I have been broad and specific in my statement regarding my life, so that there might be no misinterpreting my faults, and so that thereby they might loom up before the youth of this and every land in their true and repulsive colors. God knows it cost me many a pang to say all I have said of myself, but this was one feature of the palliation of my various crimes and offences. I must confess all! I must hide nothing, else my repentance should not be complete or sincere.
I hope and trust that there may yet be some space left to me to do good in the world; and, in view of the fact that I am not in the sear and yellow leaf, I think I can discern a bright gleam in the future. Still, I have done so much evil that I scarcely dare mention what little good I had allowed to fall to my lot. I shall, therefore, permit this drop to fall unobserved into the bucket and begin life anew. Often my heart and tongue struggle to say that which is embarassed by a restricted education, but which lies burning or smouldering far down in the depths of my being. When I see the youth about me wasting the precious moments of their lives as I have wasted mine, and think of the possible fate that awaits them, I sometimes shudder at the contemplation of their future. When I see a young man in business hours, or after or before them, wending his way to the tavern or liquor saloon, to which every vice gravitates, I feel as if I could spring forward and arrest him on the threshold of the dangerous spot.
There is something so infectious in the atmosphere of such places, that it is next to impossible to shake oneself free from it once it has touched the blood. Its fascination is that of the deadly serpent, which holds you in thrall until escape is impossible, and the poisonous fangs are buried deep in your soul. To learn the terrible power of such places has cost me dear, and I now turn from them with a loathing so deeply seated as never to be brought to tolerate them again. They are the destroyers of time, of the purse, of the health and of character; and they brand a business man so effectually and so fatally, that even his friends and the sharers of his orgies shake their heads portentously in relation to his ultimate fate. No drunkard has ever succeeded in life, or taken up an exalted position in society; and when we all know that the constant use of alcoholic stimulants not only destroys the physical body but ruins the mind, what infatuation must it be to ever permit a drop of such stuff to cross our lips.