e like a demon's eye, and beckon me on
to destruction. I heard voices which whispered in my ears--"now is the
time." A shudder crept over me. Should I end my miserable existence? I knew
that a train of cars was coming. I could lie down on the track, and no one
would ever know but I had been accidentally killed. Then I thought of my
father, and brothers, and sisters, and as a glimpse of their suffering
entered my mind, I felt myself held back. A great struggle went on between
life and death. It ended in favor of life, and I fled from the railroad. I
soon lost my way and wandered blindly over the fields and through the woods
all that night. I was perishing for liquor when daylight came. In order to
assuage my burning appetite I climbed over a fence, and, picking up a
dirty, rusty wash-pan which had been thrown away, I drank a quart of water
which I dipped from a horse-trough. My skin was dry and parched, and my
blood was in a blaze. When I came to grassy plots I lay down and bathed my
face in the cold dew, and also bared my arms and moistened them in the
cool, damp grass.

When the sun came up over the eastern tree-tops I found that I was about
ten miles from Rushville. After stumbling on for some time longer I found
my way to Henry Lord's, a farmer with whom I was acquainted. He gave me a
room in which I lay hidden from the officers for two days and nights. From
this place I went to my father's, and although the officers came there two
or three times, I escaped arrest. It is impossible to give the reader the
faintest idea of my condition. Without money, clothes, or friends, an
outcast, hunted like a wild beast, I had only one thing left--my horrible
appetite, at all times fierce and now maddening in the extreme. My hands
trembled, my face was bloated, and my eyes were bloodshot. I had almost
ceased to look like a human. Hope had flown from me, and I was in complete
despair. I moved about over my father's farm like one walking in sleep, the
veriest wretch on the face of the earth. My real condition not unfrequently
pressed upon me until, in an agony of desperation, I would put my swollen
hands over my worse than bloated face and groan aloud, while tears scalding
hot streamed down over my fingers and arms. I staid at home a number of
days. At first I had no thought of quitting drink. I was too crazed in mind
to think clearly on any subject. After two or three days, I became very
nervous for lack of my accustomed stimulants;