whole game is organized along these lines. Why make a
hermit of yourself just because you think drinking may harm you? Cut it
down. Take care of yourself. Don't be such a fool as to try to change
your manner of living just when you have an opportunity to live as you
should and enjoy what is coming to you.

This is the way it lined up for quitting: So far, liquor hasn't done
anything to you except cause you to waste some time that might have
been otherwise employed; but it will get you, just as it has landed a
lot of your friends, if you stay by it. Wouldn't it be better to miss
some of this stuff you have come to think of as fun, and live longer?
There is no novelty in drinking to you. You haven't an appetite that
cannot be checked, but you will have if you stick to it much longer.
Why not quit and take a chance at a new mode of living, especially
when you know absolutely that every health reason, every
future-prospect reason, every atom of good sense in you, tells you
there is nothing to be gained by keeping at it, and that all may be
lost?

Well, I pondered over that a long time. I had watched miserable
wretches who had struggled to stay on the waterwagon--sometimes with
amusement. I knew what they had to stand if they tried to associate
with their former companions; I knew the apparent difficulties and the
disadvantages of this new mode of life. On the other hand, I was
convinced that, so far as I was concerned, without trying to lay down
a rule for any other man, I would be an ass if I didn't quit it
immediately, while I was well and all right, instead of waiting until I
had to quit on a doctor's orders, or got to that stage when I couldn't
quit.

It was no easy thing to make the decision. It is hard to change the
habits and associations of twenty years! I had a good understanding of
myself. I was no hero. I liked the fun of it, the companionship of it,
better than any one. I like my friends and, I hope and think, they like
me. It seemed to me that I needed it in my business, for I was always
dealing with men who did drink.

I wrestled with it for some weeks. I thought it all out, up one side
and down the other. Then I quit. Also I stayed quit. And believe me,
ladies and gentlemen and all others present, it was no fool of a job.

I have learned many things since I went on the waterwagon for
fair--many things about my fellowmen and many things about myself. Most
of these things radiate round the innate hypocri