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CT A i ‘a us tn fl i it i TAR ii aN ra Hi i es as Mer tt DAT PTT a a sa aaa hu i i Hi t mn HA at at MM tN gM MN ih a imi es Mi i MK ii Hi ut a i ih B i ss \ Ms Hl HAH angi 1) reat — ae (i eae ri Ni d ii, iam Mi mh v0 tse Ml ACO Sm SM San aia act SAAT MAT TRAIT Man ANT RT ‘i el a ni HS cea sl vn mii Mil al i a va SS Mean Aa a ( cea ih a ma ih se nn i ‘os i a Mt Loose a Hil ma i i ma i i ui i al Ph i ‘i ‘i Ht HH tt ia Mh tut vaithe Hi el i oe Soi BO ye ee silt ‘i vi xe (th i a inl i i He mi ‘a ‘i ih i a te ult i mt ( nn i ! i f Huai iy Is i oe oa vine Ho it fl ae HN i , a es *h ae kc » dno nai } a i) mm } HN) 00 Mi mH Ht} 4 if y ul Hl oe eS a ie a HN) nya, i ar es ; Mi MA oe hs mit ia a Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1871, by HENRY HOYT, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. Aligning H {ra with a Hline-¢ Ings. CHAPTER I. N\A BS a fine likely boy—there’s no Oe denying it,” asserted Mistress Peggy young friend, Mary Flynn, had just made,.in Byrne, to an observation her pretty a shy, blushing sort of manner, concerning their mutual acquaintance, Terence Boyd. “He is so; and bates the three kingdoms for eyes, which are the making of a face— the glory of it,anyhow! I stand up for eyes all the world over. Some stand by moulii but they — the Irish ones o=peclenge — can 4 : DIGGING A GRAVE spake for themselves. Others cry up noses, which,’’ added Peggy Byrne, after caressing her own with a floundering pocket-handker- chief, “I count nothing. What signifies the nose! You'd never read a man or woman’s | meaning by their nose; there it stands, steady and constant, always the same, barring when, like Jim Garret, a clip of a stick turns it crooked for the rest of its days. You can’t read a man’s nature by his nose. But, O, darlint!—the dance or the wink of an eye, or the corner up or the corner down, of a mouth! Luck aroon! Whether they’re handsome or ugly, there the book of phbare _ Spakes out in the eyes; and I’d ask no more than the elance of an eye, or the twist of a lip, to read the heart. No wonder at the artfulness of the men, who are so fond of covering up their mouths by those mouse- _tachers! the poor girls ew can only el the. meaning half way, and the light in the | WITH A WINE-GLASS. a eyes bothers them. The Irish girls are not that bould yet,. bless the saints, that they can stare into a man’s eyes to read his meaning. But long ago they could peep under their eyes lashes and read it, and he never the wiser, just out of the curl of his lip. But now the mouths are all hidden under the furze-bush, so no wonder the poor craythurs of girls are more bothered than in the ould times.” | Peggy paused to take breath, and, et “some time, added, : “But handsome is that handsome does. Yes,” repeated Peggy, “ Mary, mavourneen, they all, that have any sense, say that hand- - - gome is that handsome does, and don’t you go to forget it.” | - “But what has that to do with Terence Boyd?” questioned Mary, drooping her head 3 “what is it he does that isn’t handsome ? — it’s nothing to me, to be sure; only I don’t 6 DIGGING ‘A GRAVE like to hear a neighbor’s child run down - for nothing!” | ‘“¢ Neighbor’s child! ”’ repeated Peggy, while she drew more tightly the ends of the hand- _kerchief that circled her keen, yet good- natured face, under her coal-box bonnet, “ A fine ‘child’ Terence Boyd is, to be sure. And where’s the neighborhood, Mary ?” _ His mother and my grandmother, Peggy, lived close beside the Seven Castles of Clon- mines,— before either of us were born,— and if that does not make us neighbors, I don’t know what does, Peggy Byrne;” and she drew up her little figure to its full _— and tried to look delighted. Peggy had a peculiar way of replying to anything she either did not believe in or disliked. She produced a peculiar sound like thhah-tha! and tossed ‘her head —“ an indignation toss,’ Mary called it. She “thhad’’ and tossed her head more vigor- — WITH A WINE-GLASS. 