The Blighted Life

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · May 2, 1878

The Blighted Life.

It was at a boarding-house in one of our large cities, where I was expecting to sojourn for some months, that I made the acquaintance of Henry Somers. The first time I went to the table, he attracted my attention by his loquacity. He talked more than any one else; but though his conversation was fluent and animated, his countenance did not light up; indeed he had not an expressive face, and what expression there was, was not cheerful. It was that of a man with whom things were not going happily; of one who had something on his heart—some disappointment, some sorrow, some anxiety, some heavy care. At first I thought the sweet, gentle, youthful woman who sat beside him was his wife, but in this I soon found that I was mistaken; their proximity at the table being merely accidental, and their acquaintance not of long standing. He had never been married.

Judging from his appearance, I should say that Somers, at this time, was approaching forty years of age. His dress was always most scrupulously neat, and his light brown hair and full handsome beard in perfect order. His blue eyes, though lusterless, and surrounded with a dark circle, were always in motion, as if indicative of an uneasy, restless soul. His cheeks were somewhat sunken, and his face pale.

As the season advanced, I became better acquainted with my fellow boarder, and found that he had been quite a traveler; having not only been in Europe, but in China and Japan. I discovered, too, that he belonged to a wealthy family, and that he had enjoyed opportunities of improvement far beyond what fall to the lot of most young men. But still there was not that intelligence and culture which such advantages should have given him. His conversation was quite disconnected, and, sometimes almost silly. Occasionally he seemed much dejected, talking about the unfeeling and heartless, selfish world, and his own hard lot; and even wished he was dead. He had no employment, but told me that not long before he had almost completed arrangements for going into business, but that the party failed to keep their word.

Two or three months had elapsed after my first meeting with my somewhat mysterious acquaintance when he disappeared from his place at the table for some days, and no one knew what had become of him. He had told no one of his intended absence, and his trunk and clothes were still in his room. Various were the conjectures, as day after day passed without his return. The mystery was soon solved. Learning one morning that he had come back the night before, and that he was sick in his room, I went to see him. The first glance told the tale. He had been in a debauch, and was now in the prostrate condition consequent upon days of drunkenness. I sat down by his bedside, spoke kindly to him, let him know that I understood the state of the case, that I wished to be his friend, and to do all in my power to help him up from his fall.

Sympathy and kind words quickly unlocked his burdened heart, and he told me his sorrowful story. He had fallen in with so-called friends, who enticed him to drink, and having once tasted he could not stop; he had lain several days at a public-house under the influence of liquor, and the debauch having run its course, he had now come back, "in soul and body," as he expressed it, "the most wretched man alive." With nerves unstrung, stomach disordered, burning thirst, an aching head, and an aching heart, he was indeed a pitiable spectacle.

But notwithstanding the evident sufferings of this miserable man, it was a relief to him to have some one present, and especially one to whom he could unburden his oppressed and troubled soul. He told me his whole story. "This is not the first time," said he, "no, not by hundreds, that I have been as you now see me. This thing has been going on for years. Long ago I contracted the habit of drinking, and it has clung to me with a power that I can't shake off. I am the son of a rich man and that has been my ruin. I had plenty of money, and abundant opportunities of indulgence, and but for that my life would have been a very different one. My social position, and ample means gave me access to a club, when I was quite young.

"There I met a gay, jolly set, and we used to play cards, and take drinks night after night, until a very late hour. In this way things went on from bad to worse, until sometimes I took a dozen or more drinks in a night, and of course never went home sober. This sort of life soon brought its natural consequences. My family were mortified and distressed. At first they pleaded and remonstrated; then they grew harsh, and reproached. I was making a brute of, myself disgracing them. Various means were resorted to, to reform me, and after a time I was taken to Europe to get me out of the way of bad companions; but this did not help the matter much. Afterwards they sent me off to China, in hopes that the long voyage and change of life would break up my wretched habits; but this did not avail.

"I remained two years in the East, and soon made the acquaintance of Englishmen who were harder drinkers than my old companions; and the only wonder is that I lived to get back to my own country. Perhaps it would have been better if I had died there, but I was spared and came home, and for a while strove to do better. Indeed I reformed so far that my father put me into business, but the accursed drink soon got the better of me, no longer fit for business, I was once more set adrift, and with old companions to help me on to ruin.

"What I have gone through since then, God only knows. Some time ago I concluded that I would make a desperate effort to break the horrible bondage, and as it was important to get away from old haunts and companions, I came to this city. I am allowed just money enough to pay necessary expenses; but even that, with the exception of a few dollars a month, is not risked in my hands. I had been keeping sober until I fell into this bad company, and then, as you see, I was overcome and I fear this will continue to be the way. What is to be the end—how long this wretched sort of life is to continue, I don't know; but if I were only ready for a better world, what a relief it would be to die!"

