John Barleycorn

pirates, the real heavy drinking came suddenly, and was the resu

embled on board the Annie-rough men, big and unafraid, and weazened wharf-rats, some of them ex-convicts, all of them enemies of the law and meriting

back in those days when I was rubbing shoulders with John Barleycorn and beginning to accep

ith one "Clam." Clam was a dare-devil, but Nelson was a reckless maniac. He was twenty years old, with the body of a Hercules. When

s reputation along the water-front for violence was anything but savoury. He had Berserker rages and did mad, terrible things. I made his acquaintance the first cruise

magine my pride when he promptly asked me in to have a drink. I stood at the bar and drank a glass of beer with him, and t

lead the way outside when great Nelson chose to lean against the bar? After a few minutes, to my surprise, he ask

Unfortunately for my stomach and mucous membranes, Nelson had a strange quirk of nature that made him find happiness in treating me to beer. I had no moral disinclination for beer, and just because I didn't like

w, when I look back upon it, that Nelson was curious. He wanted to find out just what kind of a g

decided that I had had enough for that time. So I mentioned that I was going

manhood. I, a truly-true oyster pirate, was going aboard my own boat after hob-nobbing in the Last Chance with Nelson, the greatest oyster pirate of us all. Strong in my brain was the vision

membered, on the drunk on the Idler, how Scotty and the harpooner and myself had raked and scraped dimes and nickels with which to buy the whisky. Then came my boy

And he was the great Nelson! I could feel myself blushing with shame. I sat down on the stringer-piece of the wharf and buried my face in my hands. And the heat

ere pinched by poverty. The pinch of poverty had been chronic. I was eight years old when I wore my first little undershirt actually sold in a store across the counter. And then it had been only one little undershirt. When it was soiled I had to return to the awful h

arly discovered that the only things I could have were those I got for myself. My meagre childhood developed meagreness. The first things I had been able to get for myself had been cigarette pictures, cigarette posters, and cigarette albums

orses, Parisian Beauties, Women of All Nations, Flags of All Nations, Noted Actors, Champion Prize Fighters, etc.

values that I had, who was never given money to buy anything. I traded for postage-stamps, for minerals, for curios, for birds' eggs, for marbles (I had a more magnificent collection of agates than I have ever seen any bo

thing. I was famous as a trader. I was notorious as a miser. I could even make a junkman weep when I had dealings with him. Other boys called me in to

ith men I admired. I was proud to be with them. Had all my pinching and saving brought me the equivalent of one of the many thrills which had been mine since I came among the oyster pirates? Then what was worth while-money or thrills? These men ha

liness and romance. Either I must throw overboard all my old values of money and look upon it as something to be flung ab

machine for a drink of something I didn't want and which tasted rotten. But it wasn't difficult. I had achieved a concept. Money no longer counted. It was comradeship that counted. "Have another?" I said. And we had another, and I paid for it. Nel

than mere quantity. I got my finger on it. There was a stage when the beer didn't count at all, but just the spirit of comradeship of drinking togethe

y, as we drank, in the hope Nelson would take it as an exp

at," he answered. "Johnny'll trust

ny agreed, w

down against me?

dded up the account of several dollars. At once I became possessed with a des

ecided to go. We parted true comradely, and I wandered down the whar

e grinned up at me thro

on," I said carelessly,

at I had achieved my concept, I might as well practise it tho

, moustached man of thirty-everything, in short, that his nickname did not connote. "Come on," I said, "an

good graces with a couple of glasses of beer. Oh! I was learning things that afternoon about John Barleycorn. There was more in him than the bad taste when you swallowed him. Here, at the absurd cost of ten cents, a

ustomed drinker, carelessly, casually, as a sort of spontaneous thought that had just occurred to me. Looki

overheard Spider conf

re with Nelson all aftern

me a recommendation as a man. "HE'S BEEN SOUSIN' HERE WITH NELSON ALL AFTER

were ready to drink. "Have something yourself, Johnny," I said, with an air of having intended to say it all the ti

from his private bottle. This hit me for a moment on my thrifty side. He had taken a ten-cent drink when the rest of us were drinking

seeing a fresh page devoted to my name and a charge pencilled for a round of drinks amounting to thirty cents. And I gl

mself in that matter of the ten-cent drink. He treated us around from behind

we got outside. Pat, who had been shovelling coal all day, had

Kelley. And Smith, of the Annie, drifted in-he of the belt-buckled revolvers. And Nelson showed up. And I met others, including the Vigy brothers, who ran the place, and, chiefest of all, Joe Goose, with

ngs of the Razzle Dazzle. "But what of it?" I thought, or rather, John Barleycorn thought it for me. "You're a man and you're getting acquainted with men. Mammy Jen

ssible for one to do sober, is done quite easily when one is not sober. In fact, it is the only thing one can d

ling expense of some trifling money and a jingle that was growing unpleasant. Who took me