July 26, 2025 • 31 mins
Discover the untold story of renowned author Jack London, who tragically passed away at just forty years old. In this deeply personal memoir, London shares his life through the lens of his relationship with alcohol, personified as John Barleycorn. Despite the prevailing controversies surrounding his demise, Londons candid exposition of his battles with alcoholism was far ahead of its time, pre-empting modern theories of addiction. With an extraordinary blend of honesty and insight, he unveils his encounters with both the demons and deities of his life, personified by his friend and foe, John Barleycorn. (Summary by Peter Kelleher)
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapters twenty three, twenty four, and twenty five of John
Barleycorn or Alcoholic Memoirs by Jack Lundon. This is a
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
(00:20):
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Chapter twenty three. My crews in the salmon boat lasted
a week, and I returned ready to enter the university.
During the week's cruise, I did not drink again. To
(00:43):
accomplish this, I was compelled to avoid looking up old friends.
For as ever the adventure path was beset with John Barleycorn.
I had wanted to drink that first day, and in
the days that followed I did not want it. My
tired brain had recuperated. I had no moral scruples in
(01:05):
the matter. I was not ashamed nor sorry because of
that first day's orgy at Benicia, and I thought no
more about it, returning gladly to my books and studies.
Long years were to pass ere I looked back upon
that day and realized its significance. At the time and
(01:29):
for a long time afterward, I was to think of
it only as a frolic. But still later in the
slough of brain fag and intellectual weariness. I was to
remember and know the craving for the anodyne that resides
in alcohol. In the meantime, after this one relapse at Benicia,
(01:56):
I went on with my abstemiousness, primarily because I didn't
want to drink, And next I was abstemious because my
way led among books and students where no drinking was.
Had I been out on the adventure Path, I should,
as a matter of course, have been drinking, for that
(02:20):
is the pity of the adventure Path, which is one
of John Barleycorn's favorite stamping grounds. I completed the first
half of my freshman year and in January of eighteen
ninety seven took up my courses for the second half.
But the pressure from lack of money, plus a conviction
(02:43):
that the university was not giving me all that I
wanted in the time I could spare for it, forced
me to leave. I was not very disappointed. For two
years I had studied, and in those two years what
was far more valuable. I had done a prodigious amount
(03:05):
of reading. Then two my grammar had improved. It is
true I had not yet learned that. I must say
it is I, but I no longer was guilty of
a double negative in writing, though still prone to that
error in excited speech. I decided immediately to embark on
(03:30):
my career. I had four preferences. First music, second poetry,
third the writing of philosophic, economic, and political essays, and
fourth and last and least fiction writing. I resolutely cut
(03:54):
out music as impossible, settled down in my bedroom, and
tackled my second, third, and fourth choices simultaneously. Heavens how
I wrote. Never was there a creative fever setches mind
(04:14):
from which the patient escaped fatal results. The way I
worked was enough to soften my brain and send me
to a madhouse, I wrote. I wrote everything, ponderous essays,
scientific and sociological short stories, humorous verse verse of all sorts,
(04:41):
from triolets and sonnets to blank verse, tragedy and elephantine
epics in Spencerian stanzas. On occasion, I composed steadily, day
after day, for fifteen hours a day. At times I
forgot to eat or refused to tear myself away from
(05:04):
my passionate outpouring in order to eat. And then there
was the matter of typewriting. My brother in law owned
a machine which he used in the daytime. In the night,
I was free to use it. That machine was a wonder.
I could weep now as I recollect my wrestlings with it.
(05:29):
It must have been a first model in the year
one of the typewriter error. Its alphabet was all capitals.
It was informed with an evil spirit. It obeyed no
known laws of physics, and overthrew the hoary axiom that
(05:49):
like things performed to like things produce like results. I'll
swear that machine never did the same thing in the
same way twice again and again. It demonstrated that unlike
actions produce like results. How my back used to ache
(06:10):
with it. Prior to that experience, my back had been
good for every violent strain put upon it in a
none too gentle career. But that typewriter proved to me
that I had a pipe stem for a back. Also,
it made me dalt. My shoulders they ached as with rheumatism.
