As soon as I was able to go abroad I joined my family in the neighborhood of Boston, in the hope of benefiting by change of scene. Remaining here for several months without much improvement of health, I felt called on for various reasons to resign my charge in New York. Thus left with a family and very slender resources, I was compelled, feeble as I was, to bestir myself for their and my own support. No employment offered itself but that of my profession, and unfit, therefore, as I felt myself, body and mind, for this, I saw no alternative but to preach as occasion presented. It was a most cruel necessity, for without some artificial aid I was unable even to stand through the pulpit services. As a choice of evils I used wine and brandy; for the terrors of opium were still too recent. In the closing part of December, 1837, I went to the city of Washington to preach for six or seven Sundays. The same necessity, real or supposed, of stimulating, followed me through the six weeks of my stay there. One day at the close of this period, feeling unusually ill and languid, I sent a servant out for a bottle of brandy. I remember pouring out and drinking a single glass of it, and this is the last and whole of my recollection for two days. I awoke and was told I had been exceedingly ill. I must have been very badly intoxicated, though how or why I was so, I know not to this day. So soon as I could hold up my head I went by invitation to Baltimore, and stayed there some three weeks with a college friend. While there I learned from various sources that I was at last palpably and generally exposed and disgraced. I relinquished my profession at once both in reality and name, deeming this the least I could do in the circumstances. About the middle of March, 1838, with shattered, miserable health, overwhelmed with regret and shame and remorse, and the future palled with funereal black, I set out for the residence of relatives in Vermont. Here I remained two and a quarter years, studying law with my sister's husband, who was an attorney and counsellor. For several months I used no stimulus except tobacco, which in the desperate restlessness of the previous summer I had again began to chew after four years' interruption. I of course was weak and languid from this great abstraction of stimulus, coupled with the effects of the severe illness I had undergone. This debility rendered more severe the endurance of other evils of my condition. No wonder that under such wear and tear my nervous system should have become shattered. I was attacked with tic-douloureux. Though suffering severely, old recollections gave me such dread of anodyne and tonic medicines--which I thought it most likely would be administered--that I delayed for some time seeking medical advice. Pain, however, at last drove me to it, and from two physicians I received a prescription of morphlne and quinine. I knew that morphine was a preparation of opium,