[CHAPTER VII.]
Blank, black night--Afloat--From place to place--No rest--Struggles--Giving way--One gallon of whisky in twenty-four hours--Plowing corn--Husking corn- -My object--All in vain--Old before my time--A wild, oblivious journey-- Delirium tremens--The horrors of hell--The pains of the damned--Heavenly hosts--My release--New tortures--Insane wanderings--In the woods--At Mr. Hinchman's--Frozen feet--Drive to town in a buggy surrounded by devils-- Fears and sorrows--No rest.
From this time until I tried to break the terrible chain that bound me by lecturing on the miseries and evils of intemperance, my life was one long, hopeless, blank, black night. More than one half of the time for five years I was dead to everything but my own despairing, helpless, pitiable and despicable condition. I was afloat without provision, sail, or compass, on an ocean of darkness, and from one period of deeper gloom to another I expected to go down in the sightless oblivion and so end my accursed existence. I could see no prospect of a rift in the curtain of pitchy cloud which hung over me. I was myself an ever-shifting, restless, uneasy tempest. My unrest and nervous dread of some swift approaching doom too awful to be conceived became so intense and real that I fled from place to place. Not unfrequently I came to myself during these epochs of madness and found that I was a hundred or more miles from home, without friends, respectable or even sufficient clothing, or money--a bloated and beastly wreck. I know not how I ever found my way back, or why I prolonged my life under such circumstances; but it seems the instinct called self- preservation was yet stronger than the ills which assailed me. Days were like weeks to me, and weeks as months, and mouths as years, and in all and through all I managed to crawl forward toward the grave which is still out yonder in the future, finding no pleasure in myself and no delight in anything beautiful and holy. As I lift the dread curtain and glance tremblingly along the path which stretches through the funereal shadows of the past, I feel that it was a thousand years ago when I was a child in my mother's dear protecting arms. Sin may have moments of pleasure, but the pleasure is but a hollow semblance in advance of seemingly never-ending hours of remorse and suffering.
More than once I made desperate efforts to escape from my humiliating thraldom, and, as I was sober during the days of struggle, I sought and found business, and thus managed to secure a little money, although most of my clients were poor and anything but influential. I always did my best for them, however, and seldom lost a case. But at the end of a few days a strange, undefinable, uneasy feeling began to crawl over me and crept into my heart; I became more and more restless, anxious and nervous. I was soon too uneasy to sit still or lie down. Horrible sufferings, agonies untold, woe unspeakable, deprived me of reason, and when I had the inclination I had not the will to guide myself aright. Then all of a sudden, my fierce and unrelenting appetite would sweep, vulture like, down upon me, and I would feel myself on the point of giving way. After this I would rally for a brief season, but only to sink into still deeper misery and desperation. There were days without food, and nights without sleep, but--God pity me!-- not without liquor. I lived on the hellish liquid alone, and such a life! The devils of the lower world could see nothing to envy in it. It was worse than their own torture. The quantity of liquor which I now required was enormous. I have drank, on the closing days of a spree, one gallon of whisky within the duration of twenty-four hours, and when I could not get whisky, I would drink alcohol, vinegar, camphor, liniment, pepper-sauce--in short, anything that would have a tendency to heat my stomach. I would have drank fire could I have done so knowing that it would satisfy the thirst that was consuming me. I left untried no means that would enable me to break away from my appetite. For two or three summers after I began practicing law, I went into the country and engaged myself to plow corn at seventy-five cents per day, in order to keep myself as long as possible from the dangers of the town. In the autumn season, after a debauch of weeks, I have hired out and shucked or husked corn in order to get money with which to buy myself boots and winter clothing. I occasionally taught school in the country, but not for money, for I have made more at my profession, when in a condition to practice it, in a single day than I got for teaching a whole month. My object was to free myself, to break my manacles, to open the door of my prison cell and walk forth in the upright posture of a man. Sadly I write, "in vain!" If I fled, the demon outran me; if I broke a link, the demon moulded another; if I prayed, he put the curse into my mouth. As I look back over my horror-haunted, broken, misspent, and false existence, I realize how worthless I am, and I see that my life is a failure. I am in my thirty-second year, and am prematurely old, without the wisdom, or gray hairs, or goodness, or truth, or respect which should accompany age. My heart is frosty but not my hair.
