Asovr this time of the year (Jan. 4/6) I go on the water wagon (slang for abstaining from Itoxicating. liquor) for periods varyi m a week to a month.
Iam never quite sure why I do it. Sometimes I think it may be the occasional expression of Puritanical fervour inherited from my father, a life-long teetotaler.
Sometimes I think i! inevitable nausea induced by organized whoopee at Christmas and New Year, and sometimes I think it is an attempt to prove that I have a will of my own, though e am perfectly aware that total abstention is an admission of weakness, not of strength.
Whatever the reason, the self-inflicted penance gives me à curious satisfaction during the first week I glow with virtue, and when I go into smoky taverns filled with pitiful drink slaves talking the most as-rounding nonsense and laughing at nothing at all I find (if I glance m the glittering mirrors) that face has twisted into a compassionate smile and I feel terribly, terribly sorry for everybody.
During the second week I am no longer sorry for the drink slaves. They fill me with disgust. They smell abominably, behave idiotically, and I run from their presence to my sensitive nostrils with the mixture of fresh air. smoke and carbon-monoxide which is the atmosphere of Fleet-street.
The third week finds me wondering if I am making an ass of myself.
I find I can think of nothing but brimming tankards of beer, and my dreams are haunted by sparkling whiskies and sodas in large barrel glasses. This is evidently a repressed urge to go on the oil in a big way, and if any psycho-analyst is interested I could supply him with some absorbing data.
The fourth week (if I have lasted so long) is nothing but an exhibition of blind, bulldog courage.
1 have fixed a.date with myself and I am going to keep it. unsupported by lofty idealism, the feeling of well-being (which has passed, through eating too much) and the vision of a better, brighter and wor-their Gubbins who has now become an old grouch, envying those who seem. io have no need for such foolishness, At the moment of writing I am filled to the tonus with tea and parley sugar, and the Awful Child "pas to keep night and day guard over her chocolates—Gubbins in the "Sunday Express."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.