I drank it only for its "kick." And from the age of five to that of twenty-five I had not learned to care for its kick.

Twenty years of unwilling apprenticeship had been required to make my system rebelliously tolerant of alcohol, to make me, in the heart and the deeps of me, desirous of alcohol.
I sketched my first contacts with alcohol, told of my first intoxications and revulsions, and pointed out always the one thing that in the end had won me over--namely, the accessibility of alcohol.

Not only had it always been accessible, but every interest of my developing life had drawn me to it.

A newsboy on the streets, a sailor, a miner, a wanderer in far lands, always where men came together to exchange ideas, to laugh and boast and dare, to relax, to forget the dull toil of tiresome nights and days, always they came together over alcohol.

The saloon was the place of congregation.