A LITTLE CANDLE, SHINING FAR.
By Wendell Phillips
A MOTHER, on the green hills of Vermont, was holding by the right hand a boy, sixteen years old, mad with the love of the sea. And as she stood at the garden gate one morning, she said:— “Edward, they tell me—for I never saw the ocean—that the great temptation of seamen's life is drink. Promise me, before you quit your mother's hand, that you will never drink liquor.” “And,” said he, for he told the story, “I gave the promise, and went the world over, to Calcutta, the Mediterranean, San Francisco, and the Cape of Good Hope, the North and South Poles. I saw them all in forty years, and I never saw a glass filled with sparkling liquor that my mother's form at the gate did not rise up before my eyes; and to-day I am innocent of the taste of liquor.” Was not that sweet evidence of the power of a single word? Yet that is not half; “for,” still continued he, “yesterday there came into my counting-room a man of forty years. “‘Do you know me?’
“‘No.’
“‘Well,’ said he, ‘I was brought into your presence on shipboard; you were a passenger; they kicked me aside; you took me to your berth, and kept me there until I had slept off my intoxication. You then asked me if I had a mother. I said I had never heard a word from her lips. You told me of yours at the garden gate, and to-day I am master of one of the finest ships in New York harbor, and I have come to ask you to come and see me.’” How far the little candle throws its beams, the mother's words on the green hills of Vermont! God be thanked for the mighty power exerted by the utterance of a single word.—Wendell Phillips.