in the starlight. There was fully a
foot of space between us. We slightly faced each other, our near
elbows on the back of the bench; and once or twice our elbows just
touched. And all the time, deliriously happy, talking in the
gentlest and most delicate terms that might not offend her
sensitive ears, I was cudgelling my brains in an effort to divine
what I was expected to do. What did girls expect of boys, sitting
on a bench and tentatively striving to find out what love was?
What did she expect me to do? Was I expected to kiss her? Did she
expect me to try? And if she did expect me, and I didn't what
would she think of me?
Ah, she was wiser than I--I know it now--the little innocent girl-
woman in her shoe-top skirt. She had known boys all her life.
She encouraged me in the ways a girl may. Her gloves were off and
in one hand, and I remember, lightly and daringly, in mock reproof
for something I had said, how she tapped my lips with a tiny flirt
of those gloves. I was like to swoon with delight. It was the
most wonderful thing that had ever happened to me. And I remember
yet the faint scent that clung to those gloves and that I breathed
in the moment they touched my lips.
Then came the agony of apprehension and doubt. Should I imprison
in my hand that little hand with the dangling, scented gloves
which had just tapped my lips? Should I dare to kiss her there and
then, or slip my arm around her waist? Or dared I even sit closer?
Well, I didn't dare. I did nothing. I merely continued to sit
there and love with all my soul. And when we parted that evening
I had not kissed her. I do remember the first time I kissed her,
on another evening, at parting--a mighty moment, when I took all
my heart of courage and dared. We never succeeded in managing
more than a dozen stolen meetings, and we kissed perhaps a dozen
times--as boys and girls kiss, briefly and innocently, and
wonderingly. We never went anywhere--not even to a matinee. We
once shared together five cents worth of red-hots. But I have
always fondly believed that she loved me. I know I loved her; and
I dreamed day-dreams of her for a year and more, and the memory of
her is very dear.
When I was with people who did not drink, I never thought of
drinking. Louis did not drink. Neither he nor I could afford it;
but, more significant than that, we had no desire to drink. We
were healthy, normal, non-alcoholic. Had we been alcoholic, we
would have drunk whether or not we could have afforded it.
Each night, after the day's work, washed up, clothes changed, and
supper eaten, we met on the street corner or in the little candy
store. But the warm fall weather passed, and on bitter nights of
frost or damp nights of drizzle, the street corner was not a
comfortable meeting-place. And the candy store was unheated.
Nita, or whoever waited on the counter, between waitings lurked in
a back living-room that was heated. We were not admitted to this
room, and in the store it was as cold as out-of-doors.
Louis and I debated the situation. There was only one solution:
the saloon, the congregating-place of men, the place where men
hobnobbed with John Barleycorn. Well do I remember the damp and
draughty evening, shivering without overcoats because we could not
afford them, that Louis and I started out to select our saloon.
Saloons are always warm and comfortable. Now Louis and I did not
go into this saloon because we wanted a drink. Yet we knew that
saloons were not charitable institutions. A man could not make a
lounging-place of a saloon without occasionally buying something
over the bar.
Our dimes and nickels were few. We could ill spare any of them
when they were so potent in paying car-fare for oneself and a
girl. (We never paid car-fare when by ourselves, being content to
walk.) So, in this saloon, we desired to make the most of our
expenditure. We called for a deck of cards and sat down at a
table and played euchre for an hour, in which time Louis treated
once, and I treated once, to beer--the cheapest drink, ten cents
for two. Prodigal! How we grudged it!
We studied the men who came into the place. They seemed all
middle-aged and elderly work-men, most of them Germans, who
flocked by themselves in old-acquaintance groups, and with whom we
could have only the slightest contacts. We voted against that
saloon, and went out cast down with the knowledge that we had lost
an evening and wasted twenty cents for beer that we didn't want.
We made several more tries on succeeding nights, and at last found
our way into the National, a saloon on Tenth and Franklin. Here
was a more congenial crowd. Here Louis met a fellow or two he
knew, and here I met fellows I had gone to school with when a
little lad in knee pants. We talked of old days, and of what had
become of this fellow, and what that fellow was doing now, and of
course we talked it over drinks. They treated, and we drank.
Then, according to the code of drinking, we had to treat. It
hurt, for it meant forty to fifty cents a clatter.
We felt quite enlivened when the short evening was over; but at
the same time we were bankrupt. Our week's spending money was
gone. We decided that that was the saloon for us, and we agreed
to be more circumspect thereafter in our drink-buying. Also, we
had to economise for the rest of the week. We didn't even have
car-fare. We were compelled to break an engagement with two girls
from West Oakland with whom we were attempting to be in love.