7 ously than usual, and pressed close to her side her bonny basket containing, very neatly | crimped, various muslin articles. Peggy was proud of the contents of her basket; and well she might be;. they were “fot. Up” ina manner that would not disgrace a Par- isian clear-starcher! Mary had a roll of needlework that she was taking home to the lady to whom the muslins belonged. She was that rare thing in those days of natural sewing machines —an excellent needlewo- man, plying her needle rapidly and neatly. The women stood almost beneath the shad- ow of Buckingham Palace, just where the bars divide St. James’ Park from the broad | trottow. Seated on the curb-stone, her bare feet nearly embedded in the brown mud of the highway, for a heavy autumn shower had just fallen — was a dark-haired, weird-looking girl about fourteen, bearing .a ‘small flat _ basket of walnuts beside her; she was’ crack- ee nS Saat geen 4 ooh yt * Yee cg At ee 8 = DIGGING A GRAVE ing the walnuts with her white, strong teeth, _ then partially shelling, and exhibiting them in rows round the edge of her extemporized shop. She was jesting mirthfully with one — of the lads of the shoe-black brigade, who had indulged himself with a pennyworth — of what the girl affirmed to be “ fine gool- den wallnuts.” : “Why, if that isn’t Nelly Livermore,” said Peggy Byrne ‘to her young friend; “Nelly, is your father in work on the Em- -bankment still?” | The sunshine faded out of the poor girl’s face while she answered, “* No, Mrs. Byrne, he is not.” “Not!” repeated the clear-starcher, “ then where is he ¢ bed | 6¢ Well, there was a bit of a misunder- standing, and trying to set his comrade right, they said he hot him rayther hard; any- way, he’s got twelve Sundays for it.?? WITH A WINE-GLASS. © 9 “Ol my law—thhad+tbha! I suppose he was overtaken, honest man, when it hap- pened. O, my! its at the top of the tree James Livermore would ha’ been years ago, if he hadn’t a turn for DIGGING HIS GRAVE WITH A WINE-GLASS.” _ “Well,” said the girl, with deepened color and flashing eyes, “he’s not the only one with a fault.” ee No, more’s the grief of the world, he. is not; and that fault in particular counts its hundreds and thousands. But your moth- er, Nelly — sure it must be hard times when pretty Polly Livermore’s daughter turns into soft shoes and takes her sate on a curb-stone! ” ‘Yes, Mrs. Byrne, the times are hard ;— but there’s Nancy Bayne signing to me over the way. I must run, for she was to have a chance of some cherry-cheeked apples —. and Nancy and I always go shares.” She snatched up her basket, flopped through the 10 DIGGING A GRAVE mud, “ dodged ” among the cabs (it was not the season for carriages even there), and disappeared down James street. “Tg there anything especially wrong with her mother, Phil?” inquired Mrs. Byrne of the shoe-black brigade-boy, who was one of her numerous acquaintances. ae since I have left Pye street and come to the West-end,— ) not out of any grandeur,” she added, tossing her head; “only, you know, to be near _Mary,—I haven’t set eyes on one of the Livermores until this day, since I don’t know when! ” | | “OQ, it sets poor Nelly wild to speak of her mother to her,”’ answered the lad. “ She’s ‘more trouble to her than her father; it was her drunkenness and ways that drove him altogether to the bad. If Nelly catches ‘sight of her, she runs like a hare before the hounds; poor Livermore is thankful for the jail that keeps him from his wife and - WITH A WINE-GLASS. 11 drink — he says he does not know which is the worst curse.” “But he had a turn for it first, Phil,” said Peggy, “I remember that. She’s gone fast down the hill, as women do—they go down faster than men, and have not the strength to get up again. Every day I hear of another and another digging their graves with a wine-glass,’ muttered Peggy. “O, dear,” she continued, “will the curse of drink ever pass from the people!—the more people, the more drink; the more drink, the more graves?” CHAPTER II. (@QELL,” ‘said Phil, “I’m a Band of | 472) Hope Boy.” “Thank God for it!” said Peggy : eetneaties ; a pray for strength to keep your pledge; don’t put faith in your strength, but in Him who gives the strengt 2 “ But the girl,” — said Mary ; “you find such ways of helping people, Peggy,— can’t you think of something for her?” “Thhath-thha! I think awhile, Mary, dear, and then I pray awhile; and betwixt the both, the Lord strikes out something for me to do; the thinking would be nothing — without the praying ; ; but we must part here, | dear ; they won't let me carry a basket WITH A WINE-GLASS. A through the Park ; yet, sure, a basket isn’t vulgarer, and not so noisy as a cab; but never mind, I’ll go the round through West- minster, and meet you by the natural gallery ; _ there’s fine resting on the steps, and the sparkle of the fountains is, like the waterfall at Powers’ court, barring the want of the trees; and go easy through the park, go round by the water, the ducks are as inno- cent and as pretty a sight as you’d see in a day’s walk ; and here’s