will sustain me in this resolve. Will brother's dying form in that land of gold, band?" answer. Will you not, my hus His glistening eyes, his sad, sweet smile, was his The judge had left the room; but when he returned, and, with a more subdued manner, took part in the entertainment of the bridal guests, no one could fail to see that he, too, had determined to banish the enemy at once and forever from that princely home. Reader, this is no fiction. I was there and heard the words which I have penned, as nearly as I can recollect them. This bride, her husband, and her brother who died in the gold regions of California, were schoolmates of mine. Those who were present at that wedding of my associates never forgot the impression so solemnly made, and all, from that hour, forsook the social glass. 23. DESOLATING EFFECTS OF INTEM PERANCE. The depopulating pestilence that walketh at noonday, the carnage of cruel and devastating war, can scarcely exhibit their victims in a more terrible array than exterminating drunkenness. I have seen a promising family spring from a parent trunk, and stretch abroad its populous limbs, like a flowering tree covered with green and healthy foliage. I have seen the unnatural decay beginning upon the yet tender leaf and gnawing like a worm in an unopened bud, while they dropped off, one by one, and the scathed and ruined shaft stood desolate and alone, until the winds and rains of many a sorrow laid that, too, in the dust. On one of these holy days when the patriarch, rich in virtue as in years, gathered about him the great and the little ones of the flock his sons with their sons, and his daughters with their daughters I, too, sat at the festive board. I, too, pledged them in the social wine-cup, and rejoiced with them round the hospitable hearth, and expatiated with delight upon the eventful future ; while the good old man, warmed in the genial glow of youthful enthusiasm, wiped the tear of joy from his glistening eye. He was happy! I met with them again when the rolling year brought the festive season round. But they were not all there. The kind old man sighed as his suffused eye dwelt upon the then unoccupied seat. But joy yet came to his relief, and he was happy. A parent's love knows no diminution,- time, distance, poverty, shame, but give intensity and strength to that passion, before which all others dissolve and melt away. Another elapsed. The board was spread; but the guests came not. The old man cried, "Where are my children?" And Echo answered, "Where?" His heart broke; for they were not. Could not Heaven have spared his gray hairs this affliction? Alas! the demon of drunkenness had been there! They had fallen victims to his spell. And one short month sufficed to cast the veil of oblivion over the old man's sorrow and the young men's shame. THEY ARE ALL DEAD. - WASHINGTON IRVING. 66 24. EULOGY ON COLD WATER. There," replied the speaker, pointing to a sparkling fountain that bubbled up from the mountain's base," THERE is the liquor which God, the eternal, brews for all his children! Not in the simmering still, over smoking fires, choked with poisonous gases and surrounded with the stench of sickening odors and rank corruption, doth your Father in heaven prepare the precious essence of life-PURE COLD WATER! "But in the green glades and grassy dell, where the red deer wanders, and the child loves to play, there God himself brews it; and down, low down in the deepest valleys, where the fountains murmur, and the rills sing; and high upon the mountain-tops, where the naked granite glitters like gold in the sun, where the storm-cloud broods, and the thunder-storms crash; and away, far out on the wide, wide sea, where the hurricane howls music, and big waves roar the chorus, 'sweeping the march of God!' THERE he brews it, that beverage of life, health-giving water! "And everywhere it is a thing of beauty: gleaming in the dew-drop; singing in the summer rain; shining in the ice-gem, till the trees seem turned to living jewels; spreading a golden veil over the setting sun, or a white gauze around the midnight moon; sporting in the cataract; sleeping in the glacier; glancing in the hail-shower; folding bright snow-curtains softly above the wintry world, and weaving the many-colored rainbow-that seraph's zone of the sky, whose warp is the rain of earth, whose woof is the sunbeam of heaven, all checkered over with celestial flowers by the mystic hand of refraction; still always it is beautiful, that blessed cold water! "No poison bubbles on its brink; its foam brings not madness and murder; no blood stains its liquid glass; pale widows and starving orphans weep not burning tears in its clear depths; no drunkard's shrieking ghost from the grave curses it in words of despair! But everywhere, diffusing all around life, vigor, and happiness, it is the purest emblem of the Water of Life, of which, if a man drink, he shall never thirst. Speak out, my friends; would you exchange it for the demon's drink, alcohol?" A shout, like the roar of a tempest, answered, "No!" -PAUL DENTON. The foregoing speech was delivered by Mr. Denton, a missionary of the M. E. Church in Texas, at a barbecue camp-meeting, many years ago. In a previous notice of the meeting, the preacher had announced that preparations would be made to suit all tastes, that there would be "a splendid barbecue, better liquor, and the best of gospel." After partaking of the repast, a voice was heard to exclaim, "Paul Denton, where is the liquor you promised us?" 25. THE FOLLY OF INTOXICATION. CASSIO and IAGO. Iago. What are you hurt, lieutenant? Iago. Marry, heaven forbid ! Cas. Reputation, reputation, reputation! Oh, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial. My reputation! Iago, my reputation! Iago. As I am an honest man, I thought you had received some bodily wound; there is more sense in that than in reputation. Reputation is an idle and most false imposition: oft got without merit, and lost without deserving. What, man! |