CHAPTER II.

Birth, parentage and early education--Early childhood--Early events--Memory of them vivid--Bitter desolation--An active but uneasy life--Breaking colts for amusement--Amount of sleep--Temperament has much to do in the matter of drink--The author to blame for his misspent life--Inheritances--The excellences of my father and mother--The road to ruin not wilfully trodden--The people's indifference to a great danger--My associates--What became of them--The customs of twenty years ago--What might have been.