Luther Benson

“ I bow my head and find a moment's relief from the anguish of soul in the hot scalding tears which stream down my fevered cheeks. O God of sure mercy, save other young men from the dark and desolate tortures which gnaw at my heart, and press down upon my weary soul! They are all, all, all the work of alcohol. Oh, how true it is--how true few can understand until their lives are a burden of distress and agony to them--that the cup which inebriates stingeth like an adder. When you see it, turn from it as from a viper. Say to yourself as you turn to fly, "It stingeth like an adder!" ”

“ Out on a spree! Oh, how much of misery is implied! Out on a spree! Readers, every one, I hope you will never have it said that you are out on a spree. To go out on a spree is to throw away strength, without which the battle of life can not be fought; it is to squander money which you may need badly for the necessaries of life, which had better be thrown into the fire and burnt up than spent in such a way; it is to quench the light of ambition, to crush hope, entomb joy, lay waste the powers of the mind, neglect duty, desert the family, and commit in the end suicide. ”

“ The agony of a dream is as keen while it lasts as any other--more so, because there is a helplessness about it which makes it harder to resist.
Many times, lying in my bed after a disgraceful debauch of days' or weeks' duration, has my memory winged its way through the realms of darkness in the mournful and lonesome past, back through years of horror and suffering to the green and holy morning of life, as it at this moment seems to me, and rested for an instant on some quiet hour in that dawn which broke tempestuously, heralding the storms which would later gather and break about me. ”

“ What ingredients of poison do they not mix with the fatal drink which deprives him of breath? With what threads do they strengthen the rope with which he hangs himself! Where should the most blame rest, where does it most rest in the eyes of God--with society which drives him forth a depraved and friendless creature? or with himself no longer accountable for his acts? O the agony of feeling that on the whole face of the earth there is not a face that will look upon you in kindness, nor a heart that will throb with compassion at sight of your misery! ”

“ The habit of drink after a time becomes more than a mere habit; the system comes to demand and crave liquor, it permeates and affects every part of the body until every function refuses to perform its part until it has been aroused to action by its accustomed stimulant.
The most hopeless and wretched slave on earth is he who has bound himself with the fetters of alcohol, and it is a sad and lamentable truth that among thousands very few ever escape from the soul-destroying, health- ruining bondage of an appetite for intoxicating drink. ”

“ I called aloud for my mother, and a voice more diabolical than any I had yet heard, hissed into my ears that she was chained in hell, but immediately a million devils screamed, "Liar! she is in heaven!" I refused then to hold my breath, and told them to kill me and do their worst. In an instant the spirit of my mother, like a benediction, rested beside me. As she begged for me I knew that it was her voice, natural as in her life on earth. While she was yet imploring for me the room became radiant, and I saw that it was full of angels. ”

“ For ten months, lacking two days, I fought my appetite for whisky day and night. I waged a continued, never-ceasing, never-ending battle, with what earnestness and desire to conquer the God to whom I so fervently prayed all that time alone knows, and he alone knows the agony of my conflicts. I dreamed that I was wildly drunk night after night, and I would rise from my bed in the morning more weary than when, tired and worn out from overwork, I sought rest. The horror of such dreams can be known only to those who have experienced them. ”

“ Let this appetite entwine itself about a man, let it throw its iron arms about his bruised body, and he will curse the day he was born. But some one says, Why don't you quit? Just don't drink! In answer I would say, O God, give me poverty, shower upon me all the hardships of life, turn me a prey to the wild beasts of the desert, so I be never again the victim of rum. Suffer me to call life and the pursuit of life my own, free from the appetite for alcohol, and I am willing to hold them at the mercy of the elements, the hunger of beasts, or the revenge of cold-blooded men. ”

“ There is escape, but courage is required to make it, and greater courage than has ever been exhibited on the field of battle, amid the thunders of cannon, the roar of deadly conflict, the gleam of sabre and glitter of bayonet. But rather than die the drunkard's death, and go to the drunkard's eternal doom, every drunkard can afford to make this fight. It were better, ten thousand times, that every such one should do as I have done--voluntarily go to an asylum and be restrained until he so far recovers that he can of his own will resist temptation. ”

“ Look not on the wine cup when it is red, no matter if the jeweled hand of a princess hold it between you and the light. It is the beginning whose end is degradation, remorse, misery and death! Turn from a glass of beer as from a goblet of reeking and poisoned blood. It is a danger to be shunned. Beware that you do not learn this too late.
Alcohol, ruin, and death go hand in hand. The region over which Alcohol is king is one of decay. It is full of graves. The ghosts of the million joys, he has slain wail amid its ghastly desolations ”

“ If ever a mortal longed and yearned for one thing more than another in this uncertain existence, I long for a peaceful and quiet evening of life for my beloved father. I implore the Father of all of us to give me grace and strength enough to keep sober until my remaining parent is fully persuaded that I am truly and beyond question saved from the curse which has driven me to an asylum, and well nigh sent him, a broken-hearted man, to his grave. O for a strength which will forever enable me to resist the hell-born and hell- supported power of the fiend Alcohol! ”

“ The wail, the curse, and the awful and unearthly ha! ha! came fearfully up before me. I had got into that condition that not one drop of stimulants would remain on my stomach. I had been vomiting for more than forty-eight hours every drop that I drank. In that condition I went into a saloon and asked for a drink; and as I tremblingly poured it out, a snake shot its head up out of the liquor, and with swaying head, and glistening eye looking at me, licked out its forked tongue, and hissed in my face. I felt my blood run cold and curdle at my heart. ”

