Warnings were not wanting, but they had no voice of terror for me. I
was intimately acquainted with a young man in the town, and well
remember his coming to my shop one morning and asking the loan of
ninepence with which to buy rum. I let him have the money, and the
spirit was soon consumed. He begged me to lend him a second ninepence,
but I refused; yet, during my temporary absence, he drank some spirit
of wine which was in a bottle in the shop, and used by me in my
business. He went away, and the next I heard of him was that he had
died shortly afterward. Such an awful circumstance as this might well
have impressed me, but habitual indulgence had almost rendered me
impervious to salutary impressions. I was, at this time, deeper in
degradation than at any period before which I can remember.

My custom now was to purchase my brandy--which, in consequence of my
limited means, was of the very worst description--and keep it at the
shop, where, by little and little, I drank it, and continually kept
myself in a state of excitement.

This course of procedure entirely unfitted me for business, and it not
unfrequently happened, when I had books to bind, that I would instead
of attending to business keep my customers waiting, whilst in the
company of desolute companions I drank during the whole day, to the
complete ruin of my prospects in life. So entirely did I give myself
up to the bottle that those of my companions who fancied they still
possessed some claims to respectability gradually withdrew from my
company. At my house, too, I used to keep a bottle of gin, which was
in constant requisition. Indeed, go where I would, stimulant I must
and did have. Such a slave was I to the bottle that I resorted to it
continually, and in vain was every effort which I occasionally made to
conquer the debasing habit. I had become a father; but God in his