Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/186

 cocktail, you know, our own national contribution, had begun to be humanized and to have its tender local associations, as every club of distinction modified its ingredients and christened it with some lovely name: The Chrysanthemum, The Chrysostom, The Golden Girl, and so forth. Doesn't it really stir your imagination a little?"

"Yes, yes," said Oliver, first smacking his lips and then pursing them with mock severity. "Yes, we grant you all that. But what is the necessity of it? We are talking of necessities, not of sentiments. We, we Midlanders—the Professor and myself—want to know what necessity requires the tolerance of a mere beverage which is so liable to become a beastly nuisance."

"Exactly so," I said.

"I'll tell you the necessity," replied Willys. "And I'll tell you, too, that it goes far deeper than your economic theory. I return to the Saturday nights of the workingman. You know, I know, everyone with two grains of sense knows, that there is something desirous in the inside of a man which even hard roads and baby bonds don't satisfy. That something is a primitive and profound need of our elemental nature for excitement and every now and then for something like intoxi-