There were on that
day as many as four fights, with enough miscellaneous howling, cursing and
billingsgate to fill out the natural make-up of a hundred more. I was
drunk--so drunk that I did not know at the last whether my name was Benson
or Bennington. I suppose I would have sworn to the latter, had the question
been raised, but it was not. I did not fight, for, as I have said, I seemed
to have an instinctive dread of doing something terrible in the event of my
getting engaged in combat with another. Like Falstaff, it may be, I was a
coward on instinct. I have always thought, moreover, that the Hudibrastic
aphorism is worthy of practice, because nothing can be more evident than
the fact that
"----He who runs away
May live to fight another day."
From that time to the commencement of the season for county fairs, five or
six weeks later, I kept in a condition of sobriety. County fairs, I wish to
say, and especially the Rush county fairs, did more toward bringing on the
disastrous career which has been mine--a career which has befouled the
record of my life and marked almost every page of its history--witness this
biography--with blots of shame, discord and unholy suffering than any other
cause of an external character.
Pages:
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69