Fifteen years in hell

Early shadows--An unmerciful enemy--The miseries of the curse--Sorrow and gloom--What alcohol robs man of--What it does--What it does not do-- Surrounding evils--Blighted homes--A Titan devil--The utterness of the destroyer--A truthful narrative-- It stingeth like an adder.
Birth, parentage and early education--Early childhood--Early events--Memory of them vivid--Bitter desolation--An active but uneasy life--Breaking colts for amusement--Amount of sleep--Temperament has much to do in the matter of drink--The author to blame for his misspent life--Inheritances--The excellences of my father and mother--The road to ruin not wilfully trodden- -The people's indifference to a great danger--My associates--What became of them--The customs of twenty years ago--What might have been.
The old log school house--My studies and discontent--My first drink of liquor--The companion of my first debauch--One drink always fatal--A horrible slavery--A horseback ride on Sunday--Raleigh--Return home-- Dead drunk --My parents' shame and sorrow--My own remorse--An unhappy and silent breakfast--The anguish of my mother--Gradual recovery--Resolves and promises--No pleasure in drinking--The system's final craving for liquor-- The hopelessness of the drunkard's condition--The resistless power of appetite--Possible escape--The courage required--The three laws--Their violation and man's atonement.
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.