About five days after we were married, Dr. Gloyd came in, threw himself on the bed and fell asleep.  I was in the next room and saw his mother bow down over his face.  She did not know I saw her.  When she left, I did the same thing, and the fumes of liquor came in my face.  I was terror stricken, and from that time on, I knew why he was so changed.  Not one happy moment did I see; I cried most all the time.  My husband seemed to understand that I knew his condition.  Twice, with tears in his eyes, he remarked:  “Oh!  Pet, I would give my right arm to make you happy.”  He would be out until late every night.  I never closed my eyes.  His sign in front of the door on the street would creak in the wind, and I would sit by the window waiting to hear his footsteps.  I never saw him stagger.  He would lock himself up in the “Masonic Lodge” and allow no one to see him.  People would call for him in case of sickness, but he could not be found.

My anguish was unspeakable, I was comparatively a child.  I wanted some one to help me.  He was a mason.  I talked to a Mr. Hulitt, a brother mason, I begged of him to help me save my precious husband.  I talked to a dear friend, Mrs. Clara Mize, a Christian, hoping to get some help in that direction, but all they could say, was.  “Oh, what a pity, to see a man like Dr. Gloyd throw himself away!” The world was all at once changed to me, it was like a place of torture.  I thought certainly, there must be a way to prevent this suicide and murder.  I now know, that the impulse was born in me then to combat to the death this inhumanity to man.

I believe the masons were a great curse to Dr. Gloyd.  These men would drink with him.  There is no society or business that separates man and wife, or calls men from their homes at night, that produces any good results.  I believe that secret societies are unscriptural, and that the Masonic Lodge has been the ruin of many a home and character.

I was so ignorant I did not know that I owed a duty to myself to avoid gloomy thoughts; did not know that a mother could entail a curse on her offspring before it was born.  Oh, the curse that comes through heredity, and this liquor evil, a disease that entails more depravity on children unborn, than all else, unless it be tobacco.  There is an object lesson taught in the Bible.  The mother of Samson was told by an angel to “drink neither wine nor strong drink” before her child was born, and not to allow him to do so after he was born.  God shows by this, that these things are injurious.  Mothers often make drunkards of their own children, before they are born.  My parents heard that Dr. Gloyd was drinking.  My father came down to visit us, and I went home with him.  My mother told me I must never go back to my husband again.  I knew the time was near at hand, when I would be helpless, with a drunken husband, and no means of support.  What could I do?  I kept writing to “Charlie,” as I called him.  He came to see me once; my mother