some bits of crusts [ put. in my left hand pocket, for you to 2 -CVe them, since I could not have that pleasure meeself, on account of the basket; ‘but for your life, Mary, don’t let them gob- _ bling swans get a crumb ! I hate the sight — of them; bloated out, swelling with pride and impudence, bobbing their heads forward without the high heels or the tight lacing either! As if enough natural sickness did not crawl into the world with us, but we :O ee DIGGING A GRAVE must cramp and squeeze our poor sinful bodies!” ee | — Do you mean the swans, Peggy, dear?”’ questioned Mary, with a saucy little smile that.played about her lips like a sunbeam. ‘‘Oh, there, don’t bother me; it’s troub- led I am about the wakeness, as much as the wickedness of the world ; and that poor Nelly Livermore is going between me and my rest. I wish I had not seen her! ”’ “Oh, Peggy!” exclaimed Mary, “don’t say that; that is cowardly. Sure you’re not one to grudge the trouble of stretching out a hand to draw a poor fellow craythur out of the mire!”’. “There, go your ways through the, Park; only don’t hurry, but take it asy,” said the worthy woman, as she turned down James ~ street, then paused and called her back. | Mary looked after her, and then looked at the little lad, who was beating one shoe — _ WITH A WINE-GLASS. 15 brush against another, while he whistled softly the refrain of a street song—one of those that popularize music to the million. - “ Has Mrs. Livermore been long gone to the bad?” she inquired. ; ‘““ Well, some time,” he replied; «“ there’s score of ’em down ‘Westminster ; they begin with a thimble full, mother says, and end —well, I don’t like to think how they end; but the women are worse than the men! They don’t seem, mother says, to have the : strength to overcome it, when once the love of the drink takes holt of ’em.” Mary entered the park, crossed over and turned down by the water, while her old friend ,trotted on with her basket. She passed Mr. Martin’s chapel and the alms- houses, and on the same side of the way saw Nelly Livermore and another young girl talking over and arranging a couple . of baskets of nuts and apples, at the corner 16 DIGGING A GRAVE of the pavement. They were so intent on their task that they did not see the stagger- ‘ing approach of a drunken woman; who, with a yell of a wild Indian, fastened on Nelly, who attempted to rush across the street to.escape her. They staggered togeth- er and fell, and at the same moment a cab / going at a faster pace than is justifiable in a crowded thoroughfare, passed almost over them. Peggy seized the horse’s head and “held him firmly, the animal neither kicked nor moved. A gentleman who was inside sprang out, and there was no lack of ready hands to endeavor to extricate ie sufferers. The woman, somewhat sobered, had received — but little injury, but poor Nelly’s temple was bleeding from a frightful wound, and she was quite insensible. Peggy, with ‘a presence of mind that never deserted her, placed her basket on the seat of the cab, and eepared to lift in the insensible child, e | WITH A WINE-GLASS. LT “Let a policeman take her to the hospital,” said the driver ; ‘my cab will be destroyed.” “Twill pay the damage,” exclaimed the gentleman. “T will go with my child,” said the wretch- ed mother. « Peggy, you won’t hinder me; you knew me in better days.’’ “T don’t want to stand betwixt a mother and her child,” answered Peggy, while she placed the young girl on her lap and sup- | ported her head ‘on her bosom; “you will want looking to, but you drove her to her death, as you drove her father to a jail. Oh, if the first glass of spirits that passes the lips of man or woman, could be turned Into present poison, what thousands on thou- sands would be spared degradation and death.” | The gentleman having taking his number, _ gave some money to the driver, a policeman Jumped on the box, the once pretty “ Polly 18 DIGGING A GRAVE Livermore,”. her large bleared eyes fixed _ with an expression of terror and _helpless- ness. on her daughter, huddled her rags into a corner of the cab. The quickly collected crowd as quickly dispersed; all except Nelly’s little friend, who hung on to the door crying, and in a few minutes the poor girl was carried into Westminster Hospital. The woman’s case was attended to else-— where; but the surgeon shook his head, while he examined the injury ors had received. | “ She is not dead,” he said, in answer to Peggy’s inquiring ; “and she may recover consciousness ; but the hurt is deep.” “ And dangerous your honor,” added Peggy. “Sure I knew it; and your honor knows me, if you’d only take time to remember ; I clear-starched you, a good five years azo, and you used to say no one could turn out your shirt fronts with Pegey Byrne.” yr WITH A WINE-GLASS. 