Part 89

The bartender KNOWS that the oldish man--about fifty-one or fifty-two--has escaped being a drunkard by mere accident, and that he has not quite escaped yet.

A little hard luck, too much trouble, and he'll lose his balance, forget that there IS lemonade, and take to whiskey permanently. ----

At the far end of the bar there is the man who comes in slowly and passes his hand over his face nervously. The bartender asks no question, but pushes out a bottle of everyday whiskey and a small glass of water.

The whiskey goes down. A shiver follows the whiskey and a very little of the water follows the shiver. The man goes out with his arms close to his sides, his gait shuffling and his head hanging.

It has taken him less than three minutes to buy, swallow and pay for a liberal dose of poison.

Says the bartender:

"That fellow had a good business once. Doesn't look it, does he? Jim over there used to work for him. But he couldn't let it alone."

The "it" mentioned is whiskey.

Outside in the cold that man, who couldn't let it alone, is shuffling his way against the bitter wind. And even in his poor, sodden brain reform and wisdom are striving to be heard.

His soul and body are sunk far below par. His vitality is gone, never to return.

The whiskey, with its shiver that tells of a shock to the heart, lifts him up for a second.

He has a little false strength of mind and brain and that strength is used to mumble good resolutions.

He THINKS he will stop drinking. He thinks he could easily get money backing if he gave up drinking for good. He feels and really believes that he WILL stop drinking.

Perhaps he goes home, and for the hundredth time makes a poor woman believe him, and makes her weep once more for joy, as she has wept many times from sorrow.

But the bartender KNOWS that that man's day has gone, and that Niagara River could turn back as easily as he could remount the swift stream that is sweeping him to destruction. ----

Five men come in together. Each asks of all the others:

"What are you going to have?"

The bartender spreads out his hands on the edge of the bar, attentive and prepared to work quickly.

Every man insists on "buying" something to drink in his turn. Each takes what the others insist on giving him.

Each thinks that he is hospitable.

But the bartender KNOWS that those men belong to the Great American Association for the Manufacture of Drunkards through "treating."

Each of those men might perhaps take his glass of beer, or even something worse, with relative safety. But, as stupidly as stampeded animals pushing each other over a precipice, each insists on buying poison in his turn. And every one spends his money to make every other one, if possible, a hard-drinking and a wasted man. ----

You, Sir. Reader, have seen all these types and many others, have you not?

WHY did you see them? What REASON had you for seeing them?

The bartender stands studying the procession to destruction, because he must make his living in that way. He is a sort of clean-aproned Charon on a whiskey Styx, ferrying the multitude to perdition on the other side of the river. But what is YOUR business there?

You might as well be found inside an opium den.

The drink swallowed at the bar braces you, does it? If you think you need a drink, you REALLY need sleep, or better nourishment, or you need to live more sensibly. Drink will not give you what you need. It may for a moment make your nerves cease tormenting you. It may do in your system for an hour what opium does in the Chinese for a whole day. But if it lifts you up high, it drops you down HARD.

And remember: