Part 1 (1/2)

Fifteen Years in hell

by Luther Benson

PREFACE

The days of long prefaces are past It is also too near the end of the century to indulge in fulsome dedications I shall, therefore, trouble the reader with only a brief introduction to this imperfect history of an imperfect life The conditions under which I write necessarilyin much that would ordinarily have added to its interest I write within the Indiana Asylum for the Insane; I have not the means of information at hand which I should have to make the hat it should be, and notes which I had taken fro them, have unfortunately been lost Much of my life is a coone for days oblivious to every act and thing, as dead to all about me as the stones of the pavement are dumb Nor can I connect a succession of incidents one after the other as they occurred in the regular course of ment and pardon the imperfections which I fear abound in the book The title, ”FIFTEEN YEARS IN hell,” may, to some, seem irreverent or profane, but let me assure any such that it is the mildest I can find which conveys an idea of the facts Expect nothing ornate or roo is not a flowery one Its shadows are those of the cypress and yew; its skies are curtained with funereal clouds; its beginning is a glooo with e of what you will seeas I have done Unless help coh, I feel that I ae on earth You who are in the light, I speak to you from the shadow; you who suffer, I speak to you fro, perhaps I may speak to you from the world of the dead; in any case the words herein written are the truth

CHAPTER I

Early shadows--An unloom--What alcohol robsevils--Blighted homes--A titan devil--The utterness of the destroyer--A truthful narrative--”It stingeth like an adder”

Truth, said Lord Byron, is stranger than fiction He was right, for so it is Another has declared that if any man should write a faithful history of his own career, the ould be an interesting one The question now arises, does any man dare to be sufficiently candid to write such a work?

Is there no secret baseness he would hide?--no act which, proper to be told, he would swerve from the truth to tell in his own favor? Undoubtedly, many Doubtless it is well that few have the resolution or inclination to chronicle their faults and failings Howa public display of theirin their past sha a pride that apes humility I pretend to no talent, but if a too true story of suffering may interest, and at the sah, and unembellished, too, for no embellishment is needed, as all my sketches are from the life The incidents will not be found to be consecutive, but set down as certain scenes occur to my recollection--heedless of order, style, or syste, destitution and disgrace

I have all atehich relentlessly barred h never forbeyond 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 sorrohose sad waves forever beat over me with a prophetic wail of desolations and stor the years of boyhood, when others were thoughtless and full of joy, the sun's rays were hidden fro in vain for an end of misery Out of such a boyhood there came--as what else could coloom, haunted by horror, and fahed upon my heart until I have cried to myself that it would break--until I have almost prayed that it would break and thereby free e of my pitilessfro is iron, the sole occupant of a room as blank as the leaf of happiness is to me, I abandon every hope On this side the silence which we call death--that silence which inhabits the disony keener than has ever before ray and old before its time the heart of man Thirty years! and what are they?--what have they been? Patience, and as best I can, I will unfold their record Thirty years! and I feel that the weight of a world's wretchedness has lain upon me for thrice their number of terrible days! Every effort of my life has been a failure Surely and steadily the hand of misfortune has crushed me until I have looked forward to etfulness of remorse--escape fro, there came to me a bitter, deadly, unhter--an ene me in his power, and hen I was once securely his victis into sobbing, and pressed to my bloated lips his poisonous chalice which I have ever found full of the stinging adders of hell and death Too well do I knohat it is to feel the burning and jagged links of the devil's chain cutting throughbone--to feel ony, and my brain burn as if bathed in liquids of fire--too well, I say, do I knohat these things are, for I have felt theain, ten thousand times The infinite God alone knows the deep abyss of my sorrow, and help, if help be possible, can coes any learned disquisition upon the nature of alcohol--its hideous effects on the systees all the functions of the body--how it impairs health--blots out memory, dethrones reason, and destroys the very soul itself--how it gives to the whole body an unnatural and unhealthy action, crucifying the flesh, blood, bones and marro it paints hell in the les hope with despair

