would awaken. I would get drunk if hell burst up out of the earth around
me--yes, if I could look down into the flames and see men whose eye-brows
were burnt off, and whose every hair was a burning, blazing, coiling,
hissing snake from their having used the deadly liquid. And if each of
these countless fiery snakes had a tongue of forked fire and could be heard
to scream for miles, and I knew that another drop would cause them to lick
my quivering flesh, yet would I take it. O horror of horrors! I would
plunge into the flames forever and ever. After I once taste I am powerless
to resist. When I was ten years of age I went one Sunday with a neighbor
boy several years older than I, riding on horseback. The course we took was
a favorite one with me for it led toward Raleigh, just north of which place
I contrived to get a pint or more of the poison called whisky. The doctor
from whom I got it had, of course, no idea that I was going to drink it,
especially all of it, but drink it I did, getting so completely under its
horrible influence that when I arrived at home I fell senseless against the
door. My father and mother heard me fall and came out and took me into the
house, and just as soon as the heat of the fire began to affect me, I sank
into a dead stupor; all consciousness was gone; all feeling was destroyed;
all intelligence was obliterated. I lay upon my bed that night wholly
oblivious to everything, knowing not, indeed, that such a creature as
myself ever existed. The morning came at last, and with it I opened my
eyes. Describe who can the thoughts which rushed through my distracted
brain. For a little while I knew not where I was or what I had done. My
head was throbbing, aching, bursting. I glanced about me and on either side
of my bed my father and mother knelt in prayer! Then did I remember what
had befallen me, and so keen was my remorse that I thought I would surely
die, and, in fact, I wanted to die. O, much loved parents--father on earth
and mother in heaven--how often since then have I felt anew the shame of
that terrible hour--how often have I seen your sacred faces, wet with the
tears of that trial, come before me, looking imploringly heavenward as if