edge of appetite.

I felt so good, that somehow, somewhere, in me arose an insatiable greed
to feel better. I was so happy that I wanted to pitch my happiness even
higher. And I knew the way. Ten thousand contacts with John Barleycorn
had taught me. Several times I wandered out of the kitchen to the
cocktail bottle, and each time I left it diminished by one man's size
cocktail. The result was splendid. I wasn't jingled, I wasn't lighted
up; but I was warmed, I glowed, my happiness was pyramided. Munificent
as life was to me, I added to that munificence. It was a great hour--one
of my greatest. But I paid for it, long afterwards, as you will see.
One does not forget such experiences, and, in human stupidity, cannot be
brought to realise that there is no immutable law which decrees that same
things shall produce same results. For they don't, else would the
thousandth pipe of opium be provocative of similar delights to the first,
else would one cocktail, instead of several, produce an equivalent glow
after a year of cocktails.

One day, just before I ate midday dinner, after my morning's writing was
done, when I had no guest, I took a cocktail by myself. Thereafter, when
there were no guests, I took this daily pre-dinner cocktail. And right
there John Barleycorn had me. I was beginning to drink regularly. I was
beginning to drink alone. And I was beginning to drink, not for
hospitality's sake, not for the sake of the taste, but for the effect of
the drink.

I WANTED that daily pre-dinner cocktail. And it never crossed my mind
that there was any reason I should not have it. I paid for it. I could
pay for a thousand cocktails each day if I wanted. And what was a
cocktail--one cocktail--to me who on so many occasions for so many years
had drunk inordinate quantities of stiffer stuff and been unharmed?

The programme of my ranch life was as follows: Each morning, at
eight-thirty, having been reading or correcting proofs in bed since four
or five, I went to my desk. Odds and ends of correspondence and notes
occupied me till nine, and at nine sharp, invariably, I began my writing.
By eleven, sometimes a few minutes earlier or later, my thousand words
were finished. Another half-hour at cleaning up my desk, and my day's
work was done, so that at eleven-thirty I got into a hammock under the
trees with my mail-bag and the morning newspaper. At twelve-thirty I ate
dinner and in the afternoon I swam and rode