When even rolling in wealth, no tongue can tell the torments I suffered both in soul and body. The excesses of the maddening bowl and of the gaming table had nearly done their work, when a whisper came to my conscience that I must alter my ways or be lost to all eternity. I had, somehow, become impressed with the necessity of a change of life, and I, therefore, made an effort to redeem my terrible past. Under Heaven I have succeeded to some extent, for I am no longer a slave to either of the vices just named. And, oh! if I could but impress upon the youth of this country the vital importance of temperance, and of a good and pure life, how happy I should be. If I could but depict to them the horror of my feelings when after a hard night's drinking and gambling I found myself in the morning all but a beggar on the streets, without a penny in my pocket or a friend in the world, staggering seedy and blear-eyed into a pawnbroker's shop to pledge my overcoat for the price of my breakfast--could I describe this as graphically as my heart would prompt me to do, I should be, indeed, grateful for the gift. For, let it be understood, that through the instrumentality of the glass and of the gambling table more souls are sent to perdition than through any other means. Look at all your murders throughout the length and breadth of the land, and take a peep into your prisons. Who perpetrates the one or fills the other?--the gambler or the drunkard. Who is your suicide and wife deserter from Maine to California?--the gambler or the drunkard. Who brings ruin upon his family and reduces the partner of his bosom and his little ones to state of beggary?--the gambler or the drunkard. And who lives without God in the world and dies without hope?--the gambler or the drunkard. 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.