is, fully paid every time, and while natural laws are as much a part of God’s creation as the divine, he would no more set aside a penalty for a violation of one of nature’s laws than he would blot out a part of his written word.  Yet there are recuperative powers and forces in nature that are wonderful, and there is a spiritual strength that helps us to bear, and overcome, and endure every affliction.  I was made a new creature in Christ Jesus at Jeffersonville, Indiana, on the 21st of last January, and had I then gone to work to recuperate and restore by all natural means, my broken body, I am most certain that I never again would have tasted liquor; but instead of using the means God had placed about me, in the supreme ecstacy which comes to a redeemed, a new-born soul, I went to work ten times more laboriously than ever, and soon completely exhausted my bodily strength.  My system was drained of every particle of its power to resist the slightest attack of any kind whatsoever, much less to make a successful struggle against my great enemy, and so, physically and mentally exhausted when I was assailed by the black, foul fiend of alcohol, I fell, and fell a second time.  I resolved, yea, took an oath the most solemn, that rather than again be overtaken by a disaster so dire, I would have myself entombed within an asylum for the insane.  Here at last, I was placed, and here I intend to remain until nature shall restore to my body sufficient strength to resist, with God’s help, the next and every attack of my enemy.  As God is my witness, I had rather remain within these walls and listen to the cries of the worst maniac here, from day to day, until the last hour of my life—­yes, and die and be buried here in the pauper’s graveyard, than ever again go out and drink.  And now as I close this chapter with a full heart, I go down on my knees in supplication to God for strength and grace to keep me from that which has wrecked all my life and made it a continued round of sorrow and shame.  I ask every one who reads this chapter, to pray to God for me with all your heart and soul.  Oh! men and women, pray for wretched, miserable, sorrowing, suffering, lonely me.

CHAPTER IV.

School days at Fairview—­My first public outbreak—­A schoolmate—­Drive to Falmouth—­First drink at Falmouth—­Disappointment—­Drive to Smelser’s Mills—­Hostetter’s Bitters—­The author’s opinion of patent medicines, bitters especially—­Boasting—­More liquor—­Difficulty in lighting a cigar—­A hound that got in bad company—­Oysters at Falmouth, and what befell us while waiting for them—­Drunken slumber—­A hound in a crib—­Getting awake—­The owner of the hound—­Sobriety—­The Vienna jug—­Another debauch—­The exhibition—­The end of the school term—­Starting to college at Cincinnati—­My companions—­The destruction wrought by alcohol—­Dr. Johnson’s declaration concerning the indulgence of this vice—­A warning—­A dangerous fallacy—­Byron’s inspiration—­Lord Brougham—­Sheridan—­Sue—­Swinburne—­Dr. Carpenter’s opinion—­An erroneous idea—­Temperance the best aid to thought.