Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/100

 took good care that whiskey did not interfere with our work. To be drunk before the task was finished was a high misdemeanor. But after the day's labor was over, we were at liberty to drink as much as we pleased; — provided always, that it did not prevent us from turning out at daylight the next morning. Sunday was generally a grand Saturnalia.

Hitherto, I had scarcely been in the habit of drinking. But now I began to be eager for anything which promised to sustain my sinking spirits, and to excite my stagnant soul. I soon found in whiskey, a something that seemed to answer the purpose. In that elevation of heart which drunkenness inspires, that forgetfulness of the past and the present, that momentary halo with which it crowns the future, I found a delight which I hastened to repeat, and knew not how to forego. Reality was to me a blank, dark and dreary. Action was forbidden; desire was chained; and hope shut out. I was obliged to find relief in dreams and illusions. Drunkenness, which degrades the freeman to a level with the brutes, raises, or seems to raise the slave, to the dignity of a man. It soon became my only pleasure, and I indulged it to excess. Every day, as soon as my task was finished, I hastened to shut myself up with my bottle. I drank in solitude, — for much as I loved the excitement of drunkenness, I could not forget its beastliness and insanity, and I hated to expose my folly to the sight of my fellow servants. But my precautions were not always successful. In the phrensy of excitement I sometimes forgot all my sober precautions; undid the bolts I had carefully fastened; and sought the company I most desired to shun,

One Sunday, I had been drinking, till I was no longer the master of my own actions. I had left my house, and gone to seek some boon-companions with whom to protract the revel and increase its zest. But I was unable to distinguish one object from another, and after straggling off for some distance, I sunk down, almost insensible, upon the carriage way, which led towards major Thornton's house.

I had grown a little more sober, and was endeavoring to rally my thoughts and to recollect where I was, and what had brought me there, when I saw my master riding up the road, with two other gentlemen. They were all on