Fifteen Years in Hell | Page 2

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."
CHAPTER XII.
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.
CHAPTER XIII.
Recovery--Trip to Maine--Lecturing in that State--Dr. Reynolds, the
"Dare to do right" reformer--Return to
Indianapolis--Lecturing--Newspaper extracts--The criticisms of the
press--Private letters of encouragement-- Friends dear to
memory--Sacred names.
CHAPTER XIV.
At home again--Overwork--Shattered nerves--Downward to
hell--Conceive the idea of traveling with some one--Leave Indianapolis
on a third tour east in company with Gen. Macauley--Separate from
him at Buffalo--I go on to New York alone--Trading clothes for
whisky--Delirious wanderings--Jersey City--In the calaboose--Deathly
sick--An insane neighbor--Another--In court--"John Dalton"--"Here!
your honor"--Discharged--Boston--Drunk--At the residence of Junius
Brutus Booth--Lecturing again--Home--Converted--Go to
Boston--Attend the Moody and Sankey meetings--Get drunk--Home
once more--Committed to the asylum--Reflections--The shadow which
whispered "Go away!"
CHAPTER XV.
A sleepless night--Try to write on the following day but fail--My
friends consult with the officers of the institution--I am discharged--Go
to Indianapolis and get drunk--My wanderings and horrible sufferings--
Alcohol--The tyrant whom all should slay--What is lost by the
drunkard--Is anything gained by the use of liquor?--Never touch it in
any form--It leads to ruin and death--Better blow your brains out--My
condition at present--The end.

PREFACE
The days of long prefaces are past. It is also too near the end of the
century to indulge in fulsome dedications. I shall, therefore, trouble the
reader with only a brief introduction to this imperfect history of an
imperfect life. The conditions under which I write necessarily make it
lacking in much that would ordinarily have added to its interest. I write
within the Indiana Asylum for the Insane; I have not the means of
information at hand which I should have to make the work what it
should be, and notes which I had taken from time to time, with a view
of using them, have unfortunately been lost. Much of my life is a
complete blank to me, as I have often, very often, alas! gone for days
oblivious to every act and thing, as dead to all about me as the stones of
the pavement are dumb. Nor can I connect a succession of incidents
one after the other as they occurred in the regular course of my life. The
reader is asked to be merciful in his judgment and pardon the
imperfections which I fear abound in the book. The title, "FIFTEEN
YEARS IN HELL," may, to some, seem irreverent or profane, but let
me assure any such that it is the mildest I can find which conveys an
idea of the facts. Expect nothing ornate or romantic. The path along
which you who walk with me will go is not a flowery one. Its shadows
are those of the cypress and yew; its skies are curtained with funereal
clouds; its beginning is a gloom and its end is a mad house. But go with
me, for you can suffer no harm, and a knowledge of what you will see
may lead you to warn others who are in danger of doing as I have done.
Unless help comes to me from on high, I feel that I am near the end of
my weary and sorrow-laden pilgrimage on earth. You who are in the
light, I speak to you from the shadow; you who suffer, I speak to you
from the depths; you who are dying, perhaps I may speak to you from
the world of the dead; in any case the words herein written are the truth.
CHAPTER I.
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."
Truth, said Lord Byron, is stranger than fiction. He was right, for so it
is. Another has declared that if any man should write a faithful history
of his own career, the work would be an interesting one. The question
now arises, does any man dare to be sufficiently candid to write such a
work? Is there no secret baseness he would hide?--no