And the way was open. It was like an uncovered well in a yard
where children play. It is small use to tell the brave little
boys toddling their way along into knowledge of life that they
mustn't play near the uncovered well. They'll play near it. Any
parent knows that. And we know that a certain percentage of them,
the livest and most daring, will fall into the well. The thing to
do--we all know it--is to cover up the well. The case is the same
with John Barleycorn. All the no-saying and no-preaching in the
world will fail to keep men, and youths growing into manhood, away
from John Barleycorn when John Barleycorn is everywhere
accessible, and where John Barleycorn is everywhere the
connotation of manliness, and daring, and great-spiritedness.

The only rational thing for the twentieth-century folk to do is to
cover up the well; to make the twentieth century in truth the
twentieth century, and to relegate to the nineteenth century and
all the preceding centuries the things of those centuries, the
witch-burnings, the intolerances, the fetiches, and, not least
among such barbarisms. John Barleycorn.



CHAPTER XVII


North we raced from the Bonin Islands to pick up the seal-herd,
and north we hunted it for a hundred days into frosty, mitten
weather and into and through vast fogs which hid the sun from us
for a week at a time. It was wild and heavy work, without a drink
or thought of drink. Then we sailed south to Yokohama, with a big