Did you ever stop to think of ALL THE STRANGE HUMAN BEINGS
besides yourself that pass before him?
He stands there as a sentinel, business man, detective, waiter,
general entertainer and host for the homeless.
In comes a young man, rather early in the day.
He is a little tired--up too late the night before. He takes a
cocktail. He tells the bartender that he does not believe in
cocktails. He never takes them, in fact. "The bitters in a
cocktail will eat a hole through a thin handkerchief--pretty bad
effect on your stomach, eh?" and so on.
Out goes the young man with the cocktail inside of him.
And the bartender KNOWS that that young man, with his fine
reasonings and his belief in himself, is the confirmed drunkard
of year after next. He has seen the beginning of many such
cocktail philosophers, and the ending of the same.
The way NOT to be a drunkard is never to taste spirits. The
bartender knows that. But his customers do NOT know it. ----
At another hour of the day there comes in the older man. This
one is the fresh-faced, YOUNG oldish man.
He has small, gray side-whiskers. He shows several people--whom
he does not know--his commutation ticket.
He changes his mind suddenly from whiskey to lemonade. The
bartender prepares the lemon slowly, and the man changes his mind
back to whiskey.
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