ons of drinking, feels
the irresistible chemical propulsion of his system toward alcohol. I do
assume that such rare individuals are born, but I have never encountered
one.

On this long, five-months' voyage, I found that among all my bodily needs
not the slightest shred of a bodily need for alcohol existed. But this I
did find: my need was mental and social. When I thought of alcohol, the
connotation was fellowship. When I thought of fellowship, the
connotation was alcohol. Fellowship and alcohol were Siamese twins.
They always occurred linked together.

Thus, when reading in my deck chair or when talking with others,
practically any mention of any part of the world I knew instantly aroused
the connotation of drinking and good fellows. Big nights and days and
moments, all purple passages and freedoms, thronged my memory. "Venice"
stares at me from the printed page, and I remember the cafe tables on the
sidewalks. "The Battle of Santiago," some one says, and I answer, "Yes,
I've been over the ground." But I do not see the ground, nor Kettle Hill,
nor the Peace Tree. What I see is the Cafe Venus, on the plaza of
Santiago, where one hot night I drank and talked with a dying consumptive.

The East End of London, I read, or some one says; and first of all, under
my eyelids, leap the visions of the shining pubs, and in my ears echo the
calls for "two of bitter" and "three of Scotch." The Latin Quarter--at
once I am in the student cabarets, bright faces and keen spirits around
me, sipping cool, well-dripped absinthe while our voices mount and soar
in Latin fashion as we settle God and art and democracy and the rest of
the simple problems of existence.

In a pampero off the River Plate we speculate, if we are disabled, of
running in to Buenos Ayres, the "Paris of America," and I have visions of
bright congregating places of men, of the jollity of raised glasses, and
of song and cheer and the hum of genial voices. When we have picked up
the North-east Trades in the Pacific we try to persuade our dying captain
to run for Honolulu, and while I persuade I see myself again drinking
cocktails on the cool lanais and fizzes out at Waikiki where the surf
rolls in. Some one mentions the way wild ducks are cooked in the
restaurants of San Francisco, and at once I am transported to the light
and clatter of many tables, where I gaze at old friends across the golden
brims of long-stemmed Rhine-wine glasses.

And so I pondere