19 The good-natured surgeon recognized the woman. 7 | “You might know me also by this, your - honor,” she said, pushing back a band of silky gray hair from her left temple; “ but it wasn’t as bad a hurt as that.” “What became of him?” inquired the - surgeon, though he kept his eyes fixed on Nelly, and his finger on her pulse. “Well, sir, he travelled for the benefit of his education. Not that I ever raised a word to harm him.” And then she paused, and her great gray eyes into vacancy saw mentally what was seen by no other—the worthless yet ever precious husband, who had disgraced and abandoned her. “Qh, darlint!”? she exclaimed. “You war as tattering a lover as ever broke this world’s bitther bread, or supt the Sorrows ~ of sin; Tl say that for you, Mickey Byrne! And yet [’d rather see your handsome face, | ~ 20 DIGGING A GRAVE WITH A WINE-GLASS. this blessed minute, than wear the Queen’s -crown—God bless her!—in Westminster Abbey.” An expression passed over the surgeon’s face that said, plainly enough — ‘What fools women are!” but still his eyes were fixed on poor N elly. There was a slight upheaving of the sheet that the nurse had thrown over the child, and a filmy gray mistiness gradually over- spreading the ghastly pallor of her poor pinched face. There was a movement of the lips —an effort, it seemed to Peggy, to speak. ) The impulsive woman waa on her knees beside the bed. “Oh, doctor, dear, sure it can’t be THAT come for the poor young thing already? Oh, doctor, say it isn’t!—and she to go without the priest to clear her way ; and her misfortunate mother the cause! ”’ ‘¢ She is, indeed, gone,” said the doctor, as he turned away. “Saved most likely, from a life of misery and shame.” CHAPTER ITI. | SNC ee drew her rosary from her y pocket, and laid the crucifix on the | forever speechless lips. “¢ Aisy, aisy,” she said to the doctor. “Just a minute,—the poor innocent child, —just let me go over a prayer for her, and if her mother has sense enough left in her to ask for her, don’t tell her yet how it is. Another grave dug with a wine- — glass! Another grave dug with a wine-glass! And the child so full of life not an hour agone! Young life, poor child! Oh, why should we mourn, cry and lament over those called away before Satan, who watches his turn, gets the black dross into their fresh 21 22 @ °° DIGGING A GRAVE young hearts? Just one minute, nurse; it’s the blessed prayers I should be saying, and not crooning my own thoughts.” And then she repeated what she believed in reverently and tenderly, and having heard that the miserable mother was sleeping, she could not help muttering, — 246 “it would be a mercy if she never woke,’—as she left the hospital. On the steps she was way- laid by poor Nelly’s little friend, whose: cries - were great because she was refused admit- tance; she was a fierce little thing, whose feelings knew no restraint, and when she heard her friend was dead, she clung to Peggy wildly, entreating to see “her Nelly only once, once more.” | “Oh, my child,” said Peggy; “you must not take on SO} she is out of all sin and sorrow.’ «And has left me alone in it; she was. the only thing I had in the world to care for, ’ screamed the girl. WITH A WINE-GLASS. 23 “ Death is often nigh handy to us, dear,” said Peggy; “we're anything but ready for him.” oe i “Took!” exclaimed the little fury, quite heedless of Peggy’s words,— __ “TI wait here night and day; rain, hail and shine; and they shan’t drag me away. Pu wait here till her mother comes out; she murdered her, and TI brain her! I’ve the stones in me basket ready.” | She seized a stone and held it aloft, clasp- ed in her emaciated fingers. _ “Nelly! my Nelly! said her. mother would be her death, and so she has been; but I'll have her life!” “Have you no parents, child?” inquired Peggy; horrified at the wild vehemence, the determination and revenge expressed in every distorted feature of the face, in which her great eyes burned, rather than sparkled. “Not that I know on; what’s the good 24. “DIGGING A GRAVE of the whole biling of parents, in Westmin- “ister ? ‘They drink and fight over gin all night, and drive every ‘scrap of a starving child they can eet, to beg and steal for the gin, all day ; it’s the children keep the parents. I havn’t got none. Oh, my Nelly! my Nelly! ”? she continued, with a sudden burst of grief, as she cast herself on the steps; ' “T have nothing now.”’ Terrified at the violence of the little girl, Pegey addressed herself to a policeman, in whom she recognized | an acquaintance ;— - You've heard what that poor child said; can’t you see to her? has she no one be- longing to her ?”’ ‘“V’ll make her move on presently,’ he replied; “that’s all I can do for her, until she does something; it’s like enough she’ll assault the woman, for she’s a regular tiger kitten, and those poor apple girls are often greatly attached to each other; she’s ag WITH A WINE-GLASS. 2 well without parents— such parents as gin makes them. I'll see after her, Missis ; Tm a father myself, and always thankful when — girls like that are put off the streets for some crime; it’s their only chance of earthly salvation.”’ Peggy went up close to the policeman. “Look here,” she said, “ Mr. Connor; I’ve - been looking at the world many a year out of the back windows” (“ windys,”’ she called them), “‘and so have you; but do you think the world’s better or worse than it was | ten years ago ?’”’ ‘Worse, by a long chalk, Mrs. Byrne; and why! Because there’s more people in it, for one thing; and for one woman who got drunk then, ten get drunk now, and take no shame to it.” | “] know that,” answered Peggy ; “I know it, to my grief; but I can’t understand the Aduse — reason — there is none ; there’s more -edication —’”’ Dee DIGGING A GRAVE “ More learning,” interrupted Mr. Connor, sententiously, who was a model policeman, erect, unflinching, dictatorial and very ob- servant—as all policemen ought to be— an adamantine faith in himself. «“ There’s much in the differ between learning and education — not that there’s any support in | either, where there’s no beef and taters— and them that hasn’t what we mentioned takes some to brandy, some to gin, according to the class its easier got its fire as well as food, and the more of it that goes in, the more sense goes out, and so on, Mrs. Byrne.” “ Well, I suppose so; but, Mr. Gorinar, it’s not only poor women that take to it.” ~~. . Mr. Connor elevated his right eyebrow, and passed his hand over. his mouth = con- ceal an involuntary smile. “Right again, Mrs. Byrne ; and it’s just among such like as you are now thinking of, that the habit has. Increased, The: rail- WITH A WINE-GLASS. Ot roads has to do with it, and the competative examinations, and the tearing away at every- thing, and heating it up with champagne; everything is done in a whiz and a whirl, first with one thing, then with another; its fearful, the quantity they take to get up the steam and then to keep it up; its when we're in colored clothes, mixing in society on the sly, that we see so much of the back- stairs practice; and what’s drank ‘at the refreshment table, and in the corners, and taken up to my lady’s chamber, unbeknown, and the red lavender, aye, and tasty drinks, and the lots sipt by pretty young ladies at croquet parties, and the gentlemen coaxing them on to do it, and winking and laughing at—” “There’s big Ben out with all he knows, Mr. Connor; and one waiting for me, and me over-due this minute’s a good hour, in Woburn Place; look to that little orphlin, 28 DIGGING A GRAVE WITH A WINE-GLASS. Mr. Connor, for the sake of Him who called little children to His knees and loved to talk to them, and if you can’t find her peo- ple, bring her. to me, Mr. Connor, Mistress Peggy Byrne, at the corner of Wrice Place; -Icall it Belgravia. ‘Kindness will cut the _ claws of the wildest cat,’ and there’s a power. and all of love in her for poor Nelly. It is the Lord’s breath ; inevery heart love and hope live together—she loved poor Nelly.” | ea CHAPTER IV. DM )ARY Flynn acted according to her Y° could. She fed the ducks, and did her best to protect them from the assaults friend’s instructions as nearly as she of the tyrannical swans; but her efforts were almost in vain. Her attention to the pretty birds did not prevent her turning over in her mind, not for the first time, what it could be that made her old friend always object to her going alone to the lady who gave them both so much to do, and paid so liberally for it; and she again turned her attention to the swans, for she had a natural appreciation of the beautiful, and a gentle, kindly feeling towards all living things. She 29 30 . DIGGING A GRAVE loitered on her way, for she did not much like © waiting for Peggy on the steps of the National Gallery; and just as she turned to -go