feeling of heroic bravery-a wild maddening sense of power came over me which crushed all others. The inebriate has his laws, they become fixed, and are as immutable as those of nature. By them did I try myself-and was acquitted. Liquor triumphed, and I, for that triumph loved it

the more.

CHAPTER II.

"There is madness in the cup."

There are times when reflection breaks in upon the soul; it is in such moments the loud voice of insulted nature is heard, the echo of which dooms its victim to everlasting misery. It is at such moments horrid reflection rushes in upon the mind, and coerces reason, with its startling truths, until a mightier power breaks the spell. That power is Wine! whose immortal spirit none can fathom, whose boundlessness none can penetrate. It claims a charter as extensive as the winds, and its fury is as swift-it courts mankind, to damn them-it smiles but to betray-it cheers but to madden! I looked back over the short career of my life; my property was wasting away, yet I valued it not; worldly matters are beneath the thought of him who is lifted to Elysium by madness. There are several kinds of insanity; mine was the extatic, the excitable, the pleasing kind. All men are mad who drink; start not, reader, it is an ordeal all men must pass through to reach the world celestial—a world liquor creates! It is your guide hither; to reach it you must suffer, aye, as I have suffered.

I became a lover; how, when, where, I cannot tell. I loved, and the object of my love returned it. I have an indistinct recollection of a large assembly, a pair of sparkling eyes, ruby lips, and features of an angel. There was a

wildness in our loves, unaccountable. My phrenzied passion was construed into adoration; my distraction, the effects of her fairy beauty. She was truly beautiful, and became the object of my adoration. I worshipped, I knelt to her; for I loved her more, because that feeling counteracted the eating sharpness of the other. Love, however, is but another sort of madness.-The one acts on the brain, the other on the heart. Wine had thrown around the latter a magic chain; love o'erleapt it; and revelled there; mind became the chamber for a mixed assemblage of thoughts.-She seemed an angel in virtue, a Venus in form. I tore gradually down the barrier which education had erected around the first; softened her frigid opinions of Plato, by praising the latter, and in a moment of madness-misplaced confidence on her part—she yielded, and fell a victim to my arts. I triumphed, and shouted out in the fulness of my success, huzza! huzza! My brain was on fire, and I left her to misery and shame. Alas! poor Maria! thou wert born to sorrow, and I forsook thee, surrounded with its worst of attendants, a tainted name. I could not save thee, for Iwas past salvation!

The kindred ties, the power of friendship, which bind man to man, are severed by the all-potent alchemy of liquor. I quarrelled with my companions, shunned society, and rushed singly on to destruction. I felt happy alone; the bottle was my chum, my comrade. We slept together, and when I awoke of a morning, with palsied limbs, nerveless strength, trembling with the shocks from rum's battery, I found a Physician there; strange, it was the cause of my suffering, and of my alleviation! Strengthened by the same medicine, whose adverse qualities I could not comprehend, I rushed onward. The day-dream was of "night's horrors," the phantasy of the night was cheered by the

hope of day. I was taken by an officer, for debt. I had no money, and when reason crept slowly o'er the burning lake of the brain, it showed me the inside of my prison walls. I cast my eyes back, and saw with astonishment the vast leap I had taken from the bright path of honor into the vortex of contumely and guilt. My property was gone, myself alone in the world, standing, or rather lying on a bed of straw, a living monument of human misery. I had undergone much, I had suffered much,-chains had eaten my flesh-my head had been shaved—I was a skeleton—every bone, muscle, fibre, of my body tingled as if touched by the electric rod. I had been raving--MAD.

I was not long an inmate of a prison house; the wholesome laws of our land soon liberated me, and I once more breathed the fresh pure air of liberty. My mind had undergone a change. I had been hurled from affluence to poverty; my affairs were changed.

I still had a quantity of clothing, and some trinkets; these my creditors left, good souls! part I disposed of, and with what cash I received determined to quit the scenes of former glory and present degradation forever. I called upon some few of those friends who had tasted largely of my bounty, but alas! they were friends no more; their behavior was cold and chilling. I cursed their selfishness in the bitterness of my heart, and a spirit of revenge, deadly in its nature, took possession of my soul. If Bowie-knives had then. been invented, I should have procured one; thanks to Heaven, those murderous weapons were then unknown. I sought employment, but the mark of Cain was on my brow, the everlasting curse of innocence deserted was written upon each and every line of my face, and I found myself an outcast from fortune, and from my kind. Smarting under the pang of mental and physical pain, I entered a grog-shop,

one of those corner houses, which Holy Writ tells us to be aware of. My means being small, my appearance and dress were shabby, I called for some gin (wine was now beyond my reach,) I snatched the glass, swallowed the contents, and handed the man a sixpence; reader, judge of my astonishment, when he gave me fourpence change. Two cents for a glass of gin; shade of my fortune, but this was wonderful. I felt my spirits expanding, and a new world was opened before me. Here was the means for an other age of inebriety. Glorious thought! What a field for the independent soul to revel in!-two cents for a glass of gin! why, I could swim in it! Here, I exclaimed, pennies will produce insanity of bliss. Mighty genius of the still! economy was thy object-the poor man's comfort thy aim. The ingredients of common gin act like wildfire on the combustible material of the brain, its effects are swift and sure. I blazed again-my brain was on fire-I laughed and shouted in an agony of bliss.

I still had fifteen dollars cash, which meted out in small portions, would, as I thought, extend to the distant ages of eternity. There were no bounds to my seeming wealth, which promised years of gratification. I seated myself on a stone, like old Diogenes in his tub, and mocked the passers by. I laughed aloud at the poor mechanic, for what was his dull plodding, starving existence, to the glory of mine. I sat upon as proud a throne as ever did the Imperial Cæsar; thought had its unlimited sway, and spirit its intuitive power. I grinned at the merchant, the bargaining systematic, cheating trader. I mocked the lawyer, and shrank from the doctor-while I chuckled at the sot. The preacher turned away his head-I had no alms for him, preachers are only happy when they can handle money, and worship it like the wretched miser. I spat at the law-smiled at

the women-cursed the aristocrat.

A kindred link like

feeling, bound me to those of my class-for they despised like me the common things of earth, and the dull routine of human reason, they had ambition to become monarchs, and dared to create for themselves a world of their own!*

CHAPTER III.

My lodgings were in a part of the town the most depraved. Vice and immorality had encircled the street, and beastly intoxication seemed engendered there. I boarded with a woman who begged from others that which she provided for us, my bed was straw, yet I was happy! Insensibility to things material, the annihilation of reflection is at all times a source of happiness; the exhilarating effects of liquor kept me above them, and created dreams of hope, which, as they could never be realized, tended to keep an additional furnace burning within me,-I became avaricious but not industrious: I kept my little stock of money to perpetuate existence; I found labor, therefore, essential to keep it from wasting. I had now become so low in the scale of human existence, that I was not ashamed to split wood. True, I was not my original self; no man would be seen in such situations, and in the place of his nativity and former splendor, if he deemed it a disgrace.-No, I felt proud of my station: Socrates was not more so when he received homage from emperors: nature had revolted from me, and I was the mere creature of artificial existence.

They say that galvanism gives motion to inanimate things. -but what is galvanism compared to immortal liquor? will coerce reason from her throne, and establish its power

* The reader will remember, these are the ravings of a maniac.