Fifteen years in hell : an autobiography

Chapter I. Pack

Early shadows — An unmerciful enemy — The miseries of the

curse— Sorrow and gloom— What alcohol robs man of— What it does— What it does not do — Surrounding evils- Blighted homes — A Titan devil — The utterness of the destroyer — A truthful narrative — "It stingeth like an adder." 5

Chapter II

Birth, parentage and early education — Early childhood — Early events — Memory of them vivid — Bitter desolation — An active but uneasy life— Breaking colts for amusement— Amount of sleep— Temperament has much to do in the matter of drink— The author to blame for his misspent life— Inheritances— The excellences of my father and mother— The road to ruin not wilfully trodden— The people's indifference to a great danger— My associates— What became of them— The customs of twenty years ago— What might have been ... 12 ii TABLE OF CONTENTS.

CIIAPTEE III.

The old log school house — My studies and discontent — My first drink of liquor — The companion of my first debauch — One drink always fatal — A horrible slavery — A horseback ride on Sunday — Raleigh — Return home — " Dead drunk " — My parents' shame and sorrow — My own remorse — An un- Tiappy and silent breakfast — Tile anguish of my mother — Gradual recovery — Resolves and promises — No pleasure in drinking — The system's final craving for liquor — The hopelessness of the drunkard's condition — The resistless power of appetite — Possible escape — The courage required — The thre laws — Their violation and man's atonement 22

Chapter IV

School days at Fairview — My first public outbreak — A schoolmate — Drive to Falmouth — First drink at Falmouth — Disappointment — Drive to Smelser's Mills — Hostetter's Bitters — The author's opinion of patent medicines, bitters especially — Boasting — More liquor — Difficulty in lighting a cigar — A bound that got in bad company — Oysters at Falmouth, and ■what befell us while waiting for them — Drunken slumber — A hound in a crib — Getting awake — The owner of the hound — Sobriety — The Vienna jug — Another debauch — The exhibition — The end of the school term — Starting to college at Cincinnati — My companions — The destruction wrought by alcohol — Dr. Johnson's declaration concerning the indulgence of this vice — A warning — A dangerous f.il-

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lacy — Byron's inspiration — Lord Brougham — Sheridan — Sue — Swinburne — Dr. Carpenter's opinion — An erroneous idea — Temperance the best aid to thought 33

Chapter V

Quit college — Shattered nerves — Summer and autumn days — Improvement — Picnic parties — A fall — An untimely storm — Crawford's beer and ale — Beer brawls — County fairs and their influence on my life — My yoke of white oxen — The " red ribbon " — " One McPhillipps " — How I got home and how I found myself in the morning — My mother's agony — A day of teaching under difficulties — Quiet again — Law studies at Connersville — "Out on a spree " — What a spree means. . . . . -49

Chapter VI

Law practice at Rushville — Bright prospects — The blight — From bad to worse — My mother's death — My solemn promise to her — "Broken, oh, God!" — Reflection — My remorse — The memory of my mother — A young man's duty — Blessed are the pure in heart — The grave — Young man, murder not your mother — Rum — A knife which is never red with blood, but which has severed souls and stabbed thousands to death — The desolation and death which are in alcohol. ... 62

Chapter VII

Blank, black night — Afloat — From place to place — No rest — j v TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Struggles — Giving way — One gallon of whisky in twenty-four hours — Plowing corn — Husking corn — My object — All in vain — Old before my time — A wild, oblivious journey — Delirium tremens — The horrors of hell — The pains of the damned — Heavenly hosts — My release — New tortures — Insane wanderings — In the woods — At Mr. Hinchman's — Frozen feet — Drive to town in a buggy surrounded by devils — Fears and sorrows — No rest 73

Chapter VIII

Wretchedness and degradation — Clothes, credit, and reputation all lost — The prodigal's return to his father's house — Familiar scenes — The beauty of nature — My lack of feeling — A wild horse — I ride him to Raleigh and get drunk — A mixture of vile poison — My ride and fall — The broken stirrups — My father's search — I get home once more — Depart the same day on the wild horse — A week at Lewisville — ■ Sick — Yearnings for sympathy 87

Chapter IX

The ever-recurring spell — Writing in the sand — Hartford City — In the Ditch — Extricated — Fairly started — A telegram — My brother's death — Sober — A long night — Ride home — Palpitation of the heart — Bluffton — The inevitable — Delirium again — No friends, money, nor clothes — One hundred miles from home — I take a walk — Clinton county — Engage to teach a school — The lobbies of hell — Arrested — Flight to the

