MY BOY by John Bartholomew Gough

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Feb 26, 1880

"MY BOY."

By John Bartholomew Gough

When addressing an audience in Connecticut, I related the following incident:—

Mrs. Falkener, who lives a little way out from here, gave me some interesting incidents with regard to her son.

"My boy," she said, "was a drunkard; but he signed the pledge, and said, 'Mother, I will go away from home, away from the midst of temptation, but I will keep this pledge.'"

By-and-by, after he had been gone a little over two years, a letter came saying: "Mother, I am coming home to spend Thanksgiving with you."

And he came by the stage into the town, which stopped at the door of Solomon Parsons' tavern. It was just after dusk. Some young men were in the bar. "Holloa, Fred; and how are you? What will you have to drink?"

"Nothing."

"Haven't seen you this long time. But you're looking well and hearty. What will you have?"

"Nothing."

"Not on Thanksgiving? Come, take a little."

"No, I'd rather not. I've come home to see my mother. She hardly expects me to-night. I thought I'd wait till dark and go in and surprise the old lady."

By-and-by, Solomon Parsons, who was leaning his elbow on the counter, looked at him, and said: "Fred Falkener, if I were six foot tall, and broad in proportion, as you are, and yet was afraid of a paltry glass of ale, by George! I'd go to the woods and hang myself."

"But I am not afraid."

"Oh, yes you are—ha! ha! ha! I say, boys, here's a great big fellow afraid of a glass of liquor. I suppose he's afraid of his mother."

"Well," he said, "I'm going to mother; and I may as well show you that I'm not afraid to drink it."

He drank it; then came another glass; and they plied him with more. Twelve o'clock that night he went into a barn, and was found in the morning—dead!

They brought him to his mother stretched on a plank with a buffalo robe thrown over the body. She said to me. "Parsons came, and I said, 'You tempted my boy.'" "Well, I didn't know it was your son."

"You did! you called him by name; you knew it was Frederic Falkener, the only son of his poor crippled mother; and you have killed him."

"Mrs. Falkener, I am not used to have such language applied to me."

"God forgive me if I have sinned," said the poor woman, "but I put my hand on the face of my dead boy, and I lifted up my finger, and I cursed him. He went out with a face white as chalk."

Then I said, "Ladies and Gentlemen, Solomon Parsons, the man who tempted Frederic Falkener to his ruin, is in this hall, and he sits right there; and this same Solomon Parsons keeps a grog-shop on the bridge of your city, licensed by the State. Connecticut! rout him out!" And, before twenty-four hours had elapsed, bag and baggage, bottles and demijohns of liquors, furniture, licenses and all, were carted out of the city.

They violated no law. They laid no hand upon him; but they made him go out himself. They helped him not to pack up a single article of his furniture; but they went to him in a body, and declared that such a man should not be tolerated in the city, and he was obliged to leave.—J. B. Gough.