entered the door
again. I went away followed by them, and wandered in a thin coat up and
down the streets, and through the woods all night. The wonder was that I
did not freeze to death. I could hear crowds of excited people at the court
house discussing me, I thought. When I started to go there, every door and
window of the building flew open and fiery devils darted out and cursed me
away. All the time I was dying for whisky, but the saloon keepers would not
give me a drop. They saw and understood what was the matter with me, and
refused to finish the work begun in their dens. I started at last in the
direction of home. Just outside of the town a man by my side showed me a
bottle of whisky. I was dying for it, and begged him for at least one
swallow. He opened the bottle and held it to my lips, and I saw that the
bottle was full of blood. Again and again did he deceive me. Exhausted at
last, I sank down in the snow and begged for death to come and end my life,
but instead, a company of citizens of Rushville, whom I knew, gathered
around me and a glass of whisky was handed to me. I saw that everyone
present held a similar glass in his hand, which, at a given word, was
raised to the mouth. I hastened to drink, but while they drained their
glasses, I could not get a drop from mine. I looked more closely at the
glass and discovered that there were two thicknesses to it, and that the
liquor was contained between them. I studied how I could break the glass
and not spill the whisky, and begged and plead with the men to have mercy
on me. I got out into the woods four or five miles from Rushville, and
wandered about in the snow, but all around and above me were the universal
and eternal voices threatening me. A thousand visions came and went; a
thousand tortures consumed me; a thousand hopes sustained me.

I quit the woods pursued by winged and cloven-footed fiends, and ran to the
house of Andy Hinchman. He received and gave me shelter until morning, when
he carried me back home in his buggy. I had no more than got into his house
when it was surrounded by my tormentors. They raised the windows and
commenced throwing lassos at me, in order, as they said, to catch me and
drag me out that they might kill me. I sat up in my chair until daylight,
fighting them off with both hands. All these terrible torments were, I
repeat, realities, intensified over the ordinary realities of life a
hundred fold. I had wandered to and fro, as I have