ons in which liquor has been sold for the last thirty
years. Both of these towns were favorite resorts with me, especially the
one called Raleigh. I have been drunk oftener and longer at a time in
Raleigh than in any one place in Indiana. I have written thus of my
birthplace and surroundings, that the reader may know the temptations that
encompassed me about, and not to speak against any place or people. The
country in my father's neighborhood is peopled at this time with noble men
and women--prosperous, noted for kindness, generosity, and unpretending
virtue. I think if I had been raised where liquor was unknown, and had been
taught in early childhood the ruin which follows drinking--if I had had
this impressed on my mind, I would have grown up a sober and happy man,
notwithstanding my inherited appetite. I would have been a sober man,
instead of traversing step by step the downward road of dissipation. I am
easily impressed, and in early life might have been taught such lessons as
would forever have turned my feet from the wrong and desolation in which
they have stumbled so often--in which they have walked so swiftly. Instead
of dwelling with shadows of realities the most terrible, and brooding in
the cell of a maniac, I might have now communed with the pure and noble of
earth.

CHAPTER III.

The old log school house--My studies and discontent--My first drink of
liquor--The companion of my first debauch--One drink always fatal--A
horrible slavery--A horseback ride on Sunday--Raleigh--Return home--"Dead
drunk"--My parents' shame and sorrow--My own remorse--An unhappy and silent
breakfast--The anguish of my mother--Gradual recovery--Resolves and
promises--No pleasure in drinking--The system's final craving for
liquor--The hopelessness of the drunkard's condition--The resistless power
of appetite--Possible escape--The courage required--The three laws--Their
violation and man's atonement.

When I first started to school, log school houses were not yet things of
the past, and well do I remember the one which stood near the little stream
known as Hood's creek, and Sam Munger, from whom I first received
instruction. The next school I attended was in a log house near where
Ammon's mill now stands. I attended one or two summer terms at each of
these places. There is nothing remarkable connected with my early
school-days. They glided onward rapidly enough, but I saw and felt
differently, it seemed to me, from those ar