They were to meet us up town the next evening, and we hadn't the
car-fare necessary to take them home. Like many others
financially embarrassed, we had to disappear for a time from the
gay whirl--at least until Saturday night pay-day. So Louis and I
rendezvoused in a livery stable, and with coats buttoned and
chattering teeth played euchre and casino until the time of our
exile was over.
Then we returned to the National Saloon and spent no more than we
could decently avoid spending for the comfort and warmth.
Sometimes we had mishaps, as when one got stuck twice in
succession in a five-handed game of Sancho Pedro for the drinks.
Such a disaster meant anywhere between twenty-five to eighty
cents, just according to how many of the players ordered ten-cent
drinks. But we could temporarily escape the evil effects of such
disaster, by virtue of an account we ran behind the bar. Of
course, this only set back the day of reckoning and seduced us
into spending more than we would have spent on a cash basis.
(When I left Oakland suddenly for the adventure-path the following
spring, I well remember I owed that saloon-keeper one dollar and
seventy cents. Long after, when I returned, he was gone. I still
owe him that dollar and seventy cents, and if he should chance to
read these lines I want him to know that I'll pay on demand.)
The foregoing incident of the National Saloon I have given in
order again to show the lure, or draw, or compulsion, toward John
Barleycorn in society as at present organised with saloons on all
the corners. Louis and I were two healthy youths. We didn't want
to drink. We couldn't afford to drink. And yet we were driven by
the circumstance of cold and rainy weather to seek refuge in a
saloon, where we had to spend part of our pitiful dole for drink.
It will be urged by some critics that we might have gone to the
Y.M.C.A., to night school, and to the social circles and homes of
young people. The only reply is that we didn't. That is the
irrefragable fact. We didn't. And to-day, at this moment, there
are hundreds of thousands of boys like Louis and me doing just
what Louis and I did with John Barleycorn, warm and comfortable,
beckoning and welcoming, tucking their arms in his and beginning
to teach them his mellow ways.
The jute mills failed of its agreement to increase my pay to a
dollar and a quarter a day, and I, a free-born American boy whose
direct ancestors had fought in all the wars from the old pre-
Revolutionary Indian wars down, exercised my sovereign right of
free contract by quitting the job.
I was still resolved to settle down, and I looked about me. One
thing was clear. Unskilled labour didn't pay. I must learn a
trade, and I decided on electricity. The need for electricians
was constantly growing. But how to become an electrician? I
hadn't the money to go to a technical school or university;
besides, I didn't think much of schools. I was a practical man in
a practical world. Also, I still believed in the old myths which
were the heritage of the American boy when I was a boy.
A canal boy could become a President. Any boy who took employment
with any firm could, by thrift, energy, and sobriety, learn the
business and rise from position to position until he was taken in
as a junior partner. After that the senior partnership was only a
matter of time. Very often--so ran the myth--the boy, by reason
of his steadiness and application, married his employ's daughter.
By this time I had been encouraged to such faith in myself in the
matter of girls that I was quite certain I would marry my
employer's daughter. There wasn't a doubt of it. All the little
boys in the myths did it as soon as they were old enough.
So I bade farewell for ever to the adventure-path, and went out to
the power plant of one of our Oakland street railways. I saw the
superintendent himself, in a private office so fine that it almost
stunned me. But I talked straight up. I told him I wanted to
become a practical electrician, that I was unafraid of work, that
I was used to hard work, and that all he had to do was look at me
to see I was fit and strong. I told him that I wanted to begin
right at the bottom and work up, that I wanted to devote my life
to this one occupation and this one employment.
The superintendent beamed as he listened. He told me that I was
the right stuff for success, and that he believed in encouraging
American youth that wanted to rise. Why, employers were always on
the lookout for young fellows like me, and alas, they found them
all too rarely. My ambition was fine and worthy, and he would see
to it that I got my chance. (And as I listened with swelling
heart, I wondered if it was his daughter I was to marry.)
"Before you can go out on the road and learn the more complicated
and higher details of the profession," he said, "you will, of
course, have to work in the car-house with the men who install and
repair the motors. (By this time I was sure that it was his
daughter, and I was wondering how much stock he might own in the
company.)
