I lost sight of my patient for some months; but I am sorry to say that on one fine summer's day, when driving through one of the public thoroughfares, I saw a poor, miserable, ragged-looking man leaning against the door of a common public house, drunk, and incapable of keeping an erect position. Even in his poverty, drunkenness, and misery, I discovered it was my teetotal patient, whom I had not so long ago persuaded to break his pledge. I could not be mistaken. I had reason to know him well, for he had been a member of a Wesleyan Church, an indefatigable Sunday-school teacher, a prayer leader,-whose earnest appeals for the salvation of others I had often listened to with pleasure and edification. I immediately went to the man, and was astonished to find the change which drink, in so short a time, had made in his appearance. With manifest surprise, and looking earnestly at the poor wretch, I said: "S., is that you?" "Yes, it's me. Look at me again; don't you know me?" he answered, with a staggering reel and clipping his words. "Yes, I know you," I said, "and I am grieved to see you in this drunken condition. I thought you were a teetotaler?" "I was before I took your medicine," he answered, with a peculiar grin upon his countenance. "I am sorry to see you disgracing yourself by such conduct. I am ashamed of you." Rousing himself, as drunken people will at times, to extraordinary effort, he scoffingly replied: "Didn't you send me here for my medicine?" And with a delirious kind of a chuckle he hiccoughed out words I shall never forget: "Doctor, your medicine cured my body, but it damned my soul!" Two or three of his boozing companions, hearing our conversation, took him under their protection, and I left. As I drove away my heart was full of bitter reflections, that I had been the cause of ruining this man's prospects, not only for this world, but for that which is to come. You may rest assured I did not sleep much that night. The drunken aspect of that man haunted me, and I found myself weeping over the injury I had done him. I rose up early the next morning and returned to his cottage, with his little garden in front, on the outskirts of the town, where I had often seen him with his wife and happy children playing about, but found to my sorrow, that he had moved some time before. At last, with some difficulty, I found him located in a low neighborhood, not far distant from the public house he had patronized the day before. Here, in such a home as none but a drunkard could inhabit, I found him laid upon a bed of straw, feverish and prostrate from the effects of the previous day's debauch, abusing his wife because she could not get him some more drink; she standing aloof, with tears in her eyes, broken down with care and grief, her children dirty and clothed in rags,—all friendless and steeped in poverty! What a wreck was there! Turned out of the church of which he was once an ornament, his religion sacrificed, his usefulness marred, his hopes of eternity blasted,— -a poor, dejected slave to his passion for drink, without mercy and without hope! I talked to him kindly, reasoned with him, saccored him until he was well, and never lost sight of him or let him have any peace until he had signed the pledge again. It took him some time to recover his place in the church, but I have had the pleasure of seeing him restored. He is now, more than ever, a devoted worker in the church, and the cause of temperance is pleaded on all occasions. Can you wonder, then, that I never order strong drink for a patient now? THE OLD DEACON'S LAMENT.-E. T. CORBETT. Yes, I've been deacon of our church Walked in the way of dooty, too, And kep' my conscience clear. I've watched the children growin' up, Seen brown locks turnin' gray, But never saw such doins yet This church was built by godly men In seventeen hundred and eighty-eight: Carpets and cushings and sech like- And when the hymns were given out, To hear our leader start the tunes, With tunin'-fork in hand! 27 66 Then good old "China,' Mear," and all, And men and women, boys and girls, But that old pulpit was my pride- Jest room inside to put a cheer, (I'll own I did get narvous when There, week by week, the parson stood, There, man and boy, I've sot below, Of course I've seen great changes made, But first a choir was interdooced, Next, boughten carpet for the floor; And then, that very year, We got our big melodeon, And the big shandyleer. Well, well! I tried to keep things straight- And voted "No to all they said, He helped the young folks when they said They laughed at all those pious scenes Said, "When the parson rose to preach, Jest half way up had tarried;" This was last week. The carpenters "It made their necks ache, lookin' up," More lookin' up would help us all In this degin'rate day." The church won't never seem the same Under the preachin' of the truth And now-to see our parson stand With jest a railin' round his desk I don't believe I can! -Harper's Magazine. TOO LATE.-Fitzhugh Ludlow. There at an old man on a rock, And unceasing bewailed him of fate, For he sang the song," Too late! too late!" "When we want, we have for our pains The promise that if we but wait Till the want has burned out our brains, ery means shall be present to sate; While we send for the napkin the soup gets cold, "When strawberries seemed like red heavens, When my brain was at sixes and sevens, When the goodies all came in a stream-in a stream "I've a splendid blood-horse, and—a liver That it jars into torture to trot; My rowboat's the gem of the river Gout makes every muscle a knot. I can buy boundless credit on Paris and Rome, Those belonged to the youth who must tarry at home, "How I longed, in that lonest of garrets A rose-bush-a little thatched cottage- With a woman's chair empty close by-close by! "Ah! now, though I sit on a rock, I have shared one seat with the great; But the lips that kissed and the arms that caressed, GOD BLESS OUR SCHOOL. About the room the Christmas greens While sparkling in their gilded dress Were fitting mottoes wrought with care, And this of all that decked those walls "God bless our school." |