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 step might have been planted with actions the memory of
which would have been a blessing instead of a remorse.
I have no recollection of a time when I had not an appetite for liquor. My
parents and friends of course knew that if it was taken in excess it would
lead to destruction, but in our quiet neighborhood, where little was known
of its excesses, no one dreamed of the fearful curse which slumbered in it
for me to awake. Had they had the least dread, fear, or anticipation of it
they would have left nothing undone that being done might have saved me. My
appetite for it was born with me, and was as much a part of myself as the
air I breathed. There are three kinds of inheritances, some of money and
lands, some of superior or great talents, and others of misfortunes. For
myself this misfortune was my inheritance. It came not to me directly from
my father or mother, but from my mother's father, and seemed to lie waiting
for me for three or four generations, and the mistakes and passion of long
dead great grandparents reappeared in me, thus fulfilling, with terrible
truth, the words of the divine book.
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