following years an academy in a near neighboring town. Here I soon
began to suffer (what I now suppose) the ill effects of the false
education and false living (the tobacco-chewing, physical inertness,
mental partialness, and the rest) of long foregoing years. I began to
suffer greatly from gloom and depression of spirits. Short fits of
morbid gayety and long stretches of dullness and darkness made up the
present, while the future looked almost wholly black. I had indeed
been afflicted so long as I could remember with seasons of low
spirits, but _these_ glooms, for depth and long continuance,
transcended any thing I had ever experienced before. On festive
occasions, at which I was often present, I was accustomed to take a
glass or half-glass of wine with and like the rest; but other than
this, I used no stimulus and never had thought of keeping any at my
lodgings. In fact, so little was I _seasoned_ in this way that
half a glass of ordinary wine was enough to elevate my spirits many
degrees above their usual pitch. I know not why it never occurred to
me to use habitually what I found occasionally to be such a relief. A
few months after commencing school I attended with a party of friends
the celebration of the Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. The orator
was exceedingly eloquent; the occasion one of great enthusiasm; and
what with my intense previous excitement of mind, what with my
unseasoned brain, and what with the universal example of the wise and
good about me, I took so much wine at the public dinner as to be
completely intoxicated, and was only able after three or four hours of
sleep to attend the Pilgrim Ball. My shame, remorse, and horror on
this occasion was so far salutary that without any special resolution
I was for a long time after, a total abstinent. In fact this monitory
influence lasted with more or less force for six or seven years. But
the gloom and depression before spoken of came to a crisis. About a
year after my leaving college I broke down with a severe attack of
dyspepsia. A weight pressing continually on my chest, palpitation of
the heart, sleeplessness by night, or dreams that robbed sleep of all
repose, debility, languor, and increased gloom--such are some of the
symptoms that hung oppressively upon me for more than a year.
Under these circumstances I took a physician's advice. By his orders
I swallowed I know not how many bottles of bitters. Whether from their
effect or from Nature's curative power in despite of them, my ailments
at last mostly disappeared; but to this very hour I have been more or
less subject to the same physical inertness and unexcitability, low
spirits, and many like symptoms. No unexperienced person can imagine
what a life it is to be thus physically but half alive. The temptation
is incessant to raise by artificial helps the physical tone, in order
thus to attain activity and energy of mind. My only wonder is that I
did not sooner resort to what would at least give temporary relief to
the depression and torpor from which I suffered so much and so long.
After keeping school three years, being the last of the three a member
of the Cambridge Divinity School, I passed two years at that school
and was licensed to preach. My life there was the same false,
unnatural one it had been in college--much study and no bodily
exercise, a few faculties active and the greater number exercised
scarce at all. All this while, with the exception of tobacco, I used
no stimulants except on rare occasions, and then always in moderation.
In August, 1829, I was licensed as a preacher by the Boston
Ministerial Association. In the December following I was ordained a
minister at Lynn, Mass. In May, 1830, I was married, and in the
succeeding autumn became a housekeeper. Immediately on becoming an
ordained clergyman I procured one or two demijohns of wine as a
preparative for hospitality to my clerical brethren and to visitants
generally. Such was the custom universally, and in various ways I was
given to understand that I too must adopt it. Keeping wine at home now
for the first time, I tasted it doubtless oftener than ever before,
though still not habitually or with any approach to excess.
Furthermore, a member of my family, in debilitated health and a
dyspeptic, was ordered by the family physician, one of the most
distinguished of the Boston Faculty, to take brandy and water with
dinner as a tonic. A demijohn of brandy therefore took its place in
the closet beside the demijohn of wine already there, and on the daily
dinner-table was set a decanter of this liquid fire. For myself I had
as already intimated never perfectly recovered from my ancient
dyspeptic attack, nor was my present way of life very favorable to
health. To replenish this waste, a good deal of bodily exercise was
needed, but of such exercise I took scarce any at all.
