"
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.
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