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Sept 5 1949 Monday

Dear Jack: In the Sept "Grapevine" the AA monthly magazine there is an article: "Was Dr. Johnson an AA"? To refresh your memory the great coffee-house gent lived 1709-1784. In his "Meditations", April 20, 1764 Johnson himself says in Part. "I have made no Reformation; I have lived totally useless, more addicted to wine and meat-----". Two years later Boswell says of him "There was now a considerable difference in his way of living. Having had an illness, in which he was advised to leave off wine, he had, from that period, continued to abstain from it, and drinks only water, or lemonade." Thus 1766, Dr. Johnson being then 57. He was on the beam in 1772. Still OK in 1776 - when Boswell wrote of him "Finding him still persevering in his abstinence from wine, I ventured to speak to