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