Stories of Achievement, Volume III | Page 8

I recommenced attending a place of worship, and for a short time I attended the Rev. Mr. Campbell's church, by whom, as well as by several of his members, I was treated with much Christian kindness. I was often invited to Mr. Campbell's house, as well as to the house of some of his hearers, and it seemed as if a favorable turning-point or crisis in my fortunes had arrived. Mr. Campbell was good enough to manifest a very great interest in my welfare, and frequently expressed a hope that I should be enabled, although late in life, to obtain an education. And this I might have acquired had not my evil genius prevented my making any efforts to obtain so desirable an end. My desire for strong liquors and company seemed to present an insuperable barrier to all improvement; and after a few weeks every aspiration after better things had ceased; every bud of promised comfort was crushed. Again I grieved the spirit that had been striving with my spirit, and ere long became even more addicted to the use of the infernal draughts, which had already wrought me so much woe, than at any previous period of my existence.
And now my circumstances began to be desperate indeed. In vain were all my efforts to obtain work, and at last I became so reduced that at times I did not know when one meal was ended, where on the face of the broad earth I should find another. Further mortification awaited me, and by slow degrees I became aware of it. The young men with whom I had associated, in barrooms and parlors, and who wore a little better clothing than I could afford, one after another began to drop my acquaintance. If I walked in the public streets, I too quickly perceived the cold look, the averted eye, the half recognition, and to a sensitive spirit such as I possessed such treatment was almost past endurance. To add to the mortification caused by such a state of things, it happened that those who had laughed the loudest at my songs and stories, and who had been social enough with me in the barroom, were the very individuals who seemed most ashamed of my acquaintance. I felt that I was shunned by the respectable portion of the community also; and once, on asking a lad to accompany me in a walk, he informed me that his father had cautioned him against associating with me. This was a cutting reproof, and I felt it more deeply than words can express. And could I wonder at it? No. Although I may have used bitter words against that parent, my conscience told me that he had done no more than his duty in preventing his son being influenced by my dissipated habits. Oh! how often have I lain down and bitterly remembered many who had hailed my arrival in their company as a joyous event. Their plaudits would resound in my ears, and peals of laughter ring again in my deserted chamber; then would succeed stillness, broken only by the beatings of my agonized heart, which felt that the gloss of respectability had worn off and exposed my threadbare condition. To drown these reflections, I would drink, not from love of the taste of the liquor, but to become so stupefied by its fumes as to steep my sorrows in a half oblivion; and from this miserable stupor I would wake to a fuller consciousness of my situation, and again would I banish my reflections by liquor.
There lived in Newburyport at that time a Mr. Law, who was a rum seller, and I had spent many a shilling at his bar; he proposed to me that he would purchase some tools, and I could start a bindery on my own account, paying him by installments. He did so; and I thought it an act of great kindness then, and for some time afterward, till I found he had received pay from me for tools he had never paid for himself, and I was dunned for the account he had failed to settle. He even borrowed seventy-five dollars from me after I signed the pledge, which has never been repaid. "Such is life."
Despite all that had occurred, my good name was not so far gone but that I might have succeeded, by the aid of common industry and attention, in my business. I was a good workman, and found no difficulty in procuring employment, and, I have not the slightest doubt, should have succeeded in my endeavor to get on in the world but for the unhappy love of stimulating drinks, and my craving for society. I was now my own master; all restraint was removed, and, as might be expected, I did