up Spring Gardens, she heard a well known voice, laughing and talking loudly. Did the words sound thick as well as loud? She hoped not; but the color, she knew, flushed to her cheeks, and her heart beat rapidly. She was not deceived in the voice. Terence ‘Boyd, two other young men, and a young woman, came boisterously from Charing Cross. The girl was sauntering Ne eeeh Terence and one of his friends —a young fellow she did not like—Abel Doyle by name; and Mary was ‘not pleased to see that _Terence’s hand was placed on the girl’s shoulder, and that they were talking and looking at each other so earnestly that he ‘did not see her until she came close to him. She would have passed them but Terence caught sight of and rushed towards her. - WITH A WINE-GLASS. | 31 “Mary!” he exclaimed, “ is that the way you cut an old friend? Walk on—walk on,” he said to his companions. “ Walk on; maybe, ’ll overtake you.” | “Maybe, you'll overtake us!” echoed the girl in a coarse voice, mockingly. ‘‘ Maybees don’t fly this time of year. Is the young lady too fine to join company? We are going for a row on the water.” Mary shrank instinctively from the party. “YT am taking home work,’ she replied, “and I have no time to spare’ —adding in a low tone to Terence — 3 “You are not in a fit state to walk with. me, or any well-behaved girl; and to be so overtaken at this hour in the morning. Oh, Terence, Terence, if I had not seen — I could not have believed it!’? Her affec- tionate, gentle heart sent the tears to her eyes. She walked quickly on, Terence still by her side ; his friends went their way. 832 . DIGGING “A GRAVE ‘You're hard on me, Mary; it’s all along of Peggy Byrne, who has set you against me — that’s what it is.” ee “ Peooy Byrne did not give you the spirits you drank this morning,” answered Mary. “JT wish you’d leave me, Terence, I don’t like to be seen walkin’ with you, in the state you’re in.” , “Tf I leave you now, Mary, Ill never come back,” answered Terence passionately. “So take your choice. I always knew you had a weak heart, but still thought there was a well of love at the bottom.” - Mary was bewildered. The young man’s heated manner, loud words and excited ges- tures, drew the attention of the passers-by, and Mary’s sense of propriety and timid nature caused her to tremble and turn pale. She had gained a little self-command from the hope that, having intentionally loitered on the way, Peggy’s rapid. footsteps would WITH A WINE-GLASS. 22 BS _ have brought her first to their trysting place; but no Pegsy was there. Then she thought it was a mercy that Peggy did not see Terence in his present excited state. He kept. re- peating —‘“‘If I lave syou now, Mary, Ill never come back. Ill take my oath to it.” “You had better take yourself off!” said a policeman, wearied with having nothing to do. ‘lve watched you annoying this young person for some time; and a man’s no man who forces his company on a woman. Walk on.” | ei Terence replied to the admonition with an oath, and at the same moment dealt him an unscientific but a telling plow. The po- liceman returned it, and in a moment there was that delight of the London roughs— a street row— from which poor Mary, terri- fied and panting, quickly escaped to the steps of the National Gallery, from whence she saw - Terence, after much resistance, marched: off in a circle of policemen. 34 DIGGING A GRAVE However hood-winked the girl had been, by an early affection for, Terence, she was sufficiently clear-sighted to . know that, if called’ on to give her evidence, she must confess that Terence’ struck the first blow, and was not sober. She observed the police- man who had been so unceremoniously dealt with, peering among the crowd, doubtless for her, who had witnessed the commence- ment of the fracas. . To avoid this, she watched for the moment wen his head was turned the other way, sprang lightly up the steps, and eoncealed herself behind one of the pillars, to which she tremblingly clung for support, apynarently satisfied that his was a hopeless search. She saw him, at last, follow ae companions, until they mingled with the crowd; agitated and trembling, she seated herself in the bend of one of the steps to wait for Peggy. She bent her head over _ her parcel to conceal her tears. When more WITH A WINE-GLASS. 