myself strong. I had clinched again, as I had often clinched, my
right to the title of "Prince." Also, my attitude may be
considered, in part, as a reaction from my childhood's meagreness
and my childhood's excessive toil. Possibly my inchoate thought
was: Better to reign among booze-fighters a prince than to toil
twelve hours a day at a machine for ten cents an hour. There are
no purple passages in machine toil. But if the spending of one
hundred and eighty dollars in twelve hours isn't a purple passage,
then I'd like to know what is.

Oh, I skip much of the details of my trafficking with John
Barleycorn during this period, and shall only mention events that
will throw light on John Barleycorn's ways. There were three
things that enabled me to pursue this heavy drinking: first, a
magnificent constitution far better than the average; second, the
healthy open-air life on the water; and third, the fact that I
drank irregularly. While out on the water, we never carried any
drink along.

The world was opening up to me. Already I knew several hundred
miles of the water-ways of it, and of the towns and cities and
fishing hamlets on the shores. Came the whisper to range farther.
I had not found it yet. There was more behind. But even this
much of the world was too wide for Nelson. He wearied for his
beloved Oakland water-front, and when he elected to return to it
we separated in all friendliness.

I now made the old town of Benicia, on the Carquinez Straits, my
headquarters. In a cluster of fishermen's arks, moored in the
tules on the water-front, dwelt a congenial crowd of drinkers and