aving a good time together.

However, there was a good deal of rum consumed one way and another. Then
three and a half years ago, after a long caucus with myself, I quit. I
decided I had played that game long enough and would begin to play
another. It may be I did not know or figure out as concretely as I have
figured out since just what I was doing when I quit. It may be! Still,
that has nothing to do with the case. I quit and I have stayed quit--and
I have quit forever. So all that is coming to me in the premises is
based on my own determination, as all has been that has come, and I have
no complaints to make; and if I made any I should expect to get a punch
in the eye for making them--and deserve one.

Passing over the physical and mental sides of the fight--which, I may
assure you, were annoying enough to suit the most exacting advocate of
the old policy of mortifying the flesh and disciplining the mind--there
came eventually the necessity of learning how to keep in the game on a
water basis--or, rather, of learning how to keep in such portions of the
game as seemed worth while on a soft-drink schedule. I was too old to
form many new ties. I had accumulated a farflung line of drinking men as
friends. They were mostly the men with whom association was a
pleasure--as in politics the villains are always the good fellows--and I
did not want to lose them, however willing they were to lose me.

There came, however, with my mineral-water view, a discriminatory sense
that was not enjoyed in the highball period--that is to say, I found,
observed with the cold and mayhap critical eye of abstinence, that a
number of those with whom I was wont to associate needed the softening
glow radiated by the liquor in me to make them as good as I had
previously thought they were. There were some I found I did not miss,
and more came to the same conclusion about me. They were all
right--fine!--when seen or heard through ears and eyes that had been
affected by the genial charitableness of a couple or three cocktails;
but when seen or heard with no adventitious appliances on my part save
ginger ale they were rather depressing--and I am quite sure they held
the same views about me.

_V: A Thirsty Nation's Need_

So I sloughed off a good many and a good many sloughed off me; and a
working basis was secured. At first I tried to keep along with all the
old crowd, but that was impossible in two ways. I never realized until
after I wa