(06:33):
After every bout, the keys of that machine had to
be hit so hard that to one outside the house
it sounded like distant thunder or someone breaking up the furniture.
I had to hit the keys so hard that I
strained my first fingers to the elbows, while the ends
(06:56):
of my fingers were blisters, burst and blister again. Had
it been my machine, I'd have operated it with a
carpenter's hammer. The worst of it was that I was
actually typing my manuscripts at the same time I was
trying to master that machine. It was a feat of
(07:19):
physical endurance and a brainstorm combined to type a thousand words.
And I was composing thousands of words every day, which
just had to be typed for the waiting editors. Oh,
between the writing and the typewriting, I was well a weary.
(07:41):
I had brain and nerve fag and body fag as well.
And yet the thought of drink never suggested itself. I
was living too high to stand in need of an anodyne.
All my waking hours at except those with that infernal typewriter,
(08:03):
were spent in a creative heaven. And along with this
I had no desire for drink, because I still believed
in many things, in the love of all men and women,
in the matter of man and women, love, in fatherhood,
in human justice, in art, in the whole host of
(08:25):
fond illusions that keep the world turning round. But the
waiting editors elected to keep on waiting. My manuscripts made
amazing round trip records between the Pacific and the Atlantic.
It might have been the weirdness of the typewriting that
(08:48):
prevented the editors from accepting at least one little offering
of mine. I don't know, and Goodness knows, the stuff
I wrote was as weird as it's typing. I sold
my hard bought school books for ridiculous sums to second
(09:09):
hand bookmen. I borrowed small sums of money wherever I could,
and suffered my old father to feed me with the
meager returns of his failing strength. It didn't last long,
only a few weeks when I had to surrender and
(09:30):
go to work. Yet I was unaware of any need
for the drink anodyne. I was not disappointed. My career
was retarded. That was all. Perhaps I did need further preparation.
I had learned enough from the books to realize that
I had only touched the hem of knowledge's garment. I
(09:55):
still lived on the heights. My waking hours, and most
of the hours I should have used for sleep, were
spent with the books. Chapter twenty four out in the
country at the Belmont Academy. I went to work in
(10:17):
a small, perfectly appointed steam laundry. Another fellow in myself
did all the work, from sorting and washing to ironing
the white shirts, collars and cuffs, and the fancy starch
of the wives of the professors. We work like tigers,
(10:39):
especially as summer came on and the academy boys took
to the wearing of duck trousers. It consumes a dreadful
lot of time to iron one pair of duck trousers,
and there were so many pairs of them. We sweated
our way through long, sizzling weeks at a task that
(11:02):
was never done, and many a night while the students
snored in bed, my partner and ile toiled on under
the electric light at steam mangle or ironing board. The
hours were long, the work was arduous, despite the fact
that we became past masters in the art of eliminating
(11:26):
waste motion, and I was receiving thirty dollars a month
and board, a slight increase over my coal shoveling and
cannery days, at least to the extent of board, which
cost my employer little we ate in the kitchen, but
which was to me the equivalent of twenty dollars a month.
(11:49):
My robuster, strength of added years, my increased skill, and
all I had learned from the books were responsible for
this increase of twenty dollars. Judging by my rate of development,
I might hope before I died to be a night
watchman for sixty dollars a month, or a policeman actually
(12:14):
receiving one hundred dollars with pickings. So relentlessly did my
partner and I spring into our work throughout the week
that by Saturday night we were frazzled wrecks. I found
myself in the old familiar work beast condition, toiling longer
(12:34):
hours than the horses, toiled, thinking scarcely more frequent thoughts
than horses think. The books were closed to me. I
had brought a trunkful to the laundry, but found myself
unable to read them. I fell asleep the moment I
tried to read, and if I did manage to keep
(12:56):
my eyes open for several pages, I could not remember
the contents of these pages. I gave over attempts on
heavy study such as jurisprudence, political economy, and biology, and
tried lighter stuff such as history, I fell asleep. I
(13:17):
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
(13:39):
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. But
(14:01):
I had no overworked 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
(14:23):
to it that it now suffered all the misery of
stagnancy and in action. 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
(14:48):
whirling washers, revolving mangles, humming centrifical ringers and fancy starch,
and interminable processions of duck trousers moving in steam under
my flying iron. And that's it. John Barleycorn makes his
(15:11):
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 steam what they are not,
(15:34):
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 awe of idleness.
