[Following the Equator by Mark Twain]@TWC D-Link bookFollowing the Equator CHAPTER I 10/23
In one instance he stood on his feet twenty-four hours fighting for his life with these sharp agonies, and yet was as full of life and cheer and activity the next day as if nothing had happened. The brightest passenger in the ship, and the most interesting and felicitous talker, was a young Canadian who was not able to let the whisky bottle alone.
He was of a rich and powerful family, and could have had a distinguished career and abundance of effective help toward it if he could have conquered his appetite for drink; but he could not do it, so his great equipment of talent was of no use to him.
He had often taken the pledge to drink no more, and was a good sample of what that sort of unwisdom can do for a man--for a man with anything short of an iron will. The system is wrong in two ways: it does not strike at the root of the trouble, for one thing, and to make a pledge of any kind is to declare war against nature; for a pledge is a chain that is always clanking and reminding the wearer of it that he is not a free man. I have said that the system does not strike at the root of the trouble, and I venture to repeat that.
The root is not the drinking, but the desire to drink.
These are very different things.
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