Cheers!

But Monday morning.  Overcast.  9:30. I will go to the dentist in half an hour, and I would like a drink.  I write, at breakfast, the biography of a man whose dependence on alcohol was extreme, but who, through some constitutional fortitude, was able to ration his drinks, to exploit alcohol rather than have it exploit him.  He never drank before noon and, after his lunch drinks, not again until five.  It was a struggle, it always would be and by the time he was fifty he realized there would be no suspension of the fight. He would never be able to pass the whiskey bottle in the pantry without sweating.  On Saturdays and Sundays he would paint screens, split wood, cut the broad lawns of Evenmere, looking at his watch every ten minutes to see if the time hadn't come for a legitimate scoop.  At five minutes to five, his hands trembling and his brow soaked with sweat, he would get out the ice, pour the beautiful, golden whiskey into a glass, and begin the better part of his life.