glass, I read “death” in it just as plainly as ever “death” was written upon the field of battle.  I hesitated a moment, while something whispered, “Death!” I struggled, but could not let go of the glass.  I felt the hot, scalding tears come in my eyes.  I thought if I could only die—­just drop dead; but I could not, yet I felt that I was dying ten thousand deaths all the time!  I lifted the glass and drank death and damnation!  I drank the red blood of butchery and the fiery beverage of hell!  It glowed like hot lava in my blood, and burned upon my tongue’s end.  A smouldering fire was kindled.  A wild glow shot through every vein, and within my stomach the demon was aroused to his strength.  I had now but one thought, but one burning desire that was consuming me—­that was for more drink!  It crept to my fingers’ ends, and out in a burning flush upon my cheek.  Drink!—­Drink!  I would have had it then if I had been compelled to go to hell for it!  But I got it just one step this side the regions of the damned.  I went to a saloon and commenced to pour it down, and continued until I was crazed.  All power over my appetite was gone; I was oblivious to everything around me.  I took the train for Cincinnati.  I have a dim, shuddering remembrance of some parties at the depot trying to keep me from taking the cars.  I don’t know who they were, or what they said.  I got to the city that night, and staid at the Galt House.  I have no remembrance of anything from the time I left Richmond until I awoke next day about ten o’clock, with an aching head, swollen tongue, burnt, black, parched lips, and a thirst for whisky that was maddening.  Death would have been kindness compared to what I suffered that morning.

And here let me ask the reader to indulge me for a while, that I may explain just the condition I was in, both physically and mentally.  I know just how much charity I am to expect and receive from the corrupt wilderness of human society, for it is a rank and rotten soil, from which every shrub draws poison as it grows.  All that in a happier field and purer air would expand into virtue and germinate into usefulness is converted into henbane and deadly nightshade.  I know how hard it is to get human society to regard one’s acts as other than his deliberate intentions.  But of being a drunkard by choice, and because I have not cared for the consequences, I am innocent.  I can say, and speak the truth, that there is not a person on earth less capable than myself of recklessly and purposely plunging himself into shame, suffering and sin.  I will never believe that a man, conscious of innocence, can not make other men perceive that he has that thought.  I have been miserable all my life.  I have been harshly treated by mankind, in being accused of wickedly doing that which I abhor, and against which I have fought with every energy I possessed.  The greatest aggravation of my life has been that I could not make mankind believe, or understand, my real and true condition.  I can