I had been brought up by religious parents. My father was a very religious man. He was considered by people as a fanatic because he was making money in the whisky business, and sold out rather than continue it. He lost money by selling out during the war. He saw what it was drifting to, and sold out. After that there was not a drop of whisky handled in his house on Main street until after his death. My mother also was a very religious woman, so that I had a careful religious training. But I had read a good deal of Ingersoll and Tom Paine. I heard Ingersoll lecture on one or two occasions; I wanted to get all the proof I could to sustain me. I wanted some consolation; I knew where I was drifting; there was a consciousness all this time that I was wrong; and I trembled at the thought of one day giving an account for the misdeeds of a wasted life; but I could not possibly help myself. From the mental anxiety I went through it is a wonder my hair is not gray to-day. It was terrible. I had two attacks of delirium tremens.
What brought me to realize my condition more than anything else, took place just before the time I first met Brother Holcombe. I was out on Second street mending umbrellas; for that was the way I made my living. I had become thoroughly hardened. I would have cut my throat, only cowardice kept me from it. Well, I was mending umbrellas out on Second street, and Mrs. Werne heard me as I was calling out, and knowing that Henry, her husband, and I had been to school together--had been boys together, she called me and said, "Fred, I want you to come in." She insisted on my coming to their house to dinner the next day. "Fix up," she said, "and come to dinner with us;" but I do not believe I had a stitch of clothes except what was on my back. She insisted however, on my coming; some of my friends would be there. That brought me to realize to what depths I had fallen.
The next week I went to New Albany; and I was told to leave the town, and I left the town under the escort of two policemen. To such abject wretchedness was I reduced, I could not endure to stay among friends, and I was in such a plight strangers could not endure me among them. But once I was coming down the street, and heard the singing in the Holcombe Mission; and I was considerably touched to think that I had come through the religious training of a Christian home and of church and Sunday-school; and that is all it amounted to. I went that evening to the courthouse steps, and heard Mr. Holcombe preach there; and from that day to this I have not drank a single drop; and it is only through God's grace that I realize that I am able to resist temptation. I felt that I was not worth anything; I felt that there was no power in myself. My skepticism all melted away. The view I took of it was that if God could help Holcombe, he could and would help such a one as I. I knew Mr. Holcombe very well. When I was deputy sheriff, I had a warrant for his arrest one time from Franklin county, and went there armed, knowing his dangerous reputation. I thought if Holcombe could be saved, there certainly was some hope for me, and under the inspiration of that hope I turned to God. It was my last and only hope. But it was not disappointed, for He has saved me.