my companion.

"Scotch."

When my companion had helped himself he passed the flask to me, but I
returned it to the owner, explaining that I did not drink Scotch whisky.

"What do you drink?" he asked.

"Bourbon."

"Here it is," he returned, drawing a second flask from the other hip
pocket.

How well, too, do I remember the long, delightful evening upon which my
companion and I sat in an Atlanta club with a group of the older
members, the week before Georgia went bone dry. There, as in Alabama
before 1915, there had been pretended prohibition, but now the bars of
leading clubs were being closed, and convivial men were looking into the
future with despair. One of the gentlemen was a justice of the Supreme
Court of the State, and I remember his wistful declaration that
prohibition would fall hardest upon the older men.

"When a man is young," he said, "he can be lively and enjoy himself
without drinking, because he is full of animal spirits. But we older men
aren't bubbling over with liveliness. We can't dance, or don't want to,
and we lack the stimulus which comes of falling continually in love. My
great pleasure is to sit of an evening, here at a table in the cafe of
this club, conversing with my friends. That is where prohibition is
going to hurt me. I shall not see my old friends any more."

The others protested at this somber view, but the judge gravely shook
his head, saying: "You don't believe me, but I know whereof I speak, for
I have been through something like this, in a minor way, before. A good
many years ago I was one of a little group of congenial men to organize
a small club. We had comfortable quarters, and we used to drop in at
night, much as we have been doing of late years here, and have the kind
of talks that are tonic to the soul. Of course we had liquor in the
club, but there came a time when, for some reason or other--I think it
was some trouble over a license--we closed our bar. We didn't think it
was going to make a great difference, but it did. The men began to stop
coming in, and before long the club ceased to exist.

"It won't be like that here. This club will go on. But we won't come
here. We won't want to sit around a table, like this, and drink ginger
ale and sarsaparilla; and even if we do, the talk won't be so good. The
thing that makes me downcast is not that liquor is going, but that we
are really parting this week.

"Every one knows that the abuse of drink does harm in the wo