It was then no uncommon thing for a minister to sit down on Saturday
evenings with a pot of green tea as strong as lye, or of coffee black
as ink, and a box of cigars beside him--drinking at the one and
puffing at the other all or most of the night through--and under the
excitement of these nerve-rasping substances trace rapidly on paper
the words which next day were to thrill or melt his listeners. A
final cup of tea or coffee, extra strong, and a last cigar before
entering the pulpit, gave him that fervor and unction of manner so
indispensable to eloquence. His theme, perhaps, was intemperance; and
with nerves tingling from the action of liquids which no swine will
drink, and of the plant which no swine will eat, he would portray most
vividly the terrible ruin wrought by intoxicating drink. Do not
believe, however, that in all this he was dishonest or hypocritical;
he was merely self-ignorant--blind to the fact that in condemning the
alcoholic inebriate he was by every word condemning himself as
well. This ignorance, however, could not obviate the effects of such
hideous outrage on the physical laws. I have dwelt on these points
partly for their intrinsic truth and importance, and partly as hearing
upon and explaining my own case. In ill health, languid and restless
from the causes pertaining to my then condition, I found in brandy or
wine a temporary relief for that languor and sedative for that
restlessness. When necessitated to write, and the mind was dull
because the body was sluggish, instead of seeking the needed life in
tea and coffee and tobacco-smoking, I found it more readily in brandy
or wine. In short, I began somewhat to depend on these stimulants for
the excitement I required for my work. I hardly need say I dreamed of
neither wrong nor danger in so doing, and it was yet a good while
before a case of intoxication awoke me from this false security. Thus
three years passed, at the close of which I removed to Brookline for
the health of a friend apparently declining in consumption. Just
before leaving I cast away the tobacco which I had used largely for
ten or eleven years. The struggle was a hard one, and the faintness
and uneasy cravings which long tormented me operated, I think, as a
temptation to replace the lost stimulus by increased quantities of
alcoholic stimulus. Under these circumstances I went to Brookline in
the beginning of February, 1833, and for three or four months I shut
myself up as sole attendant and nurse of a sick friend, apparently
dying. I had no external employment compelling my attention; there
were no outward objects to call me off from my infirmities and uneasy
sensations. I was alone with all these--alone with sickness and
coining death--alone with a gloomy present and a clouded future--and
the bottle stood near, promising relief. It is not very strange that I
resorted oftener than before to its treacherous comfort, and became
more than ever accustomed to depend upon it. I believe, however, that
only once during these months was I positively overcome by it, and I
was very ready to cheat myself into the belief that other causes were
in fault besides, and as much as alcohol. The ensuing summer I spent
partly in Cambridge and partly in travelling with the invalid who
still survived; and with health considerably improved I continued
stimulus, though I think in rather less quantities than in the winter
preceding. Once, however, I was badly intoxicated with port wine, and
so ill as greatly to alarm my friends and induce them to call in a
physician, who administered a powerful emetic. Whether or not he
understood the nature of my ailment I never knew. My friends I think
did not, and I was very willing to cheat myself into the belief that
the wine thus affected me because I was ill from other causes.
At the close of August of this year I went to Brooklyn, New York, to
preach for a few Sundays to a handful of persons who had just united
to attempt forming a new religious society. I remained through the
winter following. A society was gathered; I was installed over it, and
there continued till the summer of 1837. These four years were to me
tremendous years. They seem to me, in looking back, like a long, sick,
feverish dream. Even now I can hardly but shudder at the remembrance
of glooms of midnight blackness and sufferings that mock all endeavors
at description: for it absolutely appears to me on the review that not
for one week of these four years was I a free, healthful, sober, man;
not one week but I was rent by a fierce conflict between "the law of
the members and the law of the mind." How it was I executed the
amount I did, of intellectual labor--how it was I accomplished the
results I did, Is to me an impenetrable mystery. I began to address in
a hired school-house a handful of persons, having most of them but a
slight mutual acquaintance, and in my farewell discourse I addressed a
fair-sized, closely-united congregation assembled in their own
conveniently-spacious church, with the organization and all the
customary belongings of the oldest worshiping societies. Not one
Sunday of that time was I disenabled by my fatal habits to perform the
customary offices; but I did not understand my condition in any thing
like its reality as now I look back upon it. My actual state was known
to but very few in its entireness--I may say to absolutely none of
those I daily companied with--and I did at the close of that period
receive an honorable dismissal at my own request, a request made for
reasons distinct from this; nor between myself and people, or any of
them, was there ever a word exchanged on this subject from first to
last. "Truth is strange, stranger than fiction."
I shall not attempt going through these years in detail. I went to
Brooklyn with the habit of depending on alcohol to a considerable
extent for physical tone and mental excitement, though not with the
_habit_ of losing my balance thereby.
It was some time after establishing myself in New York before I became
at all awake to my condition. At considerable intervals I had two or
three attacks of convulsionary fits. My physician gave them some
name--I hardly remember what--but he did not specify the cause. I now
understand them to have been intoxication fits. I suspected then that
alcohol had some connection with them, and I was so far aroused to
this and other evils of my way of life that I attempted total
abstinence. But besides a host of uneasy sensations, I at once
experienced such a lack of bodily strength and of mental life and
activity that to think or write, or apply myself to my tasks
generally, I found impossible.
After making several abortive attempts of this kind, I tried at last
the substitution of laudanum for alcohol. It was a most fatal move!
for the final result was a bondage of which previously I had not even
a conception. At first, however, I seemed as though lifted out of the
pit into Paradise. Instead of the feverish, tumultuous excitement of
alcohol, I experienced a calm, equable, thrilling enjoyment. My whole
being was exalted from its previous turmoil and perturbation and heat,
to dwell in a region of serenity and peace and quiet bliss. But alas
for the reverse side of the picture! The total prostration, the depth
of depression, the more than infantile feebleness following the
reaction of this excitement--the multitude of uneasy, uncomfortable,
often bewildering sensations pertaining to the habit, are such as can
not be conveyed to one inexperienced in the matter. But any one may
decide that the presence and incorporation with the system, in large
quantities, of a poison which is so deadly a foe to life and all
life's movements can not be without very marked and baneful
results. The fact is that there is not one out of the thousand various
functions of the body which is not deranged and turned away by this
cause, and the movements of the mind and heart are from sympathy
hardly less morbid. Whether such a state must not be one of sufferings
many, and often frightful, every one may judge.
But worse even than this followed. It was not very long before the
opium nearly lost its power to excite and enliven, though it still
kept an inexorable clutch on every fibre of my frame, and I was
compelled to take it daily to keep the very current of life flowing.
To make my condition worse still, while obliged to use opium daily to
prolong even this existence--gloomy and apathetic as it was--I found
that in order to think or work with any thing of vigor I absolutely
required, every now and then, some excitement which opium now would
not give. I tried, therefore, strong tea and coffee and
tobacco-smoking. But all these were not enough, and I found there was
nothing for me but to try alcohol again; so that the upshot of my
experiment of substituting opium for alcohol was, that I got opium,
alcohol, tea, coffee, and tobacco-smoking fastened upon me all at once
and all in excessive quantities; and the consequence of using alcohol
was that no caution I could employ would secure me from occasional
intoxication. Such was my physical derangement that I never could be
certain beforehand of the degree of effect which alcoholic stimulus
would exert upon me, and the same quantity which at one time would
produce only the excitement I sought, would under other physical
conditions completely overcome me.
During my last two years in Brooklyn I made several attempts to break
away from opium and other stimulus, and each time made considerable
progress. But the same circumstances yet existed that originally led
to the evil, and in fact others of the same class had been superadded,
while the whole operated with aggravated force, so that I found or
thought it impossible to achieve my freedom without disclosing my
state, and thus, as I supposed, setting the seal to my own temporal
ruin. Once and again, therefore, I went back to my dungeon.
It may here be remarked that the sedentary man has extraordinary
difficulties to contend with in such a case. His occupation being
lonely, and demanding no bodily exertion, he has little or nothing to
draw off, _perforce_, his attention from the innumerable aches
and tormenting sensations which beset him, sometimes for months
without cessation, in going through the extricating process. To sit
still and endure long-protracted torment demands a resolution compared
with which the courage that carries one into a battle-field is a
paltry thing.
But this bondage so galling, this position so false in all ways, and
so severely condemned alike by conscience and honor, determined me at
last to attempt my freedom at the cost even of life, if need be. I
broke up housekeeping, sent my family away, and commenced the
struggle. I had a bad cold at the time, besides a complication of
various cares and distresses which probably increased the severity of
the trial. Violent brain-fever came on, accompanied with universal
inflammation and a host of sensations for which I never could find any
name. It seemed as if my arteries and veins ran with boiling water
instead of blood, and as the current circulated through the brain I
felt as if it actually boiled up against and tossed the skull at the
top of my head, as you have seen the water in a tea-kettle rattling
the lid. My hearing was affected in a thousand strange ways: I heard a
swimming noise which went monotonously on for weeks without
cessation. The ocean, with all its varieties of sound, was forever in
my hearing. Sometimes I heard the long billowy swell of the sea after
a hard blow; again I could hear the sharp, fuming collision of waves
in a storm; and then for hours I would listen to the solemn,
continuous roar, intermitted with the booming, splashing wash of the
tempest-roused surge upon the beach. Almost incessantly, too, I heard
whisper ing, sharp and hissing, on every side--outside and inside of
my room--and the whisperers I imagined were all saying hard things of
myself.
Meantime my mind was under tremendous excitement, and all its
faculties, especially the imagination, were preternaturally active,
vivid, and rapid-working. Such was my mental excitement and bodily
irritation that for ten days and nights I slept hardly at all, nor
enjoyed one moment's release from pain. That I was thoroughly in
earnest in what I had undertaken will appear from the fact that all
this time I had in a drawer within reach a bottle of laudanum, which I
knew would in a few moments give me ease and sleep. Yet thus agonized
and half delirious, I notwithstanding left it untouched. I was mostly
confined to the house about four weeks. The inflammation gradually
subsiding left me as weak as a child--so morbidly sensitive that
tears flowed on the slightest occasion, and with my whole frame
pervaded by a dull, incessant ache. To these symptoms were added
coldness of the extremities, an obstinate determination of blood to
the head, which swelled the vessels of the face and brain almost to
bursting, susceptibility to fatigue on the least exertion, physical or
mental, and so great a confusion and wandering of thought that it was
only by a violent effort that my mind could be brought to act
continuously or with the least vigor.
As soon as I was able to go abroad I joined my family in the
neighborhood of Boston, in the hope of benefiting by change of
scene. Remaining here for several months without much improvement of
health, I felt called on for various reasons to resign my charge in
New York. Thus left with a family and very slender resources, I was
compelled, feeble as I was, to bestir myself for their and my own
support. No employment offered itself but that of my profession, and
unfit, therefore, as I felt myself, body and mind, for this, I saw no
alternative but to preach as occasion presented. It was a most cruel
necessity, for without some artificial aid I was unable even to stand
through the pulpit services. As a choice of evils I used wine and
brandy; for the terrors of opium were still too recent.
