e house of an elderly widow. So completely was I transformed
from a man into something debased that I went to her house and fell through
the front door on the floor dead drunk. The landlady had me carried back to
my office, where I lay like a water-sodden log, wholly unconscious, until
the next morning. When I awoke I had no knowledge of anything that had
happened. My friends informed me of my fall at the house, and of their
bearing me back to the office. I upbraided myself bitterly, but it was days
before I had the courage to show my face on the streets, so keen were my
shame and sense of disgrace. Time softens the wildest remorse, and in a few
weeks I regained a state of quiet feeling. But unfortunately most of my
associates were among the class of young men who are never averse to taking
a drink, and it was not long before I found myself again visiting the
saloons, although I did not give up right away to take a drink with them.
But I got to staying in the saloons more than in my office, and began to go
down steadily. Good people who felt sorry for me, and who wanted to aid me,
would do nothing for me unless I would do something for myself, and this I
could not, or did not do.

I moved from office to office, always descending in respectability, because
always violating my promises not to drink. Occasionally I would make a
desperate effort to reform, gathering about me every element of strength
which I could possibly command, and for a while I would be successful, but
just as hope would begin to light up my darkened path and my friends begin
to feel a new-born confidence in me, an infernal and terrible desire would
take possession of me, and in a moment all that I had gained would be swept
away by my yielding to the demon that tempted me. A debauch longer and more
utterly sickening and vile than the last followed, after which I would
settle down into a condition of hopelessness which would appal the bravest
and strongest. So deplorable, indeed, was my feeling regarding the matter
that then, as since, I kept on drinking for days after the appetite had
left me or had been satiated, in order to deaden the horrible agony that I
knew would crush me when my reason returned.

I now come to an event in my life which affected me at the time beyond the
power of words, and which I can not without tears of choking sorrow even
now dwell upon. I refer to the death of my mother, which occurred during
the winter after my going to Rush