her persistent application to be a good fellow. One cannot do much
else. However, when a man has arrived at that stage where he can retain
at least a portion of his good fellowship and also can be two or three
of the other kinds of a worth-while fellow--to himself, at least--he has
gained on the old gang by about a hundred per cent.

As it is now, no chums come shouting in to urge me to go and have one;
nobody drops round at five o'clock in the afternoon to hurry me along to
the favorite table at the club; nobody suggests about seven o'clock that
we all 'phone home and stay down and have dinner together; the old plan
of having a luncheon that lasts an hour and a half or two hours in the
best part of the day is rarely broached. There are few telephone calls
after dinner urging an immediate descent on a gathering where there is
something coming off--all these things are left to my choice and are not
taken as a matter of usual procedure, predicated on the circumstances of
the plan of living.

A non-drinking man is the master of his own time. If he wants
sociability he can go and get it, up to such limits as he personally can
attain for himself in his water-consuming capacity. A drinking man is
not master of his time. He may think he is, but he is not. He is the
creature of a habit that may be harmless, but which surely is insistent;
and the habit dictates what he shall do with his leisure.

Time! Why, such new vistas of what can be done with time that was wasted
in former years have opened before me that time seems to me the greatest
luxury in the world--time that was formerly wasted and now is used! I
hope that does not sound priggish. I have tried to show that I value
highly the privilege of associating with my fellows, and that I like
their ways and their talk and their company. What I mean by this paean to
time is that I can have company in a modified measure, if I choose; and
that I can and do have other things that no man who has a daily drinking
habit can or does have.

_VIII: Leisure Put to Good Uses_

Take books--though books may not be a fair test of time employed in my
case, for I always have read books in great numbers--but take books: In
the past three years and a half I have read as many books--real
books--as I read in the ten years preceding. I have read books I was
always intending to read, but never got round to. I have kept up with
the new good ones and have helped myself to several items of i