the young-old philosopher has recently been traveling over the country as far west as the coast. he had heard that conditions, so far as prohibition was concerned, were excellent out there; but he wished to observe for himself.

he found them quite the contrary. in states like oregon and washington, which went dry long before national prohibition became an established fact, the people were obtaining anything they desired. close to the border, there is plenty of bootlegging, endless daring adventuring in the liquor traffic, many a bold plunge over the line to bring whiskey and gin into united states territory.

and they certainly bring it. meanwhile, the propaganda of the puritans goes on—or, rather, the impropaganda; for it is not true that people are behaving themselves. there is just as much discontent and disorder among westerners as among easterners, so the young-old philosopher observed.

but in cities like omaha, which is about in the center of the country, there is a dryness which is depressing. passing through a hotel corridor one day177 at noon, the young-old philosopher heard male voices, chanting in unison. he stepped to the open door of a private dining-room, and was much amused to see a group of forty or fifty solid business men, all wearing little badges proclaiming their allegiance to some organization or other, standing about the tables, lifting high their glasses of water, and shouting these words:

“with the feed on the ta-bull,

and a good song ring-ing clear!”

there was a desperate attempt at gaiety, a look in the eye of each prospective luncheoner which seemed to say, “we will have a good time—in spite of prohibition!” but my friend turned away at this travesty on mirth and good fellowship. he wondered if richard hovey was not turning in his grave at the cruel editing of his deathless “stein song,” and he counted it a pity that pewter mugs had been superseded by ice-water goblets; and he saw that gopher prairie was indeed a dreadful reality. not that he would have wished to see the law disobeyed. he merely deprecated the tragic fact that this was the pass we had come to; this was the drab social order we had definitely arrived at. he went disconsolately down the hallway, brooding of all those ancient poets who had held it no shame to sing of the vine and the flowing bowl. no one had ever written a song in praise of food. and he thought if hovey could be edited, soon the bible itself would hear the178 snip-snip of the shears, as certain boisterous passages were cut out; and as for poor old omar, he wondered how soon it would be before he was paraphrased by the reformers somewhat in this manner:

here with a little bread beneath the bough,

a flask of milk, a book of verse—and thou

beside me singing in the wilderness—

ah! paradise were wilderness enow.

and of course quatrains like this would soon be omitted from all editions:

why, be this juice the growth of god, who dare

blaspheme the twisted tendril as a snare?

a blessing, we should use it, should we not?

and if a curse—why, then, who set it there?

the story of the marriage feast at cana must make sorry reading for any prohibitionist; and the young-old philosopher doubts not that it will be torn from the records in years to come. we shall not even be given the pleasure of reading about the jubilations of vanished times—times rich in banquets. think of imperial rome without golden goblets! they were as much a part of the feast as the fruit and the lights; and if we are to be deprived of the vicarious joy of dipping into the pagan past, might we not just as well renounce life entirely? red wine will be as antiquated as the ermine and crowns of kings, my friend believes; yet who can deny the picturesqueness of the scepter and the court179 fool? they may not have been important, but they gave a glamour to dreary days. “and some of us may prefer them,” says the young-old philosopher, “to the dandruff-covered collars of stupid senators and congressmen.”

there is an old song of abraham cowley’s, written somewhere between 1618 and 1667, which must give pain to any prohibitionist. will they strive to bowdlerize the anthologies, erase from literature so true and human a poem as this, which voices a thought almost as old as the world? it is after anacreon.

the thirsty earth soaks up the rain,

and drinks, and gapes for drink again;

the plants suck in the earth, and are

with constant drinking, fresh and fair;

the sea itself (which one would think

should have but little need of drink)

drinks twice ten thousand rivers up,

so filled that they o’erflow the cup.

the busy sun (and one would guess

by’s drunken fiery face no less)

drinks up the sea, and, when he’s done,

the moon and stars drink up the sun:

they drink and dance by their own light;

they drink and revel all the night.

nothing in nature’s sober found,

but an eternal “health” goes round.

fill up the bowl, then, fill it high—

fill all the glasses there; for why

should every creature drink but i?

why, men of morals, tell me why?

180 think of losing from english literature lines like these, from the “last poems” of a. e. housman:

could man be drunk forever

with liquor, love, or fights,

lief should i rouse at morning

and lief lie down at nights.

but men at whiles are sober

and think by fits and starts,

and if they think, they fasten

their hands upon their hearts.

and so modern and exquisite a poet as richard le gallienne has had much to say metrically of the follies of attempting to regulate by law the natural appetites of man. he sounds a warning in this tragic-comic ballade, spurning the busy-body reformers:

181

they took away your drink from you,

the kind old humanizing glass;

soon they will take tobacco too,

and next they’ll take our demi-tasse.

don’t say, “the bill will never pass,”

nor this my warning word disdain;

you said it once, you silly ass—

don’t make the same mistake again.

we know them now, the bloodless crew,

we know them all too well, alas!

there’s nothing that they wouldn’t do

to make the world a bible class;

though against bottled beer or bass

i search the sacred text in vain

to find a whisper—by the mass!

don’t make the same mistake again.

beware these legislators blue,

pouring their moral poison-gas

on all the joys our fathers knew;

the very flowers in the grass

are safe no more, and, lad and lass,

’ware the old birch-rod and the cane!

here comes our modern hudibras!—

don’t make the same mistake again.

envoi

prince, vanished is the rail of brass,

so mark me well and my refrain—

tobacco next! you silly ass,

don’t make the same mistake again.

it would be sad indeed to lose such a song as “drink to me only with thine eyes!” how much poorer the garden of poetry would be without such bibulous planters of rhyme as burns and poe and verlaine! i suppose the paid puritans would have even our poets walk the humdrum way, so that we would have no news of life from taverns and inns. the picturesque vagabond, the rapscallion son of song must be pulled in from the pleasant highways and made to “conform.”

conform to what? a three-room flat with kitchenette and running water, and a clerk’s desk downtown, with methodical rides on a heaving subway train at eight in the morning and again at six in182 the evening. well, there are other modes of living that seem a trifle sweeter to the dreamers of dreams, the makers of beauty. art is not produced like so many bricks or like so many waffles in a waffle iron. it is shot with wonder; and just as the water-lily emerges in its white perfection from dubious slimy stems, so a great work of loveliness may sometimes rise from the meanest sources. that is what your pharisee does not—and cannot—understand. he would cast us all into one mess-pot, stew us all in the same juice, and bid us all conform to some stupid “ideal” which he has the effrontery to hold before the artist as the ultimate goodness.