in this fashion I continued to learn to be an electrician. Night
after night I limped home, fell asleep before I could eat my supper, and
was helped into bed and undressed. Morning after morning, always with
huger lunches in my dinner pail, I limped out of the house on my way to
work.

I no longer read my library books. I made no dates with the girls. I
was a proper work beast. I worked, and ate, and slept, while my mind
slept all the time. The whole thing was a nightmare. I worked every
day, including Sunday, and I looked far ahead to my one day off at the
end of a month, resolved to lie abed all that day and just sleep and rest
up.

The strangest part of this experience was that I never took a drink nor
thought of taking a drink. Yet I knew that men under hard pressure
almost invariably drank. I had seen them do it, and in the past had
often done it myself. But so sheerly non-alcoholic was I that it never
entered my mind that a drink might be good for me. I instance this to
show how entirely lacking from my make-up was any predisposition toward
alcohol. And the point of this instance is that later on, after more
years had passed, contact with John Barleycorn at last did induce in me
the alcoholic desire.

I had often noticed the day fireman staring at me in a curious way. At
last, one day, he spoke. He began by swearing me to secrecy. He had
been warned by the superintendent not to tell me, and in telling me he
was risking his job. He told me of the day coal-passer and the night
coal-passer, and of the wages they had received. I was doing for thirty
dollars a month what they had received eighty dollars for doing. He
would have told me sooner, the fireman said, had he not been so certain
that I would break down under the work and quit. As it was, I was
killing myself, and all to no good purpose. I was merely cheapening the
price of labour, he argued, and keeping two men out of a job.

Being an American boy, and a proud American boy, I did not immediately
quit. This was foolish of me, I know; but I resolved to continue the
work long enough to prove to the superintendent that I could do it
without breaking down. Then I would quit, and he would realise what a
fine young fellow he had lost.

All of which I faithfully and foolishly did. I worked on until the time
came when I got in the last of the night coal by six o'clock. Then I
quit the job of learning electricity by doing more than two men'