Fifteen Years in Hell | Page 7

have desired the opposite with my whole
heart. I was a victim of the fell spirit of alcohol before I realized it. I
was raised in a place where opportunities to drink were numerous, as
everybody in those days kept liquor, and to drink was not the
dangerous and disgraceful thing it's now considered to be. For a radius
often miles from our house more people kept whisky in their cupboards
or cellars than were without it. I never heard a temperance lecturer until
I was twenty years of age, and but seldom heard of one. The people
were asleep while a great danger was gathering in the land--a danger
which is now known and seen, and which is so vast in its magnitude
that the combined strength of all who love peace, order, sobriety and
happiness, is scarcely sufficient to meet it in victorious combat.
What associates I had in those days were among men rather than boys,
and the men I went with drank. They gave whisky to me and I drank it,
and whether they gave it or not, I wanted it. Some of those who gave
me drinks are no longer among the living, but neither of them nor of
the living would I speak unkindly, nor call up in the memory of one

who may read this book a thought that might excite a pang; but I would
ask any such just to go back ten, fifteen, and twenty years, and tell me
where, are some of the wealthy, influential men of that time? In the
silence of the winding-sheet! How many of them have hastened to
death through the agency of whisky? And how few suspected that
slowly but surely they were poisoning the wellsprings of life? How
many are bankrupts now that might yet be in possession of
unincumbered farms, the possessors of peaceful homes, but for that
thief accursed--Liquor! Look, too, at some of the sons of these men,
and say what you see, for you behold lives wrecked and wretched.
Need I tell you what has wrought all this ruin? Need I say that
intemperance is at the bottom of it?
The country where I lived in youth and boyhood was equal, if not
superior, to any surrounding it. My father's neighbors were all
kind-hearted, generous people, and some of them--many of them,
indeed--were good Christians, and yet I repeat that twenty years ago
there was not a place of a mile in extent but presented the opportunity
for drinking. In every little town and village whisky was kept in public
and private houses. There was, and yet is, near my father's farm two
very small but ancient towns, containing each some twenty or thirty
houses, and both of these places have been cursed with saloons in
which liquor has been sold for the last thirty years. Both of these towns
were favorite resorts with me, especially the one called Raleigh. I have
been drunk oftener and longer at a time in Raleigh than in any one
place in Indiana. I have written thus of my birthplace and surroundings,
that the reader may know the temptations that encompassed me about,
and not to speak against any place or people. The country in my father's
neighborhood is peopled at this time with noble men and
women--prosperous, noted for kindness, generosity, and unpretending
virtue. I think if I had been raised where liquor was unknown, and had
been taught in early childhood the ruin which follows drinking--if I had
had this impressed on my mind, I would have grown up a sober and
happy man, notwithstanding my inherited appetite. I would have been a
sober man, instead of traversing step by step the downward road of
dissipation. I am easily impressed, and in early life might have been
taught such lessons as would forever have turned my feet from the

wrong and desolation in which they have stumbled so often--in which
they have walked so swiftly. Instead of dwelling with shadows of
realities the most terrible, and brooding in the cell of a maniac, I might
have now communed with the pure and noble of earth.
CHAPTER III.
The old log school house--My studies and discontent--My first drink of
liquor--The companion of my first debauch--One drink always fatal--A
horrible slavery--A horseback ride on Sunday--Raleigh--Return
home--"Dead drunk"--My parents' shame and sorrow--My own
remorse--An unhappy and silent breakfast--The anguish of my
mother--Gradual recovery--Resolves and promises--No pleasure in
drinking--The system's final craving for liquor--The hopelessness of the
drunkard's condition--The resistless power of appetite--Possible
escape--The courage required--The three laws--Their violation and
man's atonement.
When I first started to school, log school houses were not yet things of
the past, and well do I remember the one which stood near the little
stream known as Hood's creek, and Sam Munger,