By the mercy of God I survived this awful seizure; and when I rose, a weak, broken-down man, and surveyed my ghastly features in a glass, I thought of my mother, and asked myself how I had obeyed the instructions I had received from her lips, and to what advantage I had turned the lessons she had taught me. I remembered her prayers and tears, thought of what I had been but a few short months before, and contrasted my situation with what it then was. Oh! how keen were my own rebukes; and in the excitement of the moment I resolved to lead a better life, and abstain from the accursed cup. For about a month, terrified by what I had suffered, I adhered to my resolution, then my wife came home, and in my joy at her return I flung my good resolutions to the wind, and foolishly fancying that I could now restrain my appetite, which had for a whole month remained in subjection, I took a glass of brandy. That glass aroused the slumbering demon, who would not be satisfied by so tiny a libation. Another and another succeeded, until I was again far advanced in the career of intemperance. The night of my wife's return I went to bed intoxicated. I will not detain the reader by the particulars of my everyday life at this time; they may easily be imagined from what has already been stated. My previous bitter experience, one would think, might have operated as a warning; but none save the inebriate can tell the almost resistless strength of the temptations which assail him. I did not, however, make quite so deep a plunge as before. My tools I had given into the hands of Mr. Gray, for whom I worked, receiving about five dollars a week. My wages were paid me every night, for I was not to be trusted with much money at a time, so certain was I to spend a great portion of it in drink. As it was, I regularly got rid of one third of what I daily received, for rum. My wardrobe, as it had, indeed, nearly always been whilst I drank to excess, was now exceedingly shabby, and it was with the greatest difficulty that I could manage to procure the necessaries of life. My wife became very ill. Oh! how miserable I was! Some of the women who were in attendance on my wife told me to get two quarts of rum. I procured it, and as it was in the house, and I did not anticipate serious consequences, I could not withstand the strong temptation to drink. I did drink, and so freely that the usual effect was produced. How much I swallowed I cannot tell, but the quantity, judging from the effects, must have been considerable.