(15:57):
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
(16:22):
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 traveled ten times the distance
(16:44):
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
(17:05):
for their froth. The comic supplement might bring a pallid
smile to my face, and then I would fall asleep.
Although I did not yield to John Barleycorn while working
in the laundry, a certain definite result was produced. I
had heard the call, felt the gnaw of desire, yearned
(17:31):
for the anodyne. I was being prepared for the stronger
desire of later years. And the point is that this
development of desire was entirely in my brain. My body
did not cry out for alcohol. As always, alcohol was
(17:55):
repulsive to my body. When I was bodily weary from
shoveling coal, the thought of taking a drink had never
flickered into my consciousness. When I was brain wearied after
taking the entrance examinations to the university, I promptly got
(18:16):
drunk at the laundry I was suffering physical exhaustion again,
and physical exhaustion that was not nearly so profound as
that of the coal shoveling. But there was a difference.
When I went coal shoveling, my mind had not yet awakened.
(18:39):
Between that time and the laundry, my mind had found
the kingdom of the mind. While shoveling coal, my mind
was somnolent. While tolling in the laundry, my mind, informed
and eager to do and be was crucified. And whether
(19:03):
I yielded to drink as at Benicia, or whether I
refrained as at the laundry, in my brain the seeds
of desire for alcohol were germinating. Chapter twenty five. After
(19:24):
the laundry, my sister and her husband grubstaked me into
the Klondike. It was the first gold rush into that region,
the early fall rush of eighteen ninety seven. I was
twenty one years old and in splendid physical condition. I
remember at the end of the twenty eight mile portage
(19:48):
across Chilcoot from Daya Beach to Lake Linderman, I was
packing up with the Indians and outpacking many an Indian
the last pack into Linderman was three miles. I back
tripped it four times a day, and on each forward
trip carried one hundred and fifty pounds. This means that
(20:12):
over the worst trails I daily traveled twenty four miles,
twelve of which were under a burden of one hundred
and fifty pounds. Yes, I had let career go hang
and was on the adventure path again in quest of fortune.
And of course on the adventure path I met John Barleycorn.
(20:37):
Here were their chesty men again, rovers and adventurers, And
while they didn't mind a grub famine whisky, they could
not do without. Whiskey went over the trail, while the
flower lay cashed and untouched by the trail side. As
good fortune would have it, the many men in my
(21:00):
party were not drinkers. Therefore I didn't drink, save on
rare occasions, and disgracefully when with other men. In my
personal medicine chest was a court of whiskey. I never
drew the cork till six months afterward. In a lonely
camp where without anesthetics, a doctor was compelled to operate
(21:26):
on a man, the doctor and the patient emptied my
bottle between them and then proceeded to the operation back
in California. A year later, recovering from scurvy, I found
that my father was dead and that I was the
head and the sole breadwinner of a household. When I
(21:50):
state that I had passed coal on a steamship from
bearing Seed to British Columbia and traveled in the steerage
from there to San Francis, it will be understood that
I brought nothing back from the Klondike. But my scurvy
times were hard. Work of any sort was difficult to get,
(22:15):
and work of any sort was what I had to
take for I was still an unskilled laborer. I had
no thought of career that was over and done with.
I had to find food for two miles besides my own,
and keep a roof over our heads, Yes, and by
(22:37):
a winter suit, my one suit being decidedly summary. I
had to get some sort of work immediately after that,
when I had caught my breath, I might think about
my future. Unskilled labor is the first to feel the
slackness of hard times, and I had no train ads,
(23:00):
say those of sailor and laundryman. With my new responsibilities,
I didn't care to go to sea, and I failed
to find a job at laundrying. I failed to find
a job at anything. I had my name down in
five employment bureau. I advertised in three newspapers. I sought
(23:26):
out the few friends I knew who might be able
to get me work, but they were either uninterested or
unable to find anything for me. The situation was desperate.
