DEAR SIR AND BROTHER: The few brotherly words you spoke to me during our short acquaintance, and your kindness toward me, a poor drunken outcast at the time, will ever be remembered. Often I make inquiries of Brother Holcombe regarding you and your health. At his suggestion, I write you and give a brief history of my life, in hope it may encourage some poor fellow whom you are seeking to save for a better life, and give him renewed courage to battle against sin; and for the glory of our Saviour Jesus Christ.
My father, as a wealthy man, determined to give his children the benefit of a good education. With this end in view, he left my younger brother and myself in Germany in 1864, after a visit there with the family. We stayed until 1867, when we returned to Louisville, I to enter the banking house of Theodore Schwartz & Co. With them I stayed until 1869, when my father became bondsman for the sheriff, Captain John A. Martin. Out of courtesy, Captain Martin made me, although only nineteen years of age, one of his deputies. From that time I date my downfall. Money flowed in freely; and, being young and inexperienced, I spent it just as freely, if not more so. In two years, at the age of twenty-one, I was considered about as reckless a young man as there was in the city. My father was always proud of his oldest son, and indulged me in almost everything. The habit of intemperance was gaining a sure hold; and when he died, in 1872, I was considered by some a confirmed drunkard.
Gradually I sank lower and lower, until I became what I was when you first saw me eight months ago--a poor miserable outcast from society, and a burden to myself and friends. I was forsaken and despised by all. I shudder to think that my life should ever flow in the same channel again. During all these years of dissipation I wandered all over this country--from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Atlantic almost to the Pacific. I drifted aimlessly with no other object in view but to gratify a terrible longing for strong drink. I had been in the city but a short while when I heard of Brother Holcombe's efforts to redeem the fallen. Having known him before his conversion, curiosity led me to listen to him. During all this time I knew and felt that a day of reckoning would come, but whenever such thoughts entered my mind, I dismissed them, as they made me tremble at the very idea of having to give an account of the misdeeds of a wasted life. On the 25th of last June I was passing up Jefferson street, and heard singing in the basement at No. 436. My first impulse was to turn and go away, as I was in no suitable dress to go into a place of worship. Then the thought came into my mind, "This is Steve Holcombe's place; I'll go in and see what it looks like." Thank God, I did go in. The songs of those Sunday-school children awakened chords in my heart which I thought had died long ago. Tears came into my eyes, and then and there I vowed, if by God's help salvation was possible for me, I certainly would make the trial. Glorious have been the results. That evening I heard Brother Holcombe once more; introduced myself to him and promised him I would attend evening service, which I did.