s condition
in the past as being something that never would or could recur; while
on the other hand, if he were just over a drunk, he frankly admitted his
absolute slavery to his habit. When he was getting drunk he shamelessly
maintained, and was ready to swear on all the Bibles in creation, that
he had not touched a drop, and never expected to do so again--indeed,
could not be induced to do it--when in fact he would at the very time
be reeking with the fumes of liquor, and perhaps had his pocket then
bulging with a bottle which he had just emptied, and would willingly
have bartered his soul to refill.

I never saw such absolute dominion as the love of liquor had over him.
He was like a man in chains. He confessed it frankly and calmly. He said
he had a disease, and gave me a history of it. It came on him, he said,
in spells; that when he was over one he abhorred it, but when the fit
seized him it came suddenly, and he was in absolute slavery to it. He
said his father was a gentleman of convivial habits (I have heard that
he was very dissipated, though not openly so, and "No. 4" never admitted
it). He was killed at the battle of Bull Run. His mother--he always
spoke of her with unvarying tenderness and reverence--had suffered
enough, he said, to canonize her if she were not a saint already; she
had brought him up to have a great horror of liquor, and he had never
touched it till he went into the army. In the army he was in a convivial
crowd, and they had hard marching and poor rations, often none. Liquor
was scarce, and was regarded as a luxury; so although he was very
much afraid of it, yet for good fellowship's sake, and because it was
considered mannish, he used to drink it. Then he got to like it; and
then got to feel the need of it, and took it to stimulate him when he
was run down. This want brought with it a great depression when he did
not have the means to satisfy it. He never liked the actual taste of it;
he said few drunkards did. It was the effect that he was always after.
This increased on him, he said, until finally it was no longer a desire,
but a passion, a necessity; he was obliged to have it. He felt then that
he would commit murder for it. "Why, I dream about it," he said. "I will
tell you what I have done. I have made the most solemn vows, and have
gone to bed and gone to sleep, and waked up and dressed and walked miles
through the rain and snow to get it. I believe I would have done it if
I had know