As the night wore away two or three of the boys became sober enough to hide the jug, which they concealed in a corn-shock.  These dragged the rest of us to bed, although one of the party woke up in the wood-box with his head downward and his feet dangling over the top of the box.  Only those who have been so unfortunate as to be in a similar condition can realize our state of mental and physical feeling.  Parched lips, scalded tongues, cracked throats, throbbing temples, and burning shame were indisputably ours.  So we awoke on the morning of the day set apart for the exhibition, an exhibition in which we were to appear before our respected teacher, friends and relatives, besides all the people of the surrounding country.  Early in the day we commenced to get ready for the afternoon’s work by resorting to the same jug that so recently had bereft us temporarily of reason, and laid us in the mud and snow.  I only got one big drink of the poison and so contrived to get through passably well with my part of the performance; some of the boys got too much, and failed to remember anything, so that they failed utterly and hid behind the curtains, and, taken all in all, we did little or nothing toward the success of the exhibition or to making those interested gratified with our parts.  Some of the boys who figured on the stage that day are dead; but others are alive and of those I am not the only one writhing in the coils of the serpent of alcohol, though not one of them has fallen so low as I. If at that time I might have been permitted to lift the curtain and looked down future-ward through the unlighted years of shame, and weariness, and suffering, I think the dreadful vision would have stayed me forever in a career which has only grown darker and more unendurable with every step.  I kept on much in the same way, increasing in length and frequency my ever recurring debauches, until the end of the school term.

I was well nigh twenty years of age, and from this place went to Cincinnati to attend college.  Here the opportunities to gratify my hereditary appetite, made keen and sharp, and ever keener and sharper by indulgence, were all about me.  My companions were older and further advanced on the road to ruin than I. My steps were more swift than ever before to tread the path which leads surely to the everlasting bonfire.  I could not fail to notice while at college that the most brilliant and intellectual—­those whose future prospects were the most pleasing and bright—­were the very ones who most frequently drowned their hopes, and sapped their strength and energy in alcoholic stimulants.  O, vividly do I recall to mind examples of heaven-bestowed genius, talent, health, and abilities, sacrificed on the worse than bloody teocalli of this hideous and slimy devil, Intemperance!  How many master minds, instead of progressing sublimely through the broad, deep, and august channels of thought, became impeded by the meshes and clogs of intoxication, and