I now come to an event in my life which affected me at the time beyond the
power of words, and which I can not without tears of choking sorrow even
now dwell upon. I refer to the death of my mother, which occurred during
the winter after my going to Rushville in 1867. She had been sick a long
time, and had suffered very intense pain, but for days before her death I
think she forgot her own physical torments in anxiety and solicitude about
me. I went home a few days before she died, and remained with her until the
last. She talked to me much and often, always begging and pleading with me
as only a dying mother can plead, to save myself from the life of a
drunkard. I promised her solemnly and honestly that I would never again
taste liquor. As I gazed upon her wasted face and read death in every
lineament, and heard the dread angel's approach in every breath of pain she
drew, and saw above all in her fast dimming eye that the horrors of her
approaching dissolution were almost unthought of in her care for me, I
resolved deep down in my heart never to taste liquor again, and kneeling by
her dying form, I called heaven to witness that no more, oh, never, never
more, would I go in the way of the drunkard, or touch, in any form, the
unpitying and soul-destroying curse.
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