“Amen.”
“DON’T LET HIM HAVE IT”
[Illustration]
If they wouldn’t let him have it!” exclaimed Mrs. Leslie, weeping; “Oh!
if they wouldn’t sell him the liquor, there’d not be any trouble. He’s
one of the best of men when he does not drink. He does not bring liquor
into the house; and he tries very hard, I know, to keep sober, but he
cannot pass Jenk’s tavern.”
Mrs. Leslie was talking with a sympathizing neighbor, who responded by
saying, “It’s a downright shame!”
While this conversation was going on, a little girl, of about six
years, sat listening attentively. After a little while she went quietly
from the room, and took her way down the road unobserved by the mother.
There was a purpose, great and noble, in her mind; she had started on a
mission. “Oh, if they wouldn’t sell him liquor!” Those earnest words of
her mother filled her thoughts. If Mr. Jenks wouldn’t sell her father
drink, there would be no more trouble. How simple the remedy!
She would go to Mr. Jenks and ask him not to let her father have any
more liquor, and all would be well again. Artless, innocent child!
The tavern kept by Jenks--the laziest man in Milanville, stood nearly
a quarter of a mile from the tenement occupied by the Leslies. Toward
this place, under a hot sun, Lizzie made her way, her mind so filled
with its purpose, that she was unconscious of heat or fatigue.
Not long before, a traveler had alighted at the tavern door. After
giving directions to have his horse fed, he entered the barroom, where
Jenks stood behind the counter.
“Have something to drink?” inquired the landlord.
“I’ll take a glass of water, if you please.”
Jenks could not hide the indifference at once felt toward the stranger.
Very deliberately he set a pitcher and glass upon the counter, and then
turned partly away. The stranger poured out a full tumbler of water,
and drank it with an air of satisfaction.
“Good water, that of yours, landlord,” said he.
“Is it?” was returned somewhat uncourteously.
“I call it good water, don’t you?”
“Never drink water by itself.” As Jenks said this, he winked to one
of his customers, who was lounging on the bar. “In fact, it’s so long
since I drank any water that I forget how it tastes. Don’t you, Leslie?”
The man to whom this was addressed was not so far lost to shame as
Jenks. He blushed and looked confused as he replied:--
“It might be better for some of us if we had not lost our relish for
water.”
“A true word spoken, my friend!” said the stranger, turning to the man,
whose swollen visage, and patched, threadbare garments, too plainly
told the story of his life.
“Water, pure water, bright water! is my motto. Its attendants are
health, thrift, and happiness. It takes not away the child’s bread, nor
the toiling wife’s garments.”
There were two or three customers at the bar besides Leslie, to whom
this was addressed; and all of them, in spite of the landlord’s angry
and sneering countenance, treated the stranger with attention and
respect. Seeing this, Jenks could not restrain himself; so, advancing
to the gentleman’s side, and laying his hand rudely on his shoulder, he
said in a peremptory manner:--
“See here, my friend, if you are about to deliver a temperance lecture,
you can adjourn to the town hall or the Methodist chapel.”
The stranger moved aside a pace or two, and then said, mildly, “there
must be something wrong here, if a man may not speak in praise of water
without giving offense.”
“I said you could adjourn your lecture.” The landlord’s face was now a
fiery red, and he spoke with insolence and passion.
“Oh, well, as you are president of the meeting, I suppose we must let
you exercise an arbitrary power of judgment,” said the stranger; “I
didn’t think any one had so strong a dislike of water as to consider
its praise an insult.”
At this moment a child stepped into the barroom. She glanced neither
to the right nor the left, but walked up to the landlord, lifted her
sweet young face, and said in tones that thrilled every heart but his,
“Please, Mr. Jenks, don’t sell papa any more liquor!”
“Off home with you, this instant!” exclaimed Jenks. As he spoke, he
advanced toward the child with his uplifted hand in a threatening
attitude.
[Illustration: “_Please, Mr. Jenks, don’t sell papa any more liquor._”]
“Please don’t, Mr. Jenks,” persisted the child, not moving or taking
her eyes from the landlord’s countenance. “Mother says if you would not
sell him liquor, there’d be no trouble. He’s kind and good to us all
when he does not drink.”