“ I shall not attempt to paint any of the countless scenes of degradation, and horror, and misery, which this demon has caused to be enacted. I shall leave without comment the endless train of crimes and vices, the beggary and devastation following the course of this foul Titan devil of ruin and damnation. I shall only endeavor to give a plain, truthful history of one who has felt every pang, every sorrow, every agony, every shame, every remorse, that the demon of drunkenness can inflict. ”

“ Listen to that indifference and condemnation, and this wail of agony! Can you wonder that the outcast abandons hope and plunges the knife into his heart? He is driven to madness, and feeling that all is lost, he commits an act which does indeed lose everything for him, for it bars the gates of heaven against him. Before he had nothing on earth; now he has nothing in paradise. Alas for those who triumph over the fall of a fellow creature. God have mercy on those who exult over the wretchedness of a victim of alcohol! ”

“ Why should I wait the lingering process of an unfeeling tyrant that is slowly tearing me to pieces, and not dare so much as die but when and how the marble-hearted thing decrees? Still, some inexplicable suggestion withheld my hand, and caused me to cling with desperate fondness to this shadow of existence, its mysterious attractions, and its hopeless prospects--appetite, fiendish thirst, a burning, ever-crying demand for a poison that is death, and for which a man will give his body and soul as a sacrifice to whoever will satisfy his imperious cravings. ”

“ He is the slave of a tyrant who has no compassion and knows no mercy. Oppose this tyrant, all ye who love the home circle better than the bawdy house; fight him all ye who set honor above dishonor; curse him all ye who prefer peace to discord, and law to anarchy; war against him in all ways unceasingly all ye to whom the thought of liberty and safety is dear, to whom happiness and truth are more desirable than misery and falsehood. ”

“ I think if I had been raised where liquor was unknown, and had been taught in early childhood the ruin which follows drinking--if I had had this impressed on my mind, I would have grown up a sober and happy man, notwithstanding my inherited appetite. I would have been a sober man, instead of traversing step by step the downward road of dissipation. I am easily impressed, and in early life might have been taught such lessons as would forever have turned my feet from the wrong and desolation in which they have stumbled so often--in which they have walked so swiftly. ”

“ If there be a place on earth where the human mind, unfettered by tyrannical institutions, may rise to the summit of intellectual grandeur, it is here. If there be a country where the human heart, in public and in private, may burst forth in unrestrained adulation to the God that made it, it is here, where the immortal heroes and patriots of more than one hundred years ago succeeded in establishing these United States, as the 'land of the free and the home of the brave.' Here, then, human excellence must attain to the summit of its glory. ”

“ The whole pavement and street were filled; men, and women, and little children, lying with their pale faces turned up to heaven; some looked as though they were asleep; others had died in awful agony, and their faces wore horrid contortions; while some had their eyes burst from their heads. Every time I moved I stepped on a dead body, and it would come to life, and rear up in my face; and when I would step on a baby corpse it would wail in a plaintive, baby wail, and its dead mother would come to life and rush at me, while a thousand devils would curse me for stepping on the dead. ”

“ Down, into the darkness of desperation!--down, into the gulf of ruin!--down, where Shame, and Sin, and Misery cry to fallen souls--"Stay! abide with us!" I felt now that all I had gained was lost, and that there was nothing more for me to hope for. The destroying devil had swept away everything. I was no longer a man. Behold me cowering before my race and begging the pitiful sum of ten cents with which to buy one more drink--begging for it, moreover, as something far more precious than life. ”

“ You will be a man. You are a man. You will lay this book down, and swear that you will never touch the accursed, ruinous drink, and you will keep your oath. By sobriety and good habits you will lengthen your mother's days in the land, and smooth her troubled brow, and give strength to her failing limbs.
Rum is a dreadful knife whose edge is never red with blood, but which yet severs throats from ear to ear. It assassinates the peace of families, it cuts away honor from the family name, it lets out the vital spark of life, and is followed by inconsolable death. ”

“ Each is a record of shame, suffering, destitution and disgrace. I have all my life stood without and gazed longingly through gateways which relentlessly barred me from the light and warmth and glory, which, though never for me, was shining beyond. From the day that consciousness came to me in this world I have been miserable. In early childhood I swam, as it were, in a dark sea of sorrow whose sad waves forever beat over me with a prophetic wail of desolations and storms to come. ”

“ I dared not open my heart to the best affections of our nature, for a drunkard is supposed to have no love. I was shut up within my own desolation--a deserted, solitary wretch in the midst of my species. I dared not look for the consolation of friendship, for a drunkard is always the subject of suspicion and distrust, and is not supposed to be possessed of those finer feelings that find men as friends. ”

“ Ten thousand times I have been prompted to unfold the affections of my soul, only to be repelled with the greatest anguish, until my reflections continually center upon and within myself, where wretchedness and sorrow dwell, undisturbed by one ray of hope and light. It seems to me that any person but a fool would know that I had not purposely led the life of misery that has marked my steps for fifteen years. ”

“ I only remember a burning thirst for whisky that seemed to be consuming me. The more I drank, the more I wanted. After the first four nights I could get no sleep, so I just staid up and drank all night, until, for the want of slumber, my whole body was torn with torment for long days and nights. I knew from former experience what was the awful ending! None who have ever even seen a victim cursed with delirium tremens will ever wish to look upon the like again. No human language can describe it; but its scenes burn in the eyeball so deeply that they never pass away. ”

“ You will not murder her, will you? Yes, you reply, and the laughter of mocking devils floats up from the caves of hell- -"Yes! give me more rum!" Now, hear the truth: The time will come when the grass will seem to wither from your feet, pain will stifle your breath, remorse will gnaw your heart and fill all your days and nights with misery unspeakable; your dreams will torture you in sleep, and your waking thoughts will be torments; your path will lie in gloom, and your bed will be a pillow of thorns. You will cry in vain for that departed mother. ”