Fifteen Years in Hell | Page 5

last but one of a
family of nine children, seven of whom were boys, and all of whom,
excepting one brother, are now living. Both brothers and sisters are,
without an exception, sober, industrious and honest. I was born in Rush
county, Indiana, on the 9th day of September, 1847.
If there is one spot in all the black waste of desolation about which I
cling with fond memory it is in my early childhood, and there is no part
of my life that is so fresh and vivid as that embraced in those first early
years. I can remember distinctly events which transpired when I was
but two years old, while I have forgotten thousands of incidents which
have occurred within the past two years. While it is true that in early
childhood a dark shadow fell athwart my pathway, making everything
sombre and painful with an impression of desolation, yet was my
condition happy in comparison with the rayless and pitchy blackness
which subsequently folded its curtains close about my very being,
seeming to make respiration impossible at times and life a nightmare of
mockery. Seeming, do I say? Nay, it did, for nothing can be more real
than our feelings, no matter how falsely they may be created. The
agony of a dream is as keen while it lasts as any other--more so,
because there is a helplessness about it which makes it harder to resist.
Many times, lying in my bed after a disgraceful debauch of days' or
weeks' duration, has my memory winged its way through the realms of
darkness in the mournful and lonesome past, back through years of
horror and suffering to the green and holy morning of life, as it at this
moment seems to me, and rested for an instant on some quiet hour in
that dawn which broke tempestuously, heralding the storms which
would later gather and break about me. At such times I could distinctly
remember the names and features of all the persons who dwelt in the
vicinity of my father's house, although many of them died long ago or
passed away from the neighborhood. I could at this time repeat word
for word conversations which took place twenty-five years ago. I do
not so much attribute this to a retentive memory as to the habit I have
had of thinking, when my mind was in a condition to think, of all that
was a part of my early life. Again and again, as the years gather up
around me, and the valley of life deepens its shadows toward the tomb,

do I go back in memory to the days that were. Again and again do I
awaken to the beauty, the love, the faces and friends of those days.
They are all dear and sacred to me now, though I know they can come
no more, and that the hollow spaces of time between the Here and
There--the Now and Then--will reverberate forever with the echoes of
many-voiced sorrows. Could those who meet me look down into the
depths of my ghastly and bitter desolation, they would behold more
appalling pictures of human agony than ever mortal eye gazed upon
since the opening of the day of time--since the roses of Eden first
bloomed and knew not the blight so soon to darken the earthly paradise
by the rivers of the east. But I wander from my subject.
I lived and worked on my father's farm until I was eighteen years of age.
As I have already said, even when a child I found myself sad and much
depressed at times. I could not bear the society of my companions, and
at such times would wander away alone to meditate and brood over my
misery. At the very threshold of life I was dissatisfied and discontented
with my surroundings. I was ever anxious and uneasy, ever longing for
some undefinable, unnamable something--I knew not what, but, O God,
I knew the desolation of feeling which was then mine. The sorrow of
the grave is lighter than that. My life has always been an active
one--restless, uneasy, and full of action, I naturally wanted to be doing
something or going somewhere. From the time I was seven years old
up to the time I was fifteen there was not a calf or colt on the farm that
was not thoroughly broken to work or to be ridden. In this work or
pastime of breaking in calves and colts I received sundry kicks, wounds,
and bruises quite often, and still upon my person are some of the marks
imprinted by untamed animals. I only speak of these things that the
reader may know the character of my temperament, and thus be
enabled to judge more correctly of it when influenced