much-loved child, would ever become a drunkard. If there is anything good,
manly, noble or true, that is a part of me, I am indebted to them for it.
They loved me, and I worshiped them. The consciousness that I have caused
them to suffer so much has been the keenest sorrow of my life. My mother
(blessed be the name!) is now in heaven. When she died the light went out
from my soul. A pang more poignant than any known before pierced me through
and through. My father is living still, and I verily believe there is not a
son on earth who more truly and devotedly honors and loves his father than
I mine. But I desire to show that I am not wholly responsible for my
present unhappy condition. It is natural for every man to wish to excuse,
or at least try to soften the lines of his mistakes with palliating
reasons, and this I think right so long as the truth is adhered to, and
injustice is not done any one. I hope no one will think that I have
willfully trod the road to ruin, or sunk myself so low when I 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