The taste for strong waters so developed in my grandsire would seem like a quartz-ledge to have “dipped” beneath my father to strike the family surface with all its old-time richness in myself. I state this the more secure of its truth because I was instantly and completely a drunkard, waiving every preliminary stage as a novice, from the moment of my first glass. It was my first day of the tavern when I met the Jolly Doctor. The tavern was his home--for he lived a perilous bachelor--and had been many years; and when, being in a shaken state, I sent down from the apartments I had taken and requested the presence of a physician, he came up to me. He had me right and on my feet in the course of a few hours, and then I began to look him in the face and make his acquaintance. As I abode in the tavern for a considerable space, we put in many friendly hours together. The Jolly Doctor was a round, strong, active body of a man, virile and with an atmosphere almost hypnotic. His forehead was good, his jaw hard, his nose arched, while his gray-blue eyes, half sour, half humorous and deeply wise of the world, gleamed in his head with the shine of beads. One evening while we were together about the fireplace of my parlor, I was for having up a bottle of sherry. “Before you give the order,” said the Jolly Doctor, restraining me with a friendly yet semiprofessional gesture, “let me say a word. Let me ask whether you have an intention or even a hope of one day--no matter how distant--quitting alcohol?” Without pausing for my answer, the Jolly Doctor went on. “You are yet a young man; I suppose you have seen thirty years. It has been my experience, albeit I’m but fifteen years your senior and not therefore as old as a hill, that no man uproots a habit after he has reached middle age. While climbing, mentally, physically, nervously, the slope of his years and adding to, not taking from, his strength, a man may so far re-draw himself as to make or break an appetite--the appetite of strong drink--if you will. But let him attain the summit of his strength, reach as it were the crest of his days and begin to travel down the easy long descent toward the grave, and every chance of change has perished beyond his reach. You are thirty; and to make it short, my friend, you must, considering what bottle tendencies lie latent within you, stop now and stop hard, or you are lost forever.”