ctim of the fell spirit of
alcohol before I realized it. I was raised in a place where opportunities
to drink were numerous, as everybody in those days kept liquor, and to
drink was not the dangerous and disgraceful thing it's now considered to
be. For a radius often miles from our house more people kept whisky in
their cupboards or cellars than were without it. I never heard a temperance
lecturer until I was twenty years of age, and but seldom heard of one. The
people were asleep while a great danger was gathering in the land--a danger
which is now known and seen, and which is so vast in its magnitude that the
combined strength of all who love peace, order, sobriety and happiness, is
scarcely sufficient to meet it in victorious combat.

What associates I had in those days were among men rather than boys, and
the men I went with drank. They gave whisky to me and I drank it, and
whether they gave it or not, I wanted it. Some of those who gave me drinks
are no longer among the living, but neither of them nor of the living would
I speak unkindly, nor call up in the memory of one who may read this book a
thought that might excite a pang; but I would ask any such just to go back
ten, fifteen, and twenty years, and tell me where, are some of the wealthy,
influential men of that time? In the silence of the winding-sheet! How many
of them have hastened to death through the agency of whisky? And how few
suspected that slowly but surely they were poisoning the wellsprings of
life? How many are bankrupts now that might yet be in possession of
unincumbered farms, the possessors of peaceful homes, but for that thief
accursed--Liquor! Look, too, at some of the sons of these men, and say what
you see, for you behold lives wrecked and wretched. Need I tell you what
has wrought all this ruin? Need I say that intemperance is at the bottom of
it?

The country where I lived in youth and boyhood was equal, if not superior,
to any surrounding it. My father's neighbors were all kind-hearted,
generous people, and some of them--many of them, indeed--were good
Christians, and yet I repeat that twenty years ago there was not a place of
a mile in extent but presented the opportunity for drinking. In every
little town and village whisky was kept in public and private houses. There
was, and yet is, near my father's farm two very small but ancient towns,
containing each some twenty or thirty houses, and both of these places have
been cursed with salo