pleasurable. It sent the blood rushing to the brain, and induced a
succession of vivid and pleasing thoughts. But invariably the depression
that followed was in the same ratio down as the former was up, and after a
time I lost that first pleasant, unnatural feeling, and drank only to
satisfy an indescribable passion or craving. At first the wine glass may
sparkle and foam, but let it never be forgotten that within that sparkle
and foam is concealed the glittering eye of the uncoiled adder. It is the
sparkle of a serpent's skin, the foam of the froth of death. Here I must
confess that for the past five or six years I have not been able to attain
one moment's pleasure from drinking. Every glass that I have touched has
proven to be the Dead Sea's fruit of ashes to my lips. I drank wildly,
insanely, and became oblivious for days and weeks together to all which was
about me, and finally awoke to the horrors which I had sought to drown, but
now intensified a thousand fold. No man ever buried sorrow in drunkenness.
He can not bury it that way any more than Eugene Aram could bury the body
of his victim with the weeds of the morass. Whoever seeks solace in whisky
will curse the hour which saw him commit a mistake so fatal. Woe to him who
looks for comfort in the intoxicating glass. He will see instead the
ghastly face of murdered hope, the distorted vision of a wasted life, his
own bloated corpse. The habit of drink after a time becomes more than a
mere habit; the system comes to demand and crave liquor, it permeates and
affects every part of the body until every function refuses to perform its
part until it has been aroused to action by its accustomed stimulant.

The most hopeless and wretched slave on earth is he who has bound himself
with the fetters of alcohol, and it is a sad and lamentable truth
that among thousands very few ever escape from the soul-destroying,
health-ruining bondage of an appetite for intoxicating drink. There is only
one here and there of all the hosts that are enchained and cursed who
succeeds in breaking the bonds which bind body, soul and spirit. So far as