I felt that I was shunned by the respectable portion of the community
also; and once, on asking a lad to accompany me in a walk, he informed
me that his father had cautioned him against associating with me. This
was a cutting reproof, and I felt it more deeply than words can
express. And could I wonder at it? No. Although I may have used
bitter words against that parent, my conscience told me that he had
done no more than his duty in preventing his son being influenced by my
dissipated habits. Oh! how often have I lain down and bitterly
remembered many who had hailed my arrival in their company as a joyous
event. Their plaudits would resound in my ears, and peals of laughter
ring again in my deserted chamber; then would succeed stillness, broken
only by the beatings of my agonized heart, which felt that the gloss of
respectability had worn off and exposed my threadbare condition. To
drown these reflections, I would drink, not from love of the taste of
the liquor, but to become so stupefied by its fumes as to steep my
sorrows in a half oblivion; and from this miserable stupor I would wake
to a fuller consciousness of my situation, and again would I banish my
reflections by liquor.
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