about a month after that, he walked in on me quite sober,

and looking somewhat as he did the first day I saw him,
thanked me for what I had done for him; delivered one of the most impressive

discourses on intemperance that I ever heard; and asked me to try
to help him get work. He was willing to do anything, he said; that is,

anything he could do. I got him a place with a friend of mine
which he kept a week, then got drunk. We got hold of him, however,

and sobered him up, and he escaped the police and the justice's court.
Being out of work, and very firm in his resolution never to drink again,

we lent him some money -- a very little -- with which to keep along
a few days, on which he got drunk immediately, and did fall into the hands

of the police, and was sent to jail as before. This, in fact,
was his regular round: into jail, out of jail; a little spell of sobriety,

"an accidental fall", which occurred as soon as he could get a drop of liquor,
and into jail again for thirty or sixty days, according to the degree

of resistance he gave the police -- who always, by their own account,
simply tried to get him to go home, and, by his, insulted him --

and to the violence of the language he applied to them. In this he excelled;
for although as quiet as possible when he was sober, when he was drunk

he was a terror, so the police said, and his resources of vituperation
were cyclopedic. He possessed in this particular department an eloquence

which was incredible. His blasphemy was vast, illimitable, infinite.
He told me once that he could not explain it; that when he was sober

he abhorred profanity, and never uttered an oath; when he was in liquor
his brain took this turn, and distilled blasphemy in volumes.

He said that all of its energies were quickened and concentrated
in this direction, and then he took not only pleasure, but pride in it.

He told me a good deal of his life. He had got very low
at this time, much lower than he had been when I first knew him.

He recognized this himself, and used to analyze and discuss himself
in quite an impersonal way. This was when he had come out of jail,

and after having the liquor "dried out" of him. In such a state
he always referred to his condition in the past as being something

that never would or could recur; while on the other hand,
if he were just over a drunk, he frankly admitted his absoluteslavery

to his habit. When he was getting drunk he shamelessly maintained,
and was ready to swear on all the Bibles in creation, that he had not

touched a drop, and never expected to do so again -- indeed,
could not be induced to do it -- when in fact he would at the very time

be reeking with the fumes of liquor, and perhaps had his pocket then
bulging with a bottle which he had just emptied, and would willingly

have bartered his soul to refill.
I never saw such absolutedominion as the love of liquor had over him.

He was like a man in chains. He confessed it frankly and calmly.
He said he had a disease, and gave me a history of it. It came on him,

he said, in spells; that when he was over one he abhorred it, but when
the fit seized him it came suddenly, and he was in absoluteslavery to it.

He said his father was a gentleman of convivial habits (I have heard that
he was very dissipated, though not openly so, and "No. 4" never admitted it).

He was killed at the battle of Bull Run. His mother -- he always spoke of her
with unvarying tenderness and reverence -- had suffered enough, he said,

to canonize her if she were not a saint already; she had brought him up
to have a great horror of liquor, and he had never touched it

till he went into the army. In the army he was in a convivial crowd,
and they had hard marching and poor rations, often none. Liquor was scarce,

and was regarded as a luxury; so although he was very much afraid of it,
yet for good fellowship's sake, and because it was considered mannish,

he used to drink it. Then he got to like it; and then got to feel
the need of it, and took it to stimulate him when he was run down.

This want brought with it a great depression when he did not have
the means to satisfy it. He never liked the actual taste of it;

he said few drunkards did. It was the effect that he was always after.
This increased on him, he said, until finally it was no longer a desire,

but a passion, a necessity; he was obliged to have it. He felt then
that he would commit murder for it. "Why, I dream about it," he said.

"I will tell you what I have done. I have made the most solemn vows,
and have gone to bed and gone to sleep, and waked up and dressed

and walked miles through the rain and snow to get it. I believe
I would have done it if I had known I was going next moment to hell."

He said it had ruined him; said so quite calmly; did not appear to have
any special remorse about it; at least, never professed any; said it used to

trouble him, but he had got over it now. He had had a plantation -- that is,
his mother had had -- and he had been quite successful for a while;

but he said, "A man can't drink liquor and run a farm," and the farm had gone.
I asked him how?

"I sold it," he said calmly; "that is, persuaded my mother to sell it.
The stock that belonged to me had nearly all gone before.

A man who is drinking will sell anything," he said. "I have sold
everything in the world I had, or could lay my hands on. I have never got

quite so low as to sell my old gray jacket that I used to wear when I rode
behind old Joe. I mean to be buried in that -- if I can keep it."

He had been engaged to a nice girl; the wedding-day had been fixed;
but she had broken off the engagement. She married another man.

"She was a mighty nice girl," he said, quietly. "Her people did not like
my drinking so much. I passed her not long ago on the street.

She did not know me." He glanced down at himself quietly. "She looks older
than she did." He said that he had had a place for some time, did not

drink a drop for nearly a year, and then got with some of the old fellows,
and they persuaded him to take a little. "I cannot touch it. I have either

got to drink or let it alone -- one thing or the other," he said.
"But I am all right now," he declared triumphantly, a little of the old fire

lighting up in his face. "I never expect to touch a drop again."
He spoke so firmly that I was persuaded to make him a little loan,

taking his due-bill for it, which he always insisted on giving.
That evening I saw him being dragged along by three policemen,

and he was cursing like a demon.
In the course of time he got so low that he spent much more than half his time

in jail. He became a perfect vagabond, and with his clothes ragged and dirty
might be seen reeling about or standing around the street corners

near disreputable bars, waiting for a chance drink, or sitting asleep
in doorways of untenanted buildings. His companions would be one or two

chronic drunkards like himself, with red noses, bloated faces, dry hair,
and filthy clothes. Sometimes I would see him hurrying along

with one of these as if they had a piece of the most important business
in the world. An idea had struck their addled brains that by some means

they could manage to secure a drink. Yet in some way he still held himself
above these creatures, and once or twice I heard of him being under arrest

for resenting what he deemed an impertinence from them.
Once he came very near being drowned. There was a flood in the river,

and a large crowd was watching it from the bridge. Suddenly a little girl's
dog fell in. It was pushed in by a ruffian. The child cried out,

and there was a commotion. When it subsided a man was seen swimming for life
after the little white head going down the stream. It was "No. 4".

He had slapped the fellow in the face, and then had sprung in after the dog.
He caught it, and got out himself, though in too exhausted a state

to stand up. When he was praised for it, he said, "A member of
old Joe's company who would not have done that could not have ridden

behind old Joe." I had this story from eye-witnesses, and it was used
shortly after with good effect; for he was arrested for burglary,

breaking into a man's house one night. It looked at first
like a serious case, for some money had been taken out of a drawer;

but when the case was investigated it turned out that the house
was a bar-room over which the man lived, -- he was the same man

who had pitched the dog into the water, -- and that "No. 4",
after being given whiskey enough to make him a madman, had been put out

of the place, had broken into the bar during the night to get more,
and was found fast asleep in a chair with an empty bottle beside him.