“WILL I BE LIKE YOU, PAPA?”
A gentleman who for years has been more or less under the influence of liquor, and whose red nose and bloated figure stamped him as an inebriate, had gone home to his wife and children in this condition. He was not unkind in act or in words. It was his delight to play at games with his little ones, as he was able, and to entertain them with wonderful stories. On this occasion the family were all together in the sitting-room, and the usual games having been played, little Freddie, a lad about six years of age, had climbed upon his father's knee, and was asking all sorts of boyish questions. He talked as a child will—of what he would do when he was a “big man!” asked if he would be like papa then; and finally after a long and serious look into his father's face, with every shade of childish curiosity in his voice and glance, put to him this bewildering query:— “Papa, when I grow up to be a man, will my nose be red like yours, and my face all swelled?” Ah! why should that swollen face grow redder than 'twas wont to be? Why should his arms so quickly draw that boy to his breast? And why should tears flow and voice tremble as he replied in words and tone that made his mother's heart glad:— “No, Freddie, please God, you won't be like me when you get to be a man; and neither will your father, my boy, for from this hour he will lead a sober life.” “Be like him!” He had not thought of that before, and the bare possibility staggered him. All the love of his father's heart cried out against such a fate. That boy! His pride! going about with a bloated face and poisoned breath? No, no! he was not prepared for that! Never before had he seen his own looks so clearly; they were reflected in the boy's—the boy grown to manhood; and honor, affection, and reason came to the rescue. The child had preached a sermon no orator could deliver; and innocence and ignorance had accomplished what learning and logic had aimed at in vain. Those words “went home.”—Selected.