ow sad, lonesome, gloomy and wretched he feels while
trying to resist the accursed appetite which is destroying him, they would
never taunt him with doubts, nor go to him, as I have had men, and even
women, come to me (I say "men and women," but they were neither men nor
women, but libels on men and women), and say that this or that person had
said that that or this person had heard some other person tell another
person that he, she, or it believed that I, Luther Benson, had been
drinking on such and such an occasion; or that some one told Mr. B., who
told Miss X.T. that J.B. had said to Madam Z. that such and such a one had
actually told T.Y. that O.M.U. had seen three men who had heard of four
other men who said they could find two women who had overheard a man say
that he had seen a man who had seen me with two men that had a bottle of
something which he felt pretty sure was Robinson county whisky. Therefore
B. was drunk!

These things had the effect on me that this account will probably have on
the reader--they annoyed me exceedingly at times. At times the falsehoods
were more malicious still, causing me many sleepless hours. At the end
of ten months of complete sobriety, during which I never tasted any
stimulant--ten months of constant struggle and determined effort--I fell.
Alas, that I am compelled to write the sad words! I had broken down my
strength; my mental and physical energies gave way, and my appetite had
wrapped itself as a flaming fire about me, consuming me in its heat. I
commenced drinking at Charlottsville, Henry county, and went from there to
Knightstown on a Saturday evening. On the following Monday I went to
Indianapolis drunk, and there got "dead drunk." My friends in Rushville,
hearing of my misfortune, came after me and took me with them to that
place, where I remained utterly oblivious until the next Sunday, when, by
some means--I have no knowledge how--I got on an early train that was
passing through Rushville, and went as far as Columbus, where I got off,
and soon succeeded in getting a quart of liquor. Between the hour of my
arrival at Columbus and night I drank three bottles of whisky.

That night I returned to Rushville, and while mad with liquor, made an
attempt on my life by cutting my throat. Well for me that my knife was dull
and did not penetrate to the jugular artery. The wound self-inflicted was
an ugly but not dangerous one. I kept on drinking for a week or more, until
I found tha