What, let me ask, is to be gained by drinking?  What blessing comes from forming or indulging the habit?  Pause here and think well before you answer.  You could not afford to drink if the wealth of a nation were yours, because no man can afford to lose health and happiness if he hopes enjoyment in life.  If you are strong, alcohol will destroy your nerves and sap your vigor.  If you are weak, it will enfeeble you the more.  If you are unhappy, it will only add to your unhappiness.  Look at the subject as you will, you can not afford to drink intoxicating liquors.  The moment you begin to form the habit of drinking that moment you begin to endanger your reputation, health and happiness, and that of your family and friends also.  And let me say right now that you begin to form the habit when you touch your lips to any sort of intoxicating drink the first time.  I have drank the sparkle and foam, and the gall and wormwood of all liquors.  Do you envy me the horrors through which I have passed?  You know how to avoid them.  Never touch liquor.  If you are bent on going to hell and destruction, choose a nearer and more honorable way by blowing your brains out at once.

A few words more, dear readers, and I will bid you good by.  Many of you have no doubt heard of my restored peace and lasting favor with God at Fowler, Indiana.  With regard to it and my condition at the present time, I will incorporate in substance the letter which I recently published in reply to inquiries addressed to me from all parts of the country, shortly after that event.  I will give the letter with but little change, even at the risk of repeating what is elsewhere recorded.  It is as follows: 

On the evening of January twenty-first, 1877, at Jeffersonville, Indiana, God pardoned my sins and made me a new creature.  For weeks happiness and joy were mine.  The appetite—­rather my passion—­for liquor, which made the present a misery and the future a darkness, was no longer present.  Its heavy burdens had fallen from me.  Of this there could be no doubt; but I had been educated to believe that “once in grace always in grace,” and this led to a fatal deception, a belief that I could not fall; that after God had once pardoned my sins I was as surely saved as if already in Paradise.  That they were pardoned I had not a doubt, for the manifestations were as clear as light.  Falsely thinking that I was pardoned for all time, my soul grew self-reliant:  I became at the same time careless of my religious duties.  I neglected to pray, to beware of temptation, and, naturally enough, soon found myself drifting into the society of those who neither loved nor feared God.  Had I trusted alone in God and permitted the Savior to lead and keep me, I should not have fallen.  Instead, I went back to the world, gave no thanks to God for his mercy and love, and thus dishonoring him, his face was hidden from me.