Solitude! separation! banishment!  These are words often in the mouths of human beings; but few men except myself have been permitted to feel the full latitude of their meaning.  The pride of philosophy has taught us to treat man as an individual.  He is no such thing.  He holds, necessarily, indispensably, a relation to his species.  He is like those twin births that have two heads and four hands, but if you attempt to detach them from each other, they are inevitably subjected to a miserable and lingering destruction.  If a man wants to conceive a lively idea of the regions of the damned, just let him get himself in that condition that he is alone with an enemy while he is surrounded by society and his friends—­an enemy that is like what has been described as the eye of Omniscience pursuing the guilty sinner and darting a ray that awakens him to a new sensibility at the very moment that otherwise exhausted nature would lull him into a temporary oblivion of the reproaches of his conscience.  No walls can hide me from the discernment of my hated foe.  Everywhere his industry in unwearied, to create for me new distress.  Never can I count upon an instant of security; never can I wrap myself in the shroud of oblivion.  The minutes in which I do not actually perceive and feel my destroyer are contaminated and blasted with the certain expectation of speedy interference.  Thus it has been, and thus it is to-day, and with every returning day.

Tyrants have trembled, surrounded by whole armies of their janizaries.  Alcohol—­venomous serpent! robber and reviler!—­what should make thee inaccessible to my fury?  I will unfold a tale!  I will show thee to the world for what thou art, and all the men that read shall confess my truth!  Whisky—­abhorrer of nature, the curse of the human species!—­the earth can only be freed from an insupportable burden by thy extermination!  Rum—­poisoner! destroyer! that spits venom all around, and leaves the ground infected with slime!  Accursed poison-makers and poison-dispensers!—­ do you imagine that I am altogether passive; a mean worm, organized to feel sensations of pain, but having no emotion of resentment?  Did you imagine that there was no danger in inflicting on me pains, however great; miseries, however direful?  Do you believe me impotent, imbecile, and idiot-like, with no understanding to contrive my escape and thy ruin, and no energy to perpetrate it?  I will tell the end of thy infernal works.  The country, in justice, shall hear me.  I would that I had the language of fire, that my words might glow, and burn, and drop like molten lava, that I might wipe you from the face of the earth, or persuade mankind to turn away and starve you to death.  Think you that I would regret the ruin that had overwhelmed you?  Too long I have been tender-hearted and forbearing.  Whisky, whisky sellers and whisky makers, traffickers and dealers in tears, blood, sin, shame, and woe!—­ten thousand times you have dipped your bloody talons in my blood.  There is no evil you have scrupled to accumulate upon me!  Neither will I be more scrupulous.  You have shown me no mercy, and you shall receive none.