I pawned my watch, my bicycle, and a Macintosh of
(23:46):
which my father had been very proud, and which he
had left to me. It was and is my sole
legacy in this world. It had cost fifteen dollars, and
the pawn broker let me have two dollars on it.
And oh yes, A waterfront comrade of earlier years drifted
(24:09):
along one day with a dress suit wrapped in newspapers.
He could give no adequate explanation of how he had
come to possess it, nor did I press for an explanation.
I wanted the suit myself, no not to wear. I
traded him a lot of rubbish, which, being unpawnable, was
(24:33):
useless to me. He peddled the rubbish for several dollars,
while I pledged the dress suit with my pawnbroker for
five dollars, and for all I knew, the pawnbroker still
has the suit. I had never intended to redeem it.
But I couldn't get any work yet. I was a
(24:56):
bargain in the labor market. I was twenty two years
old old, weighed one hundred and sixty five pounds stripped,
every pound of which was excellent for toil, and the
last traces of my scurvy were vanishing before a treatment
of potatoes chewed raw. I tackled every opening for employment.
(25:19):
I tried to become a studio model, but there were
too many fine bodied young fellows out of jobs. I
answered advertisements of elderly invalids in need of companions, and
I almost became a sewing machine agent on commission without salary.
(25:39):
But poor people don't buy sewing machines in hard times,
so I was forced to forego that employment. Of course,
it must be remembered that along with such frivolous occupations,
I was trying to get work as wop lumper and roustabout.
(26:00):
Winter was coming on and the surplus labor army was
pouring into the cities. Also, I, who had romped along
carelessly through the countries of the world and the Kingdom
of the mind. Was not a member of any union.
I sought odd jobs. I worked days and half days
(26:24):
at anything I could get. I mowed lawns, trimmed hedges,
took up carpets, beat them and laid them again. Further,
I took the Civil service examinations for mail carrier and
passed first. But alas there was no vacancy, and I
(26:46):
must wait. And while I waited, and in between the
odd jobs I managed to procure, I started to earn
ten dollars by writing a newspaper account of a voye
I had made in an open boat down the Yukon
of nineteen hundred miles in nineteen days. I didn't know
(27:10):
the first thing about the newspaper game, but I was
confident I'd get ten dollars for my article. But I didn't.
The first San Francisco newspaper to which I mailed it
never acknowledged receipt of the manuscript, but held onto it.
(27:30):
The longer it held onto it, the more certain I
was that the thing was accepted. But here is the
funny thing. Some are born to fortune, and some have
fortune thrust upon them. But in my case, I was
clubbed into fortune, and bitter necessity wielded the club. I
(27:55):
had long since abandoned all thought of writing as a career.
My honest intention in writing that article was to earn
ten dollars, and that was the limit of my intention.
It would help to tide me along until I got
steady employment. Had a vacancy occurred in the post office
(28:17):
at that time, I should have jumped at it. But
the vacancy did not occur, nor did a steady job,
and I employed the time between odd jobs with writing
a twenty one thousand words serial for The Youth's Companion.
I turned it out and tighted it in seven days.
(28:39):
I fancy that was what was the matter with it,
for it came back. It took some time for it
to go and come, and in the meantime I tried
my hand at short stories. I sold one to the
Overland Monthly for five dollars. The Black Cat gave me
(29:01):
forty dollars for another. The Overland Monthly offered me seven
dollars and a half pay on publication for all the
stories I should deliver. I got my bicycle, my watch,
and my father's Macintosh out of pawn and rented a typewriter. Also,
(29:23):
I paid up the bills I owed to the several
groceries that allowed me a small credit. I recall the
Portuguese grocery man who never permitted my bill to go
beyond four dollars. Hopkins and other grocer could not be
budged beyond five dollars. And just then came the call
(29:45):
from the post office to go to work. It placed
me in a most trying predicament. The sixty five dollars
I could earn regularly every month was a terrible temptation.
I couldn't decide what to do, and I'll never be
able to forgive the Postmaster of Oakland. I answered the call,
(30:11):
and I talked to him like a man. I frankly
told him the situation. It looked as if I might
win out at writing. The chance was good, but not certain.