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country — Open school — A failure — Return home — The beginning of a terrible experience — Two months of uninterrupted drinking — Coatless, hatless, and, bootless — The " Blue Goose " — The tremens — Inflammatory rheumatism — The torments of the damned — Walking on crutches — Drive to Rushville — Another drunk — Pawn my clothes — At Indianapolis — A cold bath — The consequence — Teaching school — Satisfaction given — The kindness of Daniel Baker and his wife — A paying practice at law loo

Chapter X

The "Baxter Law" — Its injustice — Appetite is not controlled by legislation — Indictments — What they amount to — "Not guilty" — The Indianapolis police — The Rushville grand jury — Start home afoot — Fear — The coming head-light — A desire to end my miserable existence — " Now is the time " — A struggle in which life wins — Flight across the fields — Bathing in dew — Hiding from the officers — My condition — Prayer — My unimaginable sufferings — Advised to lecture — The time I began to lecture 114

CHAPTER XL

My first lecture — A cold and disagreeable evening — A fair audience — My success — Lecture at Fairview — The people turn out en masse — At Rushville — Dread of appearing before the audience — Hesitation — I go on the stage and am greeted with applause — My fright — I throw off my father's old coat

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and stand forth — Begin to' speak, and soon warm to my subject — I make a lecture tour — Four hundred and seventy lectures in Indiana — Attitude of the press — The aid of the good — Opposition and falsehood — Unkind criticism — Tattle mongers — Ten months of sobriety — My fall — Attempt to commit suicide — Inflict an ugly but not dangerous wound on myself — Ask the sheriff to lock me in the jail — Renewed effort — The campaign of '74 — " Local option." 124

Chapter XII

Struggle for life — A cry of warning — " Why don't you quit ?" — Solitude, separation, banishment — No quarter asked — The rumseller — A risk no man should incur — The woman's temperance convention at Indianapolis — At Richmond — The bloated druggist — "Death and damnation" — At the Gait House — The three distinct properties of alcohol — Ten days in Cincinnati — The delirium tremens — My horrible sufferings — The stick that turned to a serpent — A world of devils — Flying in dread — I go to Connersville, Indiana — My condition grows worse — Hell, horrors, and torments — The horrid sights of a drunkard's madness 134

Chapter XIII

Recovery — Trip to Maine — Lecturing in that State — Dr. Reynolds, the "Dare to do right" reformer — Return to Indianapolis — Lecturing — Newspaper extracts — The criticisms of

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the press — Private letters of encouragement — Friends dear

to memory — Sacred names 168

CHAPTER XIY.

At home again — Overwork — Shattered nerves — Downward to hell — Conceive the idea of traveling with some one — Leave Indianapolis on a third tour east in company with Gen. Macauley — Separate from him at Buffalo— I go on to New York alone — Trading clothes for whisky — Delirious wanderings — Jersey City — In the calaboose — Deathly sick — An insane neighbor — Another — In court — "John Dalton" — "Here! your honor" — Discharged — Boston — Drunk — At the residence of Junius Brutus Booth — Lecturing again — Home — Converted — Go to Boston — Attend the Moody aud Sankey meetings — Get drunk — Home once more — Committed to the asylum — Reflections — The shadow which whispered "Go away!" J 86

Chapter XV

A sleepless night — Try to write on the following day but fail — My friends consult with the officers of the institution — I am discharged — Go to Indianapolis and get drunk — My wanderings and horrible sufferings — Alcohol — The tyrant whom all should slay— What is lost by the drunkard— Is anything gained by the use of liquor ? — Never touch it in any form — It leads to ruin and death— Better blow your brains out— My condition at present — The end 197

Preface

The days of long prefaces are past. It is also too near the end of the century to indulge in fulsome dedications. I shall, therefore, trouble the reader with only a brief introduction to this imperfect history of an imperfect life. The conditions under which I write necessarily make it lacking in much that would ordinarily have added to its interest. I write within the Indiana Asylum for the Insane ; I have not the means of information at hand which I should have to make the work what it should be, and notes which I had taken from time to time, with a view of using them, have unfortunately been lost. Much of my life is a complete blank to me, as I have often, very often, alas ! gone for days oblivious to every act and thing, as dead to all about me as the stones of the pavement are dumb. Nor can I connect a succession of incidents one after the other as they occurred in the regular course of my life. The reader is asked to be merciful in his judgment and pardon the imperfections which I fear abound in the book. The title, " Fifteen Years in Hell," may, to some, »cem irreverent or profane, but let me assure any such that it is. \hz mildest I can find which conveys an idea of the facts. Expect nothing ornate or romantic. The path along which you who walk with me will go is not a flowery one. Its shadows are those of the cypress and yew ; its skie6 are curtained with funereal clouds; its beginning is a gloom and its end is a mad house. But go with

