Temperance > Autobiography and personal recollections of John B. Gough

210 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP JOHN B. GOUGH.
drunkard. The life of a drunkard—O heavens and earth!
0 angels, men, and devils! What a theme—running
a through cherub infancy, through wasted youth, to blasted
I manhood! Days of alternate revelling and cursing; a life
of unrelieved misery; a death of shame and anguish.
Eead Charles Lamb’s Confessions of a Drunkard. How
the drink destroys genius! Some one has said, “The
effect of wine on genius is to make it sparkle and burn.”
Yes, to burn out; while the occasional flashes only serve
to reveal still more the blackness of the ruin. The most
painful and pitiful cases I have known were those of
I educated men. The farther a man falls the deeper he
goes,—is as true in morals as it is in physics. In 1845 I
received the following letter, from one with whose career
from that time I was intimately acquainted:—
Philadelphia, Monday, January 13, 1845.
I was present at your lecture last night, and desire to add one
fact to your already terribly interesting list. Eead it, sir. I
shall be among your auditory, and after your address will see
you. E.
I am an Englishman. When a child I had all the advantages
that a religious education could confer. My father was the
managing clerk of the establishment, of which he is at this time
the head. I was clever, as they said, very clever, because I
threw off verses to any seekers after such light ware. Well, I
went to parties,—Christmas parties, picnic parties, Dorcas
parties,-—and bits of cake and glasses of wine made me look at
life through a rose-coloured medium. At fourteen years of age
1 was apprenticed to a surgeon, and, though my father’s limited
means prevented his sending me to a classical school, I by sitting
up three nights out of six for two months, managed to beat fifteen
competitors in the Latin examination, which was preliminary to
the general medical ordeal at the Apothecaries’ Hall, London.