Theodore P. Wilson

“ It was a December evening; a dull fire burned within the dingy bars of William Foster’s parlour grate. William himself was at his club, but his wife and baby were at home: that poor mother, who knew nothing of a heavenly Father to whose loving wisdom she could intrust her child; the baby, a poor little sinful yet immortal being, to be brought up without one whisper from a mother’s tongue of a Saviour’s love. ”

“ I will imagine myself in your place, and looking out to see where I may best put the stamp of the Cross on my life. I am wishing to do good, I am trying to do good: but may it not be that my benevolence is sometimes rendered so ungraciously that it gives more pain than pleasure to those who receive it? Ah, then, I will put the stamp of the Cross here. I will try, not only to do good, but to do it graciously. Perhaps, again, I am looking upon suffering and natural infirmity of temper as an excuse for harshness and hard judgment, and not as a call to exercise charity, patience, and forbearance. ”

“ Ah, it is easy to laugh down, or press down by a mother’s authority, the holy resolve of a child who sees the gigantic monster drunkenness in some of his hideous proportions, and would gladly take that step which would keep him, if leaning on grace for strength, free from the deadly snare; easy to laugh down or crush down that resolve; but oh, impossible to recall the past, impossible to give back to the utterly hardened drunkard his fresh vigorous intellect, his nervous moral power, his unstrained will, his unwarped conscience, his high and holy resolution! ”

“ The old man’s appearance now attracted every one’s attention. He had drawn himself up to his full height, and had turned so as to confront Mr Huntingdon, who was sitting with his sister by his side on a garden bench facing the house. His snow-white hair gave him ordinarily a venerable appearance, and this was now increased by the look of intense earnestness which glowed in his every feature. His back was to Amos, who, noticing that the old man was evidently about to speak under the pressure of some unusual excitement, half rose to his feet, but too late to stop old Harry’s purpose. ”

“ Ay, shame to them, indeed! But oh, how sad, how grievous that the young hand, which might have raised to untainted lips none but those pure draughts which neither heat the brain nor warp the sense of right, should ever learn to grasp the cup that gives a passing brightness to the eye and glitter to the tongue, but clouds at length the intellect, fires the brain, and leaves a multitude of wretched victims cast ashore as shattered moral wrecks. To such results, though from the smallest beginnings, does the drink tend in its very nature. Oh, happy they who are altogether free from its toils! ”

“ I believe you are right,” said her friend, with a sigh. “I wish there were more of such true unselfishness amongst us; I wish I were such a character myself.”
“And so you are, dear Grace, in the main. No one can possibly doubt your genuineness and sincerity. You have only just to step up on to the higher platform, and, as your heart’s gaze becomes more fixed on a Saviour known and loved, you will cease to think about how your self-denial looks in the eyes of others, and will feel the cross which you carry after Christ in the path of duty to be easy and his burden light.” ”

“ There was a pause: then he went on: “There are plenty of homes that aren’t sweet; homes with variations enough and to spare in them; but they’re variations of misery. I hope you’ll never have one of those homes, my child.”
Mary coloured deeply, and her mother’s eyes filled with tears. Mr Tankardew looked earnestly at them both.
“No danger of any but sweet variations here,” he said; “but all new homes are not sweet homes—there’s no sweetness that will last where the barrel, the bottle, and the spirit-flask play a trio of discords: they’ll drown all the harmonies of harp and piano. ”

“ The beauty of his elder brother’s character, the nobleness of his aims, the singleness of eye that was manifest in him, his unselfishness and patience, these traits had won the unfeigned admiration of Walter, an admiration which he was too generous not to acknowledge. But yet, all the while, he rather fretted under Amos’s rigid consistency, remarking to his sister that really it was a bit of a bondage to have to be always so very good, and that one must not be so over-particular if one was to get on with people who were not yet exactly angels. ”

“ Surely the mistake is a sad and fatal one—fatal to woman’s highest happiness and truest usefulness; fatal to her due fulfilment of the part which her loving Creator designed her to fulfil in this world!
There are two concentric circles in which we all move, an inner or domestic circle, an outer or social circle. We are too often educating our women merely for the outer circle. We crowd the mind and memory with knowledge of all sorts, that they may shine in society: we forget to teach them first and foremost how to make home happy. It was so with Mrs Prosser. ”

“ Misunderstood, thwarted at every turn, her attentions misinterpreted, her gentle forbearance made the object of keen and relentless sarcasm or lofty reproof, her supposed failings and shortcomings exposed and commented upon with ruthless bitterness, while yet the tongue which wounded never transgressed the bounds imposed by politeness, but rather chose the blandest terms wherewith to stab the deepest,—hers was indeed a life whose daily strain taxed the unostentatious grace of patience to the utmost, and made her heart often waver, while yet the settled will never lost its foothold. ”

