of disgrace.  Time softens the wildest remorse, and in a few weeks I regained a state of quiet feeling.  But unfortunately most of my associates were among the class of young men who are never averse to taking a drink, and it was not long before I found myself again visiting the saloons, although I did not give up right away to take a drink with them.  But I got to staying in the saloons more than in my office, and began to go down steadily.  Good people who felt sorry for me, and who wanted to aid me, would do nothing for me unless I would do something for myself, and this I could not, or did not do.

I moved from office to office, always descending in respectability, because always violating my promises not to drink.  Occasionally I would make a desperate effort to reform, gathering about me every element of strength which I could possibly command, and for a while I would be successful, but just as hope would begin to light up my darkened path and my friends begin to feel a new-born confidence in me, an infernal and terrible desire would take possession of me, and in a moment all that I had gained would be swept away by my yielding to the demon that tempted me.  A debauch longer and more utterly sickening and vile than the last followed, after which I would settle down into a condition of hopelessness which would appal the bravest and strongest.  So deplorable, indeed, was my feeling regarding the matter that then, as since, I kept on drinking for days after the appetite had left me or had been satiated, in order to deaden the horrible agony that I knew would crush me when my reason returned.

I now come to an event in my life which affected me at the time beyond the power of words, and which I can not without tears of choking sorrow even now dwell upon.  I refer to the death of my mother, which occurred during the winter after my going to Rushville in 1867.  She had been sick a long time, and had suffered very intense pain, but for days before her death I think she forgot her own physical torments in anxiety and solicitude about me.  I went home a few days before she died, and remained with her until the last.  She talked to me much and often, always begging and pleading with me as only a dying mother can plead, to save myself from the life of a drunkard.  I promised her solemnly and honestly that I would never again taste liquor.  As I gazed upon her wasted face and read death in every lineament, and heard the dread angel’s approach in every breath of pain she drew, and saw above all in her fast dimming eye that the horrors of her approaching dissolution were almost unthought of in her care for me, I resolved deep down in my heart never to taste liquor again, and kneeling by her dying form, I called heaven to witness that no more, oh, never, never more, would I go in the way of the drunkard, or touch, in any form, the unpitying and soul-destroying curse.  I looked on her face, which was growing strangely calm and white.  She was dead, and it came upon me that