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.

CHAPTER IV.

School days at Fairview--My first public outbreak--A schoolmate--Drive
to Falmouth--First drink at Falmouth--Disappointment--Drive to Smelser's
Mills--Hostetter's Bitters--The author's opinion of patent medicines,
bitters especially--Boasting--More liquor--Difficulty in lighting
a cigar--A hound that got in bad company--Oysters at Falmouth, and
what befell us while waiting for them--Drunken slumber--A hound in
a crib--Getting awake--The owner of the hound--Sobriety--The Vienna
jug--Another debauch--The exhibition--The end of the school term--Starting
to college at Cincinnati--My companions--The destruction wrought
by alcohol--Dr. Johnson's declaration concerning the indulgence of
this vice--A warning--A dangerous fallacy--Byron's inspiration--Lord
Brougham--Sheridan--Sue--Swinburne--Dr. Carpenter's opinion--An erroneous
idea--Temperance the best aid to thought.

CHAPTER V.