It was something like this. , from the standpoint of palate and stomach, alcohol was, as it had always been, . It tasted no better than beer did when I was five, than bitter claret did when I was seven. When I was alone, writing or studying, I had no need for it. But—I was growing old, or wise, or both, or senile as an alternative. When I was in company I was less pleased, less excited, with the things said and done. Erstwhile worth-while fun and seemed no longer worth while; and it was a to listen to the insipidities and stupidities of women, to the , sayings of the little half-baked men. It is the penalty one pays for reading the books too much, or for being oneself a fool. In my case it does not matter which was my trouble. The trouble itself was the fact. The condition of the fact was mine. For me the life, and light, and sparkle of human were .
I had climbed too high among the stars, or, maybe, I had slept too hard. Yet I was not nor in any way overwrought. My pulse was normal. My heart was an of to the insurance doctors. My lungs threw the said doctors into . I wrote a thousand words every day. I was exact in with all the affairs of life that fell to my lot. I exercised in joy and gladness. I slept at night like a babe. But—
Well, as soon as I got out in the company of others I was driven to and spiritual tears. I could neither laugh with nor at the solemn of men I ; nor could I laugh, nor engage in my old-time lightsome , with the silly superficial chatterings of women, who, all their silliness and softness, were as , direct, and deadly in their pursuit of biological destiny as the monkeys women were before they shed their coats and replaced them with the furs of other animals.
And I was not pessimistic. I swear I was not pessimistic. I was merely bored. I had seen the same show too often, listened too often to the same songs and the same jokes. I knew too much about the box office receipts. I knew the cogs of the behind the scenes so well that the posing on the stage, and the laughter and the song, could not drown the creaking of the wheels behind.
It doesn't pay to go behind the scenes and see the angel-voiced beat his wife. Well, I'd been behind, and I was paying for it. Or else I was a fool. It is immaterial which was my situation. The situation is what counts, and the situation was that social intercourse for me was getting painful and difficult. On the other hand, it must be stated that on rare occasions, on very rare occasions, I did meet rare souls, or fools like me, with whom I could spend magnificent hours among the stars, or in the paradise of fools. I was married to a rare soul, or a fool, who never bored me and who was always a source of new and unending surprise and delight. But I could not spend all my hours in her company.
Nor would it have been fair, nor wise, to compel her to spend all her hours in my company. Besides, I had written a string of successful books, and society demands some portion of the recreative hours of a fellow that writes books. And any normal man, of himself and his needs, demands some hours of his fellow men.
And now we begin to come to it. How to face the social intercourse game with the gone? John Barleycorn. The ever patient one had waited a quarter of a century and more for me to reach my hand out in need of him. His thousand tricks had failed, thanks to my constitution and good luck, but he had more tricks in his bag. A or two, or several, I found, cheered me up for the foolishness of foolish people. A cocktail, or several, before dinner, enabled me to laugh whole-heartedly at things which had long since ceased being laughable. The cocktail was a , a spur, a kick, to my
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