Chapter III

by Jack London

　　I was five years old the first time I got drunk. It was on a hotday, and my father was ploughing in the field. I was sent fromthe house, half a mile away, to carry to him a pail of beer. "Andbe sure you don't spill it," was the parting injunction.

　　It was, as I remember it, a lard pail, very wide across the top,and without a cover. As I toddled along, the beer slopped overthe rim upon my legs. And as I toddled, I pondered. Beer was avery precious thing. Come to think of it, it must be wonderfullygood. Else why was I never permitted to drink of it in the house?Other things kept from me by the grown-ups I had found good. Thenthis, too, was good. Trust the grown-ups. They knew. And,anyway, the pail was too full. I was slopping it against my legsand spilling it on the ground. Why waste it? And no one wouldknow whether I had drunk or spilled it.

　　I was so small that, in order to negotiate the pail, I sat downand gathered it into my lap. First I sipped the foam. I wasdisappointed. The preciousness evaded me. Evidently it did notreside in the foam. Besides, the taste was not good. Then Iremembered seeing the grown-ups blow the foam away before theydrank. I buried my face in the foam and lapped the solid liquidbeneath. It wasn't good at all. But still I drank. The grown-ups knew what they were about. Considering my diminutiveness, thesize of the pail in my lap, and my drinking out of it my breathheld and my face buried to the ears in foam, it was ratherdifficult to estimate how much I drank. Also, I was gulping itdown like medicine, in nauseous haste to get the ordeal over.

　　I shuddered when I started on, and decided that the good tastewould come afterward. I tried several times more in the course ofthat long half-mile. Then, astounded by the quantity of beer thatwas lacking, and remembering having seen stale beer made to foamafresh, I took a stick and stirred what was left till it foamed tothe brim.

　　And my father never noticed. He emptied the pail with the widethirst of the sweating ploughman, returned it to me, and startedup the plough. I endeavoured to walk beside the horses. Iremember tottering and falling against their heels in front of theshining share, and that my father hauled back on the lines soviolently that the horses nearly sat down on me. He told meafterward that it was by only a matter of inches that I escapeddisembowelling. Vaguely, too, I remember, my father carried me inhis arms to the trees on the edge of the field, while all theworld reeled and swung about me, and I was aware of deadly nauseamingled with an appalling conviction of sin.

　　I slept the afternoon away under the trees, and when my fatherroused me at sundown it was a very sick little boy that got up anddragged wearily homeward. I was exhausted, oppressed by theweight of my limbs, and in my stomach was a harp-like vibratingthat extended to my throat and brain. My condition was like thatof one who had gone through a battle with poison. In truth, I hadbeen poisoned.

　　In the weeks and months that followed I had no more interest inbeer than in the kitchen stove after it had burned me. The grown-ups were right. Beer was not for children. The grown-ups didn'tmind it; but neither did they mind taking pills and castor oil.As for me, I could manage to get along quite well without beer.Yes, and to the day of my death I could have managed to get alongquite well without it. But circumstance decreed otherwise. Atevery turn in the world in which I lived, John Barleycornbeckoned. There was no escaping him. All paths led to him. Andit took twenty years of contact, of exchanging greetings andpassing on with my tongue in my cheek, to develop in me a sneakingliking for the rascal.