The thing is done, however—at least, for the present, whatever hopes one may entertain for referendums in the future—and we must accept our thirsty destiny. So farewell the jovial Collins and the smooth and voluptuous Gin Fizz, whether silver or golden. No longer must we soar on the bounding High Ball to celestial regions where the heat-waves cease from troubling and the mercury is at rest. The pungent and appetizing Cocktail is not for us, nor the enticing Rickey. Even the mild and genial Shandy-gaff must we shun, for it contains Beer, and the name of Beer is anathema in anything but negligible percentages.
Their merry reign is over, and all their kingdom is given up to plebeian beverages like Sarsaparilla and Soda-Pop. But those of us who are royalists at heart will still continue to look forward to a restoration of the old regime. They have gone, but their memory is green in our hearts—green with sprigs of mint.
BACK TO NATURE IN A LIMOUSINE
Back to Nature in a Limousine
There has been in recent years a good deal of talk about "going back to nature"—perhaps we should make that a capital "N." Even some of the highest-class magazines have been devoting to it so much space that we begin to suspect the advertisers must have asked to be put next to extra-pure reading matter. It is true that most of it was written at so much a line or an inch or a column by chaps living in hall-bedrooms, but it is none the less an indication of a genuine back-to-the-land movement. We know for we have taken part in it ourself.
Last summer we went back to the land for a week-end. As a result of our experience we wish to state that we now approve of the land as an institution. But you have to go back to it right. Everything depends on that.
Years and years ago when we were younger and foolisher than we will ever be again, we trust—as a matter of fact, we were fresh out of college, very fresh—we went back to the land. The experience embittered our nature for years. We made the mistake of going back to work on the land. Never, never do that. That way misanthropy lies.
Brutally heedless of our "B.A." and our other scholastic honors, big, coarse farmers bullied us around from four o'clock in the morning till ten at night. The rest of the time was our own. We went out at dewy dawn and hitched two or three imbecile horses to a rusty old plough, and spent the day tearing irregular gashes in the scenery till it looked like a crochet pattern, and till our head swam and our knees wobbled.
When we tottered in at twilight, an old and broken man, we had to go and chase home several festive cows who did the Maxixe and Tango and several other dances quite unknown to human beings at that time—they are still unknown to all but dancing professors. It usually took an hour at least to shoo them into the barn and hog-tie them so they wouldn't kick us through the pail, or the pail through us—they didn't care which.