ville in 1867. She had been sick a long
time, and had suffered very intense pain, but for days before her death I
think she forgot her own physical torments in anxiety and solicitude about
me. I went home a few days before she died, and remained with her until the
last. She talked to me much and often, always begging and pleading with me
as only a dying mother can plead, to save myself from the life of a
drunkard. I promised her solemnly and honestly that I would never again
taste liquor. As I gazed upon her wasted face and read death in every
lineament, and heard the dread angel's approach in every breath of pain she
drew, and saw above all in her fast dimming eye that the horrors of her
approaching dissolution were almost unthought of in her care for me, I
resolved deep down in my heart never to taste liquor again, and kneeling by
her dying form, I called heaven to witness that no more, oh, never, never
more, would I go in the way of the drunkard, or touch, in any form, the
unpitying and soul-destroying curse. I looked on her face, which was
growing strangely calm and white. She was dead, and it came upon me that
she who had loved and suffered most for me, and without a reproach, was
never more to look upon me again or speak words of comfort and aid to my
ears, so often unheeding. At that moment, looking through scalding tears at
her holy face, and afterwards when I heard the grave clods falling with
their terrible sound upon her coffin lid, I swore that I would keep my
promise, no matter what the temptation to break it might be. She would not
be here to see my triumph, but I would conquer for her memory's sake, and
all would be well. I swore by earth, sea, and sky, never, never to break
the promise made to her in the moment of her dying. That promise I broke
within two months from the day it was solemnized by my mother's death. I
shudder still, remembering the agony of that fall. Broken, oh God!--the
promise has been broken, is what first entered my mind. Never before had I
suffered as I then suffered.

My wild revel was protracted for days out of dread of the awful sorrow and
remorse that I knew must surely come on my getting sober. My mother
appeared to me in my troubled dreams, and talked to me as in life. Many
times in my slumber, and in my waking fancies did I see her pale, troubled
face, with her pitying eyes looking on me as from that bed of pain and
death, and at such times I reached out my hands toward her in