The experience of ages proves that the use of intoxicating agents invariably tends to engender a burning appetite for more; and he who indulges in them shall do it at the peril of contracting a passionate and rabid thirst for them, which shall ultimately overmaster the will of his victim, and drag him, unresisting, to his ruin.  No man can put himself under the influence of alcoholic stimulants without incurring the risk of this result.  It may not be perceptible at once.  It may be interrupted, and while the bonds are yet feeble he may escape.  But let the habit go forward, the excitement be often repeated, and soon a deep-wrought physical effect will be produced; a headlong and almost delirious appetite, of the nature of a physical necessity, will have seized the whole man as with iron arms, and crushed from his heart the power of self-control.

My whole nature was almost constantly demanding and crying out for stimulants.  During the period that I abstained from them, and for two weeks before I touched or tasted them the last time, my agony was unbearable.  In my sleep I dreamed that I was drinking, and dreamed that I was drunk.  Day by day my appetite grew fiercer and more unbearable, until in my misery I walked my floor hour after hour, unable to sleep, and feeling that if I lay down I should die.  One night, about a week before I yielded, I walked my room until midnight, suffering the torments of hell.  I felt that I was dying, and rushed out of my room and walked and ran across fields and through the woods, panting and gasping for breath.  I felt that my head was bursting to pieces.  My blood boiled, and hissed, and foamed through my veins.  I could feel my heart throb and beat as though it would burst out of my body.  At that time I would have torn the veins of my arms open, if I could have drawn whisky from them.  When light came, I found that I had walked and run seven miles since leaving my room at midnight.  All that day I was burning up for liquor.  Had I been where I could lay my hands on it, a thousand times that day I would have drank though it steeped my soul in rivers of death.

In just this condition I went to Indianapolis to address the Woman’s Temperance Convention.  I felt that I would drop dead before I finished my speech.  That night I did not sleep more than an hour, and that was a miserable hour of sleep, in which I dreamed that I was drunk.  I woke up with a burning thirst, and sharp pains darting through my brain.  The very least noise would send a new pang to my head, and when I attempted to walk, my own footsteps would jar upon my brain as though knives were driven through it.  The next day and night I fought it like a tiger, but my thirst only increased, and then one gets tired at last of fighting an enemy all day, knowing that he must confront that same enemy the next day, and the next, for one can not live always on a strain, always in fear, and doubt, and dread.  The next day I started for Richmond, where I had business,