"But," he said, "as you yourself so plainly see, you couldn't
expect to begin as a helper to the car-house electricians. That
will come when you have worked up to it. You will really begin at
the bottom. In the car-house your first employment will be
sweeping up, washing the windows, keeping things clean. And after
you have shown yourself satisfactory at that, then you may become
a helper to the car-house electricians."
I didn't see how sweeping and scrubbing a building was any
preparation for the trade of electrician; but I did know that in
the books all the boys started with the most menial tasks and by
making good ultimately won to the ownership of the whole concern.
"When shall I come to work?" I asked, eager to launch on this
dazzling career.
"But," said the superintendent, "as you and I have already agreed,
you must begin at the bottom. Not immediately can you in any
capacity enter the car-house. Before that you must pass through
the engine-room as an oiler."
My heart went down slightly and for the moment as I saw the road
lengthen between his daughter and me; then it rose again. I would
be a better electrician with knowledge of steam engines. As an
oiler in the great engine-room I was confident that few things
concerning steam would escape me. Heavens! My career shone more
dazzling than ever.
"When shall I come to work?" I asked gratefully.
"But," said the superintendent, "you could not expect to enter
immediately into the engine-room. There must be preparation for
that. And through the fire-room, of course. Come, you see the
matter clearly, I know. And you will see that even the mere
handling of coal is a scientific matter and not to be sneered at.
Do you know that we weigh every pound of coal we burn? Thus, we
learn the value of the coal we buy; we know to a tee the last
penny of cost of every item of production, and we learn which
firemen are the most wasteful, which firemen, out of stupidity or
carelessness, get the least out of the coal they fire." The
superintendent beamed again. "You see how very important the
little matter of coal is, and by as much as you learn of this
little matter you will become that much better a workman--more
valuable to us, more valuable to yourself. Now, are you prepared
to begin?"
"Any time," I said valiantly. "The sooner the better."
"Very well," he answered. "You will come to-morrow morning at
seven o'clock."
I was taken out and shown my duties. Also, I was told the terms
of my employment--a ten-hour day, every day in the month including
Sundays and holidays, with one day off each month, with a salary
of thirty dollars a month. It wasn't exciting. Years before, at
the cannery, I had earned a dollar a day for a ten-hour day. I
consoled myself with the thought that the reason my earning
capacity had not increased with my years and strength was because
I had remained an unskilled labourer. But it was different now.
I was beginning to work for skill, for a trade, for career and
fortune, and the superintendent's daughter.
And I was beginning in the right way--right at the beginning.
That was the thing. I was passing coal to the firemen, who
shovelled it into the furnaces, where its energy was transformed
into steam, which, in the engine-room, was transformed into the
electricity with which the electricians worked. This passing coal
was surely the very beginning-unless the superintendent should
take it into his head to send me to work in the mines from which
the coal came in order to get a completer understanding of the
genesis of electricity for street railways.
Work! I, who had worked with men, found that I didn't know the
first thing about real work. A ten-hour day! I had to pass coal
for the day and night shifts, and, despite working through the
noon-hour, I never finished my task before eight at night. I was
working a twelve-to thirteen-hour day, and I wasn't being paid
overtime as in the cannery.
I might as well give the secret away right here. I was doing the
work of two men. Before me, one mature able-bodied labourer had
done the day shift and another equally mature able-bodied labourer
had done the night-shift. They had received forty dollars a month
each. The superintendent, bent on an economical administration,
had persuaded me to do the work of both men for thirty dollars a
month. I thought he was making an electrician of me. In truth
and fact, he was saving fifty dollars a month operating expenses
to the company.
But I didn't know I was displacing two men. Nobody told me. On
the contrary, the superintendent warned everybody not to tell me.
How valiantly I went at it that first day. I worked at top speed,
filling the iron wheelbarrow with coal, running it on the scales
and weighing the load, then trundling it into the fire-room and
dumping it on the plates before the fires.
Work! I did more than the two men whom I had displaced. They had
merely wheeled in the coal and dumped it on the plates. But while
I did this for the day coal, the night coal I had to pile against
the wall of the fire-room. Now the fire-room was small. It had
been planned for a night coal-passer. So I had to pile the night
coal higher and higher, buttressing up the heap with stout planks.
Toward the top of the heap I had to handle the coal a second time,
tossing it up with a shovel.
