My cruise in the salmon boat lasted a week, and I returned ready
to enter the university. During the week's cruise I did not drink
again. To accomplish this I was compelled to avoid looking up old
friends, for as ever the adventure-path was beset with John
Barleycorn. I had wanted the drink that first day, and in the
days that followed I did not want it. My tired brain had
recuperated. I had no moral scruples in the matter. I was not
ashamed nor sorry because of that first day's orgy at Benicia, and
I thought no more about it, returning gladly to my books and
studies.

Long years were to pass ere I looked back upon that day and
realised its significance. At the time, and for a long time
afterward, I was to think of it only as a frolic. But still
later, in the slough of brain-fag and intellectual weariness, I
was to remember and know the craving for the anodyne that resides
in alcohol.

In the meantime, after this one relapse at Benicia, I went on with
my abstemiousness, primarily because I didn't want to drink. And
next, I was abstemious because my way led among books and students
where no drinking was. Had I been out on the adventure-path, I
should as a matter of course have been drinking. For that is the
pity of the adventure-path, which is one of John Barleycorn's
favourite stamping grounds.

I completed the first half of my freshman year, and in January of
1897 took up my courses for the second half. But the pressure
from lack of money, plus a conviction that the university was not
giving me all that I wanted in the time I could spare for it,