Not many weeks after, he was seized with another fit; but owing to the absence of the family physician, he did not see him until some time after he had come out of it. The physician, however, who attended, informed him it was violent. After repeated assurances of his increasing danger, and the remonstrances of friends, who had now begun to learn the real cause of his fits, he renewed his promises and determination to reform, and entered upon a course of total abstinence, which he maintained for several months, and inspired many of his friends with pleasing hopes of his entire reform and the reestablishment of his health. But, alas, in an unguarded moment, he dared to taste again the forbidden cup, and with this fled all his resolutions and restraints. From that time he drank more openly and freely. His fits returned with painful violence; friends remonstrated, entreated, pleaded, but all in vain. He thus continued his course of intemperance, with intervals of fits and sickness, about eight or ten months, and at length died _drunk_ in his bed, where he had lain for two or three weeks in a continual state of intoxication. The writer has stated this case in detail, to show the influence of _the law of stimulation_, or what in popular language is termed, "the appetite for spirituous liquors," when once it is awakened. Here we have the instance of an individual, of a fine and cultivated intellect, with every thing on earth to render him happy, that could be comprised in wealth, friends, honor, and bright prospects. Ay, indeed, too, he professed an interest in the blood of the Saviour, and had communed with Christians at his table; surrounded by those whom he tenderly loved, the wife of his bosom, and the dear pledges of her devotion. Yet, in spite of all these considerations, and the most sensible conviction of his fatal career, he continued to drink, and thus pressed downward to the gate of death and hell. Now what was this? What giant's arm dragged this fair victim to an untimely grave? Was it for the want of motives and obligations to pursue an opposite course? No. Was it for the want of intellect and talents to appreciate those obligations? No. Was it trouble, arising from disappointed hopes and blasted prospects? Certainly, by those who knew him best, he was accounted a man who might have been happy. What was it, then, that urged this individual, with his eyes open upon the consequences, and in the face of every thing most dear, thus to sacrifice his _all_ upon the altar of intemperance? It _was that law_ of which we have spoken, enkindled into action by his tippling, and which once developed, he could no more control, _while persisting in his pernicious practice of drinking_, than he could have hurled the Andes from their base, or have plucked the moon from her orbit.