I dripped with sweat, but I never ceased from my stride, though I
could feel exhaustion coming on. By ten o'clock in the morning,
so much of my body's energy had I consumed, I felt hungry and
snatched a thick double-slice of bread and butter from my dinner
pail. This I devoured, standing, grimed with coal-dust, my knees
trembling under me. By eleven o'clock, in this fashion I had
consumed my whole lunch. But what of it? I realised that it would
enable me to continue working through the noon hour. And I worked
all the afternoon. Darkness came on, and I worked under the
electric lights. The day fireman went off and the night fireman
came on. I plugged away.
At half-past eight, famished, tottering, I washed up, changed my
clothes, and dragged my weary body to the car. It was three miles
to where I lived, and I had received a pass with the stipulation
that I could sit down as long as there were no paying passengers
in need of a seat. As I sank into a corner outside seat I prayed
that no passenger might require my seat. But the car filled up,
and, half-way in, a woman came on board, and there was no seat for
her. I started to get up, and to my astonishment found that I
could not. With the chill wind blowing on me, my spent body had
stiffened into the seat. It took me the rest of the run in to
unkink my complaining joints and muscles and get into a standing
position on the lower step. And when the car stopped at my corner
I nearly fell to the ground when I stepped off.
I hobbled two blocks to the house and limped into the kitchen.
While my mother started to cook, I plunged into bread and butter;
but before my appetite was appeased, or the steak fried, I was
sound asleep. In vain my mother strove to shake me awake enough
to eat the meat. Failing in this, with the assistance of my
father she managed to get me to my room, where I collapsed dead
asleep on the bed. They undressed me and covered me up. In the
morning came the agony of being awakened. I was terribly sore,
and, worst of all, my wrists were swelling. But I made up for my
lost supper, eating an enormous breakfast, and when I hobbled to
catch my car I carried a lunch twice as big as the one the day
before.
Work! Let any youth just turned eighteen try to out-shovel two
man-grown coal-shovellers. Work! Long before midday I had eaten
the last scrap of my huge lunch. But I was resolved to show them
what a husky young fellow determined to rise could do. The worst
of it was that my wrists were swelling and going back on me.
There are few who do not know the pain of walking on a sprained
ankle. Then imagine the pain of shovelling coal and trundling a
loaded wheelbarrow with two sprained wrists.
Work! More than once I sank down on the coal where no one could
see me, and cried with rage, and mortification, and exhaustion,
and despair. That second day was my hardest, and all that enabled
me to survive it and get in the last of the night coal at the end
of thirteen hours was the day fireman, who bound both my wrists
with broad leather straps. So tightly were they buckled that they
were like slightly flexible plaster casts. They took the stresses
and pressures which hitherto had been borne by my wrists, and they
were so tight that there was no room for the inflammation to rise
in the sprains.
And in this fashion I continued to learn to be an electrician.
Night after night I limped home, fell asleep before I could eat my
supper, and was helped into bed and undressed. Morning after
morning, always with huger lunches in my dinner pail, I limped out
of the house on my way to work.
I no longer read my library books. I made no dates with the
girls. I was a proper work beast. I worked, and ate, and slept,
while my mind slept all the time. The whole thing was a
nightmare. I worked every day, including Sunday, and I looked far
ahead to my one day off at the end of a month, resolved to lie
abed all that day and just sleep and rest up.
The strangest part of this experience was that I never took a
drink nor thought of taking a drink. Yet I knew that men under
hard pressure almost invariably drank. I had seen them do it, and
in the past had often done it myself. But so sheerly non-
alcoholic was I that it never entered my mind that a drink might
be good for me. I instance this to show how entirely lacking from
my make-up was any predisposition toward alcohol. And the point
of this instance is that later on, after more years had passed,
contact with John Barleycorn at last did induce in me the
alcoholic desire.
I had often noticed the day fireman staring at me in a curious
way. At last, one day, he spoke. He began by swearing me to
secrecy. He had been warned by the superintendent not to tell me,
and in telling me he was risking his job. He told me of the day
coal-passer and the night coal-passer, and of the wages they had
received. I was doing for thirty dollars a month what they had
received eighty dollars for doing. He would have told me sooner,
the fireman said, had he not been so certain that I would break
down under the work and quit. As it was, I was killing myself,
and all to no good purpose. I was merely cheapening the price of
labour, he argued, and keeping two men out of a job.
Being an American boy, and a proud American boy, I did not
immediately quit. This was foolish of me, I know; but I resolved
to continue the work long enough to prove to the superintendent
that I could do it without breaking down. Then I would quit, and
he would realise what a fine young fellow he had lost.
All of which I faithfully and foolishly did. I worked on until
the time came when I got in the last of the night coal by six
o'clock. Then I quit the job of learning electricity by doing
more than two men's work for a boy's wages, went home, and
proceeded to sleep the clock around.
