The brightest passenger in the ship, and the most interesting and felicitous talker, was a young Canadian who was not able to let the whisky bottle alone.  He was of a rich and powerful family, and could have had a distinguished career and abundance of effective help toward it if he could have conquered his appetite for drink; but he could not do it, so his great equipment of talent was of no use to him.  He had often taken the pledge to drink no more, and was a good sample of what that sort of unwisdom can do for a man—­for a man with anything short of an iron will.  The system is wrong in two ways:  it does not strike at the root of the trouble, for one thing, and to make a pledge of any kind is to declare war against nature; for a pledge is a chain that is always clanking and reminding the wearer of it that he is not a free man.

I have said that the system does not strike at the root of the trouble, and I venture to repeat that.  The root is not the drinking, but the desire to drink.  These are very different things.  The one merely requires will—­and a great deal of it, both as to bulk and staying capacity—­the other merely requires watchfulness—­and for no long time.  The desire of course precedes the act, and should have one’s first attention; it can do but little good to refuse the act over and over again, always leaving the desire unmolested, unconquered; the desire will continue to assert itself, and will be almost sure to win in the long run.  When the desire intrudes, it should be at once banished out of the mind.  One should be on the watch for it all the time—­otherwise it will get in.  It must be taken in time and not allowed to get a lodgment.  A desire constantly repulsed for a fortnight should die, then.  That should cure the drinking habit.  The system of refusing the mere act of drinking, and leaving the desire in full force, is unintelligent war tactics, it seems to me.  I used to take pledges—­and soon violate them.  My will was not strong, and I could not help it.  And then, to be tied in any way naturally irks an otherwise free person and makes him chafe in his bonds and want to get his liberty.  But when I finally ceased from taking definite pledges, and merely resolved that I would kill an injurious desire, but leave myself free to resume the desire and the habit whenever I should choose to do so, I had no more trouble.  In five days I drove out the desire to smoke and was not obliged to keep watch after that; and I never experienced any strong desire to smoke again.  At the end of a year and a quarter of idleness I began to write a book, and presently found that the pen was strangely reluctant to go.  I tried a smoke to see if that would help me out of the difficulty.  It did.  I smoked eight or ten cigars and as many pipes a day for five months; finished the book, and did not smoke again until a year had gone by and another book had to be begun.

I can quit any of my nineteen injurious habits at any time, and without discomfort or inconvenience.  I think that the Dr. Tanners and those others who go forty days without eating do it by resolutely keeping out the desire to eat, in the beginning, and that after a few hours the desire is discouraged and comes no more.