Nor shall I discuss the terrible and overshadowing evils, financial and social, inflicted by it on every class of society Like the trail of the serpent it is over all Look where you will, turn where you may, you can not be blind to its evils It despoils manhood of all that makes manhood desirable; it plucks hope fro ith a hand of ice; it robs the orphan of his bread cruates of penitentiaries, ”Open wide and often to the criminals who became my slaves before they committed crime” The evils of which I speak are not unknown to you, but have you considered theht theers? You have heard the wild sounds of drunken revelry ht winds; you have heard the shrieks and sobs, and seen the strea women; you have heard the unprotected and unfriended orphans' cry echoed frohted homes and squalid tenements; you have seen the outcast fahways, or shi+vering on the streets; you have shuddered at the sound of the maniac's scream upon the burdened air; you have beheld the hu attribute, transforel into a devil; you have seen virtue crushed by vice; the bright eye lose its lustre, the lips their power of articulation; you have seen as clean becoh becos, sunken to a level with brute beasts; and after all these you have or may have said to yourself, ”All this is the work of the terrible demon, alcohol”

I shall not atteradation, and horror, and misery, which this demon has caused to be enacted I shall leave without coary and devastation following the course of this foul titan devil of ruin and daive a plain, truthful history of one who has felt every pang, every sorrow, every agony, every shame, every remorse, that the de to thank this de--hours of false delight He has wrought only woe and loss to me Even now, as I sit here in the stillness of desperation, afraid of I know not what, tre in fright backward along the shores of the years whereon I see the wrecks of a thousand hopes, the destruction of every noble aspiration, the ruin of every noble resolve, I cry aloud against the utterness of the destroyer My life has indeed been a sad one; so sad, so lonely, that no language in ive to the reader a full conception of its ic pen of a De Quincey were -heartedintoxicating as from the oblivion of eternal death

To many, certain events which I shall relate in this history may seeain let eration The incidents took place just as I shall state theh not only all that you will find recorded in these pages, but ten thousand tih the black, unlighted past, I shudder and holdthan the one just before it, rises like the phanto itself with pitiless distinctness upon my seared eyeballs, until the last and most awful of all stands tall and black by my side, and whispers, hisses, shrieks Madness in uish of soul in the hot scalding tears which stream downnaw 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 theeth like an adder When you see it, turn from it as froeth like an adder!”

CHAPTER II

Birth, parentage, and early education--Early childhood--Early events--Memory of them vivid--Bitter desolation--An active but uneasy life--Breaking colts for amusement--Amount of sleep--Temperament has much to do in the matter of drink--The author to blame for his misspent life--Inheritances--The excellences of my father and mother--The road to ruin not wilfully trodden--The people's indifference to a great danger--My associates--What becaht have been

As to e and education, I am the last but one of a family of nine children, seven of ere boys, and all of who Both brothers and sisters are, without an exception, sober, industrious and honest I was born in Rush county, Indiana, on the 9th day of September, 1847

If there is one spot in all the black waste of desolation about which I cling with fond memory it is in my early childhood, and there is no part of my life that is so fresh and vivid as that embraced in those first early years I can remember distinctly events which transpired when I was but two years old, while I have forgotten thousands of incidents which have occurred within the past two years While it is true that in early childhood a dark shadow fell athwartsombre and painful with an impression of desolation, yet was my condition happy in comparison with the rayless and pitchy blackness which subsequently folded its curtains close aboutto ht, do I say?

Nay, it did, for nothing can be s, no ony of a dream is as keen while it lasts as any other--more so, because there is a helplessness about it whichin raceful debauch of days' or weeks'

duration, has h the realh years of horror and suffering to the green and holyof life, as it at this moment seems to me, and rested for an instant on some quiet hour in that dahich broke teather and break about me At such times I could distinctly remember the names and features of all the persons elt in the vicinity of o or passed away frohborhood I could at this time repeat word for word conversations which took place twenty-five years ago I do not so much attribute this to a retentive , when my mind was in a condition to think, of all that was a part of ather up around me, and the valley of life deepens its shadoard the toain do I awaken to the beauty, the love, the faces and friends of those days They are all dear and sacred to h I know they can come no more, and that the hollow spaces of time between the Here and There--the Now and Then--will reverberate forever with the echoes of many-voiced sorrows

Could those who hastly and bitter desolation, they would behold azed upon since the opening of the day of time--since the roses of Eden first blooht so soon to darken the earthly paradise by the rivers of the east But I wander from my subject

I lived and worked on e