amed day-dreams of her for a year and more, and the memory of her is
very dear.

CHAPTER XIX

When I was with people who did not drink, I never thought of drinking.
Louis did not drink. Neither he nor I could afford it; but, more
significant than that, we had no desire to drink. We were healthy,
normal, non-alcoholic. Had we been alcoholic, we would have drunk
whether or not we could have afforded it.

Each night, after the day's work, washed up, clothes changed, and supper
eaten, we met on the street corner or in the little candy store. But the
warm fall weather passed, and on bitter nights of frost or damp nights of
drizzle, the street corner was not a comfortable meeting-place. And the
candy store was unheated. Nita, or whoever waited on the counter,
between waitings lurked in a back living-room that was heated. We were
not admitted to this room, and in the store it was as cold as
out-of-doors.

Louis and I debated the situation. There was only one solution: the
saloon, the congregating-place of men, the place where men hobnobbed with
John Barleycorn. Well do I remember the damp and draughty evening,
shivering without overcoats because we could not afford them, that Louis
and I started out to select our saloon. Saloons are always warm and
comfortable. Now Louis and I did not go into this saloon because we
wanted a drink. Yet we knew that saloons were not charitable
institutions. A man could not make a lounging-place of a saloon without
occasionally buying something over the bar.

Our dimes and nickels were few. We could ill spare any of them when they
were so potent in paying car-fare for oneself and a girl. (We never paid
car-fare when by ourselves, being content to walk.) So, in this saloon,
we desired to make the most of our expenditure. We called for a deck of
cards and sat down at a table and played euchre for an hour, in which
time Louis treated once, and I treated once, to beer--the cheapest drink,
ten cents for two. Prodigal! How we grudged it!

We studied the men who came into the place. They seemed all middle-aged
and elderly work-men, most of them Germans, who flocked by themselves in
old-acquaintance groups, and with whom we could have only the slightest
contacts. We voted against that saloon, and went out cast down with the
knowledge that we had lost an evening and wasted twenty cents for beer
that we didn't want.

We made several more tries on succeeding nights, and a