4 PREFACE.

me, for you can suffer no harm, and a knowledge of what you will see may lead you to warn others who are in danger of doing as I have done. Unless help comes to me from on high, I feel that I am near the end of my weary and sorrow-laden pilgrimage on earth. You who are in the light, I speak to you from the shadow; you who suffer, I speak to you from the depths ; you who are dying, perhaps I may speak to you from the world of the dead ; in any case the words herein written are the truth.

Chapter I

Early shadows — An unmerciful enemy — The miseries of the curse — Sorrow and gloom — What alcohol robs man of — What it does — What it does not do- — Surrounding evils — Blighted homes-;- A Titan devil — The utterness of the destroyer — A truthful narrative — " It stingeth like an adder."

Truth, said Lord Byron, is stranger than fiction. He was right, for so it is. Another has declared that if any man should write a faithful history of his own career, the work would be an interesting one. The question now arises, does any man dare to be sufficiently candid to write such a work ? Is there no secret baseness he would hide? — no act which, proper to be told, he would swerve from the truth to tell in his own favor? Undoubtedly, many. Doubtless it is well that few have the resolution or inclination to chronicle their faults and failings. How many, too, would shrink from making a public display of their miserable experiences for fear of being accused of glorying in their past shame, or of parading a pride that apes humility. I pretend to no talent, but if a

(J FIFTEEN YEARS IN HELL.

too true story of suffering may interest, and at the same time alarm, I can promise matter enough, and unembellished, too, for no embellishment is needed, as all my sketches are from the life. The incidents will not be found to be consecutive, but set down as certain scenes occur to my recollection — heedless of order, style, or system. Each is a record of shame, suffering, destitution and disgrace. I have all my life stood without and gazed longingly through gateways which relentlessly barred me from the light and warmth and glory, which, though never for me, was shining beyo»d. From the day that consciousness came to me in this world I have been miserable. In early childhood I swam, as it were, in a dark sea of sorrow whose sad waves forever beat over me with a prophetic wail of desolations and storms to come. During the years of boyhood, when others were thoughtless and full of joy, the sun's rays were hidden from my sight and I groped hopelessly forward, praying in vain for an end of misery. Out of such a boyhood there came — as what else could come? — a manhood all imperfect, clothed with gloom, haunted by horror, and familiar with undefinable terrors which have weighed upon my heart until I have cried to myself that it would break — until I have almost prayed that it would break and thereby free me from the bondage of my pitiless master, Woe !

To-day walled within a prison for madmen, looking from a window whose grating is iron, the sole occupant of a room as blank as the leaf of happiness is to me, I abandon every hope. On this side the silence which we call death — that silence which inhabits the dismal grave, there is for me only sorrow and agony keener than has ever before made gray and old before its time the heart of man. Thirty years! and what are they? — what have they been? Patience, and as best I can, I will unfold their record. Thirty years! and I feel that the weight of a world's wretchedness has lain upon me for thrice their number of terrible days! Every effort of my life has been a failure. Surely and steadily the hand of misfortune has crushed me until I have looked forward to my bier as a blessed bed of repose — rest from weariness — forgetfulness of remorse — escape from misery. At the dawn of life, ay, in its very beginning, there came to me a bitter, deadly, unmerciful enemy, accompanied in those days by song and laughter — an enemy that was swift in getting me in his power, and who, when I was once securely his victim, turned all laughter into wailing, and all songs into gobbing, and pressed to my bloated lips his poisonous chalice which I have ever found full of the stinging adders of hell and death. Too well do I know what it is to feel the burning and jagged links of the devil's chain cutting through my quivering flesh to the shrinking bone — to feel my nerves tremble with agony, and my brain burn as if bathed in liquids of fire — too well, I say, do I know what these things are, for I have felt them intensified again and again, ten thousand times. The infinite God alone knows the deep abyss of my sorrow, and help, if help be possible, can come from him alone.

I shall not attempt in these pages any learned disquisition upon the nature of alcohol — its hideous effects on the system — how it disarranges all the functions of the body — how it impairs health — blots out memory, dethrones reason, aud destroys the very soul itself — how it gives to the whole body an unnatural and unhealthy action, crucifying the flesh, blood, bones and marrow — how it paints hell in the mind and torture on the heart, and strangles hope with despair.

