an knowledge has been performed by men of
sobriety, many of them having been drinkers of water only. Under this last
category may be ranked Demosthenes, Johnson, Haller, Bacon, Milton, Dante,
etc. Johnson, it is true, was a great tea drinker. Voltaire drank coffee at
times to excess, and occasionally a small quantity of light wine. So, also,
did Fontenelle. Newton solaced himself with the fumes of tobacco. Of Locke,
whose long life was devoted to constant intellectual labor, who appears
independently of his eminence in his special objects of pursuit one of the
best informed men of his time, the following explicit testimony is found by
one who knew him well: His diet was the same as that of other people,
except he usually drank nothing but water, and he thought that his
abstinence in this respect had preserved his life so long, although
naturally his constitution was so weak. In addition to these examples,
which I have quoted at length, I might also mention the case of Cornaro,
the old Italian philosopher, who at the age of thirty-five found himself on
a bed of misery and imminent death through intemperance. He amended his way
of life, and for upwards of four score years after, by a temperate course
of living, lived happily and did all the important work which has placed
his name among the men of great intellectual powers.

CHAPTER V.

Quit college--Shattered nerves--Summer and autumn days--Improvement--Picnic
parties--A fall--An untimely storm--Crawford's beer and ale--Beer
brawls--County fairs and their influence on my life--My yoke of white
oxen--The "red ribbon"--"One McPhillipps"--How I got home and how I
found myself in the morning--My mother's agony--A day of teaching
under difficulties--Quiet again--Law studies at Connersville--"Out on
a spree"--What a spree means.

I left college in the spring of 1866, and returned home to the farm where I
spent the summer and autumn months in a very nervous and discontented
manner. For over four months my mental condition bordered on that of a
maniac, so completely had the use of liquor shattered my nervous system. I
became alarmed at my state, and for a time was deterred from drinking, or,
if I drank at all, the quantity was small. But fresh air and the little
work which I did on the farm, soon restored me. As the summer wore away I
attended pleasure parties, and found, not happiness, but a moment's
forgetfulness among the merry picnic parties in the woods. I had also