The foregoing was not given in the continuous form in which I have narrated it; he was suffering too much for that—nor in the precise words; but this is the story. He looked and talked like one who, although conscious of his frightful bondage, was yet hopeless as to his power to escape. I told him that God could help him, that his grace was all-sufficient, and that if with a penitent, broken heart, he would cast himself at the feet of the Sinner's Friend, he would find mercy and be made a thoroughly reformed man; and that this was the only help that would certainly avail.

"I wish I were a Christian," said he; "what a blessing it must be to be a Christian! I should think you must be the happiest man in the world, with a Christian's hope, and spending your life in trying to do good."

This was spoken in the tone and manner of one whose bitter experience afforded a sombre background for setting off his ideal of a Christian. But though the words were sincere, they were evidently but the passing utterances of a restless, disturbed spirit.

After a few moments silence, he said:— "I'm like the man in the Bible—Esau, was n't it?—that sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. I sold mine for a glass of liquor."

"Well, there's one thing," said I, "that you ought to do, and which I suppose you can do—that is, to get some employment. You know the proverb 'An idle mind is the devil's workshop;' and so long as you are unemployed, you will be more liable to fall into temptation."

"I know that very well," he replied, "but how can I get employment? My father won't trust me with money, for he thinks I would soon waste it; and nobody would take a man into a business house who knows nothing about business, and who, they would be sure to find out, had been dissipated. And to tell the truth, I am not fit for business; my miserable course of life has injured my mind. I can't fix my attention on anything, and what I undertook to do wouldn't be done well. The fact is, there's no hope for me. Oh, if I was only prepared, what a relief it would be to die!"

The tone and manner in which this was said, showed that it came from a thoroughly wretched heart. It was the wail of woe from one who had made shipwreck of himself.

After this interview I not unfrequently conversed with this unhappy man. His course was still the same—sometimes months conducting himself well, and then falling into a debauch. But at his best moments there was about him an air of misery and hopelessness, which always excited my sympathy. He went to the West some years since, and not long ago I read a notice of his death. Poor fellow! from what I have been able to gather about his last years, there were no light shed upon his closing scene.

I have narrated the foregoing as a striking illustration, of the wreck which bad habits, contracted in youth, make of the entire subsequent life. This man was not cut off in the morning of his days; he lived to middle age. Nor did he sink to utter degradation. He never lay in the gutter; he was not a common outcast; nor did he die literally a drunkard's death. For years he saw the evil of his course, and would fain have changed it; but when he had made the attempt, he could neither form the social ties nor make the business connections so essential to his continuance in well-doing.

What he said of himself, indeed was true; he really was fit for nothing. His enfeebled mind rendered him an uninteresting companion; he was incapable of continuance and intelligent application, and he was restless as the troubled sea. All this, combined with shattered nerves and an irresolute will, made him apparently as unavailable for all the practical purposes of manhood as any human being I ever saw. Oftentimes I used to think what could be done for him, or with him, but there was developed nowhere to begin, nothing to build upon. Had he become a Christian that would have furnished the needful objective point; but thoughts on that subject came and went through his mind like water through a sieve. And so powerless was his will, that if he made a pledge of abstinence he would not keep it.

Here, then, was the sad spectacle of a man hardly yet in the noon of his days, restless, miserable, exiled by his family, without one intimate virtuous friend, and for practical purposes good for nothing. It was one of the most sorrowful illustrations I have ever met with, of a blighted life. At the outset of his career he had every advantage—social position, wealth, influential friends, everything—but by yielding to the tempter these were all sacrificed. In those days and nights card-playing drinking and jollity, no doubt seemed very fine, that was the seed-sowing, but when I saw him, the harvest time had come. He sowed to the wind and was reaping the whirlwind.

As I used to listen to the moaning of his wretched heart, and feel how powerless I was to help him in such a case, oh, how my inmost soul pitied him; and how unspeakable seemed the folly of those who, with beacons before them, deliberately and persistently follow in their footsteps. "Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird." So spoke Solomon; but it does not seem to be so now. The net stands right in view, with its victims struggling in its meshes, and yet how many with eyes wide open walk right into it.

Young man, beware of dissipated company! Touch not, taste not, the fatal wine cup. Avoid the first step in the road to ruin and then you will not take the second. Take warning from the bitter experience of Henry Somers, lest like him sowing the poison seeds in youth, like him you reap the blighted life.—Sel.