Samuel G. Blythe

“ What I do mean is that there remains in every man a remembrance, the ghost of a desire, the haunting thoughts of how good a certain kind of a drink would taste, and a regret for joys of companionship with one's fellows in the old way and in the old game, which takes time—and a good deal of time—to eradicate.
It becomes a sort of state of mind. The body does not crave liquor. ”

“ So far as I am able to judge, a man who has been a more or less sincere drinker for twenty years does not arrive at a point before two years of abstinence where he can take an impartial and non-alcoholic survey.
At first he is imbued with the spirit of the new convert, fired with zeal and considerable of a Pharisee. Also, he is inhabited by the lingering thoughts of what he has renounced—the fun and the frolic of it; and he has set himself aside, in a good measure, from the friends he has made in the twenty years of joyousness. ”

“ A non-drinking man is the master of his own time. If he wants sociability he can go and get it, up to such limits as he personally can attain for himself in his water-consuming capacity. A drinking man is not master of his time. He may think he is, but he is not. He is the creature of a habit that may be harmless, but which surely is insistent; and the habit dictates what he shall do with his leisure. ”

“ The old game makes for fun, but it takes toll—and never fails!
I have tried it both ways. I can see how a man who never took any liquor cannot understand much of what I have written, and I can see how a man who has the same sort of habits I had can think me absurd in my conclusions; but a man who has played both ends of it certainly has some qualifications as a judge. And, as I stated, I have set down here only my own personal ideas on the subject.
As I look at it there is no argument. The man who does not drink has all the better of the game. ”

“ The fact that any man who salves himself with this sort of statement—and hundreds do—did go back does not prove that he could quit, but that he could not!
[Pg 30]
I can understand why a man, having tried both sides of the game, should conclude that the rigors and restraints of not drinking overbalance the compensations and take up the practice again; but I cannot understand why a man should be so great a hypocrite with himself as to assign a reason like that for his renewal of the habit. No man quits just to see whether he can quit. ”

“ Moreover, they are the worst sort of liars, for they not only lie to others but commit the useless folly of lying to themselves. They may think they do not lie; but they do.
There is not one of them—not one—who is not visited by the ghost of good times, the wraith of former fun, now and then; or one who does not wonder whether it is worth the struggle and speculate on what the harm would be if he took a few for old time's sake. ”

“ The crying need of the society of this country is a non-alcoholic beverage that can be drunk in quantities similar to the quantities in which highballs can be drunk. A man who is a good, handy drinker can lap up half a dozen highballs in the course of an evening—and many lap up considerably more than that number and hold [Pg 38] them comfortably; but the man does not exist who can drink half of that bulk of water or ginger ale, or of any of the first-aids-to-the-non-drinkers, and not be both flooded and foundered. ”

“ Why, such new vistas of what can be done with time that was wasted in former years have opened before me that time seems to me the greatest luxury in the world—time that was formerly wasted and now is used! ”

“ When you do drink, about all you do is drink—that is, the usual formula, day by day, is to get through work and then go somewhere where there are fellows of your kind and have a few. Now when you do not drink you find there are other things that occur to you as worth while. It is not necessary to hurry to the club or elsewhere to meet the crowd and listen to the newest story, or hear the comment on the day's doings, punctuated by the regular tapping of the bell for the waiter and the pleasing: "What'll it be, boys?" ”

“ Looking back at the old game from this hillock of abstinence—it is not an eminence like those occupied by the twelve and fifteen year boys—looking back at the old game from this slight elevation, it is perhaps excusable for a man who put in twenty years at the old game to set the old game off against the new game and make up a debit and credit account just for the fun of it. ”

“ A man who has the convivial-drinking habit is put to it on occasions to find time for anything but conviviality aside from his regular occupation. It seems imperative to him that he shall get where the crowd is, and stay there. He might miss something—a drink maybe, or two, or a laugh, or a yarn, or the pleasures of association with folks he likes. ”

“ My occupation takes me to all parts of the world and has for twenty-five years. It has caused me to make friends with all sorts of people in all sorts of places and in all sorts of circumstances. I early discovered that, as I was a gregarious person and intent on doing the best for myself that I possibly could, it was necessary for me to cultivate the friendship of men of affairs; and it became apparent to me that many men of affairs take an occasional drink. Naturally I took an occasional drink with them, having no prejudices in the matter and being of open mind. ”

