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Updated: August 4, 2024
I abandoned myself to the life, and developed the misconception that the secret of John Barleycorn lay in going on mad drunks, rising through the successive stages that only an iron constitution could endure to final stupefaction and swinish unconsciousness. I did not like the taste, so I drank for the sole purpose of getting drunk, of getting hopelessly, helplessly drunk.
They were tickles of the something destined to grow into daily and deadly desire. And I didn't know, never dreamed I, who had lived with John Barleycorn for so many years and laughed at all his unavailing attempts to win me.
It was the PEOPLE, and no thanks to John Barleycorn, who pulled me through my long sickness. And when I was convalescent came the love of woman to complete the cure and lull my pessimism asleep for many a long day, until John Barleycorn again awoke it. But in the meantime, I pursued Truth less relentlessly, refraining from tearing her last veils aside even when I clutched them in my hand.
John Barleycorn makes toward death. That is why I voted for the amendment to-day. I read back in my life and saw how the accessibility of alcohol had given me the taste for it. You see, comparatively few alcoholics are born in a generation. And by alcoholic I mean a man whose chemistry craves alcohol and drives him resistlessly to it.
At this period he was doing his best to kill me at a fairly rapid pace. But, not satisfied with that, he tried another dodge. He very nearly got me, too, and right there I learned a lesson about him became a wiser, a more skilful drinker. I learned there were limits to my gorgeous constitution, and that there were no limits to John Barleycorn.
A thousand times no; and I wept tears of sweet sadness over my glorious youth going out with the tide. The water was delicious. It was a man's way to die. John Barleycorn changed the tune he played in my drink-maddened brain. Away with tears and regret. It was a hero's death, and by the hero's own hand and will.
Beer was not for children. The grown-ups didn't mind it; but neither did they mind taking pills and castor oil. As for me, I could manage to get along quite well without beer. Yes, and to the day of my death I could have managed to get along quite well without it. But circumstance decreed otherwise. At every turn in the world in which I lived, John Barleycorn beckoned. There was no escaping him.
"Waal," continued his leisurely interlocutor, still interrogative, "does ye know Jacob Brice?" Ill-starred association of ideas! There was a look of apprehension on Jenkins Hollis's wooden face. "They hev done got a license down hyar ter the Court House an' gone a-kitin' out on the Old B'ar road." This was explicit. "Whar's my horse?" exclaimed Jenks, appropriating "John Barleycorn" in his haste.
"I suppose if I were the right sort," he said, at length, with some difficulty, "I'd let you go under these circumstances. Well, I'm not the right sort; I'm not big or noble. I'm just an ordinary, medium-sized man, and I'm going to keep you. However, I'm through side-stepping; I've tried to outrun the Barleycorn Brothers, but it's no use, so I'm going to turn and face them.
My victims lie in Potter's Fields in regiments and legions; John Barleycorn his scepter wields o'er all these smiling regions. I find new victims every day as I go blithely roaming; a million feet I lead astray between the dawn and gloaming. With sparkling beer and foaming ale I am my friends befriending, and to the poorhouse and the jail my followers are wending.
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