Temperance > Autobiography and personal recollections of John B. Gough

TAKES THE PLEDGE.
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intense is my disgust and abhorrence of the damning j
degradation of those seven years of my life from eighteen [
to twenty-five. I am intensely social in my nature, and *
enjoy the society of friends keenly; yet often in the midst
of the pleasant social circle, the ghost of the past comes
gliding before me, and words seem to be hissed in my ear:
“What is your record?” I believe this to be one reason
why I shrink from society; why I have so often refused
kind invitations; why, though I love my personal friends
as strongly and as truly as any man’s friends are ever
loved, I have so steadily withdrawn from social parties,
dinners, or introductions. This is the penalty I must ever (
pay-
A man can never recover from the effects of such a;
seven years’ experience, morally or physically. Lessons
learned in such a school are not forgotten; impressions
made in such a furnace of sin are permanent; the nature
so warped in such crooked ways, must retain in some
degree the shape; lodgments are made by such horrible
contacts and associations, that nothing but the mighty
Spirit of God can eradicate. Young men, I say to you,
looking back at the fire where I lay scorching,—at the
bed of torture, where the iron entered my soul,—yes,
looking back at the past; standing, as I trust I do, under
the arch of the bow, one base of which rests on the dark
days, and the other I hope on the sunny slopes of para¬
dise,—I say to you, in view of the awful evil spreading
around you, beware! tamper not with the accursed thing,
—and may God forbid that you should ever suffer as I I
have suffered, or be called to fight such a battle as I fought *
for body and soul.
The month of October had nearly drawn to a close, and
on its last Sunday evening I wandered out into the streets,
pondering as well as I was able to do,—for I was some-