ONE WOMAN'S REASON by Mrs. G. A. Sylvester

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Jul 28, 1881

ONE WOMAN'S REASON.

By Mrs. G. A. Sylvester

"It's all nonsense, Sister Mary; for my part I'm free to confess that I'm sick and tired of temperance."

The speaker was a woman, young and fair and elegantly dressed. The frown upon her lovely face, and the scornful curve of the rosy lips showed her hearers how angry she was getting.

"I am surprised," replied a soft voice playfully. "Now for my part I am sick of intemperance. I rather wonder at your taste, Margaret."

The speaker had a tender, serene face, and looking at it you would know that some great sorrow had come into her life. But if you looked long enough you would decide that, although the face was thin and pale and the lovely hair streaked with gray, it was a much more beautiful face than that of the younger woman beside her.

"You know very well what I mean," replied Margaret Preston. "I mean the word temperance disgusts me. You can't even open a paper, that is, a religious paper, but the word stares at you from every page."

"It is a good word, I'm sure, Auntie," spoke a little maiden who was cuddled up on the broad window-seat, with the shadow of the crimson curtain flushing her pale face.

"What do you know about it, Midget?" asked the lady, a smile chasing away the frowns from the fair forehead, as her eyes rested on the child.

"I know lots," laughed Minnie, gleefully. "Temperance means simply freedom from excess in drinking or in eating." "Yes, I know," replied the lady gravely, "but that is just what I am particularly disgusted with, this matter of mixing up the children with all this talk about drunkards and drinking, before they are out of their pinafores; it is bad enough to fill up the boys' heads—"

"Oh, Auntie! not bad enough. Good enough, I think!" replied Minnie, springing from her perch and nestling down on a low seat by her aunt's side. "Only think, if all the ten millions of children in this country should take the pledge and keep it, there wouldn't be a single drunkard in the next generation."

"I was going to say," added the lady severely, "that when it comes to the girls, poor things, I think it is simply absurd. Now hear that child! I should think she was about seventy-five years old! The idea! I don't wonder your face is so pale and pinched. I am going, right off, to get you a glass of my nice wine. That will bring back your roses, dear. What would you say to that?" "Oh, Auntie," replied Minnie, rising, "I should say, 'No Sir! I can't, you see! I'm a Band of Hope girl, and I'm pledged not to touch or taste or handle.' My Doctor doesn't order me to take wines, either. If he did I should hate to. I'm glad he doesn't."

"Well, well, child," replied Aunt Margaret, coldly, "don't look at me as if I was a common highwayman. Your temperance people do not teach you very good grammar, or politeness, to say 'No Sir' to a lady!"

"Oh, Auntie," laughed Minnie, "I beg your pardon! that is a little speech I learned to say by and by, when young men ask me to take wine. I never thought my first temptation would come from a woman."

The laugh was as clear as a silver bell, and Aunt Margaret could not resist it, and said directly:—

"You are pardoned, dear! but I think it is absurd all the same; and, Sister Mary, I should like to know if really and truly you are afraid that your daughter will grow up a drunkard too! I was angry at you for bringing up your boys to be teetotalers before they were fairly into their long trousers, but for a girl! I think it is outrageous!"

"Oh, Auntie!" began Minnie with a grieved lip. But a soft hand was laid upon the child's head and a sweet mother-kiss fell upon the pure up-lifted brow.

"Mamma will have to give Auntie the reasons for her conduct, dear. The sun is warm in the orchard, now run out and play, dear; kiss mamma and Auntie good by, and go."

The child did as she was bidden, her usually smiling face a little troubled.

Mrs. Leslie's voice trembled a little as she asked gently,

"You don't think I was over-strict with my boys, Margaret? You don't think they regret their early temperance training?"

"Oh, dear, no!" replied Margaret Preston; "if I had any boys, I'd send them all to you to train up in the way they should go. Such splendid fellows as they are! Only yesterday Fred told me that everything he is, he owes, under God, to his mother's training, especially the teetotalism."

The tender face was lighted up now, with an expression that made it fairly radiant.

"I thought I'd tell you," her sister added a moment afterwards. "But I wish I hadn't. You are too strict by half, and when it comes to girls, I have not the least patience with you."

Mrs. Leslie was evidently disturbed by her sister's words. But she only said gently, "Why should not a temperance education, which, according to your own showing, makes splendid men of boys, work equally well for girls?"

"For girls! What do girls need to meddle with temperance for?"

"Where would my boys have been, I wonder," replied her sister, "if I had not known how to teach them temperance?"

"Oh, well, when she is a woman—"

"You don't suppose I can bear to think of my darling being taught in the same school that I have been, Margaret?" The voice was very low now, and the quivering lip and pallid face showed how deeply she was moved.

"Forgive me, Mary!" said Margaret, kneeling beside her sister and encircling the slender form with her graceful arms, and kissing over and over the cheeks and brow and lovely hair. "I am cruel to bring that all back to you."

