the old
world of John Barleycorn held no inducements for me.

Come to think of it, I did enter a saloon. I went to see Johnny Heinhold
in the Last Chance, and I went to borrow money. And right here is
another phase of John Barleycorn. Saloon-keepers are notoriously good
fellows. On an average they perform vastly greater generosities than do
business men. When I simply had to have ten dollars, desperate, with no
place to turn, I went to Johnny Heinhold. Several years had passed since
I had been in his place or spent a cent across his bar. And when I went
to borrow the ten dollars I didn't buy a drink, either. And Johnny
Heinhold let me have the ten dollars without security or interest.

More than once, in the brief days of my struggle for an education, I went
to Johnny Heinhold to borrow money. When I entered the university, I
borrowed forty dollars from him, without interest, without security,
without buying a drink. And yet--and here is the point, the custom, and
the code--in the days of my prosperity, after the lapse of years, I have
gone out of my way by many a long block to spend across Johnny Heinhold's
bar deferred interest on the various loans. Not that Johnny Heinhold
asked me to do it, or expected me to do it. I did it, as I have said, in
obedience to the code I had learned along with all the other things
connected with John Barleycorn. In distress, when a man has no other
place to turn, when he hasn't the slightest bit of security which a
savage-hearted pawn-broker would consider, he can go to some
saloon-keeper he knows. Gratitude is inherently human. When the man so
helped has money again, depend upon it that a portion will be spent
across the bar of the saloon-keeper who befriended him.

Why, I recollect the early days of my writing career, when the small sums
of money I earned from the magazines came with tragic irregularity, while
at the same time I was staggering along with a growing family--a wife,
children, a mother, a nephew, and my Mammy Jennie and her old husband
fallen on evil days. There were two places at which I could borrow
money; a barber shop and a saloon. The barber charged me five per cent.
per month in advance. That is to say, when I borrowed one hundred
dollars, he handed me ninety-five. The other five dollars he retained as
advance interest for the first month. And on the second month I paid him
five dollars more, and continued so to do each month until I made a ten