"I cannot ensure your life a single hour, unless you quit business. You
are liable to be stricken with paralysis at any moment, if [once?]
subject to the [least] excitement.[7] Can't you trust your business in
the hands of your sons?"
"Doctor," said John Anderson, "I have only two boys. My oldest went West
several years ago, and never writes to us unless he wants something, and
as to Frank, if I would put the concern into his hands, he would drink
himself into the grave in less than a month. The whole fact is this, my
children are the curse of my life," and there was bitterness in the tone
of John Anderson[8] as he uttered these words of fearful sorrow.
"Well," said the doctor, "you must have rest and quiet or I will not
answer for the consequences."
"Rest and quiet!" said John Anderson to himself, "I don't see how I am
to get it, with such a wife as I have always worrying and bothering me
about something." "Mr. Anderson," said one of the servants, "Mrs.
Anderson says please come, as quick as possible into Mr. Frank's room."
"What's the matter now!"
"I don't know, but Mr. Frank's acting mightily queer; he thinks there
are snakes and lizards crawling over him."
"He's got the horrors, just what I expected. Tell me about rest and
quiet! I'll be there in a minute. Oh what's the matter? I feel strange,"
said Anderson falling back on the bed suddenly stricken with paralysis.
While in another room lay his younger son a victim to delirium tremens,
and dying in fearful agony. The curse that John Anderson had sent to
other homes had come back darkened with the shadow of death to brood
over his own habitation. His son is dying, but he has no word of hope to
cheer the parting spirit as it passed out into the eternity, for him the
darkness of the tomb, is not gilded with the glory of the resurrection.
The best medical skill has been summoned to the aid of John Anderson,
but neither art, nor skill can bind anew the broken threads of life. The
chamber in which he is confined is a marvel of decoration, light streams
into his home through panes of beautifully stained glass. Pillows of the
softest down are placed beneath his head, beautiful cushions lie at his
feet that will never take another step on the errands of sin, but no
appliances of wealth can give peace to his guilty conscience. He looks
back upon the past and the retrospect is a worse than wasted life; and
when the future looms up before him he shrinks back from the
contemplation, for the sins of the past throw their shadow over the
future. He has houses, money and land, but he is a pauper in his soul,
and a bankrupt in his character. In his eager selfish grasp for gold, he
has shriveled his intellect and hardened and dried up his heart, and in
so doing he has cut himself off from the richest sources of human
enjoyment. He has wasted life's best opportunities, and there never was
an angel, however bright, terrible and strong, that ever had power to
roll away the stone from the grave of a dead opportunity, and what John
Anderson has lost in time, he can never make up in eternity. He has
formed no taste for reading, and thus has cut himself off from the
glorious companionship of the good, the great, and the wise of all ages.
He has been selfish, mean and grasping, and the blessing of the poor and
needy never fall as benedictions on his weary head; and in that
beautiful home with disease and death clutching at his heartstrings, he
has wealth that he cannot enjoy, luxuries that pall upon his taste, and
magnificence that can never satisfy the restless craving of his soul.
His life has been a wretched failure. He neglected his children to amass
the ways of iniquity, and their coldness and indifference pierce him
like poisoned arrows. Marriage has brought him money, but not the
sweet, tender ministrations of loving wifely care, and so he lives on
starving in the midst of plenty; dying of thirst, with life's sweetest
fountains eluding his grasp.
Charles Romaine is sleeping in a drunkard's grave. After the death of
his boy there was a decided change in him. Night after night he tore
himself away from John Anderson's saloon, and struggled with the monster
that had enslaved him, and for awhile victory seemed to be perching on
the banner of his resolution. Another child took the place of the first
born, and the dead, and hope and joy began to blossom around Jeanette's
path. His mother who had never ceased to visit the house marked the
change with great satisfaction and prevailed upon his father to invite
Charles and Jeanette to a New Year's dinner (only a family gathering).
Jeanette being unwell excused herself from going, and Charles went
alone. Jeanette felt a fearful foreboding when she saw him leaving the
door, and said to herself, "I hope his father will not offer him wine. I
am so afraid that something will happen to him, and yet I hated to
persuade him not to go. His mother might think I was averse to his
reconciliation with his father."
"It looks very natural to have Charles with us again," said Mrs.
Ro[maine] looking fondly on her son.
"Yes, it seems like old times, when I always had my seat next to yours."
"And I hope," said his father, "it will never be vacant so long again."
The dinner hour passed on enlivened by social chat and pleasant
reminiscences, and there was nothing to mar the harmony of the occasion.
Mrs. Romaine had been careful to keep everything from the table that
would be apt to awaken the old appetite for liquor, but after dinner Mr.
Romaine invited Charles into the library to smoke. "Here," said he,
handing him a cigar, "is one of the finest brands I have smoked lately,
and by the way here is some rare old wine, more than 25 years old,
which was sent to me yesterday by an old friend and college class mate
of mine.[9] Let me pour you out a glass." Charles suddenly became
agitated, but as his father's back was turned to him, pouring out the
wine, he did not notice the sudden paling of his cheek, and the
hesitation of his manner. And Charles checking back his scruples took
the glass and drained it, to the bottom.
