of knowledge that was to be a source of pride in succeeding
years, and that ultimately I was to come to consider a great affliction.
The fortunate man is the one who cannot take more than a couple of drinks
without becoming intoxicated. The unfortunate wight is the one who can
take many glasses without betraying a sign, who must take numerous
glasses in order to get the "kick."

The sun was setting when I came on the Idler's deck. There were plenty
of bunks below. I did not need to go home. But I wanted to demonstrate
to myself how much I was a man. There lay my skiff astern. The last of
a strong ebb was running out in channel in the teeth of an ocean breeze
of forty miles an hour. I could see the stiff whitecaps, and the suck
and run of the current was plainly visible in the face and trough of each
one.

I set sail, cast off, took my place at the tiller, the sheet in my hand,
and headed across channel. The skiff heeled over and plunged into it
madly. The spray began to fly. I was at the pinnacle of exaltation. I
sang "Blow the Man Down" as I sailed. I was no boy of fourteen, living
the mediocre ways of the sleepy town called Oakland. I was a man, a god,
and the very elements rendered me allegiance as I bitted them to my will.

The tide was out. A full hundred yards of soft mud intervened between
the boat-wharf and the water. I pulled up my centreboard, ran full tilt
into the mud, took in sail, and, standing in the stern, as I had often
done at low tide, I began to shove the skiff with an oar. It was then
that my correlations began to break down. I lost my balance and pitched
head-foremost into the ooze. Then, and for the first time, as I
floundered to my feet covered with slime, the blood running down my arms
from a scrape against a barnacled stake, I knew that I was drunk. But
what of it? Across the channel two strong sailormen lay unconscious in
their bunks where I had drunk them. I WAS a man. I was still on my
legs, if they were knee-deep in mud. I disdained to get back into the
skiff. I waded through the mud, shoving the skiff before me and
yammering the chant of my manhood to the world.

I paid for it. I was sick for a couple of days, meanly sick, and my arms
were painfully poisoned from the barnacle scratches. For a week I could
not use them, and it was a torture to put on and take off my clothes.

I swore, "Never again!" The game wasn't worth it. The price was too
stiff. I had no m