y means, but I really thought he was my Jonah. We
talked a while, and we promised to meet and go home together. Like a
foolish boy, I met him that night and many a time after.

TOUCH NOT, TASTE NOT

Mike was just learning to play pool, and one evening we had to go in and
play a game. That night I had the first glass of beer I ever took in a
saloon. Mike was getting to be quite a tippler, and he said, "Let's have
a drink." I said I didn't want any, and I didn't. But he said--I really
think the Devil was using Mike to make me drink--"Oh, be a man! One
glass won't hurt you; it will do you good." And he talked to me about
mother's apron-strings, and finally I took my first drink outside of
what I drank when grandfather used to send me for beer.

Do you know, as I stood there before the bar, with that beer in my hand,
I heard a voice just as plain as I ever heard anything, saying, "Don't
take that stuff; it's no good, and will bring you to shame and misery.
It will spoil your future, and you will never become the great merchant
you started out to be. Put it down and don't drink it." That was
twenty-five years ago, and many a time I have heard that voice since.
How I wish now that I had listened to that voice and never taken that
first drink! It is not the second or the one hundred and second drink
that makes a man a drunkard, but the first.

I started to put the glass down, and with that Mike began to laugh, and
his laugh brought the other fellows around. Of course Mike told them I
was a milk-and-water boy. I could not stand it to be laughed at, so I
put the glass of beer to my lips, swallowed it, and never made a face
about it. Then the fellows said, "You're all right! You are initiated
now and you're a man!"

I didn't feel very much like a man. I felt as though I was some fellow
without a single spark of manhood in my whole make-up. I thought of
mother; what would she say if she knew I had broken my promise to her? I
had promised her when father died never to take a drink in all my life.
I knelt at her dear side, with her hands upon my head, and she prayed
that God would bless her boy and keep him from drink. I had honestly
intended to keep that promise, but you see how the Devil popped in and
once more made me do what I knew was wrong--drink that first cursed
glass of beer.

I went home, walking all the way, and trying to get the smell out of my
mouth. I could not face my dear mother, so I went to my room without