CUTTING IT OUT

In Press
By the Same Author

THE FUN OF GETTING THIN

CUTTING IT OUT
HOW TO GET ON THE WATERWAGON
AND STAY THERE

BY
SAMUEL G. BLYTHE

CHICAGO
FORBES & COMPANY
1912

COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY
THE CURTIS PUBLISHING CO.

COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY
FORBES AND COMPANY

CONTENTS

• CHAPTER PAGE

1. Why I Quit 9
2. How I Quit 21
3. What I Quit 31
4. When I Quit 45
5. After I Quit 57

Publisher's Note

This work originally appeared in The Saturday Evening Post under the title "On the Water-Wagon."

CUTTING IT OUT

CHAPTER I

WHY I QUIT

First off, let me state the object of the meeting: This is to be a record of sundry experiences centering round a stern resolve to get on the waterwagon and a sterner attempt to stay there. It is an entirely personal narrative of a strictly personal set of circumstances. It is not a temperance lecture, or a temperance tract, or a chunk of advice, or a shuddering recital of the woes of a horrible example, or a warning, or an admonition—or anything at all but a plain tale of an adventure that started out rather vaguely and wound up rather satisfactorily.

I am no brand that was snatched from the burning; no sot who picked himself or was picked from the gutter; no drunkard who almost wrecked a promising career; no constitutional or congenital souse. I drank liquor the same way hundreds of thousands of men drink it—drank liquor and attended to my business, and got along well, and kept my health, and provided for my family, and maintained my position in the community. I felt I had a perfect right to drink liquor just as I had a perfect right to stop drinking it. I never considered my drinking in any way immoral.

I was decent, respectable, a gentleman, who drank only with gentlemen and as a gentleman should drink if he pleases. I didn't care whether any one else drank—and do not now. I didn't care whether any one else cared whether I drank—and do not now. I am no reformer, no lecturer, no preacher. I quit because I wanted