Fortunately, I had not stayed by the job long enough to injure
myself--though I was compelled to wear straps on my wrists for a
year afterward. But the effect of this work orgy in which I had
indulged was to sicken me with work. I just wouldn't work. The
thought of work was repulsive. I didn't care if I never settled
down. Learning a trade could go hang. It was a whole lot better
to royster and frolic over the world in the way I had previously
done. So I headed out on the adventure-path again, starting to
tramp East by beating my way on the railroads.
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.)
Three years was the time required to go through the high school.
I grew impatient. Also, my schooling was becoming financially
impossible. At such rate I could not last out, and I did greatly
want to go to the state university. When I had done a year of
high school, I decided to attempt a short cut. I borrowed the
money and paid to enter the senior class of a "cramming joint" or
academy. I was scheduled to graduate right into the university at
the end of four months, thus saving two years.
And how I did cram! I had two years' new work to do in a third of
a year. For five weeks I crammed, until simultaneous quadratic
equations and chemical formulas fairly oozed from my ears. And
then the master of the academy took me aside. He was very sorry,
but he was compelled to give me back my tuition fee and to ask me
to leave the school. It wasn't a matter of scholarship. I stood
well in my classes, and did he graduate me into the university he
was confident that in that institution I would continue to stand
well. The trouble was that tongues were gossiping about my case.
What! In four months accomplished two years' work! It would be a
scandal, and the universities were becoming severer in their
treatment of accredited prep schools. He couldn't afford such a
scandal, therefore I must gracefully depart.
I did. And I paid back the borrowed money, and gritted my teeth,
and started to cram by myself. There were three months yet before
the university entrance examinations. Without laboratories,
without coaching, sitting in my bedroom, I proceeded to compress
that two years' work into three months and to keep reviewed on the
previous year's work.
Nineteen hours a day I studied. For three months I kept this
pace, only breaking it on several occasions. My body grew weary,
my mind grew weary, but I stayed with it. My eyes grew weary and
began to twitch, but they did not break down. Perhaps, toward the
last, I got a bit dotty. I know that at the time I was confident,
I had discovered the formula for squaring the circle; but I
resolutely deferred the working of it out until after the
examinations. Then I would show them.
Came the several days of the examinations, during which time I
scarcely closed my eyes in sleep, devoting every moment to
cramming and reviewing. And when I turned in my last examination
paper I was in full possession of a splendid case of brain-fag. I
didn't want to see a book. I didn't want to think or to lay eyes
on anybody who was liable to think.
There was but one prescription for such a condition, and I gave it
to myself--the adventure-path. I didn't wait to learn the result
of my examinations. I stowed a roll of blankets and some cold
food into a borrowed whitehall boat and set sail. Out of the
Oakland Estuary I drifted on the last of an early morning ebb,
caught the first of the flood up bay, and raced along with a
spanking breeze. San Pablo Bay was smoking, and the Carquinez
Straits off the Selby Smelter were smoking, as I picked up ahead
and left astern the old landmarks I had first learned with Nelson
in the unreefer Reindeer.
Benicia showed before me. I opened the bight of Turner's
Shipyard, rounded the Solano wharf, and surged along abreast of
the patch of tules and the clustering fishermen's arks where in
the old days I had lived and drunk deep.
And right here something happened to me, the gravity of which I
never dreamed for many a long year to come. I had had no
intention of stopping at Benicia. The tide favoured, the wind was
fair and howling--glorious sailing for a sailor. Bull Head and
Army Points showed ahead, marking the entrance to Suisun Bay which
I knew was smoking. And yet, when I laid eyes on those fishing
arks lying in the water-front tules, without debate, on the
instant, I put down my tiller, came in on the sheet, and headed
for the shore. On the instant, out of the profound of my brain-
fag, I knew what I wanted. I wanted to drink. I wanted to get
drunk.
The call was imperative. There was no uncertainty about it. More
than anything else in the world, my frayed and frazzled mind
wanted surcease from weariness in the way it knew surcease would
come. And right here is the point. For the first time in my life
I consciously, deliberately, desired to get drunk. It was a new,
a totally different manifestation of John Barleycorn's power. It
was not a body need for alcohol. It was a mental desire. My
over-worked and jaded mind wanted to forget.
And here the point is drawn to its sharpest. Granted my
prodigious brain-fag, nevertheless, had I never drunk in the past,
the thought would never have entered my mind to get drunk now.
