298 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
word to dissuade him from his downward 
course. 
The Sabbath was a day of feasting, and their 
house the resort of idlers, who had no respect 
for things sacred. In a few years they were 
almost as much isolated from all refined and 
cultivated society as if they had lived in the 
desert. Children grew up with soured and em¬ 
bittered feelings towards all around them. They 
were taught to look upon those who cultivated 
their minds, and adopted a style of living in 
accordance with good taste and refinement, as 
proud and aristocratic, and encouraged to avoid 
instead of imitating them. The store and tav¬ 
ern, where vulgar herds convened, were their 
places of diversion. 
In the meantime, the poison was at work, and 
he who dealt it out, and allured the unwary to 
destruction, was growing rich upon the spoils. 
Day by day he poured out the liquid fire, which 
he knew was burning into the very heart’s core, 
destroying mind, and soul, and body, withering 
every energy, taking bread from the mouths of 
children, and desolating a hearth-stone around 
which children and children’s children had so 
long gathered, and exulted in his inhuman tra¬ 
ffic. Houses and lands were added to his pos¬ 
sessions—he grew rich and was crowned with 
honors, such as the vulgar are so ready to lav¬ 
ish on those who hoard money—no matter if 
it is coined from the very life-blood of the 
widow and the orphan, and stamped with the 
tears of those who are perishing with hunger 
and nakedness. Oh, why do not the stones cry 
out against such injustice, or the earth open and 
swallow up those who thus pollute its surface? 
But though the destroyer was silently and 
surely at work, there were no evidences of his 
ruthless hand upon the premises. The land was 
faithfully tilled, and the crops faithfully harvest¬ 
ed, and though he who toiled diligently from 
morning till night often reeled to his work, the 
little garden exhibited no signs of neglect; the 
flower beds were as neatly bordered, and the 
honeysuckles and morning-glories were trained 
and pruned as tenderly as if the mind had not 
been shattered, and the body wasted of its 
strength. The tall shade trees interlaced the ir 
gigantic stems, and formed a lofty bower about 
the dwelling, but never were they left to look 
scragly and old. All without was neat, and 
trim, and tasteful, but alas, all within was with¬ 
out beauty, or taste, or method. The fireside 
was never bright and cheerful. There were no 
evidences of the skilful hand of woman on the 
walls, or the mantle-shelf, or the work-table. 
Every thing had a sombre and repulsive look, 
and the atmosphere a chilly and unwholesome 
dampness. You could not enter the house 
without feeling that the refining and ennobling 
influence of a pure-minded woman had never 
shed its radiance there. 
Now and then, conscience, or rather the fear 
of an untimely death, awoke the slumbering 
energies of the self-destroyer, and he would re¬ 
solve to “touch not, taste not, handle not,”and 
for a little while would keep his resolution; and 
then would come the tempter with his soft 
speech and flattering tongue, and resolution, 
and thought, and energy would be drowned in 
the bewildering draught, and another step 
would be taken down into the deep pit of des¬ 
truction. 
The grave-yard was often passed as he went 
to his daily labor, and one evening as he was 
staggering by, his companion pointed him to a 
fresh mound, beneath which had recently been 
laid one who had been their companion through 
all the days of boyhood, and youth, and ripening 
manhood, and whom they had dearly loved. In 
the vigor and prime of life he had gone down 
to a drunkard’s grave! “Yes,” said his com¬ 
panion, “and ere another winter’s snows shall 
have melted from the green sward, you will 
have followed him, unless you retrace your 
downward steps. He might have lived a hale 
old man, of threescore years and ten, gathered 
like a shock of corn fully ripe, had he lived a 
temperate and sober life. But he was cut 
down in the midst of his days, and his death 
was not the less suicide because it was produced 
in years instead of an hour.” 
He who listened had already experienced the 
horrors of delirium tremens, and this terrible 
disease had terminated the life of the friend 
upon whose grave they were now gazing, and 
there he made a new resolution that he -would 
cast off the fetters that bound him—-the chains 
that were dragging him to perdition—and lead 
a new life. For a year the maddening cup did 
not touch his lips. But there was no kind 
voice to cheer him on, or commend his noble 
efforts. His fireside was no brighter, and the 
face of his wife no less gloomy. His former 
companions deserted him, and there were no 
new ones of a better class to take their place. 
He was prostrated without his usual excitement, 
and could not perform his ordinary amount of 
labor. So he returned to his idols, and never 
again attempted to cast them away. 
He loved his children, and was proud, as 
fathers often are, of his daughters, who were 
pretty, and more than ordinarily interesting. 