In the closing part of December, 1837, I went to the city of
Washington to preach for six or seven Sundays. The same necessity,
real or supposed, of stimulating, followed me through the six weeks of
my stay there. One day at the close of this period, feeling unusually
ill and languid, I sent a servant out for a bottle of brandy. I
remember pouring out and drinking a single glass of it, and this is
the last and whole of my recollection for two days. I awoke and was
told I had been exceedingly ill. I must have been very badly
intoxicated, though how or why I was so, I know not to this day. So
soon as I could hold up my head I went by invitation to Baltimore, and
stayed there some three weeks with a college friend. While there I
learned from various sources that I was at last palpably and generally
exposed and disgraced. I relinquished my profession at once both in
reality and name, deeming this the least I could do in the
circumstances. About the middle of March, 1838, with shattered,
miserable health, overwhelmed with regret and shame and remorse, and
the future palled with funereal black, I set out for the residence of
relatives in Vermont. Here I remained two and a quarter years,
studying law with my sister's husband, who was an attorney and
counsellor. For several months I used no stimulus except tobacco,
which in the desperate restlessness of the previous summer I had again
began to chew after four years' interruption. I of course was weak and
languid from this great abstraction of stimulus, coupled with the
effects of the severe illness I had undergone. This debility rendered
more severe the endurance of other evils of my condition. No wonder
that under such wear and tear my nervous system should have become
shattered. I was attacked with tic-douloureux. Though suffering
severely, old recollections gave me such dread of anodyne and tonic
medicines--which I thought it most likely would be administered--that
I delayed for some time seeking medical advice. Pain, however, at last
drove me to it, and from two physicians I received a prescription of
morphlne and quinine. I knew that morphine was a preparation of opium,
but supposing it a preparation leaving out the stimulating and
retaining only the sedative properties of the drug, I imagined it less
dangerous than crude opium. With this opinion--with excruciating pain
on one side and on the other relief in the physicians' prescription--
it is not very strange I chose relief. I used the morphine until
apparently the neuralgic affection was cured. On attempting then to
lay it aside I found the habit of stimulating again fastened upon
me. Once more I found myself neither more nor less than a bond slave
to opium to all intents and purposes. With my existing physical
debility, with a pressing host of perplexities and tribulations, and
with my appalling remembrances of the former struggle, I could not
summon resolution and perseverance enough to achieve a second
emancipation. So regulating the quantity as well as I could, I waited
in hope of some more auspicious season for the attempt.
In the latter part of June, 1840, I went to New York city to complete
my third year of legal study. I was at the time weak in body and
low-spirited, and my debility was increased by the extraordinary heat
of the weather. I was disappointed too in several arrangements on
which I had reckoned. The result of all this was a want of physical
and moral energy which precluded the attempt at emancipation from
opium which I had purposed to make on my arrival; and worse than this,
I found myself rapidly getting into the way of adding brandy to opium
to procure the desired amount of excitement, as had formerly been the
case. I came to the conclusion that I could not achieve my freedom
alone, but must have help. I had no home, and after casting about I
could devise no better scheme than to enter the Insane Hospital at
Bloomingdale. I accordingly went there and stayed thirteen weeks. I
found on arriving, that neither myself nor the friends I had advised
with had understood the conditions of a residence in that Institution;
for to their disappointment and mine I was locked into the lunatic
ward and at total abandonment of stimulus, in a state of intense
nervous excitement, I was for several days, especially during nights,
kept on the very verge of frenzy by the mutterings and gibberings, the
howlings and horrid execrations of the mad creatures, my
neighbors. Without occupation for mind or body--with all things
disturbing about me--with deeply depressing remembrances, and the
future showing black as midnight--I remained here three months, and
it is marvellous that these causes alone did not utterly destroy
me. But to fill up the measure, I was attacked with fever and ague,
which kept me burning and freezing, shaking and aching, for several
weeks, and reduced me to such a degree of feebleness that I kept my
bed most of the time. Thus I left the Institution more shattered
physically than when I entered--so shattered that it was full two
years before I regained my customary measure of bodily strength.
It being now the first of December, 1840, I entered a law office in
Wall Street, where I remained till the following July. For some
months I enjoyed a glimpse of sunshine and had the hope of being
established in business by my employer. But in the spring of 1841 his
business fell off so largely that he dismissed three clerks who were
there on my entering, and counselled me to seek some more promising
sphere. Thus I was again afloat, knowing not whither to turn, and so
discouraged as to care little what became of me. One thing only seemed
stable and permanent, and that was the temptation to seek a temporary
exhilaration in my depression, and a brief oblivion of my troubles, in
alcohol.