As soon as I got off the ferry-boat in Louisville, in as sad a plight as any wretched man was ever in, I met an old friend, who had known me in years previous, and who handed me two dollars, requesting me to call at his office the next morning, when he would give me such assistance as I needed. The two dollars I spent that day for whisky. That night I begged a quarter to pay for my lodging. The next day, by begging, I filled up pretty well on whisky again. Toward evening I went into a Main-street house and asked a gentleman for a quarter to pay for a night's lodging, I had lost all pride, all self-respect, and could beg with a brazen face. The gentleman handed me a card of Holcombe's Mission. As I did not know or care anything about missions or churches, I merely stuck the card in my pocket and went on my way. After walking around for some time I heard the remark: "There goes that old man now." Upon looking up I recognized the gentleman whom I last asked for a quarter to pay for a night's lodging, and another man, engaged in conversation. The other gentleman, who proved to be the Rev. Steve Holcombe, of Holcombe's Mission, took me by the hand and invited me up to the Mission rooms, where I told him my story. He asked me if I ever had asked God through Jesus Christ to assist me in my endeavors to become a sober man. I told him I had not, as I had made up my mind years ago that God had no use for me. I felt as though I had sinned beyond redemption. I had left home very early in life. My mother was the best Christian woman I had ever seen. She was a Methodist, but she never could preach Christianity to me--I fell back on my own righteousness. I did not drink, I did not smoke, I did not chew, I did not swear, I did not run after women, I did not loaf around saloons like other young men. When my mother was after me to join the church, I told her that would not make me any better: "Look at your church members; is that man any better than I am?" My sister, along toward the last, having joined the Episcopal church, I took two pews in that church; was a lay member, but I did not attend it. That was in Newport--St. Paul's Episcopal church, Newport. When the minister insisted on my going to church, I told him that while he would be preaching sermons I would be building steamboats, so his sermons would not do me any good. After I got to drinking, my poor daughter did not see me. I did not go to my children at all. I never got but one letter from them during that time, from 1872 to 1884, and that was a letter that went to Cincinnati, and they held it there, I believe, for two years. I was at Cincinnati a good many times; but they could never get me to stay there long enough to get my children down to see me. As soon as I had an idea that they were manoeuvring for anything of that kind, I would get out of town at once, and they would not know where I had gone.