My father was a drinking man and was in the habit of sending his children to a neighboring saloon for liquor, though I was sent more often than any of the others. I remember tasting of the liquor I carried, and think it was always beer. In November, 1891, and on the afternoon of Thanksgiving Day, my father and I were alone in the house, my brothers being at play out of doors, and in going about the house, I found a bottle filled with what I afterwards knew must have been whiskey. Being but a child, I picked up the bottle and drank freely from it; its effect was almost immediate, and I grew weak and stupefied. My father was in an adjoining room and called to me to go and put some wood on the kitchen fire and I called back that I was sick and could not go, but he insisted and I obeyed. I had taken the lids from the stove, when, from the combined effect of the heat and the liquor, my whole being gave way and I sank on to the open stove, unconscious. I must have lain there some time, for the physicians and surgeons said that the bones of my hands and arms were amputated three inches from the shoulders. I was burned on the neck and on the chest but those burns were not serious. |
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