Fifteen Years in Hell | Page 3

act which, proper
to be told, he would swerve from the truth to tell in his own favor?
Undoubtedly, many. Doubtless it is well that few have the resolution or
inclination to chronicle their faults and failings. How many, too, would
shrink from making a public display of their miserable experiences for
fear of being accused of glorying in their past shame, or of parading a
pride that apes humility. I pretend to no talent, but if a too true story of
suffering may interest, and at the same time alarm, I can promise matter
enough, and unembellished, too, for no embellishment is needed, as all
my sketches are from the life. The incidents will not be found to be
consecutive, but set down as certain scenes occur to my
recollection--heedless of order, style, or system. Each is a record of
shame, suffering, destitution and disgrace. I have all my life stood
without and gazed longingly through gateways which relentlessly
barred me from the light and warmth and glory, which, though never
for me, was shining beyond. From the day that consciousness came to
me in this world I have been miserable. In early childhood I swam, as it
were, in a dark sea of sorrow whose sad waves forever beat over me
with a prophetic wail of desolations and storms to come. During the
years of boyhood, when others were thoughtless and full of joy, the
sun's rays were hidden from my sight and I groped hopelessly forward,
praying in vain for an end of misery. Out of such a boyhood there
came--as what else could come?--a manhood all imperfect, clothed
with gloom, haunted by horror, and familiar with undefinable terrors
which have weighed upon my heart until I have cried to myself that it
would break--until I have almost prayed that it would break and thereby
free me from the bondage of my pitiless master, Woe! To-day walled
within a prison for madmen, looking from a window whose grating is
iron, the sole occupant of a room as blank as the leaf of happiness is to
me, I abandon every hope. On this side the silence which we call

death--that silence which inhabits the dismal grave, there is for me only
sorrow and agony keener than has ever before made gray and old
before its time the heart of man. Thirty years! and what are they?--what
have they been? Patience, and as best I can, I will unfold their record.
Thirty years! and I feel that the weight of a world's wretchedness has
lain upon me for thrice their number of terrible days! Every effort of
my life has been a failure. Surely and steadily the hand of misfortune
has crushed me until I have looked forward to my bier as a blessed bed
of repose--rest from weariness--forgetfulness of remorse--escape from
misery. At the dawn of life, ay, in its very beginning, there came to me
a bitter, deadly, unmerciful enemy, accompanied in those days by song
and laughter--an enemy that was swift in getting me in his power, and
who, when I was once securely his victim, turned all laughter into
wailing, and all songs into sobbing, and pressed to my bloated lips his
poisonous chalice which I have ever found full of the stinging adders of
hell and death. Too well do I know what it is to feel the burning and
jagged links of the devil's chain cutting through my quivering flesh to
the shrinking bone--to feel my nerves tremble with agony, and my
brain burn as if bathed in liquids of fire--too well, I say, do I know
what these things are, for I have felt them intensified again and again,
ten thousand times. The infinite God alone knows the deep abyss of my
sorrow, and help, if help be possible, can come from him alone.
I shall not attempt in these pages any learned disquisition upon the
nature of alcohol--its hideous effects on the system--how it disarranges
all the functions of the body--how it impairs health--blots out memory,
dethrones reason, and destroys the very soul itself--how it gives to the
whole body an unnatural and unhealthy action, crucifying the flesh,
blood, bones and marrow--how it paints hell in the mind and torture on
the heart, and strangles hope with despair.
Nor shall I discuss the terrible and overshadowing evils, financial and
social, inflicted by it on every class of society. Like the trail of the
serpent it is over all. Look where you will, turn where you may, you
can not be blind to its evils. It despoils manhood of all that makes
manhood desirable; it plucks hope from the breast of the weeping wife
with a hand of ice; it robs the orphan of his bread crumb, and says to

the gates of penitentiaries,