“ There are impressions cut deeper into the heart by the sudden stroke of some special trial than any made by the continuous pressure of afflictions, however heavy; impressions which nothing in this world can efface—wounds, like the three-cornered thrust of the bayonet, which will not heal up. Such was the keen, piercing sorrow which the sight of Frank in his drunkenness had stabbed deep into the soul of Mary Oliphant. The wound it had made would never heal. Oh, miserable drink! which turns the bright, the noble, the intellectual creatures of God into worse than madmen ”

“ Walter looked discomfited, and not best pleased. Then Miss Huntingdon said, in her clear gentle voice, “Surely dear Amos is right. If the principle of gambling is in the raffle, though in a seemingly more innocent form, how can it be otherwise than perilous and wrong to engage in such things? Oh, there is such a terrible fascination in this venturing one’s little in the hope of making it much, not by honest work of hand or brain, nor by giving an equivalent, nor by receiving it as the free-will loving gift of one who gladly does us a kindness. ”

“ I quite agree with you.”
“Do you hear him, mates?” cried Foster triumphantly. “He owns he’s beaten.”
“Not a bit of it,” cried Bradly. “What I grant you is this, and no more: the Bible hasn’t done all it should have done, and would have done. But why? Just because men wouldn’t let it: as our Saviour said when he was upon earth, ‘Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life.’ That’s man’s fault, not the Bible’s.”
“Ah, but if the Bible had really been a revelation from heaven, it ought to have converted all the world by this time, Tommy Tracks.” ”

“ Dear Mrs Franklin! The drink has washed out all kindness: there’s ruin hanging over that house, not as I wishes it to them, but it is so. The children’s been brought up to think of just nothing but themselves; their eating and drinking, and dressing, and playing: there’s sipping in the parlour all day long; drinking in the dining-room; swilling in the kitchen. Our poor Jim’s seen his betters there living as if men, women, and children had nothing to do in this world but to drown the thoughts of the next in drink and pleasure, and he’s learnt his lesson too well ”

“ I want to show Mary, I want to show you all, that I can still be strictly sober, strictly moderate, without total abstinence, without a pledge. And oh, do not let it be said that the mother and daughter of a minister of the gospel were less ready to pardon than their heavenly Master.”
“Oh, Frank,” cried Mrs Oliphant, “how grievously you mistake us! Pardon! Yes; what are we that we should withhold pity or pardon? But surely it is one thing to forgive, and quite another thing to entrust one’s happiness, or the happiness of one’s child, into hands which we dare not hope can steadily maintain it. ”

“ Not a doubt of it, he was a truly great and good man, a genuine moral hero. For a man who can be satisfied with nothing less than what is real and right; who is content to count all things loss for the attainment of a spiritual aim, and to fight for it against all enemies; who does his duty spite of all outward contradiction; and who reverences his conscience so greatly that he will face any difficulty and submit to any penalty rather than do violence to it, that is a truly great man, exhibiting a superb example of moral courage. And such a man, no doubt, was Martin Luther ”

“ Will you promise me that you will never knowingly marry a man who loves the drink?”
Mary buried her face in her hands. A few moments, and no one spoke.
“Hear me, my child,” cried the old man, again beginning to pace the room with measured strides; “you are dear to me, very dear, for you’re the image of one lost to me years ago, long weary years ago. I cannot bear to see you offered as another victim on the altar of the Drink-Moloch: he has had victims enough: too many, too many. Do you wish to wither into a premature grave? ”

“ The Friday on which the appointment between Foster and Levi Sharples was to be kept at Cricketty Hall, was one of those dismal April days which make you forget that there is any prospect of a coming summer in the chilly misery of the present. Cold showers and raw breezes made the passers through the streets of Crossbourne fold themselves together, and expose as little surface as was possible to the inclemency of the weather; so that when James Barnes and Thomas Bradly left the station by the early and mid-day trains, there were but few idlers about to notice their departure. ”

“ Brighter days, then, had come; nevertheless, Amos could not help seeing much in the character and conduct of both his sister and Walter which saddened him. Acting himself on the highest of all principles—the constraining love of the heavenly Master—he could not be content till the same holy motive should have its place in the hearts of those he so dearly loved.
Sorrow had subdued and softened in Julia the less amiable features in her character; while all that Amos had done and suffered and was still doing for herself and her children could not but draw out her heart to him. ”

