tiless, spectral syllogisms of the white
logic. He looks upon life and all its affairs with the jaundiced eye of
a pessimistic German philosopher. He sees through all illusions. He
transvalues all values. Good is bad, truth is a cheat, and life is a
joke. From his calm-mad heights, with the certitude of a god, he beholds
all life as evil. Wife, children, friends--in the clear, white light of
his logic they are exposed as frauds and shams. He sees through them,
and all that he sees is their frailty, their meagreness, their
sordidness, their pitifulness. No longer do they fool him. They are
miserable little egotisms, like all the other little humans, fluttering
their May-fly life-dance of an hour. They are without freedom. They are
puppets of chance. So is he. He realises that. But there is one
difference. He sees; he knows. And he knows his one freedom: he may
anticipate the day of his death. All of which is not good for a man who
is made to live and love and be loved. Yet suicide, quick or slow, a
sudden spill or a gradual oozing away through the years, is the price
John Barleycorn exacts. No friend of his ever escapes making the just,
due payment.

CHAPTER III

I was five years old the first time I got drunk. It was on a hot day,
and my father was ploughing in the field. I was sent from the house,
half a mile away, to carry to him a pail of beer. "And be sure you don't
spill it," was the parting injunction.

It was, as I remember it, a lard pail, very wide across the top, and
without a cover. As I toddled along, the beer slopped over the rim upon
my legs. And as I toddled, I pondered. Beer was a very precious thing.
Come to think of it, it must be wonderfully good. Else why was I never
permitted to drink of it in the house? Other things kept from me by the
grown-ups I had found good. Then this, too, was good. Trust the
grown-ups. They knew. And, anyway, the pail was too full. I was
slopping it against my legs and spilling it on the ground. Why waste it?
And no one would know whether I had drunk or spilled it.

I was so small that, in order to negotiate the pail, I sat down and
gathered it into my lap. First I sipped the foam. I was disappointed.
The preciousness evaded me. Evidently it did not reside in the foam.
Besides, the taste was not good. Then I remembered seeing the grown-ups
blow the foam away before they drank. I buried my face in the foam and
lapped the solid