In consequence of the dreadful excess to which she had abandoned herself, the imagination of Mrs. ---- became disordered, and conjured up horrible visions. In her fits of the _delirium tremens_, she fancied herself bound with a belt of brass, to which was attached a chain held by the great enemy of souls, who had indeed enchained her with the most dire and effectual of all his spells. She would cross the room with the rapidity of lightning, screaming that he was winding up the chain, and she _must go_--she _could not_ stop. She was afraid to pass her own threshold, and fancied she heard unearthly voices, and saw spirits black and hideous all around her. "There they sit," she would say, "J----, M----," mentioning the names of all her children; "there they sit, grinning at me, and telling me I sent them to hell: they are on the beams and in the corners, and wherever I go." The writer of this has often witnessed her desperate struggles; has seen her, when a gleam of reason came over her mind, weep in bitterness over her ruin and misery; has heard her confessions of deeds of villany committed under her roof; and has heard also her solemn vows to refrain from that which wrought all this misery and sin; but after all this, has seen her "seek it yet again." All the arguments which religion can offer were set before her, and she often appeared to feel their force, and resolved to repent; but the deadly wave seemed to have retired to gather new force, and again swept over her and prostrated her lower than "the beasts that perish." There can be no more effectual barrier against the voice of conscience, the powerful influence of natural affection, and the strivings of the blessed Spirit of God, than the use of intoxicating drinks. Her husband had made himself literally a beast: his appearance was scarcely human; bloated, discolored, tottering, uttering curses, and sometimes threatening her life. Her constitution after a while gave away, and she sunk in death, snoring out the few last days of her existence in a state of stupor, covered with rags and filth. Her husband had so benumbed every feeling of humanity by his excess, that he seemed very little affected by her death; and to one who reminded him of their former respectability, and spoke of the wretched state to which they were reduced, urging him powerfully, over the dead body of the self-murdered wife _now_ to desist, he replied stupidly, that there is an _eleventh hour_. Four or five years have elapsed, and he is still in the same state of beastly degradation--his property entirely gone, and he occasionally earning a few cents, with which to purchase the poison which is consuming his vitals, and rendering him stupid and dead to every motive that can be urged for reformation.