“ O Frank, I have dreadful misgivings. Miserable rumours come across the sea to make all our hearts sick. Will you not at once and for ever renounce what has been the occasion of sin and disgrace to yourself and of misery to us both? Will you not go to the Strong for strength, and cast yourself at once on him? I cannot write more now, for I am almost broken-hearted. I shall not cease to pray for you.—Yours, Mary Oliphant. ”

“ One or two things for which she had real taste and ability thoroughly mastered would have been a far greater source of delight to her husband, and of satisfaction to herself, than the mere handful of unripe fruit which she had gathered from a dozen different branches of the tree of knowledge, and in the collecting of which she had, in a measure, impaired the elasticity of her mind and her bodily strength, and found no time for making herself mistress of a thousand little undemonstrative acquirements which tend to keep a steady light of joy and peace burning daily and hourly in the home. ”

“ To be thinking of others, to be steadily keeping the good of others in view, to put self-pleasing in the background, or to find it in pleasing others, and that, too, from love to one who for her sake pleased not Himself,—this was something wondrous indeed to her, and yet how full of real and heavenly brightness when it had truly found an entrance into her soul! ”

“ She was not one of those active ladies who carry little bells on the skirts of their good deeds, so as to make a loud tinkling in the ears of the world. Hers was a quiet and unobtrusive work. Her views of usefulness and duty were, in the eyes of some of her acquaintance, old-fashioned and behind the age. Standing on one side, as it were, out of the whirl of good excitement, she could mark the mistakes and shortcomings in the bringing up of the professedly Christian families which came under her observation, and of the grownup workers of her own sex. ”

“ Captain Merryweather had proved himself all that a captain should be—a thorough sailor, equal to any emergency; a firm but considerate commander; an interesting and lively companion, ever evenly cheerful, and watchful to make all around him comfortable and happy. Hubert Oliphant was full of spirits—happy himself, and anxious to make others the same; a keen observer of every natural phenomenon, and admirer of the varied beauties of ocean and sky; and, better still, with a heart ready to feel the bounty and love of God in everything bright, lovely, and grand. Poor Frank had become less sad ”

“ We want to know unmistakably what to believe, and how to act out our belief. What a blessing it is that, when we take up our Bibles in a humble and teachable spirit, we can say, ‘Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.’ But we are come upon strange times indeed, when professed teachers of the Christian religion can propound to us ‘a gospel without an atonement, a Bible without inspiration, and an ignorant Christ.’—Well, Thomas, shall we come into my study? Dr Prosser will excuse me for a few minutes. ”

“ Then Amos turned to his aunt and said, “Will you, dear aunt, kindly explain to my father how matters are, and why I am gone?—Poor Julia!” he added, raising her up gently and kissing her forehead, “all may yet be well. May I take him one kind word from you?” She did not speak, but her bosom heaved convulsively. At last she said in a hoarse, quivering whisper, “Yes, what you like; and—write and tell me if he is really dying.” Then she rushed out of the room to her own chamber, but appeared at luncheon with all traces of emotion vanished from her features. ”

“ Johnson returned from the pit, from whence he was summoned, to find his wife dead, destroyed by her own hand; and Betty utterly prostrate on her bed with the terrible and agonising shock.
Oh, drink, drink! most heartless of all fiendish destroyers, thou dost kill thy victims with a smile, plucking away from them every stay and support that keeps them from the pit of destruction; robbing them of every comfort, while hugging them in an embrace which promises delight, and yet crushes out the life-blood both of body and soul ”

“ O master, master! if you loved Miss Julia as was as I love her, and as Master Amos loves her, though she has married a vagabond of a husband, and had the door of her home closed agen her for ever for it, and oh, if you’d but a touch still of the dear Saviour’s forgiving love towards your own flesh and blood, you couldn’t blame Master Amos for doing as he’s doing, if you only knew too how he’s been a-sacrificing of himself, and bearing the shame and scorn all the while without a murmur. ”

“ Some wring their hands over bodies which can never live again till the resurrection morning; some lovingly tend those who lie racked with agony on their beds, every limb writhing with fiery anguish; while some poor victims are so scorched and blackened that none can be found to claim them—one can only be known by his watch-chain, so completely is he burnt out of all remembrance. And what of poor Johnson? Hour after hour Betty and her mother watched near the pit’s mouth, sick with sorrow and suspense, pressing forward as each fresh tub-load landed its miserable burden, still to be disappointed ”

