of life. Still, the fact remains that with any habit, and especially
with the liquor habit--probably because that is the most prevalent
habit there is--nine-tenths of the subjects delude themselves about how
much of a habit they have; and, second, that nine-tenths of those with
the habit have a very clear idea of the extent to which the habit is
fastened on others. They are fooled about themselves, but never about
their neighbors! Wherefore the breweries and the distilleries prosper
exceedingly.

However, I am straying away from my story, which has to do with such
drinking as the ordinary man does--not sprees, nor debauches, or
orgies, or periodicals, or drunkenness, but just the ordinary amount
of drinking that happens along in a man's life, with a little too much
on rare occasions and plenty at all times. A German I knew once told me
the difference between Old-World drinking and American drinking was
that the German, for example, drinks for the pleasure of the drink,
while the American drinks for the alcohol in it. That may be so; but
very few men who have any sense or any age set out deliberately to get
drunk. Such drunkenness as there is among men of that sort usually
comes more by accident than by design.

My definition of a drunkard has always been this: A man is a drunkard
when he drinks whisky or any other liquor before breakfast. I think
that is pretty nearly right. Personally I never took a drink of liquor
before breakfast in my life and not many before noon. Usually my
drinking began in the afternoon after business, and was likely to end
before dinnertime--not always, but usually.

CHAPTER III

WHAT I QUIT

I had been drinking thus for practically twenty years. I did not drink
at all until after I was twenty-one and not much until after I was
twenty-five. When I got to be thirty-two or thirty-three and had gone
along a little in the world, I fell in with men of my own station; and
as I lived in a town where nearly everybody drank, including many of
the successful business and professional men--men of affairs--I soon
got into their habits. Naturally gregarious, I found these men good
company. They were sociable and convivial, and drank for the fun of it
and the fun that came out of it.

My business took me to various parts of the country and I made
acquaintances among men like these--the real live ones in the
communities. They were good fellows. So was I. The result was that in a
few years I ha