Fifteen Years in Hell | Page 8

from whom I first
received instruction. The next school I attended was in a log house near
where Ammon's mill now stands. I attended one or two summer terms
at each of these places. There is nothing remarkable connected with my
early school-days. They glided onward rapidly enough, but I saw and
felt differently, it seemed to me, from those around me; but this may be
the experience of others, only I think the melancholy, the fear, the
unhappiness which hung over me were not as marked in any one else. I
studied but little, because of my discontented and uneasy feeling, but I
kept up with my lessons, and have yet one or two prizes bestowed on
me twenty years ago for being at the head of my class the greater
number of times.
I recollect with painful clearness the first drink of liquor that ever
passed my lips. It has been more than twenty-four years since then, but
my memory calls it up as if it were only yesterday, with all the
circumstances under which I took it. It was in the time of threshing

wheat, and then, as in harvesting, log-rolling, and everything that
required the cooperation of neighbors, whisky was always more or less
used. I was little more than six years of age. A bottle containing liquor
was set in the shadow of some sheaves of wheat which stood near a
wagon, and taking it I crawled under the wagon with a neighbor now
living in Raleigh. We began drinking from this bottle and did not stop
until we were both pitiably drunk. The boy who took that first drink
with me has since had some experience with the effects of alcohol, but
at this time he is bravely fighting the good battle of sobriety and may
God always give him the victory. I never could taste liquor without
getting drunk. When one drop passed my lips I became wild for another,
and another, until my sole thought was how to get enough to satisfy the
unquenchable thirst. To-day if I were to dip the point of a needle into
whisky and then touch my tongue with that needle, I would be unable
to resist the burning desire to drink which that infinitesimal atom would
awaken. I would get drunk if hell burst up out of the earth around
me--yes, if I could look down into the flames and see men whose
eye-brows were burnt off, and whose every hair was a burning, blazing,
coiling, hissing snake from their having used the deadly liquid. And if
each of these countless fiery snakes had a tongue of forked fire and
could be heard to scream for miles, and I knew that another drop would
cause them to lick my quivering flesh, yet would I take it. O horror of
horrors! I would plunge into the flames forever and ever. After I once
taste I am powerless to resist. When I was ten years of age I went one
Sunday with a neighbor boy several years older than I, riding on
horseback. The course we took was a favorite one with me for it led
toward Raleigh, just north of which place I contrived to get a pint or
more of the poison called whisky. The doctor from whom I got it had,
of course, no idea that I was going to drink it, especially all of it, but
drink it I did, getting so completely under its horrible influence that
when I arrived at home I fell senseless against the door. My father and
mother heard me fall and came out and took me into the house, and just
as soon as the heat of the fire began to affect me, I sank into a dead
stupor; all consciousness was gone; all feeling was destroyed; all
intelligence was obliterated. I lay upon my bed that night wholly
oblivious to everything, knowing not, indeed, that such a creature as
myself ever existed. The morning came at last, and with it I opened my

eyes. Describe who can the thoughts which rushed through my
distracted brain. For a little while I knew not where I was or what I had
done. My head was throbbing, aching, bursting. I glanced about me and
on either side of my bed my father and mother knelt in prayer! Then
did I remember what had befallen me, and so keen was my remorse that
I thought I would surely die, and, in fact, I wanted to die. O, much
loved parents--father on earth and mother in heaven--how often since
then have I felt anew the shame of that terrible hour--how often have I
seen your sacred faces, wet with the tears of that trial, come before me,
looking imploringly heavenward as if beseeching for