They were without greatness, without imagination, without camaraderie.

It was the good fellows, easy and genial, daring, and, on occasion, mad, that I wanted to know--the fellows, generous-hearted and -handed, and not rabbit-hearted.
And here is another complaint I bring against John Barleycorn.

It is these good fellows that he gets--the fellows with the fire and the go in them, who have bigness, and warmness, and the best of the human weaknesses.

And John Barleycorn puts out the fire, and soddens the agility, and, when he does not more immediately kill them or make maniacs of them, he coarsens and grossens them, twists and malforms them out of the original goodness and fineness of their natures.
Oh!--and I speak out of later knowledge--Heaven forefend me from the most of the average run of male humans who are not good fellows, the ones cold of heart and cold of head who don't smoke, drink, or swear, or do much of anything else that is brase, and resentful, and stinging, because in their feeble fibres there has never been the stir and prod of life to well over its boundaries and be devilish and daring.

One doesn't meet these in saloons, nor rallying to lost causes, nor flaming on the adventure-paths, nor loving as God's own mad lovers.