He said he had a disease, and gave me a history of it.It came on him, he said, in spells; that when he was over one he abhorred it, but when the fit seized him it came suddenly, and he was in absolute slavery to it.
He said his father was a gentleman of convivial habits (I have heard that he was very dissipated, though not openly so, and "No.4" never admitted it).
He was killed at the battle of Bull Run.His mother -- he always spoke of her with unvarying tenderness and reverence -- had suffered enough, he said, to canonize her if she were not a saint already; she had brought him up to have a great horror of liquor, and he had never touched it till he went into the army.In the army he was in a convivial crowd, and they had hard marching and poor rations, often none.Liquor was scarce, and was regarded as a luxury; so although he was very much afraid of it, yet for good fellowship's sake, and because it was considered mannish, he used to drink it.Then he got to like it; and then got to feel the need of it, and took it to stimulate him when he was run down.
This want brought with it a great depression when he did not have the means to satisfy it.He never liked the actual taste of it;he said few drunkards did.It was the effect that he was always after.
This increased on him, he said, until finally it was no longer a desire, but a passion, a necessity; he was obliged to have it.He felt then that he would commit murder for it."Why, I dream about it," he said.
"I will tell you what I have done.I have made the most solemn vows, and have gone to bed and gone to sleep, and waked up and dressed and walked miles through the rain and snow to get it.I believe I would have done it if I had known I was going next moment to hell."He said it had ruined him; said so quite calmly; did not appear to have any special remorse about it; at least, never professed any; said it used to trouble him, but he had got over it now.He had had a plantation -- that is, his mother had had -- and he had been quite successful for a while;but he said, "A man can't drink liquor and run a farm," and the farm had gone.
I asked him how?
"I sold it," he said calmly; "that is, persuaded my mother to sell it.
The stock that belonged to me had nearly all gone before.
A man who is drinking will sell anything," he said."I have sold everything in the world I had, or could lay my hands on.I have never got quite so low as to sell my old gray jacket that I used to wear when I rode behind old Joe.I mean to be buried in that -- if I can keep it."He had been engaged to a nice girl; the wedding-day had been fixed;but she had broken off the engagement.She married another man.
"She was a mighty nice girl," he said, quietly."Her people did not like my drinking so much.I passed her not long ago on the street.
She did not know me." He glanced down at himself quietly."She looks older than she did." He said that he had had a place for some time, did not drink a drop for nearly a year, and then got with some of the old fellows, and they persuaded him to take a little."I cannot touch it.I have either got to drink or let it alone -- one thing or the other," he said.
"But I am all right now," he declared triumphantly, a little of the old fire lighting up in his face."I never expect to touch a drop again."He spoke so firmly that I was persuaded to make him a little loan, taking his due-bill for it, which he always insisted on giving.
That evening I saw him being dragged along by three policemen, and he was cursing like a demon.
In the course of time he got so low that he spent much more than half his time in jail.He became a perfect vagabond, and with his clothes ragged and dirty might be seen reeling about or standing around the street corners near disreputable bars, waiting for a chance drink, or sitting asleep in doorways of untenanted buildings.His companions would be one or two chronic drunkards like himself, with red noses, bloated faces, dry hair, and filthy clothes.Sometimes I would see him hurrying along with one of these as if they had a piece of the most important business in the world.An idea had struck their addled brains that by some means they could manage to secure a drink.Yet in some way he still held himself above these creatures, and once or twice I heard of him being under arrest for resenting what he deemed an impertinence from them.
Once he came very near being drowned.There was a flood in the river, and a large crowd was watching it from the bridge.Suddenly a little girl's dog fell in.It was pushed in by a ruffian.The child cried out, and there was a commotion.When it subsided a man was seen swimming for life after the little white head going down the stream.It was "No.4".
He had slapped the fellow in the face, and then had sprung in after the dog.
He caught it, and got out himself, though in too exhausted a state to stand up.When he was praised for it, he said, "A member of old Joe's company who would not have done that could not have ridden behind old Joe." I had this story from eye-witnesses, and it was used shortly after with good effect; for he was arrested for burglary, breaking into a man's house one night.It looked at first like a serious case, for some money had been taken out of a drawer;but when the case was investigated it turned out that the house was a bar-room over which the man lived, -- he was the same man who had pitched the dog into the water, -- and that "No.4", after being given whiskey enough to make him a madman, had been put out of the place, had broken into the bar during the night to get more, and was found fast asleep in a chair with an empty bottle beside him.
I think the jury became satisfied that if any money had been taken the bar-keeper, to make out a case against "No.4", had taken it himself.
But there was a technical breaking, and it had to be got around;so his counsel appealed to the jury, telling them what he knew of "No.4", together with the story of the child's dog, and "No.4"'s reply.
There were one or two old soldiers on the jury, and they acquitted him, on which he somehow managed to get whiskey enough to land him back in jail in twenty-four hours.
