Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: July 4, 2025
I achieved a false exhilaration, drugged myself to merriment. And the thing began so imperceptibly that I, old intimate of John Barleycorn, never dreamed whither it was leading me. I was beginning to call for music and wine; soon I should be calling for madder music and more wine. It was at this time I became aware of waiting with expectancy for the pre-dinner cocktail.
Not a hundred men in a million have been so lucky as I. Yet, with all this vast good fortune, am I sad. And I am sad because John Barleycorn is with me. And John Barleycorn is with me because I was born in what future ages will call the dark ages before the ages of rational civilisation.
"You you want to know what 'tis, Cap'n Lote? All right, all right, I'll tell you." And without waiting for further questioning and with, for him, surprisingly few repetitions, he told of his "enlistment" to fight John Barleycorn for the duration of the war. Captain Zelotes listened to the very end in silence.
To throw a barleycorn through the eye of a needle, to multiply nine figures by nine in the memory, argues definite dexterity of body and capacity of mind, but nothing comes of either. There is a surprising power at work, but the effects are not proportionate, or such as take hold of the imagination. To impress the idea of power on others, they must be made in some way to feel it.
"What you doin' at the Double A? You ought be herd-ridin' scholars in a district schoolhouse." "Missed my calling," grinned the other. "I got to know too much to teach school, but didn't know enough to let John Barleycorn alone. I'm a drifter, sort of. Been roaming around the north country. Struck the basin about three weeks ago.
I met the seal-hunter, Pete Holt, and agreed to be his boat-puller and to sign on any schooner he signed on. And I had to have half a dozen drinks with Pete Holt there and then to seal our agreement. And at once awoke all my old unrest that John Barleycorn had put to sleep.
By truly heroic perseverance I finally forced myself to write the daily thousand words without the spur of John Barleycorn. But all the time I wrote I was keenly aware of the craving for a drink. And as soon as the morning's work was done, I was out of the house and away down-town to get my first drink.
As it was, I would sprawl out in the shade on my one day of rest and dally with the Sunday papers. But I was too weary even for their froth. The comic supplement might bring a pallid smile to my face, and then I would fall asleep. Although I did not yield to John Barleycorn while working in the laundry, a certain definite result was produced.
Their meagre physical experiences, plus their meagre intellectual experiences, made a negative sum so vast that it overbalanced their wholesome morality and healthful sports. In short, I couldn't play with the pupils of a lower grade. All the clean splendid young life that was theirs was denied me thanks to my earlier tutelage under John Barleycorn. I knew too much too young.
And I, the long time intimate of John Barleycorn, knew just what he promised me maggots of fancy, dreams of power, forgetfulness, anything and everything save whirling washers, revolving mangles, humming centrifugal wringers, and fancy starch and interminable processions of duck trousers moving in steam under my flying iron. And that's it.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking