When the sun came up over the eastern tree-tops I found that I was about ten miles from Rushville.  After stumbling on for some time longer I found my way to Henry Lord’s, a farmer with whom I was acquainted.  He gave me a room in which I lay hidden from the officers for two days and nights.  From this place I went to my father’s, and although the officers came there two or three times, I escaped arrest.  It is impossible to give the reader the faintest idea of my condition.  Without money, clothes, or friends, an outcast, hunted like a wild beast, I had only one thing left—­my horrible appetite, at all times fierce and now maddening in the extreme.  My hands trembled, my face was bloated, and my eyes were bloodshot.  I had almost ceased to look like a human.  Hope had flown from me, and I was in complete despair.  I moved about over my father’s farm like one walking in sleep, the veriest wretch on the face of the earth.  My real condition not unfrequently pressed upon me until, in an agony of desperation, I would put my swollen hands over my worse than bloated face and groan aloud, while tears scalding hot streamed down over my fingers and arms.  I staid at home a number of days.  At first I had no thought of quitting drink.  I was too crazed in mind to think clearly on any subject.  After two or three days, I became very nervous for lack of my accustomed stimulants; then I got so restless that I could not sleep, and for nights together I scarcely closed my aching eyes.  Long as the days seemed, the nights were longer still.  At the end of two weeks I began to have a more clear or less muddied conception of my condition, and a faint hope came to me that I might yet conquer the appetite which was taking me through utter ruin of body, to the eternal death of body and soul.  The reader must not think that I thought I could by my own strength save myself.  I prayed often and fervently.  However strange it may sound it is nevertheless true, that, notwithstanding the degraded life I have lived, I have covered it with prayer as with a garment, and with as sincere prayer, too, as ever rose from the lips of pain and sin.  My unimaginable sufferings have impelled me to seek earnestly for an escape from the torments which go out beyond the grave.  None can ever be made to realize how much pain and agony I experienced during these first weeks I spent at home and abstained from liquor, nor can any know how much I resisted.  At that time I had not the least thought of lecturing.  Many times, when getting over a spree, I had, in the presence of people, given expression to the agonies that were consuming me, and at such times I did not fail to pay my respects to alcohol in a way (the only way) it deserves.  My friends advised me to lecture on temperance, and I now began to think of their words.  Was it my duty to go forth and tell the world of the horrors of intemperance, and warn all people to rise against this great enemy?  If so, I would gladly do it.  I began to prepare a lecture.  It would help me to pass away the time, if nothing more came of it.  It has been nearly four years since I delivered that lecture.  I will give a history of my first effort and succeeding ones, with what was said about me, in the next chapter.