intending to go from there to Cincinnati and Covington, and thence East.  I got to Richmond, haunted, every inch of the road, with an inexpressible longing for stimulants.  When I got there, I knew that I was where I could get a little rest from my intense suffering, for I could get whisky.  When the thought of what would be the result of touching it forced itself on my mind, my agony was so terrible that I could feel the sweat streaming down my face, and I could have wrung water from my hair.

If ever there was a man in ruins, a perfect spectacle of utter desolation, I was that man, as I stood in the depot at Richmond, burning up for whisky.  Had I been standing on red-hot embers my sufferings could not have been more intense.  I feel that I can almost hear some one say, “Why did you not pray? just go and ask God to help you.”  I have been told to do that ten thousand times by good-meaning men and women, who do not know how to pray as I do, and never will until (which God forbid) they have suffered as I have.  I did pray, and beg, and plead for mercy and help, but the heavens were solid brass and the earth hard iron, and God did not hear or heed my prayers.  Talk about having the appetite for stimulants removed by prayer!  That appetite is just as much the part of a man as his hand, heart, brain, or any other part of his body.  Every one of God’s laws are unchangeable and immutable.  The day of miracles is over.  When one of God’s creatures violates his laws, he must pay the penalty; and I think it would be far better to educate the rising generation that there is no escape for them from the consequences of their acts, than to preach them into the belief that they may for years pursue a course of dissipation, violate every law of their being, and then by prayer have the chains of habit stricken off and be restored whole.

Then there is another class of individuals who have said to me, “When you get into that condition, when you feel that you must have liquor, why don’t you just take a little in moderation?” Moderation!  A drink of liquor is to my appetite what a red-hot coal of fire is to a keg of dry powder.  You can just as easily shoot a ball from a cannon’s mouth moderately, or fire off a magazine slowly, as I can drink liquor moderately.  When I take one drink, if it is but a taste, I must have more, if I knew hell would burst out of the earth and engulf me the next instant.  I am either perfectly sober, with no smell f of liquor about me, or I am very drunk.  Some of those moderate drinkers, who are increasing their moderation a little every day, and also some pretended temperance people, who are always suspicious of others, because they are sneaking, cowardly, sly, deceitful and treacherous themselves, are constantly asking me if I do not drink a little all the time.  And then they say I use morphine and opium.  There is nothing that has made me more wretched, and done more to weaken and drag me down, than the continued