Nor shall I discuss the terrible and overshadowing evils, financial and social, inflicted by it on every class of society. Like the trail of the serpent it is over all. Look where you will, turn where you may, you can not be blind to its evils. It despoils manhood of all that makes manhood desirable ; it plucks hope from the breast of the weeping wife with a hand of ice; it robs the orphan of his bread crumb, and says to the gates of penitentiaries, " Open wide and often to the criminals who became my slaves before they committed crime." The evils of which I speak are not unknown to you, but have you considered them as things real? Have you fought them as present and near dangers? You have heard the wild sounds of drunken revelry mingling with the night winds; you have heard the shrieks and sobs, and seen the streaming, sunken eyes of dying women ; you have heard the unprotected and unfriended orphans' cry echoed from a thousand blighted homes and squalid tenements; you have seen the outcast family of the inebriate wandering houseless upon the highways, or shivering on the streets; you have shuddered at the sound of the maniac's scream upon the burdened air; you have beheld the human form divine despoiled of every humanizing attribute, transformed from an angel into a devil; you have seen virtue crushed by vice; the bright eye lose its lustre, the lips their power of articulation; you have seen what was clean become foul, what was upright become crooked, what was high become low — man, first in the order of created things, sunken to a level with brute beasts; and after all these you have or may have said to yourself, "All this is the work of the terrible demon, alcohol."

I shall not attempt to paint any of the countless scenes of degradation, and horror, and misery, which this demon has caused to be enacted. I shall leave without comment the endless train of crimes and vices, the beggary and devastation following the course of this foul Titan devil of ruin and damnation. I shall only endeavor to give a plain, truthful history of one who has felt every pang, every sorrow, every agony, every shame, every remorse, that the demon of drunkenness can inflict. I have nothing to thank this demon for, beyond a few fleeting — oh, how fleeting — hours of false delight. He has wrought only woe and loss to me. Even now, as I sit here in the stillness of desperation, afraid of I know not what, trembling with a strange dread of some impending doom, gazing in fright backward along the shores of the years whereon I see the wrecks of a thousand hopes, the destruction of every noble aspiration, the ruin of every noble resolve, I cry aloud against the utterness of the destroyer. My life has indeed been a sad one ; so sad, so lonely, that no language in my power of utterance can give to the reader a full conception of its moonless darkness. Would that the magic pen of a De Quincey were mine that my miseries might stand out until strong-hearted men and true-hearted women would weep, and every young man and maiden also would tremble and turn from everything intoxicating as from the oblivion of eternal death.

To many, certain events which I shall relate in this history may seem incredible ; some of the escapes may seem improbable ; but again let me assure you that there shall not be one word of exaggeration. The incidents took place just as I shall state them. I have passed through not only all that you will find recorded in these pages, but ten thousand times more. As I lift the dark veil and look back through the black, unlighted past, I shudder and hold my breath as scene after scene, each more appalling than the one just before it, rises like the phantom line of Banquo's issue, defining itself with pitiless distinctness upon my seared eyeballs, until the last and most awful of all stands tall and black by my side, and whispers, hisses, shrieks Madness in my ears. I bow my head and find a moment's relief from the anguish of soul in the hot scalding tears which stream down my fevered cheeks. O God of sure mercy, save other young men from the dark and desolate tortures which gnaw at my heart, and press down upon my weary soul ! They are all, all, all the work of alcohol. Oh, how true it is — how true few can understand until their lives are a burden of distress and agony to them — that the cup which inebriates stingeth like an adder. When you see it, turn from it as from a viper. Say to yourself as you turn to fly, "It stingeth like an adder!"

CHAPTEE II.

Birth, parentage, and early education — Early childhood — Early events — Memory of them vivid — Bitter desolation — An active but uneasy life — Breaking colts for amusement — Amount of sleep — Temperament has much to do in the matter of drink — - The author to blame for his misspent life — Inheritances — The excellences of my father and mother — The road to ruin not wilfully trodden — The people's indifference to a great danger — My associates — What became of them — The customs of twenty years ago — What might have been.

As to my birth, parentage and education, I am the last but one of a family of nine children, seven of whom were boys, and all of whom, excepting one brother, are now living. Both brothers and sisters are, without an exception, sober, industrious and honest. I was born in Rush county, Indiana, on the 9th day of September, 1847.

