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W. C. Fields
his drinking. The comedian's nerves were never of much account, being chaffed, lacerated, sensitized, and in general badly worn by adversity and work. Physicians now say that some persons are born with defective nervous systems, as others are born with weak hearts, frail lungs, or infirm heads. Fields, though springing from sturdy, placid stock, got off to a restive start. Along the way he had extraordinary troubles, and a ghostly army of fears and worries began to camp on his trail. In his young manhood he discovered that peace of mind, of a rather inferior order, came in bottles, and he addressed himself to the remedy. Throughout his life it was the only one that ever worked. Despite the cigarettes, his year of temperance was a raging failure. He felt weak, rundown, tense, sleepless, and pursued. He had previously smoked cigars, though listlessly and without relish. The addiction to tobacco struck him as a dull habit; besides, he could never hold cigars without wanting to juggle. In his time on the vaudeville stage, cigars had formed an important part of his flying paraphernalia. So that later, after he lit one, his mind would wander, his hands would begin to twitch, and the cigar would presently describe a half-flip and come to rest on his index finger, where it would burn a sizable hole.
Cigarettes gave him even less comfort than cigars, being just as inadequate to his need for artificial repose and too small to juggle. He never inhaled the smoke; eventually he found some comic device whereby he could amuse himself, and others, with a cigarette. He would stick one between his nose and upper lip, or put one in an ear, and pretend to smoke it with some outre and slightly sinister enjoyment. Strangers at a party were likely to nudge one another and point at the curious man with the lighted cigarette in his ear. In one of his last movies, The Bank Dick, he was seen sitting on a park bench surrounded by admiring youngsters. The close-up camera explained their interest: the
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