Edgefield advertiser. [volume] (Edgefield, S.C.) 1836-current, 1893-06-01

Everybody in Edge6eld knows
Sam Colgan.
Sam has been what IS called a
drinking man" in the past-and
he had it bad; but you can't call
him by that name any more for
ever, or if you do he won't answer
the reason why is that for the last
four weeks he has been a student
at the Kelley Institute in Colum-
bia, has graduated and received
his diploma. He showed us this
on last Saturday in our Office and
gave us long talk.
For a long time we have been
expecting to write SANS obituary,
"died from drinking liquor"-but
low we are writing his renaissance,
that he has been rescued, redeem
ed, disenthralled, and that not a
single drop now ever passes down
his esophagus. We have seen him
tempted in bar-rooms, and ont of
themasince his return from Colum-
bia and he has not yielded, in fact
he walks into a .bar-room now in a
bold, defiant manner, as if to say,
ST have downed you at last,
although you had it on me once"
But we will let Sam talk a while !:
SForty-two years old and for the
last twenty-five years an habitual
drinker to excess, got drunk every
time I could get the liquor. I took
my first drink when eighteen years
of age out of bar-room which
stood between the old Whitaker
Hotel, and what was then Mr.. B.
G. Bryan's store, and I got tight
and from that day to five weeks
ago getting tight is just what I've
been ADDING, and but for the fact
mat I had to WORK to get the money
to buy the liquor, I should have
been dead long ago. This is what
the physicians in charge of the
Columbia Institute told me, and I
believe it. If / had been man
of means, I should have drunk
myself into the grave years ago,
no doubt, but I am now cured
man, cured by the Kelley Institute
in Columbia.
During these twenty-five years
of drinking and suffering, I have
lost friends, money, and positions,
one after another, until it would
seem that no one could or would
trust me, or have any faith in my
efforts to reform, and l was most
agreeably surprised when friends
whom / thought had long since
given me up, as a last resort raised
money to send me to the Kelley
Institute.
Ihad gotten so low that children
on the streets hooted and jeered at
me. When drunk / would be- SO
dead drunk, my pockets would be
robbed almost invariably, and fire.
quently even my shoes, hat, and
coat taken from me. The world
as rule has no sympathy for a
drunken man. 'Oh! he is drunk,
is all that is said and they pass on.
Of course in my sober moments
I'd feel deeply the disgrace of all
these things, but the demon had
me, and / could not shake him off
by any power or will of my own,
yet during all these years I am
proud to state I have never de-
frauded any one, never lied to any
one, except to get whiskey. My
record is clear except for the get
ting drunk"
This and great deal besides, he
told us. He called on Gov. Till
man while at the Institute and
says the Governor gave him great
encouragement, told him the
Kelley cure was a good thing, and
advised him when cured and back
at home in Edgefield again, to
steer clear of his old associates,
those who drank with him in the
past and led him astray.
Sam does not even regret that he
has stopped drinking just as the
Dispensary law has made the
liquor good, and this is one of the
best Indications that the appetite
for strong drink is gone; and to
look at him no one could doubt the
fact of the cure; his eyes are
bright as never before in twenty
two years; his complexion healthy,
his step vigorous and elastic, and
there is an open, manly look about
him that betokens a new and q
better life.