If there is one spot in all the black waste of desolation about which I cling with fond memory it is in my early childhood, and there is no part of my life that is so fresh and vivid as that embraced in those first early years. I can remember distinctly events which transpired when I was but two yeai's old, while I have forgotten thousands of incidents which have occurred within the past two years. While it is true that in early childhood a dark shadow fell athwart my pathway, making everything sombre and painful with an impression of desolation, yet was my condition happy in comparison with the rayless and pitchy blackness which subsequently folded its curtains close about my very being, seeming to make respiration impossible at times and life a nightmare of mockery. Seeming, do I say? Nay, it did, for nothing can be more real than our feelings, no matter how falsely they may be created. The agony of a dream is as keen while it lasts as any other — more so, because there is a helplessness about it which makes it harder to resist.

Many times, lying in my bed after a disgraceful debauch of days' or weeks' duration, has my memory winged its way through the realms of darkness in the mournful and lonesome past, back through years of horror and suffering to the green and holy morning of life, as it at this moment seems to me, and rested for an instant on some quiet hour in«that dawn which broke tempestuously, heralding the storms which would later gather and break about me. At such times I could distinctly remember the names and features of all the persons who dwelt in the vicinity of my father's house, although many of them died long ago or passed away from the neighborhood. I could at this time repeat word for word conversations which took place twenty -five years ago. I do not so much attribute this to a retentive memory as to the habit I have had of thiuking, when my mind was in a condition to think, of all that was a part of my early life. Again and again, as the years gather up around me, and the valley of life deepens its shadows toward the tomb, do I go back in memory to the days that were. Again and again do I awaken to the beauty, the love, the faces and friends of those days. They are all dear and sacred to me now, though I know they can come no more, and that the hollow spaces of time between the Here and There — the Now and Then — will reverberate forever with the echoes of many-voiced sorrows. Could those who meet me look down into the depths of my ghastly and bitter desolation, they would behold more appalling pictures of human agony than ever mortal eye gazed upon since the opening of the day of time — since the roses of Eden first bloomed and knew not the blight so soon to darken the earthly paradise by the rivers of the east. But I wander from my subject.

I lived and worked on my father's farm until I was eighteen years of age. As I have already said, even when a child I found myself sad and much depressed at times. I could not bear the society of my companions, and at such times would wander away alone to meditate and brood over my misery. At the very threshold of life I was dissatisfied and discontented with my surroundings. I was ever anxious and uneasy, ever longing for some undefinable, unnamable something — I knew not what, but, O God, I knew the desolation of feeling which was then mine. The sorrow of the grave is lighter than that. My life has always been an active one — restless, uneasy, and full of action, I naturally wanted to be doing something or going somewhere. From the time I was seven years old up to the time I was fifteen there was not a calf or colt on the farm that was not thoroughly broken to work or to be ridden. In this work or pastime of breaking in calves and colts I received sundry kicks, wounds, and bruises quite often, and still upon my person are some of the marks imprinted by untamed animals. I only speak of these things that the reader may know the character of my temperament, and thus be enabled to judge more correctly of it when influenced and excited by stimulants which will arouse to rash actions the dullest organizations. I was invariably the last one to go to bed when night came, but not the last to rise, for I always bounded out of bed ahead of the others; and in this connection I can assert with truth that for over twenty years I have not averaged over five hours of sleep out of every twenty-four during that time.

I have never found in all nature one object or occupation that gave me more than a swiftly passing gleam of contentment or pleasure. That the reader may clearly comprehend my present condition and impartially judge as to my culpability in certain of my acts, I desire that he may know the circumstances and surroundings of my childhood, for I do solemnly aver that my sorrows and miseries were not of my own planting in those days. While I believe that some men will be drunkards in spite of almost everything that can be done for their relief, others there are, no matter how surrounded, who never will be drunkards, but solely because they abstain from ever tasting the insidious poison. Temperament has much to do with the matter of drink, and could it be known and properly guarded against, I believe that a majority of those having the strongest predisposition to drink, if steps were taken in time, could be saved from its inevitable end, which is madness and death. I would here say to parents that it is their solemn duty to study well the disposition and temperament of their children from the hour of their birth. By proper training and restraint, all wrong impulses might be corrected and the child saved from a life of shameful misery, while they would themselves escape the sorrow which would come to them because of the wrong-doing of the child. While no person is particularly to blame for my misspent life, yet I can clearly see to-day how its worse than wasted years might have been years of use and honor. Its every tttep might have been planted with actions the memory of which would have been a blessing instead of a remorse.