My object was to free myself, to
break my manacles, to open the door of my prison cell and walk forth in the
upright posture of a man. Sadly I write, "in vain!" If I fled, the demon
outran me; if I broke a link, the demon moulded another; if I prayed, he
put the curse into my mouth. As I look back over my horror-haunted, broken,
misspent, and false existence, I realize how worthless I am, and I see that
my life is a failure. I am in my thirty-second year, and am prematurely
old, without the wisdom, or gray hairs, or goodness, or truth, or respect
which should accompany age. My heart is frosty but not my hair.
I will now endeavor to recite some of the scenes through which I passed,
that the reader may form for himself an opinion regarding my sufferings. I
left Rushville on one of my periodical sprees (I do not remember the exact
time, but no matter about that, the fact is burning in my memory), and
after three or four weeks of blind, insane, drunken, unpremeditated
travel--heaven only knows where--I found myself again in Rushville, but
more dead than alive. I experienced a not unfamiliar but most strange
foreboding that some terrible calamity was impending.
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