" I said I didn't want any, and I didn't. But he said--I really
think the Devil was using Mike to make me drink--"Oh, be a man! One
glass won't hurt you; it will do you good." And he talked to me about
mother's apron-strings, and finally I took my first drink outside of
what I drank when grandfather used to send me for beer.
Do you know, as I stood there before the bar, with that beer in my hand,
I heard a voice just as plain as I ever heard anything, saying, "Don't
take that stuff; it's no good, and will bring you to shame and misery.
It will spoil your future, and you will never become the great merchant
you started out to be. Put it down and don't drink it." That was
twenty-five years ago, and many a time I have heard that voice since.
How I wish now that I had listened to that voice and never taken that
first drink! It is not the second or the one hundred and second drink
that makes a man a drunkard, but the first.
I started to put the glass down, and with that Mike began to laugh, and
his laugh brought the other fellows around. Of course Mike told them I
was a milk-and-water boy. I could not stand it to be laughed at, so I
put the glass of beer to my lips, swallowed it, and never made a face
about it.
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