The Literary echo, and Pawcatuck advertiser. [volume] (Westerly, R.I.) 1851-1854, 1853-07-28
WESTERLY, r. l., THURSDAY, JULY %, 1853

forth whatever purity and kindness the
heart contains--such letter as thou
sand mothers write-such a letter as
scarcely any son can read without self
recriminatiOn, repentance, and tears.
For my own part gave way to my
feelings, and wept like child {; but
Carson shed no tear his voice was
husky, low, and dreadful deliberate, as
if he wished to drain the dregs of the
bitter cup, and feel the torment of each
separate drop. He folded up the letter
and arose his limbs trembled so that
he had to lean on me and as he walked
back to the cab, he whispered
l will drink no more my fate is in
your hands take me to doctor and
see if a worthless life can be saved for
better purposes.
| drove him to my friend, DIR. BIS
and to him Carson stated his case. 1t
was common one, and this--that he
had now been under the maddening in
fuence of drink for more than ten days,
and that he feared delirium and death
would seize him if he abstained.
DR.. b. felt his pulse, and Immediately
asked him if he had any friends on whom
he could rely. He answered none, un-
less | would interest myself so far in a
ruined man who might never live to
make return of the obligation. He felt,
he said, as if death had already marked
him, but still desired, even more strong
er than life, that no friends of his should
be acquainted with the nature or degree
Of his illness.
l promised silence, and it was finally
agreed that he should be removed to a
" mansion de sante," or private hospital
some miles from town,
Why harrow your feelings by a de-
scription of his sufferiDgs' Why at
tempt to depict the unutterablc torture
of body and soul which followed after
his abstinence from the bowl? Why,
or how, reveal the horrors which made
demon-land of his couch, and frcnzied
into a desperation and violence, an
imagination already vivid, warm, eager
and comprehensive : Behold him on
the bed, young, brilliant, educated, re-
fined and sensitive, but yesterday, or q
fortnight since, with friends who esteem
ed him, mother who loved him, a future
full of hope, and equal to his highest
aspirations. To-day draw aside the
curtain, and contemplate the wreck-a
shattered maniac, raving in the horrors
of an anticipated hell-shuddering at
the terrors of his own disordercd fancy
shrieking with the agony of brain and
heart-convulsed in every limb and
quivcring in every sinew, as the shadows
gather around and around him more
gloomily and more strangely, hideously
and slowly, and more blackly.
The mother and sister did come to
town but not as they expected, to
share his joy and witness the position
his genius had achieved They came
to stand beside a narrow pit, into which
an uninscribed coffin is being slowly
lowered. 1t was his request in the lucid
interval which preceded death, that his
name should perish with his shame, and
that neither monument nor record should
preserve his memory. The name |
have assigned him is fictitious; there
fore his request is unviolated by brief
narrative, as true as it is sad.
His mother has since died she with
cred under the second blight, for her
husband had also been a victim to the
red plague of intoxication. Hope died
within her heart, and she died abont a
twelve-month after her sons death but
not in England. In Palermo, where |
had gone to spend the summer, under
the bright skies of Sicily, and in the
home Of my wife, her daughter, another
secondary victim-one of those fifty in.
nocents who suffer for every individual
drunkard's criminality-the spirit OF the
mother and the wife, outraged, desolated
in each capacity by the one foul tyrant,
flew up to the Throne of Grace to cry
" How long, oh Lord, how long shall
this worse than pestilence, this moral
and physical death be permitted to walk