Now if he would pass me by and select the
next man on the eligible list and give me a
(30:31):
call at the next vacancy. But he shut me off
with then you don't want the position, but I do,
I protested, Don't you see if you will pass me
over this time, if you want it, you will take it,
he said, coldly, Happily for me. The cursed brutality of
(30:55):
the man made me angry very well, I said I
won't take it. End of Chapter twenty five
Chapters twenty three, twenty four, and twenty five of John
Barleycorn or Alcoholic Memoirs by Jack Lundon. This is a
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
(00:20):
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Chapter twenty three. My crews in the salmon boat lasted
a week, and I returned ready to enter the university.
During the week's cruise, I did not drink again. To
(00:43):
accomplish this, I was compelled to avoid looking up old friends.
For as ever the adventure path was beset with John Barleycorn.
I had wanted to drink that first day, and in
the days that followed I did not want it. My
tired brain had recuperated. I had no moral scruples in
(01:05):
the matter. I was not ashamed nor sorry because of
that first day's orgy at Benicia, and I thought no
more about it, returning gladly to my books and studies.
Long years were to pass ere I looked back upon
that day and realized its significance. At the time and
(01:29):
for a long time afterward, I was to think of
it only as a frolic. But still later in the
slough of brain fag and intellectual weariness. I was to
remember and know the craving for the anodyne that resides
in alcohol. In the meantime, after this one relapse at Benicia,
(01:56):
I went on with my abstemiousness, primarily because I didn't
want to drink, And next I was abstemious because my
way led among books and students where no drinking was.
Had I been out on the adventure Path, I should,
as a matter of course, have been drinking, for that
(02:20):
is the pity of the adventure Path, which is one
of John Barleycorn's favorite stamping grounds. I completed the first
half of my freshman year and in January of eighteen
ninety seven took up my courses for the second half.
But the pressure from lack of money, plus a conviction
(02:43):
that the university was not giving me all that I
wanted in the time I could spare for it, forced
me to leave. I was not very disappointed. For two
years I had studied, and in those two years what
was far more valuable. I had done a prodigious amount
(03:05):
of reading. Then two my grammar had improved. It is
true I had not yet learned that. I must say
it is I, but I no longer was guilty of
a double negative in writing, though still prone to that
error in excited speech. I decided immediately to embark on
(03:30):
my career. I had four preferences. First music, second poetry,
third the writing of philosophic, economic, and political essays, and
fourth and last and least fiction writing. I resolutely cut
(03:54):
out music as impossible, settled down in my bedroom, and
tackled my second, third, and fourth choices simultaneously. Heavens how
I wrote. Never was there a creative fever setches mind
(04:14):
from which the patient escaped fatal results. The way I
worked was enough to soften my brain and send me
to a madhouse, I wrote. I wrote everything, ponderous essays,
scientific and sociological short stories, humorous verse verse of all sorts,
(04:41):
from triolets and sonnets to blank verse, tragedy and elephantine
epics in Spencerian stanzas. On occasion, I composed steadily, day
after day, for fifteen hours a day. At times I
forgot to eat or refused to tear myself away from
(05:04):
my passionate outpouring in order to eat. And then there
was the matter of typewriting. My brother in law owned
a machine which he used in the daytime. In the night,
I was free to use it. That machine was a wonder.
I could weep now as I recollect my wrestlings with it.
(05:29):
It must have been a first model in the year
one of the typewriter error. Its alphabet was all capitals.
It was informed with an evil spirit. It obeyed no
known laws of physics, and overthrew the hoary axiom that
(05:49):
like things performed to like things produce like results. I'll
swear that machine never did the same thing in the
same way twice again and again. It demonstrated that unlike
actions produce like results. How my back used to ache
(06:10):
with it. Prior to that experience, my back had been
good for every violent strain put upon it in a
none too gentle career. But that typewriter proved to me
that I had a pipe stem for a back. Also,
it made me dalt. My shoulders they ached as with rheumatism.
(06:33):
After every bout, the keys of that machine had to
be hit so hard that to one outside the house
it sounded like distant thunder or someone breaking up the furniture.