“ And now the women are clustered round on the pit-bank in haggard expectation, the very picture of woe, some wild in their cries, others rocking themselves to and fro to still, if it may be, their misery; and others bowed down to the earth, the very image of mute despair. And now the wheels rapidly revolve, the rope runs swiftly, at last it slackens speed. The tub reaches the top—two ghastly forms are lifted from it—the women, with straining eyes, pressing forward to look. Oh, what a sight! the fiery stream has scorched the faces and limbs of the poor men almost out of knowledge. ”

“ And sorrow has not made her selfish. She has learned to take a deepening interest in the happiness of others; and thus, in her self-denying works of faith and labours of love, she finds the throbbings of her wounded spirit to beat less fiercely. She has gained all she hopes for in this life, peace—not in gloomy seclusion, but in holy activity—and she knows that there is joy for her laid up in that bright, eternal land where the sorrows of the past can cast no shadows on present glory. ”

“ I am sure, dear children, that they are to the point; I mean, that they are examples of the sublimest moral courage—that courage which leads godly men and women not to shrink from duty though disease and death lie before them or hover over their path.”
“Thank you, dearest auntie,” said Walter; “you have indeed brought some glorious examples before us, and they just fit in with the conduct of our own dear hero here, who seems to wish us to forget that there ever was such a person as Amos Huntingdon, but he certainly won’t succeed.” ”

“ I dare not run the terrible risk. I dare not join myself to you in a bond which could never be severed, however aggravated might be my misery and your sin. Oh, Frank, my heart is well nigh broken! I have loved you, and do love you still. Let us be one in heaven, though we never can be so here. Pray, oh, pray for grace to resist your temptation! Ask to be made a true follower of the Lord Jesus, and you will be guided aright, and we shall meet then in that bright land where all shall rejoice together who have, by grace, fought the fight and won the victory here.—Sincerely yours, Mary Oliphant. ”

“ I do not justify myself. I do not attempt to make less of the fault. I can thoroughly understand her horror, her disgust. I loathe myself as a vile beast, and worse than a beast. But yet, can I by this one act have cut through every cord that bound her heart to mine?”
“Excuse me, dear Frank,” said the other; “but you mistake in speaking of one transgression—one act. It is because poor Mary feels, as I feel too, that this act must be only one of many acts of the like kind, though the rest may have been concealed from us, that she dare not trust her happiness in your keeping.” ”

“ I know that you can do without the drink if you’ve a mind. I know you’ll be all the better by being without it. I know, and you know yourself, that it’s swallowed up the clothes from your own back, and starved and beggared us all. If you’ll give it up, and live without it like a Christian woman should, you’ll never have an afterthought; and as soon as I see that you can be trusted with the brass, I’ll give it you again with all my heart. Come, Alice, there’s a good wench; you mustn’t think me hard. I’ve been a hard husband, and fayther too, for years, but I must be different now ”

“ I thought as I’d try and get through the world without heart at all—but it wasn’t to be. The captain found a soft place in my heart, and I loved him. But that were nothing at all to the love I’ve had to yourself, Mayster Frank. I loved you afore you saved my life, and I’ve loved you better nor my own life ever since you saved it. And oh, I can’t abide to see you throw away health and strength, and your good name and all, for the sake of that wretched drink as’ll bring you to misery and beggary and shame. Oh, don’t—dear mayster, don’t—don’t keep the horrid poison in your house. ”

“ Frank, still beautiful in the refined cast of features, out of which intemperance has not yet been able to sear the traces of gentle blood and early culture; bright too and graceful in the masses of rich chestnut hair which adorn a forehead high and noble, yet now, alas! often crossed by lines of weary, premature care. Juniper, a compound of cat, fox, monkey, wolf—every feature of his contemptible face instinct with the greediest, most self-satisfied cunning. ”

“ Mr Oliphant hid his head in his hands, and groaned aloud. He had never before conceived it possible—what he now found to be too true—that long habits of drunkenness can so utterly unhumanise a man as to reduce him to a mere callous self, looking upon all things outside self as dreamy and devoid of interest, with but one passion left—the passion for the poison which has ruined him.
At last the rector raised his head, and said slowly and solemnly,—
“And if God spares you, will you not strive to lead a new life? Will you not pray for grace to conquer your besetting sin?” ”

“ I am no longer a child. I am not acting in the dark. I see what is my duty. I see that to exceed moderation is a sin. I have had my fall and my warnings, and to be forewarned is to be forearmed. Trust me, dear Mary—trust me without a pledge, trust me without total abstinence. You shall not have cause to blush for me again. Believe me, I love you too well.”
And with this she was forced to be content. Alas! poor Frank; he little knew the grasp which the insidious taste for strong drink had fixed upon him. ”