You see, John Barleycorn was blunting me. The old stings and
prods of the spirit were no longer sharp. Curiosity was leaving
me. What did it matter what lay on the other side of the world?
Men and women, without doubt, very much like the men and women I
knew; marrying and giving in marriage and all the petty run of
petty human concerns; and drinks, too. But the other side of the
world was a long way to go for a drink. I had but to step to the
corner and get all I wanted at Joe Vigy's. Johnny Heinhold still
ran the Last Chance. And there were saloons on all the corners
and between the corners.

The whispers from the back of life were growing dim as my mind and
body soddened. The old unrest was drowsy. I might as well rot
and die here in Oakland as anywhere else. And I should have so
rotted and died, and not in very long order either, at the pace
John Barleycorn was leading me, had the matter depended wholly on
him. I was learning what it was to have no appetite. I was
learning what it was to get up shaky in the morning, with a
stomach that quivered, with fingers touched with palsy, and to
know the drinker's need for a stiff glass of whisky neat in order
to brace up. (Oh! John Barleycorn is a wizard dopester. Brain
and body, scorched and jangled and poisoned, return to be tuned up
by the very poison that caused the damage.)

There is no end to John Barleycorn's tricks. He had tried to
inveigle me into killing myself. At this period he was doing his
best to kill me at a fairly rapid pace. But, not satisfied with
that, he tried another dodge. He very nearly got me, too, and
right there I learned a lesson about him--became a wiser, a more