I will now endeavor to recite some of the scenes through which I passed, that the reader may form for himself an opinion regarding my sufferings. I left Rushville on one of my periodical sprees (I do not remember the exact time, but no matter about that, the fact is burning in my memory), and after three or four weeks of blind, insane, drunken, unpremeditated travel- -heaven only knows where--I found myself again in Rushville, but more dead than alive. I experienced a not unfamiliar but most strange foreboding that some terrible calamity was impending. I was more nervous than ever before, so much so in fact that I became alarmed seriously, and called on Dr. Moffitt for medical advice. He diagnosed my case, and informed me that my condition was dangerous, unnatural and wild. He gave me some medicine and kindly advised me to go into his house and lie down, I remained there two days and nights, and in spite of his able treatment and constant care I grew worse. Do you know what is meant by delirium tremens, reader? If not, I pray God you may never know more than you may learn from these pages. I pray God that you may never experience in any form any of the disease's horrors. It was this, the most terrible malady that ever tortured man, that was laying its ghastly, livid, serpentine hands upon me. All at once, and without further warning, my reason forsook me altogether, and I started from Dr. Moffitt's house to go to my boarding place. The sidewalks were to me one mass of living, moving, howling, and ferocious animals. Bears, lions, tigers, wolves, jaguars, leopards, pumas--all wild beasts of all climes--were frothing at the mouth around me and striving to get to me. Recollect that while all this was hallucination, it was just as real as if it had been an undeniable and awful reality. Above and all around me I heard screams and threatening voices. At every step I fell over or against some furious animal. When I finally reached the door leading to my room and just as I was about to enter, a human corpse sprang into the doorway. It had motion, but I knew that it was a tenant of that dark and windowless abode, the grave. It opened full upon me its dull, glassy, lustreless eyes; stark, cold, and hideous it stood before me. It lifted a stiffened arm and struck me a blow in the face with its icy and almost fleshless hand from which reptiles fell and writhed at my feet. I turned to rush into another room, but the door was bolted. I then thought for a second that I was dreaming, and I awoke and laughed a wild laugh, which ended in a shriek, for I knew that I was awake. I turned again toward my own door, and the form had vanished. I jumped into my room and tore off my clothes, but as I threw aside my garments, each separate piece turned into something miscreated and horrible, with fiendish and burning eyes, that caused my own to start from their sockets. My room was filled with menacing voices, and just then a mighty wind rushed past my window, and out of the wind came cries, and lamentations, and curses, which took shapes unearthly, and ranged about the bed on which I lay shuddering. Die! die! die! they shrieked. I was commanded to hold my breath, and they threatened horrors unimaginable if I did not obey.
I now believed that my time had come to render up the life which had been so much abused. I asked what would become of my soul when my body gave it up, and they told me it would descend to the tortures of an everlasting hell, and that once there, my present sufferings would be as bliss compared with what was in store for me for an endless age. As my eyes wandered about the room--I was afraid to close them--I saw that innumerable devils were crowding into it. They were henceforth to be my companions, and if the Prince of all of them ever allowed me to leave for a brief time the regions of infernal woe, it would be in their company and on missions such as they were now fulfilling. I called aloud for my mother, and a voice more diabolical than any I had yet heard, hissed into my ears that she was chained in hell, but immediately a million devils screamed, "Liar! she is in heaven!" I refused then to hold my breath, and told them to kill me and do their worst. In an instant the spirit of my mother, like a benediction, rested beside me. As she begged for me I knew that it was her voice, natural as in her life on earth. While she was yet imploring for me the room became radiant, and I saw that it was full of angels. I felt a strange joy. My sins were pardoned, and I was told that I should go forth and preach and save souls. I was commanded to get out of bed, put on my clothes, and go down stairs, where I would be told what to do. I obeyed, and on opening the door that led to the street, a man came to me and he bid me follow him. The spirits whispered to me that the man was Christ, and his looks, acts and steps even were such as I had conceived were his when he was once a meek and lowly sufferer on earth. I followed him about sixty rods, when he told me to stop. I did so, and just then the heavens opened with a great blaze of glory, and millions of angels came down. Such music as then broke upon my senses I never heard before, and have never since heard. The angels would approach near me and tell me they were going to take me to heaven with them; then they would disappear for an instant and devils gathered about me. I could hear music and see the heavenly hosts returning. They came and went many times thus, and after they went away the last time, I was again surrounded by fiends who inflicted every torture on me. Christ commanded me to stand in that place, I thought, and there I remained. It was very cold, and I froze my feet and hands. I then felt that the devils were burning off my feet, and I shrieked for liquor. I looked down and saw a bottle at my feet, but when I reached down to get it a lion threw his claws over it, and warned me with a fierce growl not to touch it. The snow melted, the season changed, and I was standing in mud and mire up to my neck. Ropes were tied around me, and horses were hitched to them to drag me from the deeps, but in trying to draw me out the ropes would snap asunder and I was left imbedded in the clay. They could not move me, because Christ had commanded me to stand there. A little while before the break of day the Savior appeared and told me to go. I started to run, but when I got alongside the old depot there burst from it the combined screams of millions of incarnate devils. I can hear in fancy still the avalanche of voices which rolled from those lost myriads. I ran into the first house to which I came. Its saw at a glance what was the nature of my terrible trouble, but he had no power to help me. I beheld the face of a black fiend grinning on me through a window. In the center of his forehead was an enormous and fiery eye, and about his sinister mouth the grin which I at first saw became demoniacal. He called the fiends, and I heard them come as a rushing tornado, and surround the house. Everything I attempted to do was anticipated by them. If I thought of moving my hand I heard them say, "Look! he is going to lift his hand." No matter what I did or thought of doing, they cursed me.
