Of course, for the most part of the time, I knew not where
I was. As I think of it now, I know that I was in hell. My thirst for
whisky was positively maddening. I tried every means to quit, when
conscious of my existence: I voluntarily entered the calaboose more than
once, and was locked up, but the instant I got out, the madness caused me
to fly where liquor was. I drank it in enormous quantities, and smothered
without quenching the scorching, blazing fires of hell which were making
cinders and ashes of every hope and energy of my being. I made my bed among
serpents; I fed on flames and poison; I walked with demons and ghouls; all
unutterable and slimy monsters crawled around and over me; every breath
that I drew reeked with the odor of death; every beat of my fast-throbbing
heart sent the hissing, boiling blood through my veins, which returned and
froze about it. I have neither words nor images sufficiently horrible to
typify my condition. I became, for the time an abhorred object; the sex of
my sainted mother made a wide sweep to pass me by, and dear, little,
innocent children fled from me as from a monster.
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