All day I drew
my breath with painful difficulty, and thought that each respiration would
be the last. I raised the car window and put out my head so that the
rushing air would strike my face, and this revived me. When I got home my
brother was buried. I had left him a few days before in good health and
proud in his strength. I returned to find him hidden forever from my sight
by the remorseless grave. What I felt and suffered no one knew, nor can
ever know. Every night for weeks I could see my brother in life, but the
cold reality of death came back to me with the light of day. I was stunned
and almost crazed by the blow, and yet there were not wanting persons who,
incapable of a deep pang of sorrow, said that I did not care. Could they
have been made to suffer for one night the agony which I endured for weeks
they would learn to feel for the miseries of others, and at the same time
have a knowledge of what sufferings the human heart is capable.
My next move was to Bluffton, Wells county, Indiana, where I arranged to go
into the practice of the law. But here at Bluffton, as elsewhere, were the
devil's recruiting offices--the saloons--and the first night after I
reached the town I got drunk.
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