But he had not the means of educating them, 
though they were fully impressed by their igno¬ 
rant mother with the vulgar idea that their 
birth and lineage made them ladies. They en¬ 
deavored in many little ways to brighten their 
home and make it more cheerful; but the vices 
of their parents, which were like a weight upon 
their spirits, drove them very early in life, to 
efforts for self-support, and they went forth 
among strangers to toil as common servants to 
earn the bread which their father sold for rum. 
His sons were without education and without 
ambition, and grew up coarse and grovelling in 
their tastes ; and having no healthy incitement 
to labor at home, and no pleasure in the family 
circle, they too, early -went forth into a world of 
temptation to be corrupted and destroyed. 
So, day by day, and inch by inch, the mea¬ 
dow, and the pasture, and the hill-side, were 
bargained away, and still almost unconsciously; 
for no mention was made of accounts, and the 
long column of debit and credit was not exhib¬ 
ited, and no warning words were spoken, till the 
vultures were ready to swoop upon their prey. 
The farm, the homestead, and all his possess¬ 
ions had been bartered, and he had in return a 
shattered constitution, and an utterly debased 
and ruined mind. The cup of ruin had been 
drained to the dregs; and he who, only a little 
while ago, was the owner of a proud domain, 
and might have lived to a green old age, com¬ 
fortable and independent, and left a pretty in¬ 
heritance to his children, went forth a beggar, 
and is fast degenerating into a hopeless vaga¬ 
bond. He is only yet in middle life, and without 
home, or friends, or comfort!—the victim of a 
depraved appetite—and soon for him also will 
open the drunkard’s grave. 
The pretty farm is sold—strangers are stroll¬ 
ing leisurely in the shadows of those tall old 
trees, with no reverence for the hand that 
planted them, and only contempt for him who, 
for worse than a mess of pottage, has sold his 
birthright. They may be happy within those 
grey old walls, on which he who built them, 
fondly hoped no name but his would ever be in¬ 
scribed, and within which none but those in 
whose veins should flow his blood, should ever 
dwell; but no more justly did they come by their 
ill-gotten gains than the midnight thief and un¬ 
principled marauder. 
They have no more reverence either for the 
God who avenges, and no fear of retribution ; 
yet it may come!—for there is a woe pro¬ 
nounced against those who lay snares for their 
neighbors’ feet, and who put the cup to their 
neighbors’ lips, and who lay wait to destroy. 
But may mercy be dealt out to them instead of 
judgment, for a terrible doom would be theirs 
who had done, not only one, but all these 
things. 
But the little household is wrecked, and their 
inheritance passed away forever. Oh, it is sad 
to see a home blighted, and the fire upon an 
ancient hearth-stone go out in darkness and o 
woe. But how many, oh, how many, have 
been thus desolated in our fair land by this in¬ 
sidious foe. How stealthy are his footsteps as 
he creeps over the threshold, where he comes 
to spread the blight and the mildew—to give 
poverty for riches, and for bright hopes and 
light hearts, crushed and broken spirits, 
wretchedness and woe. 
It is the monster evil, and comes in a thou¬ 
sand forms to charm its victims to the very 
verge of the pit. But though I have often seen 
it enter the cot of the humble—make the poor 
poorer, and the desolate utterly forsaken, it 
never before seemed so terrible as when I saw 
the proud family of the old homestead go forth, 
bowed and stricken, with not a lingering look 
upon the meadows, the woodlands, the garden, 
or the hill-side, to take shelter in the hut of 
poverty, and live henceforth upon the pittance 
which the day laborer, paralyzed and broken, 
might be able to command. I turned away in 
bitter anguish from the sight, and may it be a 
lesson which shall encourage the humble, and 
prove a timely warning to the proud, for whoso 
eateth the bread ofjionest industry shall in due 
time reap abundant reward, and whoso wasteth 
his substance in riotous living shall be brought 
low. 
-!>•- 
Excuse Bad Spelling. —“ Massa,” said the 
black steward of a Marble head captain, as they 
fell in with a homeward bound vessel, “ I wish 
you’d write a few lines for me to send to the old 
woman, cos I can’t write.” 
“ Certainly,” said the good-natured skipper, 
taking his writing materials; “ now, what shall 
I say ?” 
Pompey told the story which he wished his 
wife to know, which his amenuensis faithfully 
recorded. 
“Is that all, Pomp?” asked the captain, pre¬ 
paring to seal the letter. 
“Yes, massa,” replied he showing his ivory, 
“tank you; but’fore you close him, jist say, 
please ’scuse bad spellin and writen, will ye ?” 
The captain appended the postscript as de¬ 
sired. 