Beginning with physical intolerance for alcohol, for years
drinking only for the sake of comradeship and because alcohol was
everywhere on the adventure-path, I had now reached the stage
where my brain cried out, not merely for a drink, but for a drunk.
And had I not been so long used to alcohol, my brain would not
have so cried out. I should have sailed on past Bull Head, and in
the smoking white of Suisun Bay, and in the wine of wind that
filled my sail and poured through me, I should have forgotten my
weary brain and rested and refreshed it.
So I sailed in to shore, made all fast, and hurried up among the
arks. Charley Le Grant fell on my neck. His wife, Lizzie, folded
me to her capacious breast. Billy Murphy, and Joe Lloyd, and all
the survivors of the old guard, got around me and their arms
around me. Charley seized the can and started for Jorgensen's
saloon across the railroad tracks. That meant beer. I wanted
whisky, so I called after him to bring a flask.
Many times that flask journeyed across the railroad tracks and
back. More old friends of the old free and easy times dropped in,
fishermen, Greeks, and Russians, and French. They took turns in
treating, and treated all around in turn again. They came and
went, but I stayed on and drank with all. I guzzled. I swilled.
I ran the liquor down and joyed as the maggots mounted in my
brain.
And Clam came in, Nelson's partner before me, handsome as ever,
but more reckless, half insane, burning himself out with whisky.
He had just had a quarrel with his partner on the sloop Gazelle,
and knives had been drawn, and blows struck, and he was bent on
maddening the fever of the memory with more whisky. And while we
downed it, we remembered Nelson and that he had stretched out his
great shoulders for the last long sleep in this very town of
Benicia; and we wept over the memory of him, and remembered only
the good things of him, and sent out the flask to be filled and
drank again.
They wanted me to stay over, but through the open door I could see
the brave wind on the water, and my ears were filled with the roar
of it. And while I forgot that I had plunged into the books
nineteen hours a day for three solid months, Charley Le Grant
shifted my outfit into a big Columbia River salmon boat. He added
charcoal and a fisherman's brazier, a coffee pot and frying pan,
and the coffee and the meat, and a black bass fresh from the water
that day.
They had to help me down the rickety wharf and into the salmon
boat. Likewise they stretched my boom and sprit until the sail
set like a board. Some feared to set the sprit; but I insisted,
and Charley had no doubts. He knew me of old, and knew that I
could sail as long as I could see. They cast off my painter. I
put the tiller up, filled away before it, and with dizzy eyes
checked and steadied the boat on her course and waved farewell.
The tide had turned, and the fierce ebb, running in the teeth of a
fiercer wind, kicked up a stiff, upstanding sea. Suisun Bay was
white with wrath and sea-lump. But a salmon boat can sail, and I
knew how to sail a salmon boat. So I drove her into it, and
through it, and across, and maundered aloud and chanted my disdain
for all the books and schools. Cresting seas filled me a foot or
so with water, but I laughed at it sloshing about my feet, and
chanted my disdain for the wind and the water. I hailed myself a
master of life, riding on the back of the unleashed elements, and
John Barleycorn rode with me. Amid dissertations on mathematics
and philosophy and spoutings and quotations, I sang all the old
songs learned in the days when I went from the cannery to the
oyster boats to be a pirate--such songs as: "Black Lulu," "Flying
Cloud," "Treat my Daughter Kind-i-ly," "The Boston Burglar," "Come
all you Rambling, Gambling Men," "I Wisht I was a Little Bird,"
"Shenandoah," and "Ranzo, Boys, Ranzo."
Hours afterward, in the fires of sunset, where the Sacramento and
the San Joaquin tumble their muddy floods together, I took the New
York Cut-Off, skimmed across the smooth land-locked water past
Black Diamond, on into the San Joaquin, and on to Antioch, where,
somewhat sobered and magnificently hungry, I laid alongside a big
potato sloop that had a familiar rig. Here were old friends
aboard, who fried my black bass in olive oil. Then, too, there
was a meaty fisherman's stew, delicious with garlic, and crusty
Italian bread without butter, and all washed down with pint mugs
of thick and heady claret.
My salmon boat was a-soak, but in the snug cabin of the sloop dry
blankets and a dry bunk were mine; and we lay and smoked and
yarned of old days, while overhead the wind screamed through the
rigging and taut halyards drummed against the mast.
My cruise in the salmon boat lasted a week, and I returned ready
to enter the university. During the week's cruise I did not drink