up
before the world a free and happy man. But my desire to see and tell every
one of the new joy which I had found controlled me, and for six weeks I
spoke every day, and often twice a day. I started east again and went to
Boston. I attended the Moody and Sankey meetings, but was troubled with I
know not what. All the time an unnatural feeling seemed to have possession
of me.

One afternoon, just after getting off my knees from prayer, a strange spell
came over me and before I could realize what I was doing, the devil hurried
me into a saloon, where I began to drink recklessly, and knew nothing more
for two or three days. Then I awoke, I knew not where. Some of my friends
found me and sent me home. I now suffered more mental torture than I
experienced on sobering up from any other spree I was ever on. I believed
firmly that I was saved; that my appetite for liquor was forever gone. I
felt now that there was no hope for me. Oh, the despairing days and long
black nights of agony unspeakable that followed this debauch! In time I
recovered physical health, and began to lecture, though under greater
difficulties than ever before. I was so harrassed by my own shame and the
world's doubts that within a month I again got drunk. While on this spree
my friends made out the necessary papers, and I was committed to the
Indiana Hospital for the Insane. Here, then, I am to-day, very near the end
of my most wretched and misspent life. How can I tell the emotions which
swell in my heart? It is on the record of this asylum that I was brought
here June 4th, a victim of intemperance. Everything is being done for me
that can be done, but I feel that my case is hopeless unless help comes
from above. Ordinarily restraint and proper attention to diet and rest
would in time cure aggravated cases of that peculiar insanity which
manifests itself in an abnormal and excessive demand for liquor. But with
me the spell returns after months of sobriety with a force which I am
powerless to resist, as the reader has seen in the several instances given
in this autobiography. The rule of treatment for patients here varies with
the different characters of the patients. The impressions which I had
formed of insane asylums was very different from those which have come from
my sojourn among the insane. There is less screaming and violence than I
thought there would be, and for most of the time the wards in which the
better class of patients are confined are a