Left - Mt. Horeb residents "whooping it up" during prohibition.
"Prohibition is the greatest promoter of bibulosity. People enjoy their booze all the more because is forbidden. So how could I keep on being dry with a vast population doing its best to make me wet?" - R.W.S.
SERVICE 
This Service Selection deals with Robert's abstenence from liquor. After being diagnosed with "Athelete's Heart" now refered to as an enlarged heart Robert gave up drink. In his book "Why Not Grow Young" published in 1928, Service talks about giving up drinking but his respect for the vice. His views on America's bout with prohibition is interesting and points out why the folly of legistrating abstenance.
The Service Selection poem that follows this selection, "In praise Of Alcohol" can be found on a wonderful compact disc recording "The Man From Eldorado" by David Parry. Sixteen other Service poems are also included on this recording and David does a wonderful job of putting Service's ballads to music. You can find out more about this recording by clickin on CD cover .
Our Saving Vices
from "Why Not Grow Young"
I am condemned by my doctor to a life sentence of sobriety, and I am darned sorry. Drinking is bad but sometimes getting drunk is good, and because of a virtuously indignant heart the joy of getting drunk is denied me forever. The spirit is willing but the flesh is strong. I think it is the duty of every philosophic man to get drunk once on his lifetime. To get drunk once is virtue: twice, folly; three times vice. I mean deliberately drunk, experimentally drunk; not to drown a sorrow or celebrate a joy, or out of respect for one's company, but drunk to enrich experience, drunk by strength, not weakness.
Every experience has some good in it, even bad experience . Only by knowing vice can we truly appreciate virtue; so that as future exponents of virtue it is our duty to have some first hand acquaintance with vice. But after all who is to say what is vice, what virtue? Let us agree that for his soul's sake the most saintly of men ought to be able a to avow: " Once I was soused to the gills." For if it is don, let it be well done. Get drunk so that the reaction is devastating. If the morning after only came before the night before, it would never come after.
Why I don't live in the U.S.A..
I like drinking men. They're the best of good fellow. And I don't like men like myself who don't drink at all. If I were someone else I should dislike myself on that count alone. For I never touch a drop of . Yet I know something about wines, and rather fancy myself a bit of a connoisseur- -vicariously. I love to dig up a bottle of rare vintage in an out of the way wine shop, and bring it home to high glee. I handle it with respect, open it with gusto, inhale its fragrance, admire its colour. I get all my pleasure from their satisfaction, and this is, I think, the quintessence of epicureanism.
Living in France where there is no liquor limit it is easy to abstain. In the united States I fear I should find it hard. When a nice man affectionately takes you aside and produces with the joy of a child a hip-flask, who would have the heart not to take a nip? Prohibition is the greatest promoter of bibulosity. People enjoy their booze all the more because is forbidden. So how could I keep on being dry with a vast population doing its best to make me wet? No, I maintain the right of every man to drink water if he wants to, and if Government were to make a law that it was only to be taken with whisky, I should fight for the right to drink it straight.
In Praise of Alcohol
(from "Later Collected Verse" page 421)
Of vintage wine I am a lover;
To drink dip would be my delight;
If 'twere not for the bleak hangover
I'd get me loaded every night
I'd whoop it up with song and laughter-
If 'twere not for the morning after.
For though to soberness I'm given
It is a thought I've often thunk:
The nearest that is Earth to heaven
Is to get sublimely drunk;
Is to achieve divine elation
By means of generous libation.
Alas, the wine-cups claim their payment
And as the price is often pain,
If we could sense what morning grey meant
We never would get soused again;
Rather than buy a hob-nailed liver
I'm sure that we'd abstain for ever.
Yet how I love the glow of liquor,
As joyfully I drunk it up!
Hoping that unto life's last flicker
With praise I'll raise the ruby cup;
And let me like a jolly monk
Proceed to get sublimely drunk.
