political economy, and
biology, and tried lighter stuff, such as history. I fell asleep. I
tried literature, and fell asleep. And finally, when I fell asleep over
lively novels, I gave up. I never succeeded in reading one book in all
the time I spent in the laundry.

And when Saturday night came, and the week's work was over until Monday
morning, I knew only one desire besides the desire to sleep, and that was
to get drunk. This was the second time in my life that I had heard the
unmistakable call of John Barleycorn. The first time it had been because
of brain-fag. But I had no over-worked brain now. On the contrary, all
I knew was the dull numbness of a brain that was not worked at all. That
was the trouble. My brain had become so alert and eager, so quickened by
the wonder of the new world the books had discovered to it, that it now
suffered all the misery of stagnancy and inaction.

And I, the long time intimate of John Barleycorn, knew just what he
promised me--maggots of fancy, dreams of power, forgetfulness, anything
and everything save whirling washers, revolving mangles, humming
centrifugal wringers, and fancy starch and interminable processions of
duck trousers moving in steam under my flying iron. And that's it. John
Barleycorn makes his appeal to weakness and failure, to weariness and
exhaustion. He is the easy way out. And he is lying all the time. He
offers false strength to the body, false elevation to the spirit, making
things seem what they are not and vastly fairer than what they are.

But it must not be forgotten that John Barleycorn is protean. As well as
to weakness and exhaustion, does he appeal to too much strength, to
superabundant vitality, to the ennui of idleness. He can tuck in his arm
the arm of any man in any mood. He can throw the net of his lure over
all men. He exchanges new lamps for old, the spangles of illusion for
the drabs of reality, and in the end cheats all who traffic with him.

I didn't get drunk, however, for the simple reason that it was a mile and
a half to the nearest saloon. And this, in turn, was because the call to
get drunk was not very loud in my ears. Had it been loud, I would have
travelled ten times the distance to win to the saloon. On the other
hand, had the saloon been just around the corner, I should have got
drunk. As it was, I would sprawl out in the shade on my one day of rest
and dally with the Sunday papers. But I was too weary even