I had a few months still to run before I was seventeen; I scorned the thought of a steady job at anything; I felt myself a pretty tough individual in a group of pretty tough men; and I drank because these men drank and because I had to make good with them.

I had never had a real boyhood, and in this, my precocious manhood, I was very hard and woefully wise.
Though I had never known girl's love even, I had crawled through such depths that I was convinced absolutely that I knew the last word about love and life.

And it wasn't a pretty knowledge.

Without being pessimistic, I was quite satisfied that life was a rather cheap and ordinary affair.
You see, John Barleycorn was blunting me.

The old stings and prods of the spirit were no longer sharp.