When daylight at last came--and oh, what an age of dying agony lay behind it in the vast hollow darkness of the night!--the horrid objects disappeared, but the voices remained and talked with me all day. You who read, imagine yourselves alone in a room, or walking deserted streets, with voices articulating words to you with as clear distinctness as words were ever spoken to you. Many of the voices were those of friends and acquaintances whom I knew to be in their graves, and yet they--their voices--were conversing with, or talking to me, during the whole of that long, long, terrible day. I was tortured with fears and a dread of something infinitely horrible. I went to my office--the voices were there! I stepped to the window, and on the street were men congregating in front of the building. I could hear their voices, and they were all talking of hanging me. I had committed an appalling crime, they said. I knew not where to go or whither to fly. Now and then I could hear strains of music. The dreaded night came on, and with it the fiends returned. In the excitement of breaking from my office, I forgot to put on my overcoat. The moment I got on the street the freezing wind drove me back, but hundreds of voices gathered around me and threatened me with death if I entered the door again. I went away followed by them, and wandered in a thin coat up and down the streets, and through the woods all night. The wonder was that I did not freeze to death. I could hear crowds of excited people at the court house discussing me, I thought. When I started to go there, every door and window of the building flew open and fiery devils darted out and cursed me away. All the time I was dying for whisky, but the saloon keepers would not give me a drop. They saw and understood what was the matter with me, and refused to finish the work begun in their dens. I started at last in the direction of home. Just outside of the town a man by my side showed me a bottle of whisky. I was dying for it, and begged him for at least one swallow. He opened the bottle and held it to my lips, and I saw that the bottle was full of blood. Again and again did he deceive me. Exhausted at last, I sank down in the snow and begged for death to come and end my life, but instead, a company of citizens of Rushville, whom I knew, gathered around me and a glass of whisky was handed to me. I saw that everyone present held a similar glass in his hand, which, at a given word, was raised to the mouth. I hastened to drink, but while they drained their glasses, I could not get a drop from mine. I looked more closely at the glass and discovered that there were two thicknesses to it, and that the liquor was contained between them. I studied how I could break the glass and not spill the whisky, and begged and plead with the men to have mercy on me. I got out into the woods four or five miles from Rushville, and wandered about in the snow, but all around and above me were the universal and eternal voices threatening me. A thousand visions came and went; a thousand tortures consumed me; a thousand hopes sustained me.
I quit the woods pursued by winged and cloven-footed fiends, and ran to the house of Andy Hinchman. He received and gave me shelter until morning, when he carried me back home in his buggy. I had no more than got into his house when it was surrounded by my tormentors. They raised the windows and commenced throwing lassos at me, in order, as they said, to catch me and drag me out that they might kill me. I sat up in my chair until daylight, fighting them off with both hands. All these terrible torments were, I repeat, realities, intensified over the ordinary realities of life a hundred fold. I had wandered to and fro, as I have described, but the people, the angels and the devils were alike the phantasmagoria of my diseased mind. For one week after the night last mentioned, I had no use of either arm. I had so frozen my feet that I could not put on my boots. Mr. Hinchman kindly loaned me a pair that I succeeded, although with great pain, in drawing on, for they were three sizes larger than I was in the habit of wearing. The devils were still with me, but I had moments of reason when I could banish them from my mind. On our way to town they rode on top of the buggy and clung to the spokes of the wheels, and whirled over and over with dizzy revolutions. How they fought, and cursed, and shrieked! When I got to my room it was the same, and for days I was surrounded the greater part of the time with demons as numberless as those seen in the fancy of the mighty poet of a Lost Paradise marshaled under the infernal ensign of Lucifer on the fiery and blazing plains of hell! For more than one month after the madness left me I was afraid to sleep in a room alone, and the least sound would fill me with fear. I ran when none pursued, and hid when no one was in search of me. My sleep was fitful and full of terrible dreams, and my days were days of unrest and anguish unspeakable.
[CHAPTER VIII.]
Wretchedness and degradation--Clothes, credit, and reputation all lost--The prodigal's return to his father's house--Familiar scenes--The beauty of nature--My lack of feeling--A wild horse--I ride him to Raleigh and get drunk--A mixture of vile poison--My ride and fall--The broken stirrups--My father's search--I get home once more--Depart the same day on the wild horse--A week at Lewisville--Sick--Yearnings for sympathy.