been done by men who thus lived joyously, strenuously, and
perhaps a bit dangerously. They have never been concerned about
stretching life for two or three more years; they have been concerned
about making life engrossing and stimulating and a high adventure while
it lasts. Teetotalism is as impossible to such men as any other
manifestation of cowardice, and, if it were possible, it would destroy
their utility and significance just as certainly.

A man who shrinks from a cocktail before dinner on the ground that it
may flabbergast his hormones, and so make him die at 69 years, ten
months and five days instead of at 69 years, eleven months and seven
days--such a man is as absurd a poltroon as the fellow who shrinks from
kissing a woman on the ground that she may floor him with a chair leg.
Each flees from a purely theoretical risk. Each is a useless encumberer
of the earth, and the sooner dead the better. Each is a discredit to the
human race, already discreditable enough, God knows.

Teetotalism does not make for human happiness; it makes for the dull,
idiotic happiness of the barnyard. The men who do things in the world,
the men worthy of admiration and imitation, are men constitutionally
incapable of any such pecksniffian stupidity. Their ideal is not a safe
life, but a full life; they do not try to follow the canary bird in a
cage, but the eagle in the air. And in particular they do not flee from
shadows and bugaboos. The alcohol myth is such a bugaboo. The sort of
man it scares is the sort of man whose chief mark is that he is always
scared.

No wonder the Rockefellers and their like are hot for saving the
workingman from John Barleycorn! Imagine the advantage to them of
operating upon a flabby horde of timorous and joyless slaves, afraid of
all fun and kicking up, horribly moral, eager only to live as long as
possible! What mule-like fidelity and efficiency could be got out of
such a rabble! But how many Lincolns would you get out of it, and how
many Jacksons, and how many Grants?

XXX

THOUGHTS ON THE VOLUPTUOUS

Why has no publisher ever thought of perfuming his novels? The final
refinement of publishing, already bedizened by every other art! Barabbas
turned Petronius! For instance, consider the bucolic romances of the
hyphenated Mrs. Porter. They have a subtle flavor of new-mown hay and
daffodils already; why not add the actual essence, or at all events some
safe coal-tar substitute, and so help