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.
The ever-recurring spell--Writing in the sand--Hartford City--In the Ditch- -Extricated--Fairly started--A telegram--My brother's death--Sober--A long night--Ride home--Palpitation of the heart--Bluffton--The inevitable-- Delirium again--No friends, money, nor clothes--One hundred miles from home--I take a walk--Clinton county--Engage to teach a school--The lobbies of hell--Arrested--Flight to the country--Open school--A failure--Return home--The beginning of a terrible experience--Two months of uninterrupted drinking--Coatless, hatless, and, bootless--The "Blue Goose"--The tremens-- Inflammatory rheumatism--The torments of the damned--Walking on crutches-- Drive to Rushville--Another drunk--Pawn my clothes--At Indianapolis--A cold bath--The consequence--Teaching school--Satisfaction given--The kindness of Daniel Baker and his wife--A paying practice at law.
The "Baxter Law"--Its injustice--Appetite is not controlled by legislation- -Indictments--What they amount to--"Not guilty"--The Indianapolis police-- The Rushville grand jury--Start home afoot--Fear--The coming head-light--A desire to end my miserable existence--"Now is the time"--A struggle in which life wins--Flight across the fields--Bathing in dew--Hiding from the officers--My condition--Prayer--My unimaginable sufferings--Advised to lecture--The time I began to lecture.
My first lecture--A cold and disagreeable evening--A fair audience--My success--Lecture at Fairview--The people turn out en masse--At Rushville-- Dread of appearing before the audience--Hesitation--I go on the stage and am greeted with applause--My fright--I throw off my father's old coat and stand forth--Begin to speak, and soon warm to my subject--I make a lecture tour--Four hundred and seventy lectures in Indiana--Attitude of the press-- The aid of the good--Opposition and falsehood--Unkind criticism--Tattle mongers--Ten months of sobriety--My fall--Attempt to commit suicide-- Inflict an ugly but not dangerous wound on myself--Ask the sheriff to lock me in the jail--Renewed effort--The campaign of '74--"Local option."
Struggle for life--A cry of warning--"Why don't you quit?"--Solitude, separation, banishment--No quarter asked--The rumseller--A risk no man should incur--The woman's temperance convention at Indianapolis--At Richmond--The bloated druggist--"Death and damnation"--At the Galt House-- The three distinct properties of alcohol--Ten days in Cincinnati--The delirium tremens--My horrible sufferings--The stick that turned to a serpent--A world of devils--Flying in dread--I go to Connersville, Indiana- -My condition grows worse--Hell, horrors, and torments--The horrid sights of a drunkard's madness.