predisposition to drink, if steps were taken in time, could be saved from
its inevitable end, which is madness and death. I would here say to parents
that it is their solemn duty to study well the disposition and temperament
of their children from the hour of their birth. By proper training and
restraint, all wrong impulses might be corrected and the child saved from a
life of shameful misery, while they would themselves escape the sorrow
which would come to them because of the wrong-doing of the child. While no
person is particularly to blame for my misspent life, yet I can clearly see
to-day how its worse than wasted years might have been years of use and
honor. Its every step might have been planted with actions the memory of
which would have been a blessing instead of a remorse.

I have no recollection of a time when I had not an appetite for liquor. My
parents and friends of course knew that if it was taken in excess it would
lead to destruction, but in our quiet neighborhood, where little was known
of its excesses, no one dreamed of the fearful curse which slumbered in it
for me to awake. Had they had the least dread, fear, or anticipation of it
they would have left nothing undone that being done might have saved me. My
appetite for it was born with me, and was as much a part of myself as the
air I breathed. There are three kinds of inheritances, some of money and
lands, some of superior or great talents, and others of misfortunes. For
myself this misfortune was my inheritance. It came not to me directly from
my father or mother, but from my mother's father, and seemed to lie waiting
for me for three or four generations, and the mistakes and passion of long
dead great grandparents reappeared in me, thus fulfilling, with terrible
truth, the words of the divine book. It has been gathering strength until
when it broke forth its force has become wide-sweeping, irresistible and
rushing--a consuming power, devouring and sweeping away whatever dares to
arrest its onward progress. Never, never, in those long gone and innocent
years of my childhood did my father or mother dream that I, their