honor of actually superintending and presiding over two of these festivities, both of which were held in Horace Elwell’s woods, on the unsung, but classically rustic banks of Tom.  Hall’s mill-dam, near the village which bears the historic and great name of Raleigh.  I succeeded in tiding myself through the first picnic without getting drunk.  I mean more particularly that I remained sober during the day—­that is, sober enough to keep it from being known that I had drank more than once or twice; but that night at the ball at Louisville, I bit the dust, or, to get at the truth more literally and unrhetorically, I fell down stairs and came within a point of breaking my neck.  Had I been sober the fall would have put an end then and there to my miserable and worthless existence; but lest any one should argue from this that after all whisky sometimes saves life, I would have them bear in mind that if I had been sober the chances are I would not have fallen.

The next picnic was sadly interfered with by a violent storm of wind and rain, which came up the day before the one set apart for it.  The water washed the sawdust which had been sprinkled on the ground for the dancers’ benefit into Hall’s fretful mill-race, and thence down into the turbulent and swollen Flat Rock.  This, as well as other creeks, became so high that it was out of the question to ford them.  The boys could get to the grounds very well, and many of them did get there, but the girls were not of a mind to risk their lives for a day’s doubtful amusement, and so the picnic failed in the beginning.  The young men—­myself, of course, in the lot—­determined to have what was called “fun” at any rate, and to this end they congregated during the day at Raleigh.  Mr. Sam Crawford had an abundant supply of beer and ale, and I wish to say that if there are any persons so innocent as to doubt that beer and ale intoxicate they would change from doubt to faith in the power of these slops to make men drunk, could they experience or see what took place at Raleigh on that day.  They would be willing to testify in any court that beer will not only intoxicate, but, taken in sufficient quantities, it will make men beastly drunk and fill them with a spirit of fiendish cruelty.  There were on that day as many as four fights, with enough miscellaneous howling, cursing and billingsgate to fill out the natural make-up of a hundred more.  I was drunk—­so drunk that I did not know at the last whether my name was Benson or Bennington.  I suppose I would have sworn to the latter, had the question been raised, but it was not.  I did not fight, for, as I have said, I seemed to have an instinctive dread of doing something terrible in the event of my getting engaged in combat with another.  Like Falstaff, it may be, I was a coward on instinct.  I have always thought, moreover, that the Hudibrastic aphorism is worthy of practice, because nothing can be more evident than the fact that

    “——­He who runs away
    May live to fight another day.”