must pay with shortened life, and, oft-times, with savage usury
added.

Intenseness and duration are as ancient enemies as fire and water.
They are mutually destructive. They cannot co-exist. And John
Barleycorn, mighty necromancer though he be, is as much a slave to
organic chemistry as we mortals are. We pay for every nerve
marathon we run, nor can John Barleycorn intercede and fend off
the just payment. He can lead us to the heights, but he cannot
keep us there, else would we all be devotees. And there is no
devotee but pays for the mad dances John Barleycorn pipes.

Yet the foregoing is all in after wisdom spoken. It was no part
of the knowledge of the lad, fourteen years old, who sat in the
Idler's cabin between the harpooner and the sailor, the air rich
in his nostrils with the musty smell of men's sea-gear, roaring in
chorus: "Yankee ship come down de ribber--pull, my bully boys,
pull!"

We grew maudlin, and all talked and shouted at once. I had a
splendid constitution, a stomach that would digest scrap-iron, and
I was still running my marathon in full vigour when Scotty began
to fail and fade. His talk grew incoherent. He groped for words
and could not find them, while the ones he found his lips were
unable to form. His poisoned consciousness was leaving him. The
brightness went out of his eyes, and he looked as stupid as were
his efforts to talk. His face and body sagged as his
consciousness sagged. (A man cannot sit upright save by an act of
will.) Scotty's reeling brain could not control his muscles. All
his correlations were breaking down. He strove to take another