of created things, sunken to a level with brute beasts; and after all these
you have or may have said to yourself, "All this is the work of the
terrible demon, alcohol."

I shall not attempt to paint any of the countless scenes of degradation,
and horror, and misery, which this demon has caused to be enacted. I shall
leave without comment the endless train of crimes and vices, the beggary
and devastation following the course of this foul Titan devil of ruin and
damnation. I shall only endeavor to give a plain, truthful history of one
who has felt every pang, every sorrow, every agony, every shame, every
remorse, that the demon of drunkenness can inflict. I have nothing to thank
this demon for, beyond a few fleeting--oh, how fleeting--hours of false
delight. He has wrought only woe and loss to me. Even now, as I sit here in
the stillness of desperation, afraid of I know not what, trembling with a
strange dread of some impending doom, gazing in fright backward along the
shores of the years whereon I see the wrecks of a thousand hopes, the
destruction of every noble aspiration, the ruin of every noble resolve, I
cry aloud against the utterness of the destroyer. My life has indeed been a
sad one; so sad, so lonely, that no language in my power of utterance can
give to the reader a full conception of its moonless darkness. Would that
the magic pen of a De Quincey were mine that my miseries might stand out
until strong-hearted men and true-hearted women would weep, and every young
man and maiden also would tremble and turn from everything intoxicating as
from the oblivion of eternal death.

To many, certain events which I shall relate in this history may seem
incredible; some of the escapes may seem improbable; but again let me
assure you that there shall not be one word of exaggeration. The incidents
took place just as I shall state them. I have passed through not only all
that you will find recorded in these pages, but ten thousand times more. As
I lift the dark veil and look back through the black, unlighted past, I
shudder and hold my breath as scene after scene, each more appalling than
the one just before it, rises like the phantom line of Banquo's issue,
defining itself with pitiless distinctness upon my seared eyeballs, until
the last and most awful of all stands tall and black by my side, and
whispers, hisses, shrieks Madness in my ears. I bow my head and find a
moment's relief from the anguish of soul in the hot sc