The reader need
not be told that this gifted young lawyer was walking into the very
jaws of death. There were soon alarming rumors that he was becoming
dangerously addicted to drink, and his friends entreated him to save
himself while he could, and he made promise to his mother and wife to
reform. But, alas! it was too late!
I was traveling home from Topeka, and on the railroad train I met a
gentleman from Atchison--an intimate friend of this young lawyer--and
I was congratulating him on the reformation of our mutual friend. He
shook his head, and said: "don't deceive yourself. He tells me that
he can remain sober two or three months, but that then he can held out
no longer, and, not wishing to make a public spectacle of himself, he
buys a bottle of liquor, locks himself up in his room, and goes into a
regular debauch. Then, after three or four days, he is able to appear
on the streets again."
After a while the friends of this young man buried him. The doctors
gave his sickness a respectable name, and reported that he had died of
such a disease as decent people may die of, but his friends, with
heart-breaking sorrow, knew they were burying a man who had died of a
drunken debauch.
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