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Updated: May 26, 2025
That was twenty years ago, and I am still very much and wisely alive; and I have seen much, done much, lived much, in that intervening score of years; and I shudder when I think how close a shave I ran, how near I was to missing that splendid fifth of a century that has been mine. And, oh, it wasn't John Barleycorn's fault that he didn't get me that night of the Hancock Fire Brigade.
It is when in this condition that he strips away the husks of life's healthiest illusions and gravely considers the iron collar of necessity welded about the neck of his soul. This is the hour of John Barleycorn's subtlest power. It is easy for any man to roll in the gutter.
"The 'Memoirs of an Alcoholic," I sneered or, rather, John Barleycorn sneered; for he sat with me there at table in my pleasant, philanthropic jingle, and it is a trick of John Barleycorn to turn the smile to a sneer without an instant's warning. "No," said Charmian, ignoring John Barleycorn's roughness, as so many women have learned to do.
No mad dog was ever more afraid of water than was I of alcohol. Yet the point I am making is that this experience, terrible as it was, could not in the end deter me from forming John Barleycorn's cheek-by-jowl acquaintance. All about me, even then, were the forces moving me toward him.
And revivalist preachers, now as in the days of John the Baptist, seldom fail to warn their flocks to watch and pray, as the great day will steal upon them like a thief in the night, and cannot be long deferred in a world so wicked. This belief also associates itself with Barleycorn's second coming; so that the two events become identified at last.
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.
"Faith, I didn't mean it. You look so proud and gintale that it's jist a mistake I made." "You knew that we had no dukes in America," said Godfrey, suspiciously. "If we had, now, you'd be one of them," said Andy. "Why? What makes you say so?" "You're jist the picture of the Earl of Barleycorn's ildest son that I saw before I left Ireland."
Three of the most brilliant are still drudging along in the old shop on general assignments, for little more money than they made ten years ago. One did a book of real merit and the effort he expended upon it overcame him with ennui. Another made the mistake of supposing that he could pin John Barleycorn's shoulders to the mat. Another had no initiative. He is dying in his tracks.
"You have shown yourself no alcoholic, no dipsomaniac, but merely an habitual drinker, one who has made John Barleycorn's acquaintance through long years of rubbing shoulders with him. Write it up and call it 'Alcoholic Memoirs."
A few years before and most of them hardly knew its taste, but some of their number had more than once made "John Barleycorn's" acquaintance and had told wondrous tales of its effects.
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