world, wherever I have gone, during all the years, it has been the
same. It may be a cabaret in the Latin Quarter, a cafe in some
obscure Italian village, a boozing ken in sailor-town, and it may
be up at the club over Scotch and soda; but always it will be
where John Barleycorn makes fellowship that I get immediately in
touch, and meet, and know. And in the good days coming, when John
Barleycorn will have been banished out of existence along with the
other barbarisms, some other institution than the saloon will have
to obtain, some other congregating place of men where strange men
and stranger men may get in touch, and meet, and know.

But to return to my narrative. When I turned my back on Benicia,
my way led through saloons. I had developed no moral theories
against drinking, and I disliked as much as ever the taste of the
stuff. But I had grown respectfully suspicious of John
Barleycorn. I could not forget that trick he had played on me--on
me who did not want to die. So I continued to drink, and to keep
a sharp eye on John Barleycorn, resolved to resist all future
suggestions of self-destruction.

In strange towns I made immediate acquaintances in the saloons.
When I hoboed, and hadn't the price of a bed, a saloon was the
only place that would receive me and give me a chair by the fire.
I could go into a saloon and wash up, brush my clothes, and comb
my hair. And saloons were always so damnably convenient. They
were everywhere in my western country.

I couldn't go into the dwellings of strangers that way. Their
doors were not open to me; no seats were there for me by their
fires. Also, churches and preachers I had never known. And from