HOW ONE DRUNKARD WAS MADE.
It was done in the usual way, with this difference (to me, at least), I saw it done. Had I known the end from the beginning, I should have raised a warning cry. Who would not? Was not the drunkard's end, when the wine which "moveth itself aright" is biting like a serpent and stinging like an adder, what I had always looked at? But one day the beginning and the end of his course was set over against each other in such a way that I seemed to see the picture as a vision. There was Satan, the great enemy of souls, spreading his first fatal snare; but it was not in a dram shop, as one might suppose. And there, too, was his most carefully chosen instrument, a fair, thoughtless woman, standing, I plainly saw, as much in the shadow of God's displeasure as the evil companions to whom the world gave all the blame. It was a dark picture, but at that time and in that instance, the chief sorrow to me was not so much that here was another image of God defaced and brutalized by rum, but another and more startling thought: "Could I have hindered this? Need this have been here for angels to weep over, and demons to mock at?" To go back ten years and more, that you may see it all as I did. It was New Year's day, 186—. A storm had been raging outside since morning, but we who had gathered in Mrs. C.'s beautiful parlor knew nothing of bitter wind and sleet, except that we had fewer callers than usual. But those who came seemed to be all the merrier for having less of a crowd. The bright fire glowed in hospitable welcome on the hearth for winter cheer, and one might forget in the bloom and fragrance of the flowers that brightened the room everywhere that it was not summer time and summer weather. I remember the scene so well. The happy young faces, the gay dresses, the songs with which we filled the intervals, the tables so loaded with dainties, and the friends about it who came into the sunshine of that pleasant home with wishes for us all of a "Happy New Year." Just at nightfall, a group of young men entered, and among them was Dr. Richard L., a particular friend of the C.'s, a young man of whom I knew very little beyond the very evident fact that he was handsome, intelligent, and wonderfully popular. He had been looked for all day, and now that he was come, every one was all attention when his cherry voice was heard. "You are welcome as flowers in May," said Martha C., extending her hand with an old friend's greeting, "but how could you stay away so long?" "So that the best should come last," he said gaily. "I think I'll crown my New Year wish with one for your health and happiness, Miss Martha." "Not till you have pledged me in this," she answered, turning as she spoke to a decanter, that until then I had not seen among the flowers on the table, to fill a delicate bubble of a glass to the brim with wine. "Thank you, Miss Martha. Will you excuse me if I say that I have been out all day and have not come to that yet?" There was something in his tone, some self-assertion in his manner, that seemed to rouse in Martha a desire to show the influence she had over this young man. Her little hand was still holding the glass toward him. "Ah, indeed! Then you are the more ready to take it now, Richard." "What if he never takes wine?" suggested a friend who stood by watching the young man in what he thought, and rightly too, was a dilemma. "Oh, that's nothing," said Martha, lightly. "You will take it for me. Just this once, Richard?" I shuddered at her persistency, for a thought of the serpent that might lie coiled within that cup flashed upon me. She was near enough for me to put my hand on hers. Would she bear a check from me? She would she; but while I stopped to parley with the doubt, and to balance friendship with duty, the time for action had passed. "Just this once," echoed Richard, blushing as he took the glass, without a smile, from her hand. "Here's wishing you many happy returns of the day." I turned away, chilled with disappointment over his lack of courage, and pained, too, with that question of my own duty in the case. But after events hinged on that night's doings have forever settled the question of all such doubts for me. A little over two years after this, I sat, one Summer day, by a friend's open window. We were talking of this and that, as we bent over our sewing together, when a loud knocking across the street aroused us both. We saw a man standing at a door whereon a doctor's sign was conspicuously displayed. "He need not wait there," said Alice, gravely. "Dr. L. ought to put up a notice, 'No patients wanted here.' He has been lying there dead drunk for hours. My husband says he has been in that disgusting condition for two days, only waking to get more liquor, which he keeps on the stand beside him. The poor fellow seems bent on killing himself." "It is not possible," I exclaimed, "that this Dr. L. is Martha C.'s old friend?" "The very same," said Alice. "But" said I, still unwilling to believe it, "I heard it said that he never takes wine, at least but seldom;" for then the memory of his words, "Just this once," came back to me as they sounded that night. "I cannot say how that is," said Alice. "I only know that two years ago last New Year's night he was carried home drunk for the first time in his life. He has been going down, down ever since, has been turned out of home and church, and any day we may hear of a coroner's inquest over a man found dead in his office." So I had seen one drunkard made. That glass I had seen Richard L. put to his lips was said to be his first, and it ruined him. In sight of that closed door, and remembering the poor, debased victim inside, I resolved, God helping me, never again to stand by while the tempter snared another soul, even though the hand and voice of friend were enlisted in this unholy service.—Christian Weekly.