"Ah, my sister, it is always present. Do you think I can ever forget? I vowed a solemn vow over my dead husband—gone to his death, young, talented, beloved, through his passion for drink—I vowed to my God that never a child of mine should know the taste of wine or any other strong drink, or beer or cider. I have so far kept my vow. My boys know their father's history. Some day I shall tell Minnie."

"But for a girl—what do girls need the pledge for, and all that? They are not in public life. They are not exposed to temptation."

"Ah, my sister, are you sure of that? I should think in your city you might sometimes see a drunken woman."

"Drunken women! Yes, indeed! miserable, low creatures, a disgrace to their sex and the world!" and Margaret Preston's fair face showed only too plainly the disgust she felt for the poor degraded sister-woman who once was "pure as the beautiful snow." But her sister's face was full of pity as she gently said:—

"Somewhere, sometime there was a beginning, Margaret. Did it never occur to you that these degraded creatures were once pure, innocent little girls, like our own Minnie?"

"No, I believe they were to the manor born degenerate daughters of sinful Magdalens, perhaps. No pure womanly nature would fall so low."

"Ah, my sister," gravely replied Mrs. Leslie, "you must pardon me for saying that you are wrong, all wrong. I know of more than one case myself where the foundation for a life of sin and shame was laid early, in pleasant homes, where brandied peaches formed a part of the dessert at table, or where wine, harmless (so called) domestic wine was used as a beverage."*

"Very improbable, it seems to me, and at least you must own such cases are rare among women. Even then I dare say the love of drink was inherited."

"Granted," replied Mrs. Leslie with paling cheek again, "my daughter might inherit it. Who can tell what is behind us? 'Unto the children of the third and fourth generation,' you know. And how many of us know anything about even our great grandfathers, to say nothing of any still farther back? Or of what appetites or passions, as well as brains they may have left us as an inheritance?"

"Well, of one thing I am very sure," replied Margaret, "it is not very complimentary to your daughter, to think she is in danger of becoming a drunkard if she ever chances to taste wine. It vexes me, and I am angry, every time I think of it."

"Ah! my sister," replied Mrs. Leslie, "you can never know what my darling is to me. But she is not above the common lot of humanity. I cannot, if I would, blind myself to the fact that she is subject to like passions with the poor wayfarer who has fallen a victim to the tempter's wiles."

"I don't believe a word of such improbable stuff!" replied her sister angrily. "Let us change the subject."

For a few moments there was silence between them, and the two ladies went on with their work, one with color heightened by anger, the other with compressed lips and sorrowful face.

At length Mrs. Leslie said, softly, "Do you remember Evelyn Maynard, Margaret?"

"Sweet little Evelyn! Could I ever forget her? I believe she was the nearest perfection of any human being I ever knew, and lovelier than anything earthly. She married young, you know, and after her parents died she never came home, and so I lost sight of her. How glad I should be to hear from her once more. They say she has an elegant home in Boston."

"I can tell you something about her," replied Mrs. Leslie, "but I thought I would not. It will not make you glad I am sure. I saw her when I was in Boston, last week."

"Saw her! And didn't she send some word to me? Can Evelyn have forgotten me?" Mrs. Leslie shook her head.

"It was on Sunday," she said hurriedly. "The streets were full of people going home from church. Everybody turned round and stared at an elegantly dressed lady who was leaning against a stone pillar. Her jewels flashed in the sun, and her beautiful hair hung in shining waves below her waist."

"Such lovely hair Evelyn had! I never saw the like! such golden, glossy ripples like little waves all over her head! Well—" "Well, after awhile she arose, staggered a few steps, and would have fallen but that I took her arm, stopped a carriage, and rode with her to her luxurious home. They say truly, her husband is wealthy, occupies a high social position, yet his wife, our dear little school-girl friend, was drunk in the streets of Boston."

Mrs. Preston covered her face and wept silently.

"If you could have gone with me to her elegant home! Two lovely children, and the noble man who calls her wife, were nearly heart-broken. He had not forgotten me, and I stayed till the evening, when having slept off her brandy, she woke with bloodshot eyes and haggard face, to call for 'more brandy.' She raved like a mad woman, and when, under the influence of a powerful opiate, she slept again, her husband came to me with a face like death, and said, 'O Mrs. Leslie, what shall I do?' What could I say? 'Again and again she has tried to reform, but failed.' 'How did it ever happen?' I asked, with tears in my eyes.

"'It began before she was six years old, in her father's house,' was his reply. 'Brandied peaches, brandy in mince-pies and cake, wines at table, and last but not least, a little whisky for every little ailment.'"

"But this must be an uncommon case," replied her sister, her tears falling like rain, upon her white hands.

"Possibly, but not probably," replied Mrs. Leslie, gravely. "But I mean to leave my daughter the ability to take care of herself. Her tastes are pure now. I will never, so far as I can help it, allow them to become vitiated. That was why I allowed her to take the pledge so young. I want her always to be able to say, 'I've signed the pledge, and I couldn't, you see.'"

May the dear Lord help us who are mothers to "go and do likewise."—Mrs. G. A. Sylvester.