“ Mental impressions and desires last far longer than physical ones, and by that time the mind has been reorganized along the new lines. Then comes the sure knowledge that it is all right; and after that time any man who has fought his fight and falls can be classed only as an idiot. What, in the name of Bacchus, is there to compensate a man in drinking again—after he has won his fight—for all the troubles and rigors of the battle from which he has emerged victorious? ”

“ When a man first stops drinking he is likely to become censorious. That starts him badly. Also he is likely to become serious. That marks him down fifteen points out of a possible thirty. He flocks by himself, thinking high thoughts about his purity of purpose, his vast wisdom, his acute realization of the dangers that formerly beset his path and now beset the path of all those who are not walking side by side and in close communion with him. He pins medals all over himself, pats himself on the chest, and is much better than his kind. ”

“ Every man quits because he personally thinks he ought to quit—for whatever his personal reason may be. And he begins again because he concludes the game is not worth playing, which means that he is not able to play it—not that it lacks merit. ”

“ If I have lost any friends they were friends whose loss does not bother me. I find that all the true-blue chaps, the worth-while ones, though they look—in most instances—on my non-drinking idiosyncrasy with amused tolerance, have not lost any respect or affection for me, and are just as true blue as they formerly were. Most of them drink, but I fancy some of them wish they did not ”

“ There are times, you know, when even the most enthusiastic ginger-ale specialist is not persona grata. We have reached a common basis of understanding. The real man is tolerant. Intolerance is the vice of the narrow man. ”

“ Take books—though books may not be a fair test of time employed in my case, for I always have read books in great numbers—but take books: In the past three years and a half I have read as many books—real books—as I read in the ten years preceding. ”

“ A scientist who has made a study of the subject told me, early in my water-wagoning, that it takes eighteen months for a man to get the alcohol entirely out of his system—provided, of course, he has been a reasonably consistent consumer of it for a period of years. ”

“ Of course everybody knows the reformer boys think the world is going to hell in a hanging basket unless each person in it comports himself and herself as the reformer boy dictates! But it is not so. And it is so that the social intercourse, the interchange of ideas [Pg 39] between man and man, both in this country and in every other country, is often predicated on drinking as a concomitant. ”

“ The ghost appears and reappears; but gradually, as time goes on, the visits are less frequent—and finally they cease. The ghost has given you up for a bad job. If any man has quit and has stuck it out for two years he can be reasonably sure he will not be haunted much after he enters his third year. ”

“ I have no desire to impress my convictions on the subject of drinking liquor on any person whatever. That is not my mission. So far as I am concerned, all persons are hereby given full and free permission to eat, drink and be merry to such extent as they may prescribe for themselves. ”

“ The physical gain is so obvious that even those who have not experienced [Pg 62] it admit it, and those who have experienced it comment on it as some miracle of health that has been attained. Any man—I do not care who he is—who was the sort of a drinker I was, who will stop drinking long enough to get cooled out will feel so much better in every way that he will be hard put to it to give a reason for ever beginning again. ”

“ Hence any man who has been used to the normal society of his fellows along the lines by which I became used to that society, and along the lines by which ninety per cent of the men in this country become used to that society, must make a bluff at drinking something now and then. ”

“ If he is one or both of those he never wakes up, but soon passes beyond the pale. When he wakes up—assuming he has intelligence enough to do that—he gets an acute realization that if he [Pg 41] holds off in that manner much longer even the elevator boys will not speak to him; and he comes to a point where he finds out that the wisest of the wise saws is that a man who is in Rome should do as the Romans do, with such modifications as his personal circumstances may demand. ”

“ I was never quite normal—no man is normal who has a few drinks each day, though most men boast they never were under the influence of liquor in their lives, and all that sort of tommyrot—and never quite up to the mark. ”

“ However, when a man has arrived at that stage where he can retain at least a portion of his good fellowship and also can be two or three of the other kinds of a worth-while fellow—to himself, at least—he has gained on the old gang by about a hundred per cent. ”

“ These are found in every center of population and are the boys who never cease wondering how it is that any man can or does do anything they themselves do not do, and continually comment thereon. Ordinarily when a man of my type quits drinking the fact is accepted after the probationary period has passed, and no further comment is made on it. ”