“Off, I say!” shouted Jenks, now maddened beyond self-control, and his
hand was about to descend upon the little one, when the stranger caught
her in his arms, exclaiming as he did so, with deep emotion:--
“God bless the child! No! no, precious one,” he added, “Don’t fear him.
Plead for your father. Plead for your home. Your petition must prevail.
The merciful Lord cannot say nay to the little ones, whose angels do
always behold the face of their Father in Heaven. God bless the child!”
added the stranger, in a choking voice. “Oh, that the father, for whom
she has come on this touching errand, were present now! If there was
anything of manhood yet left in him, this would awaken it from its
palsied sleep.”
“Papa! O papa!” the child exclaimed, stretching forth her hand. In the
next moment she was clinging to the breast of her father, who, with his
arms clasped tightly around her, stood weeping and mingling his tears
with those of his child.
An oppressive stillness reigned in the room! Jenks stood subdued and
bewildered, his state of mental confusion scarcely enabling him to
comprehend the full import of the scene, and the stranger looked on
wonderingly, yet deeply affected.
Quietly, and with moist eyes, the two or three customers, who had
been lounging at the bar, went stealthily out; and the landlord, the
stranger, and the father and the child, were left the only inmates of
the room.
[Illustration]
“Come, Lizzie, dear! this is no place for us,” said Leslie, breaking
the dead silence. “We’ll go home.” And the unhappy father took his
child by the hand, and led her toward the door.
But the little one held back. “Wait, papa, wait,” she said: “he hasn’t
promised, yet. Oh, I wish he would promise!”
“Promise her, in heaven’s name!” exclaimed the stranger.
“If I do promise, I keep it!” returned the landlord, in a threatening
tone.
“Then, in the name of mercy, do promise,” begged Leslie, in a
despairing voice; “promise, and I’m safe!”
“Be it so! May I be cursed, if ever I sell you a drop of drink at this
bar, while I am landlord!” Jenks spoke with an angry emphasis.
“God be thanked!” murmured the poor drunkard, as he led his child away.
“God be thanked! There is hope for me yet.”
Hardly had Mrs. Leslie missed her child ere she entered, leading
her father by the hand. “O mother!” she exclaimed, with a joy-lit
countenance and a voice of exultation, “Mr. Jenks has promised!”
“Promised what?” Hope sprang up in the mother’s heart; her face
flushed, then grew pale.
“That he would never sell me another glass of liquor,” replied the
husband.
A pair of thin, white hands were clasped together; an ashen face was
turned upward; tearful eyes looked their thankfulness in Heaven.
“There is hope yet,” said Leslie.
“Hope, hope! And, O Edward, you have said the word. I know you will
be a man once more now! Surely, God sent our child on that errand of
love! Innocence has triumphed over vice and cruelty. Our child came to
the strong, evil, passionate man, and in her weakness and innocence,
prevailed over him. God made her fearless and eloquent.”
A year afterward, a stranger came that way, and stopped at the same old
tavern. As before, Jenks was behind his well-filled bar, and drinking
customers came and went in numbers.
Jenks did not recognize the stranger until he called for water, and
drank a full tumbler of the pure liquid with a hearty zest. Then he
knew him, but feigned to be ignorant of his identity.
The stranger made no reference to the scene he had witnessed twelve
months before, but lingered in the barroom most of the day, closely
observing every one who came there to drink. Leslie was not among the
number.
“What has become of the man and the little girl that I saw here at my
last visit to Milanville?” the stranger questioned.
“Gone to the devil, for all I care,” was the landlord’s rude answer as
he hastily left the barroom.
“Do you see that little white cottage away off there, just at the edge
of the wood?” replied one of the customers. “A row of tall poplars
stand in front. The young man you ask for lives there. And what is
more, if he keeps on the way he has begun, the cottage will be his own
in another year.”
“Ah! I see; well, did the young man Leslie ever again try to get a
drink here, since the landlord promised never to let him have another?”
“Twice to my knowledge.”
“And he refused him?”
“Yes; if you remember, Jenks said, in his anger, ‘May I be cursed if I
sell him another drop.’ That saved Leslie. Jenks is superstitious in
some things. Once he drove Leslie from the barroom, threatening, at the
same time, to horsewhip him if he ever set foot inside his house again.”
“Ah! sometimes God makes even the wrath of man to praise Him,” replied
the stranger reverently.
[Illustration]