At St. Louis he got a position on a boat for New Orleans, and soon after arriving in that city he shipped on board a steamship for Galveston, Texas, but returned immediately to New Orleans. Here, however, he soon lost, in gambling, all the money he had made on the trip, and was so entirely without friends or acquaintances that he could find no place to sleep, and wandered about on the levee until one or two o'clock in the morning. To add to the loneliness and dismalness of his situation, it was during an epidemic of yellow fever in the city, and people were dying so fast they could not bury them, but had to plow trenches and throw the corpses in, as they bury soldiers on a battle-field. About one or two o'clock, a colored man, on a steamboat seeing him walking around alone, called him, and finding out his condition, took him on board the steamer and gave him a bed. But Holcombe was so afraid the negro had some design upon him, as there were no others on board, that he stole away from the boat and wandered around, alone, all the rest of the night.
On that awful night the great deep of his heart was broken up and he felt a sense of loneliness that he had never felt before in his life. He was in a strange city among a strange people. He had no friends, he had no means. He had not where to lay his head. The darkness of the night shut off the sight of those objects which in the day would have diverted his mind and relieved his painful reflections; and the awful stillness, broken only by the rattling of wheels that bore away the dead, made it seem to him as if his thoughts were spoken to him by some audible voice. His past life came up before him, but there was in it nothing pleasant for him to remember. It had been from his earliest recollection one constant experience of pain and sin. He was uneasy about himself. He was frightened at the past, and the recollection of his hard, but vain, struggle to get his evil nature changed and bettered, cast a dark cloud over his future. What could he do? Where could he go? Who was there could help him? Who was there that loved him? At his own home, if home it could be called, there was nothing but strife and cruelty and sin. Father, he had none. He that was his father had lived a drunkard's life, had died a drunkard's death and was buried in a drunkard's grave. And his mother--she had no power to help him or even love him as most mothers love their children, and as on that lone dismal night he would have given the world to be loved. Of God's mercy and love he did not know, he thought only of his wrath, nor had he learned how to approach him in prayer. Alone, alone, he felt himself to be shut up between a past that was full of sin and crime and a future that promised nothing better. But he did think of one who had loved him and who had said she would always love him and he felt there was truth in her soul and in her words. It was the brown-haired, sweet-faced, strong-hearted little girl he had left in Shippingsport. He would go back to her. She alone of all people in the world seemed able to help him and this seemed his last, his only hope. If she had remained true to him, and if she would love him, the world would not seem so dreary and the future would not seem so dark, and maybe she could help him to be a better man. "On the next day," says Mr. Holcombe, "an acquaintance of mine from Louisville ran across me as I was strolling about the streets, took me aboard a steamer and made me go home with him."