30 composed, her old friend’s warnings stood in array before her. Could it be really so? Was the love of her young heart another victim to the vice that was leading thousands to destruction? Was it possible that it had 99 brought “ one of her people,” as she felt him to be, before a magistrate? Had she seen him taking off by a “peeler’’—all through - the drink? Suddenly St. Martin’s clock told the hour. She hastily dried her eyes, and wondered what could have delayed Peggy. The lady would be so angry; it was more than half an hour past the time. Mary knew she required the work for a particular purpose, at a particular hour. She thought it would be better to disobey Peggy, and go alone to Woburn Place, than to hazard her employ- er’s displeasure. She had heard she was a very touchy lady, for Pegoy had told her = that no matter, if ever she saw her, what. she said, she was never to be answered ; 36 DIGGING A GRAVE WITH “? ' WINE-GLASS. and that what she’d have to do, would be to go on— never minding and seeing nothing. She could form no idea of what delayed Peggy, who was, for an Irish woman, aston- ishingly punctual; but she was thankful that Peggy had not seen Terence ‘ overtaken,’’ and wondered how she could conceal the terrible facts from her. | Should she, or should she not, go to. Woburn place without Peggy? The clock _ chimed the quarter; shading her eyes with her hand, she gazed over the crowd for Peggy’s peculiar bonnet and gay-colored hand- kerchief, in vain, and then took her ay to Woburn Place. CHAPTER V. Gy Fax Spa Mary arrived at her desti- ‘7 nation, she was admitted by the > 4s footman, and ushered up stairs by the lady’s maid, who reprimanded her rather sharply for her unpunctuality. Mary had the Irish readiness at. framing an excuse, and she managed to soften the Abigal’s dis- pleasure before they reached the lady’s dress- ing-room. at Mrs. Layton had her baby in her lap, and her feet on the fender-stool, and examined the work over and over again, in a way that Mary thought very peculiar. She told her maid twice she need not wait, ‘before the woman attempted to move. 37 838 . - DIGGING A GRAVE “Let me have baby, ma’am,’™ she said ; “this is his sleeping time.” She returned from the door, and attempted to take the child, who was more than half asleep. “No, he can sleep here,” replied Mrs. Layton. — | ‘Tet me have him, please, ma’am,” per- sisted the girl. “ Master said he was not to sleep in this room.’ | . “But I say he shall!” sald the mother ; : ( and you are impertinent. Leave the room!’ i “Oh, very well!” was the answer. “If anything happens the child, and you let him fall in the fire, as you have done before, I shall call this young woman to prove I did my best to prevent it.” And she flounced out of the room. Mar y. who had been a servant, was astonished at such’ conduct, for she had still more than a remnant of old Irish reverence for her em- 4 ployers, and, she thought, her mistress wil] - surely give her warning. WITH A WINE-GLASS. 59 Mrs. Layton rose from her seat in great excitement. She was a young; pretty, grace- ful woman ; slicht and: fair, with large blue eyes, and a full complexion, which anger deepened into scarlet. She still held the child in her arms; but to Mary’s horror, as she attempted to walk along the room, she turned the infant on one arm and staggered as she did so. Was it possible that a lady —“a born lady’’—could have fallen into _ the degrading vice, which she could not have believed had risen from the streets and en- tered into such a sanctuary as that! No, she must be ill. Mrs. Layton went towards a wardrobe, the child hanging half in, half out of the bend of her arm. Again she staggered, and Mary, seeing the child falling, caught it, and exclaimed — | “You are Hl, ma/am.”’ | Mrs. Layton .turned on her a changed countenance. ~—~40 | DIGGING: A GRAVE “How dare you touch my child, and speak when you are not spoken to! Put down my baby!—lay it in the chair. I suppose you had your lesson on the stairs. A pretty ‘pass the world is coming to, when the canaule are permitted to— to— but where is Mrs. Byrne ? — nurse, I mean; and where are my frills, where the chemisette, and the set — where, I say?” | | ee Madam,” answered poor Mary, trembling, - for Mrs. Layton had come so close to her that her breath, tainted by brandy, told a too sadly true story, | “1 beg your pardon, Madam, but its Mrs. Byrne that’s the clear-starcher, and some- thing has hindered her being here at the right time; but as she told me your ladyship wanted the needle-work, and to explain some- thing Peggy could not get under—I mean understand —she said she would come with me herself. I’m the needle-woman, your _ WITH A WINE-GLASS, : AT honor,” ies said, aperieaittil in answer to the