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.
Quit college--Shattered nerves--Summer and autumn days--Improvement--Picnic parties--A fall--An untimely storm--Crawford's beer and ale--Beer brawls-- County fairs and their influence on my life--My yoke of white oxen--The "red ribbon"--"One McPhillipps"--How I got home and how I found myself in the morning--My mother's agony--A day of teaching under difficulties--Quiet again--Law studies at Connersville--"Out on a spree"--What a spree means.
Law practice at Rushville--Bright prospects--The blight--From bad to worse- -My mother's death--My solemn promise to her--"Broken, oh, God!"-- Reflection--My remorse--The memory of my mother--A young man's duty-- Blessed are the pure in heart--The grave--Young man, murder not your mother--Rum--A knife which is never red with blood, but which has severed souls and stabbed thousands to death--The desolation and death which are in alcohol.
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.