Five months only did I remain in
business, and during that short period I gradually sunk deeper and
deeper in the scale of degradation. I was now the slave of a habit
which had become completely my master, and which fastened its
remorseless fangs in my very vitals. Thought was a torturing thing.
When I looked back, memory drew fearful pictures, the lines of lurid
flame, and, whenever I dared anticipate the future, hope refused to
illumine my onward path. I dwelt in one awful present; nothing to
solace me--nothing to beckon me onward to a better state.
I knew full well that I was proceeding on a downward course, and
crossing the sea of time, as it were, on a bridge perilous as that over
which Mahomet's followers are said to enter paradise. A terrible
feeling was ever present that some evil was impending which would soon
fall on my devoted head, and I would shudder as if the sword of
Damocles, suspended by its single hair, was about to fall and utterly
destroy me.
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.
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