There is a fable, that a certain king once permitted the devil to kiss
his shoulder, and out of those shoulders sprang[10] two serpents that in
the fury of their hunger aimed at his head and tried to get at his
brain. He tried to extricate himself from their terrible power. He tore
at them with his fingers and found that it was his own flesh that he was
lacerating. Dormant but not dead was the appetite for strong drink in
Charles Romaine, and that one glass awakened the serpent coiled up in
his flesh. He went out from his father's house with a newly awakened
appetite clamoring and raging for strong drink. Every saloon he passed
adding intensity to his craving. At last his appetite overmastered him
and he almost rushed into a saloon, and waited impatiently till he was
served. Every nerve seemed to be quivering with excitement,
restlessness; and there was a look of wild despairing anguish on his
face, as he clutched the glass to allay the terrible craving of his
system. He drank till his head was giddy, and his gait was staggering,
and then started for home. He entered the gate and slipped on the ice,
and being too intoxicated to rise or comprehend his situation, he lay
helpless in the dark and cold, until there crept over him that sleep
from which there is no awakening, and when morning had broken in all its
glory, Charles Romaine had drifted out of life, slain by the wine which
at [last] had "bitten like an adder and stung like a serpent." Jeanette
had waited and watched through the small hours of the night, till nature
o'erwearied had sought repose in sleep and rising very early in the
morning, she had gone to the front door to look down the street for his
coming when the first object that met her gaze was the lifeless form of
her husband. One wild and bitter shriek rent the air, and she fell
fainting on the frozen corpse. Her friends gathered round her, all that
love and tenderness could do was done for the wretched wife, but nothing
could erase from her mind one agonizing sorrow, it was the memory of her
fatal triumph over his good resolution years ago at her mother's silver
wedding. Carelessly she had sowed the seeds of transgression whose
fearful yield was a harvest of bitter misery. Mrs. Clifford came to her
in her hour of trial, and tried to comfort and sustain the
heart-stricken woman; who had tried to take life easy, but found it
terribly hard, and she has measurably succeeded. In the home of her
cousin she is trying to bear the burden of her life as well as she can.
Her eye never lights up with joy. The bloom and flush have left her
careworn face. Tears from her eyes long used to weeping have blenched
the coloring of her life existence, and she is passing through life with
the shadow of the grave upon her desolate heart.
Joe Gough has been true to his pledge, plenty and comfort have taken the
place of poverty and pain. He continued his membership with the church
of his choice and Mary is also striving to live a new life, and to be
the ministering angel that keeps his steps, and he feels that in answer
to prayer, his appetite for strong drink has been taken away.
Life with Mrs. Clifford has become a thing of brightness and beauty, and
when children sprang up in her path making gladness and sunshine around
her home, she was a wife and tender mother, fond but not foolish; firm
in her household government, but not stern and unsympathising in her
manner. The faithful friend and companion of her daughters, she won
their confidence by her loving care and tender caution. She taught them
to come to her in their hours of perplexity and trial and to keep no
secrets from her sympathising heart. She taught her sons to be as
upright in their lives and as pure in their conversation as she would
have her daughters, recognizing for each only one code of morals and one
law of spiritual life, and in course of time she saw her daughters
ripening into such a beautiful womanhood, and her sons entering the
arena of life not with the simplicity which is ignorant of danger and
evil, but with the sterling integrity which baffles the darts of
temptation with the panoply of principle and the armor of uprightness.
Unconsciously she elevated the tone of society in which she moved by a
life which was a beautiful and earnest expression of patient continuance
in well doing. Paul Clifford's life has been a grand success, not in the
mere accumulation of wealth, but in the enrichment of his moral and
spiritual nature. He is still ever ready to lend a helping hand. He has
not lived merely for wealth and enjoyment, but happiness, lasting and
true springs up in his soul as naturally as a flower leaps into
blossoms, and whether he is loved or hated, honored or forgotten, he
constantly endeavors to make the world better by his example and
gladdened by his presence feeling that if every one would be faithful to
duty that even here, Eden would spring up in our path, and Paradise be
around our way.
Notes
1. This installment is numbered as a second Chapter I in the original.
2. The original reads "Jeanette Romaine."
3. The original reads "Mr. Roland."
4. The original reads "to showing."
5. The phrase "that of" is repeated in the original.
6. A note from the _Christian Recorder_ follows this paragraph: "[The
rest of this chapter was crowded out. It will appear next week.]"
7. The original reads: "if once [or possibly "one"] subject to the lest
excitement."
8. The original reads "and there was a tone of bitterness in the tone
of John Anderson."
9. The original reads "by an old friend and college and class mate of
mine."
10. The original reads "out of those shoulders spring two serpents."