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in his grave at the cruel editing of his deathless “Stein Song,” and he counted it a pity that pewter mugs had been superseded by ice-water goblets; and he saw that Gopher Prairie was indeed a dreadful reality.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 the 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 court 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?
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.