The Drunkard and His Story.
FROM the New York Five Points' Monthly Review, is selected the following from real life:— A few Sundays since, at morning service, one of the most degraded specimens of humanity that ever greeted my vision came staggering into the chapel of the House of Industry. His wild and frightened looks, ragged and dirty beyond description, and face bruised and swollen, rendered him an object of disgust and terror. He seemed to look at the children with wonderful interest, occasionally muttering to himself, "Beautiful! beautiful! Oh, that mine were here!" He sat an hour or two more, and then with a long, earnest look at the children, staggered out of the chapel, and went up to the "valley of the shadow of death"—Cow Bay. As the bell rang for service in the afternoon, and while the children were clustering together, the same wild looking man staggered in once more. He surveyed the faces of the children with the closest scrutiny, and at length his eyes rested on two bright eyed little girls, who were singing one of their little hymns. He sat immovable as a statue during the whole service, gazing intently on the faces of the two children. The services closed, the congregation dispersed, yet he lingered, and the tears came coursing down his face thick and fast. Dr. S. asked him what was the matter. "I am a drunkard! a wretch! an outcast! homeless, and without a penny. Once I had a home and friends—father, mother, wife, children, and hosts of friends who loved and respected me. Time passed on, and I became a drunkard! One friend after another left me; still I drank on, down, down I fell. Father and mother went down to their graves with broken hearts. My poor wife clung to me when all others deserted me. I still drank on, pawned one article after another till all was gone, and when my wife refused to give me her wedding ring, which she had clung to with the tenacity of a death grasp, I felled her to the earth, tore off the ring and pawned it for rum. That fatal blow maddened her, and in despair she drank, and together we wallowed in the gutter. Penniless, we begged our way from Vermont to this great city. Here we hired a small cellar, in a dark and dismal street, and sent our children out to beg. Many a weary day we spent in that dreary cellar, while our children were wandering in the streets, begging for their drunken parents. About forty days since, my little children went out to beg, and from that time to this I have not seen them. Without food or fire, I clung to my dismal abode until hunger forced me out to search for my children. My degraded wife has been sent to Blackwell's Island as a vagrant, and alone I went to the Island, and the House of Reform, to the Tombs, and in despair I wandered to the Five Points, and for the last few days I have lived in the Cow Bay, among beggars and thieves. To-day I saw two children who, if they had not looked so clean and sung so sweetly, I would have called them mine. Oh! would to God they were!" "Tell me the name," said Dr. S., "and I will see." In a few moments, two interesting little children were led towards him. At the sight of this tearful-looking man, they shrank back. The poor man sprang to his feet exclaiming, "They are mine! my dear children! do n't you know your poor old father? Come to me, children. Father loves you; he won't hurt you." He reached out his arms; the little ones were timid at first, but they soon climbed upon his father's knee, while the tears were streaming down his face. "Kiss your poor drunken father, my children." But the face of the man was so black and filthy, not a place could be found. Soon they forgot the dirty face, and remembered their poor degraded father; and each entwined their little arms around his neck, and kissing him, the elder one said, with a voice that touched every heart:— "Father, we are so happy, that we want to stay. Won't you come here and live too, papa? What makes you drink so? Dear papa, do sign the pledge, and not drink any more. A kind friend found us in the street begging, and now we are happy. Do papa, come and live here and be as good as you used to be." The father's heart was overwhelmed—he sobbed and groaned aloud. For more than an hour they sat together, till at last the old man arose, still clinging to his children, and exclaiming, "The pledge! the pledge! I will never drink again!" I gave him the pledge, and from that hour he has kept it faithfully. He is now a man engaged in business, earning ten dollars per week, and none recognize him in the well-dressed man, who still boards in the house, the degraded original, whose portrait can still be seen at the House of Industry, guerreotyped in its striking deformity and squalor.