I had to hit the keys so hard that I
strained my first fingers to the elbows, while the ends
(06:56):
of my fingers were blisters, burst and blister again. Had
it been my machine, I'd have operated it with a
carpenter's hammer. The worst of it was that I was
actually typing my manuscripts at the same time I was
trying to master that machine. It was a feat of
(07:19):
physical endurance and a brainstorm combined to type a thousand words.
And I was composing thousands of words every day, which
just had to be typed for the waiting editors. Oh,
between the writing and the typewriting, I was well a weary.
(07:41):
I had brain and nerve fag and body fag as well.
And yet the thought of drink never suggested itself. I
was living too high to stand in need of an anodyne.
All my waking hours at except those with that infernal typewriter,
(08:03):
were spent in a creative heaven. And along with this
I had no desire for drink, because I still believed
in many things, in the love of all men and women,
in the matter of man and women, love, in fatherhood,
in human justice, in art, in the whole host of
(08:25):
fond illusions that keep the world turning round. But the
waiting editors elected to keep on waiting. My manuscripts made
amazing round trip records between the Pacific and the Atlantic.
It might have been the weirdness of the typewriting that
(08:48):
prevented the editors from accepting at least one little offering
of mine. I don't know, and Goodness knows, the stuff
I wrote was as weird as it's typing. I sold
my hard bought school books for ridiculous sums to second
(09:09):
hand bookmen. I borrowed small sums of money wherever I could,
and suffered my old father to feed me with the
meager returns of his failing strength. It didn't last long,
only a few weeks when I had to surrender and
(09:30):
go to work. Yet I was unaware of any need
for the drink anodyne. I was not disappointed. My career
was retarded. That was all. Perhaps I did need further preparation.
I had learned enough from the books to realize that
I had only touched the hem of knowledge's garment. I
(09:55):
still lived on the heights. My waking hours, and most
of the hours I should have used for sleep, were
spent with the books. Chapter twenty four out in the
country at the Belmont Academy. I went to work in
(10:17):
a small, perfectly appointed steam laundry. Another fellow in myself
did all the work, from sorting and washing to ironing
the white shirts, collars and cuffs, and the fancy starch
of the wives of the professors. We work like tigers,
(10:39):
especially as summer came on and the academy boys took
to the wearing of duck trousers. It consumes a dreadful
lot of time to iron one pair of duck trousers,
and there were so many pairs of them. We sweated
our way through long, sizzling weeks at a task that
(11:02):
was never done, and many a night while the students
snored in bed, my partner and ile toiled on under
the electric light at steam mangle or ironing board. The
hours were long, the work was arduous, despite the fact
that we became past masters in the art of eliminating
(11:26):
waste motion, and I was receiving thirty dollars a month
and board, a slight increase over my coal shoveling and
cannery days, at least to the extent of board, which
cost my employer little we ate in the kitchen, but
which was to me the equivalent of twenty dollars a month.
(11:49):
My robuster, strength of added years, my increased skill, and
all I had learned from the books were responsible for
this increase of twenty dollars. Judging by my rate of development,
I might hope before I died to be a night
watchman for sixty dollars a month, or a policeman actually
(12:14):
receiving one hundred dollars with pickings. So relentlessly did my
partner and I spring into our work throughout the week
that by Saturday night we were frazzled wrecks. I found
myself in the old familiar work beast condition, toiling longer
(12:34):
hours than the horses, toiled, thinking scarcely more frequent thoughts
than horses think. The books were closed to me. I
had brought a trunkful to the laundry, but found myself
unable to read them. I fell asleep the moment I
tried to read, and if I did manage to keep
(12:56):
my eyes open for several pages, I could not remember
the contents of these pages. I gave over attempts on
heavy study such as jurisprudence, political economy, and biology, and
tried lighter stuff such as history, I fell asleep. I
(13:17):
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
(13:39):
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. But
(14:01):
I had no overworked 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
(14:23):
to it that it now suffered all the misery of
stagnancy and in action. 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
(14:48):
whirling washers, revolving mangles, humming centrifical ringers and fancy starch,
and interminable processions of duck trousers moving in steam under
my flying iron. And that's it. John Barleycorn makes his
(15:11):
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 steam what they are not,
(15:34):
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 awe of idleness.
