“What do you drink?” he asked.

“Bourbon.”

“Here it is,” he returned, drawing a second flask from the other hip pocket.

How well, too, do I remember the long, delightful evening upon which my companion and I sat in an Atlanta club with a group of the older members, the week before Georgia went bone dry.  There, as in Alabama before 1915, there had been pretended prohibition, but now the bars of leading clubs were being closed, and convivial men were looking into the future with despair.  One of the gentlemen was a justice of the Supreme Court of the State, and I remember his wistful declaration that prohibition would fall hardest upon the older men.

“When a man is young,” he said, “he can be lively and enjoy himself without drinking, because he is full of animal spirits.  But we older men aren’t bubbling over with liveliness.  We can’t dance, or don’t want to, and we lack the stimulus which comes of falling continually in love.  My great pleasure is to sit of an evening, here at a table in the cafe of this club, conversing with my friends.  That is where prohibition is going to hurt me.  I shall not see my old friends any more.”

The others protested at this somber view, but the judge gravely shook his head, saying:  “You don’t believe me, but I know whereof I speak, for I have been through something like this, in a minor way, before.  A good many years ago I was one of a little group of congenial men to organize a small club.  We had comfortable quarters, and we used to drop in at night, much as we have been doing of late years here, and have the kind of talks that are tonic to the soul.  Of course we had liquor in the club, but there came a time when, for some reason or other—­I think it was some trouble over a license—­we closed our bar.  We didn’t think it was going to make a great difference, but it did.  The men began to stop coming in, and before long the club ceased to exist.

“It won’t be like that here.  This club will go on.  But we won’t come here.  We won’t want to sit around a table, like this, and drink ginger ale and sarsaparilla; and even if we do, the talk won’t be so good.  The thing that makes me downcast is not that liquor is going, but that we are really parting this week.

“Every one knows that the abuse of drink does harm in the world, but these pious prohibitionists are not of the temperament to understand how alcohol ministers to the esthetic side of certain natures.  It gives us better companions and makes us better companions for others.  It stimulates our minds, enhances our appreciations, sharpens our wit, loosens our tongues, and saves brilliant conversation from becoming a lost art.”

My sympathies went out to the judge.  It has always seemed to me a pity that the liquor question has resolved itself into a fight between extremists—­for I think the wine and beer people might survive if they were not tied up with the distillers, and I do not believe that any considerable evil comes of drinking wine or beer.