ve without breathing; that is, to take a drink
of liquor without getting drunk. And if there is any one thing that will
make me hate a man--loathe, abhor, and despise him--it is to have him
accuse me of drinking or using any kind of stimulants regularly and
moderately. I just want to say here, now, and for all time, that they who
thus accuse me, lie in their teeth, mouth, throat, and away down deep in
their dirty, cowardly, craven, black hearts.

I walked from the depot in Richmond--or, rather, almost ran--until I came
to a drug store kept by a young man I have known for five or six years. He
keeps nearly all drugs in barrels, well watered, and drinks them regularly,
and, as he calls it, moderately. That is to say, he has not been sober for
five years. Always full, bloated, imbecile, idiotic--has no idea of quiting
himself, and would suffer as keenly as any brute is capable of suffering,
at the thought of any one else who is in the habit of drinking becoming a
sober man. When I went in, he was leaning back in a chair dozing, dreaming,
drunk, or as drunk as that kind of a man generally gets. I asked him for
whisky. He straightened up, and a more fiendish gleam of joy than lit up
his brutal face never sat upon the hideous countenance of a fiend fresh
from hell. He got up to get me the liquor, saying at the same time, "I will
bet you five dollars you are drunk before night." I looked at him, saw the
smile of joy, and the intense pleasure that my getting drunk was going to
afford him. Suffering, choking, and almost bereft of reason, as I was, his
look and act caused me to hesitate and wonder what manner of man it was
that was so utterly base and heartless as to rejoice at the ruin of one
whose continued prayer is to live and die sober. Then and there I prayed
God to deliver me from such friends, and keep me from their accursed
influence. Hell knows no blacker deformity than that which would drag a
fellow-creature again to degradation. Satan was as much a friend of human
happiness when he slimed into Eden. In my very youth, I made a resolve that
I never would, knowingly, stand in the path of any man and a better life:
that I would never do anything to prevent a man from leading a better life,
and I have never broken that resolution. I gathered strength and courage
enough, by a desperate effort, to get out of the store without drinking,
and started in an opposite direction from where anything was kept to drink.

I had gone but