(15:57):
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
(16:22):
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 traveled ten times the distance
(16:44):
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
(17:05):
for their froth. The comic supplement might bring a pallid
smile to my face, and then I would fall asleep.
Although I did not yield to John Barleycorn while working
in the laundry, a certain definite result was produced. I
had heard the call, felt the gnaw of desire, yearned
(17:31):
for the anodyne. I was being prepared for the stronger
desire of later years. And the point is that this
development of desire was entirely in my brain. My body
did not cry out for alcohol. As always, alcohol was
(17:55):
repulsive to my body. When I was bodily weary from
shoveling coal, the thought of taking a drink had never
flickered into my consciousness. When I was brain wearied after
taking the entrance examinations to the university, I promptly got
(18:16):
drunk at the laundry I was suffering physical exhaustion again,
and physical exhaustion that was not nearly so profound as
that of the coal shoveling. But there was a difference.
When I went coal shoveling, my mind had not yet awakened.
(18:39):
Between that time and the laundry, my mind had found
the kingdom of the mind. While shoveling coal, my mind
was somnolent. While tolling in the laundry, my mind, informed
and eager to do and be was crucified. And whether
(19:03):
I yielded to drink as at Benicia, or whether I
refrained as at the laundry, in my brain the seeds
of desire for alcohol were germinating. Chapter twenty five. After
(19:24):
the laundry, my sister and her husband grubstaked me into
the Klondike. It was the first gold rush into that region,
the early fall rush of eighteen ninety seven. I was
twenty one years old and in splendid physical condition. I
remember at the end of the twenty eight mile portage
(19:48):
across Chilcoot from Daya Beach to Lake Linderman, I was
packing up with the Indians and outpacking many an Indian
the last pack into Linderman was three miles. I back
tripped it four times a day, and on each forward
trip carried one hundred and fifty pounds. This means that
(20:12):
over the worst trails I daily traveled twenty four miles,
twelve of which were under a burden of one hundred
and fifty pounds. Yes, I had let career go hang
and was on the adventure path again in quest of fortune.
And of course on the adventure path I met John Barleycorn.
(20:37):
Here were their chesty men again, rovers and adventurers, And
while they didn't mind a grub famine whisky, they could
not do without. Whiskey went over the trail, while the
flower lay cashed and untouched by the trail side. As
good fortune would have it, the many men in my
(21:00):
party were not drinkers. Therefore I didn't drink, save on
rare occasions, and disgracefully when with other men. In my
personal medicine chest was a court of whiskey. I never
drew the cork till six months afterward. In a lonely
camp where without anesthetics, a doctor was compelled to operate
(21:26):
on a man, the doctor and the patient emptied my
bottle between them and then proceeded to the operation back
in California. A year later, recovering from scurvy, I found
that my father was dead and that I was the
head and the sole breadwinner of a household. When I
(21:50):
state that I had passed coal on a steamship from
bearing Seed to British Columbia and traveled in the steerage
from there to San Francis, it will be understood that
I brought nothing back from the Klondike. But my scurvy
times were hard. Work of any sort was difficult to get,
(22:15):
and work of any sort was what I had to
take for I was still an unskilled laborer. I had
no thought of career that was over and done with.
I had to find food for two miles besides my own,
and keep a roof over our heads, Yes, and by
(22:37):
a winter suit, my one suit being decidedly summary. I
had to get some sort of work immediately after that,
when I had caught my breath, I might think about
my future. Unskilled labor is the first to feel the
slackness of hard times, and I had no train ads,
(23:00):
say those of sailor and laundryman. With my new responsibilities,
I didn't care to go to sea, and I failed
to find a job at laundrying. I failed to find
a job at anything. I had my name down in
five employment bureau. I advertised in three newspapers. I sought
(23:26):
out the few friends I knew who might be able
to get me work, but they were either uninterested or
unable to find anything for me. The situation was desperate.
I pawned my watch, my bicycle, and a Macintosh of
(23:46):
which my father had been very proud, and which he
had left to me. It was and is my sole
legacy in this world. It had cost fifteen dollars, and
the pawn broker let me have two dollars on it.
And oh yes, A waterfront comrade of earlier years drifted
(24:09):
along one day with a dress suit wrapped in newspapers.
