“Each attack finds me weaker to resist, each advance carries me further from my fortress; I feel my defense falling; I am drawing nearer to the brink; shall I fall? Shall I go crashing down, dragged from my high estate by some fiendish tendency as inexorable as it is degrading?”
“As yet I am enabled to resist beyond the point of insensate silliness and folly, but each returning shock is accompanied by ever stronger suggestion of immorality, brutality and crime. Shall I be strong enough always to repulse this tireless current of assault? Shall I finally succumb and fall to the level of the barbarian and the beast? Soul harrowing thought!”
“The insane or drink frenzied man is unconscious of his acts, but such is not my miserable fate, while held in bondage by that unknown power I appreciate the absurdity of my every act. I still am I, but powerless to control myself, I catch the look of wonder that fills the eyes of others. I feel the shame, but am powerless to remove the cause.”
“And, oh! the horror of seeing and recognizing a look of rebuke and repulsion in the eyes of those I love and those who love me. To see the smile of pride vanish and the blush of mortification succeed it on the face of that being of all the world to me the dearest and fairest.”
“Last night in my dear Lucy’s eyes I read reproof, rebuke, and on her cheeks I saw the red flag of shame. Cognizant of the cause, I, like a leaf upon the current of some mighty cataract, helpless, rushed along in humiliation and self-disgust. I beat against the stream with all my remaining strength of mind; I struggled to regain the shore of my accustomed dignity, but all in vain.”
“I was carried on and on, until plunging over the brink of the fall I struck the bottom where lie those self-respect destroying rocks of disgrace. In ignominy I fled and sought refuge here; ceasing my unavailing efforts to break the chain that held me I gave free rein to the influences that governed my mood.”
“Wild and ribald songs burst from my lips, hilarious and lascivious music poured from the instruments that I touched, movements, rythmic but novel, fantastic, barbarous, jerked my limbs about in the measure of some savage dance. I ate and drank more as an untutored tribesman of the jungle than a civilized citizen of our cultured country.”
“All unrestrained and unopposed that mystifying mood bore me on recklessly, abandoned, until it swept me to the very verge of wickedness and sin. On the extremist edge of that precipice, below which lies the gulf of infamy, I found strength to grasp and hold the feeble tendrils of that higher estate that still clung around me; in every fiber of my being there surged Satanic suggestions to relinquish my hold upon the fragile stay to which I desperately clung, and take the plunge into that dark gulf below.”
“Go where base associates await you! Where lewdness, lasciviousness, brutality, beastliness and licensed libidinousness lead to savage satiety that ends in blood. These were the suggestive words whispered to me by that fiendish spirit of these strange spells. They vibrated through every nerve and vein of my racked and straining being.”