Away With Temptation

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, Cal. · Jul 15, 1875

Away With Temptation.

HOW A MINISTER BECAME AN OSTLER.

A FEW years since a number of ladies and gentlemen were assembled in the elegantly furnished parlors of a wealthy man who resided near to one of the principal American colleges. The company had met to see Judge Fiddle, a member of Congress, whose son, was to be the valedictorian on the morrow, at the Commencement. By common consent, as the idol of his class, this position had been assigned to Leo. During the evening the conversation turned upon the subject of temperance. An advocate of total abstinence asked the Judge for his opinion, which he gave as follows:—

“I suppose my temperance friends will not consider me orthodox on that subject. I am utterly opposed to outside meddling with our domestic and family affairs, for I believe in every man tempering himself. Every person must be a law unto himself. I have the best of wines, and something stronger, too, on my sideboard. My children have always had free access thereto.”

The next day the Commencement exercises occurred. The son of the Judge did much better than his warmest friends had expected. Old and young were alike delighted with his eloquence. That evening the host and hostess of the Judge gave a large party in honor of the graduating class. The temperance friend of the Judge, who had discussed that question with him on the previous evening, congratulated the Judge on having raised such a son. To which the Judge had the bad taste to reply: “Yes, yes; I am proud of that boy; but, do you know, he was brought up with the bottle?” If that father could have known what was transpiring at that moment in his son’s room at the college, no such silly joke could or would have fallen from his lips.

After finishing his oratorical effort so creditably, Leo met by prior appointment, with a number of his young friends at his room. From beneath the bed he drew an old trunk, and from it he took out several bottles of wine and one of brandy. While his companions drank sparingly of the wine, he drank deeply of the stronger liquor. Before delivering his address he had taken several glasses to nerve him up for the day’s work. Consequently this second recourse to alcohol very soon produced its necessary effect; so that while the others were only merry, he became boisterous, and even delirious.

The doctor was sent for, and came, to find the youthful hero of the day afflicted with incipient delirium tremens. The struggles of the liquor-infuriated maniac were so fierce that the strength of three athletic companions was severely tasked to hold the victim in bed. The doctor at once administered opiates and enjoined secrecy. At length the patient slept, and the danger was over. When he became fully conscious, thirty hours thereafter, of his critical condition, in reply to the doctor’s inquiry how, when, and where he had acquired the taste for strong drink, for the doctor knew it was not recent, he said:—

“I began drinking wine when quite a child, from my father’s sideboard, which lost its power to exhilarate me sufficiently as I grew older, and I took to drinking brandy; but this is the first time it got ahead of me, and it shall be the last.”

The doctor was anxious to save the youth for many reasons, especially on account of his belief that an engagement existed between Leo and his own daughter. He therefore told Leo that his only salvation depended upon total abstinence—that he had never joined a temperance society, but would quietly unite with him in signing the pledge. Leo readily assented, and the old man of sixty and the young one of twenty organized a private association of their own. Both expected to keep it during life. The doctor did; but, alas! in the end Leo did not.

In consequence of Leo’s having experienced a change of heart, and joined the church a few months after graduating from college, his father abandoned the idea of making a lawyer of him, and sent him to the Princeton Theological Seminary. After having been licensed, and having preached acceptably for a year, he married the daughter of the physician already referred to, and, accepting a call, became the pastor of a large and wealthy congregation. No person ever saw a more handsome or devoted couple.

After some time a beautiful boy was born to them. The nurse asked for liquor to put into the young mother’s food. The young minister procured some liquor at a drug store. By accident the vial lost its cork and spilled its contents in his pocket. The fumes fired his brain. He tasted the alcoholic poison, then swallowed a glass of it. That night he led in his prayer-meeting. He was so unusually eloquent as to receive many congratulations thereupon. Thereafter he never went into the pulpit or into the desk of the lecture room without taking some alcoholic beverage. One evening, having taken too much, he fell upon the lecture room floor while attempting to sit down upon a chair

All saw that he was drunk. The hearts of his people were nearly broken. They loved him truly, and were devotedly attached to his amiable wife. He was prevailed upon to resign to save the disgrace of expulsion. He returned with his heart-broken wife and their unconscious babe to his father’s house. Soon after arriving he found the old sideboard, and became helplessly intoxicated. Then, for the first time, the eyes of the Judge were opened; but too late for poor Leo. His father and mother are now dead. His wife is earning her living by teaching school; but he, once so bright, once so eloquent, is now, or was quite recently, an ostler at a country wayside tavern.—Ex.