He could give no adequate explanation of how he had
come to possess it, nor did I press for an explanation.
I wanted the suit myself, no not to wear. I
traded him a lot of rubbish, which, being unpawnable, was
(24:33):
useless to me. He peddled the rubbish for several dollars,
while I pledged the dress suit with my pawnbroker for
five dollars, and for all I knew, the pawnbroker still
has the suit. I had never intended to redeem it.
But I couldn't get any work yet. I was a
(24:56):
bargain in the labor market. I was twenty two years
old old, weighed one hundred and sixty five pounds stripped,
every pound of which was excellent for toil, and the
last traces of my scurvy were vanishing before a treatment
of potatoes chewed raw. I tackled every opening for employment.
(25:19):
I tried to become a studio model, but there were
too many fine bodied young fellows out of jobs. I
answered advertisements of elderly invalids in need of companions, and
I almost became a sewing machine agent on commission without salary.
(25:39):
But poor people don't buy sewing machines in hard times,
so I was forced to forego that employment. Of course,
it must be remembered that along with such frivolous occupations,
I was trying to get work as wop lumper and roustabout.
(26:00):
Winter was coming on and the surplus labor army was
pouring into the cities. Also, I, who had romped along
carelessly through the countries of the world and the Kingdom
of the mind. Was not a member of any union.
I sought odd jobs. I worked days and half days
(26:24):
at anything I could get. I mowed lawns, trimmed hedges,
took up carpets, beat them and laid them again. Further,
I took the Civil service examinations for mail carrier and
passed first. But alas there was no vacancy, and I
(26:46):
must wait. And while I waited, and in between the
odd jobs I managed to procure, I started to earn
ten dollars by writing a newspaper account of a voye
I had made in an open boat down the Yukon
of nineteen hundred miles in nineteen days. I didn't know
(27:10):
the first thing about the newspaper game, but I was
confident I'd get ten dollars for my article. But I didn't.
The first San Francisco newspaper to which I mailed it
never acknowledged receipt of the manuscript, but held onto it.
(27:30):
The longer it held onto it, the more certain I
was that the thing was accepted. But here is the
funny thing. Some are born to fortune, and some have
fortune thrust upon them. But in my case, I was
clubbed into fortune, and bitter necessity wielded the club. I
(27:55):
had long since abandoned all thought of writing as a career.
My honest intention in writing that article was to earn
ten dollars, and that was the limit of my intention.
It would help to tide me along until I got
steady employment. Had a vacancy occurred in the post office
(28:17):
at that time, I should have jumped at it. But
the vacancy did not occur, nor did a steady job,
and I employed the time between odd jobs with writing
a twenty one thousand words serial for The Youth's Companion.
I turned it out and tighted it in seven days.
(28:39):
I fancy that was what was the matter with it,
for it came back. It took some time for it
to go and come, and in the meantime I tried
my hand at short stories. I sold one to the
Overland Monthly for five dollars. The Black Cat gave me
(29:01):
forty dollars for another. The Overland Monthly offered me seven
dollars and a half pay on publication for all the
stories I should deliver. I got my bicycle, my watch,
and my father's Macintosh out of pawn and rented a typewriter. Also,
(29:23):
I paid up the bills I owed to the several
groceries that allowed me a small credit. I recall the
Portuguese grocery man who never permitted my bill to go
beyond four dollars. Hopkins and other grocer could not be
budged beyond five dollars. And just then came the call
(29:45):
from the post office to go to work. It placed
me in a most trying predicament. The sixty five dollars
I could earn regularly every month was a terrible temptation.
I couldn't decide what to do, and I'll never be
able to forgive the Postmaster of Oakland. I answered the call,
(30:11):
and I talked to him like a man. I frankly
told him the situation. It looked as if I might
win out at writing. The chance was good, but not certain.
Now if he would pass me by and select the
next man on the eligible list and give me a
(30:31):
call at the next vacancy. But he shut me off
with then you don't want the position, but I do,
I protested, Don't you see if you will pass me
over this time, if you want it, you will take it,
he said, coldly, Happily for me. The cursed brutality of
(30:55):
the man made me angry very well, I said I
won't take it. End of Chapter twenty five
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