that nothing could save me, and I might as well give up the struggle.
I drank two pin-ap-o-lades, three grapefruit-olas and an egg-zoolak,
before pausing to take breath.

And then, the next day, I met May, the girl who effected my
reformation. She was a clergyman's daughter who, to support her
widowed mother, had accepted a non-speaking part in a musical comedy
production entitled "Oh Joy! Oh Pep!" Our acquaintance ripened, and
one night I asked her out to supper.

I look on that moment as the happiest of my life. I met her at the
stage door, and conducted her to the nearest soda-fountain. We were
inside and I was buying the checks before she realized where she was,
and I shall never forget her look of mingled pain and horror.

"And I thought you were a live one!" she murmured.

It seemed that she had been looking forward to a little lobster and
champagne. The idea was absolutely new to me. She quickly convinced
me, however, that such was the only refreshment which she would
consider, and she recoiled with unconcealed aversion from my
suggestion of a Mocha Malted and an Eva Tanguay. That night I tasted
wine for the first time, and my reformation began.

It was hard at first, desperately hard. Something inside me was trying
to pull me back to the sundaes for which I craved, but I resisted the
impulse. Always with her divinely sympathetic encouragement, I
gradually acquired a taste for alcohol. And suddenly, one evening,
like a flash it came upon me that I had shaken off the cursed yoke
that held me down: that I never wanted to see the inside of a