n I was going next moment to hell." He said it had ruined him;
said so quite calmly; did not appear to have any special remorse about
it; at least, never professed any; said it used to trouble him, but he
had got over it now. He had had a plantation--that is, his mother had
had--and he had been quite successful for a while; but he said, "A man
can't drink liquor and run a farm," and the farm had gone.

I asked him how?

"I sold it," he said calmly; "that is, persuaded my mother to sell it.
The stock that belonged to me had nearly all gone before. A man who is
drinking will sell anything," he said. "I have sold everything in the
world I had, or could lay my hands on. I have never got quite so low as
to sell my old gray jacket that I used to wear when I rode behind old
Joe. I mean to be buried in that--if I can keep it."

He had been engaged to a nice girl; the wedding-day had been fixed; but
she had broken off the engagement. She married another man. "She was
a mighty nice girl," he said, quietly. "Her people did not like my
drinking so much. I passed her not long ago on the street. She did not
know me." He glanced down at himself quietly. "She looks older than she
did." He said that he had had a place for some time, did not drink a
drop for nearly a year, and then got with some of the old fellows, and
they persuaded him to take a little. "I cannot touch it. I have either
got to drink or let it alone--one thing or the other," he said. "But I
am all right now," he declared triumphantly, a little of the old fire
lighting up in his face. "I never expect to touch a drop again."

He spoke so firmly that I was persuaded to make him a little loan,
taking his due-bill for it, which he always insisted on giving. That
evening I saw him being dragged along by three policemen, and he was
cursing like a demon.

In the course of time he got so low that he spent much more than half
his time in jail. He became a perfect vagabond, and with his clothes
ragged and dirty might be seen reeling about or standing around the
street corners near disreputable bars, waiting for a chance drink, or
sitting asleep in doorways of untenanted buildings. His companions would
be one or two chronic drunkards like himself, with red noses, bloated
faces, dry hair, and filthy clothes. Sometimes I would see him hurrying
along with one of these as if they had a piece of the most important
business in the world. An idea had struck their addled brains that by