lady’s halfwild, half-stupefied look. “I thought it best to come alone than to wait any longer for Mrs. Byrne, who was delayed in some way.” In a vague, listless manner, the lady took the needle-work, and examined or endeavy- -ored to examine it; the angry, excited ex- pression gave way to one almost idiotic. — “Q yes, I understand—now I under- stand ; that impertinent girl made me angry ; but-I shall discharge her; I will not keep her another week. You heard how imper- tinent she was. Are you in service?” she questioned, dropping the work on the floor. “Not now my lady,” said Mary, with an- other courtesy; “not now. I can make as good bread by my needle, and have more quiet.”’ | ‘‘ But I have taken a fancy to you; you shall have her situation. You would be faithful, 42 ---s«*xPIGGING A GRAVE and do as I desired, mind as 1 desired in all things. I should be your mistress you know.” ~ Another courtesy. ‘¢Many thanks to your honor; but it’s nee . such a place as this I'd be fit for. I—” she -exclaimed, in a terrified tone, as “the lady” staggered over the chair where the child lay, playing with it’s fingers. “Oh! take care, my lady! sure it’s the precious babby ye re just going to sit on!” | Mary’s exclamation was barely in time, for it was echoed by a scream from the child. - The terrible habit that was growing on this unfortunate lacy, had not yet destroyed her | natural afiections even when under its infiu- ~ ence. She snatched up the child, sank into the chair, and burst into tears. - 2 Oh, don’t go’ into asterichs, my lady, don’t ; the darling isn’t hurt. Your weight didn’t rest on him; he was only frightened. Oh, what will I do, at all—and the both WITH A WINE-GLASS. 43 of them screaming,’ thought poor Mary; ‘and I’m afraid to call that vixen.” She managed to bring Mrs. Layton a glass of water, and just as a comparative tranquil- lity was restored, the same “ vixen,” to Mary’s great relief, ushered in Mrs. Byrne, who, as “af to add to poor Mary’s perplexity, darted an angry look at her. Mrs. Layton seemed more composed. | : cae May I take the baby now, ma’am,” in- quired the maid; “he’s been crying, | see, poor dear.” Be “Leave the room instantly,” was Mrs. Layton’s fierce answer. E The servant exchanged glances with Peggy, the expression of whose face said as plainly as she could say without words,—‘“ Go at once.” The girl lounged out of the room; her insolent behavior increased Mrs. Layton’s anger. Turning to Peggy, —‘ You have seen more than once,’ she said, “that woman’s conduct. I must get rid of her.” Ad. , ‘DIGGING A GRAVE “The master thinks she takes such care of baby,” replied Mrs. Byrne. — | | : ‘ Others could do that as well. Oh, Peggy ; you who nursed me in my infancy, might have more feeling than you have; I was so glad to find you alter so many years, and thought I had found a true friend, but you’re like the rest; you’re like the rest; you take part with my husband against me; I wish I _ was in my grave, I do;” and her vehemence returned. Peggy, without replying to her, - turned to Mary and said sharply, “Have you given up the work you were in such a hurry to deliver to the lady?” “Yes, Peggy.” | . “fave you received the fresh order for what she would see you about?” “No, Peggy.” “Then you’d better go home. I will bring whatever work Mrs. Layton has for you, or _ you can come some other time.” WITH A WINE-GLASS. 45 Mary curtsied to the lady and was about leaving the room, when Mrs. Layton said, — ‘Nurse, l intend to take that girl into my service. Stay; I have something to say to her.” “Not now, ma’am; and she’s not fit for your service. And now let me tell you about her first, said Peggy,” with an air of authority. ‘Then she must come to me to-morrow.” “Very well, ma’am; go now.” Mary was too bewildered almost to take refuge in a curtsey, and felt wonderfully re- lieved when she found herself on the landing, where she encountered the servant, astonish- | ingly close to the door; the girl stood still, and looked Mary over, from her coarse, serviceable shoes, up to her neat straw bonnet, which was trimmed with ereen ribbon. “And so you are to come and have my - place, she said, in a contemptuous tone ;— that’s the best news! WaslTlist’ning? Why, 46 DIGGING A GRAVE of course I was; sure a drunken woman a mad woman as long as she’s drunk but it’s how she gets the drink, astonishes us all. That old Irish woman was her nurse, we know that; but there never was one stood out more against bribery than Mrs. Byrne; yet, she’s very fond of her, We have a weary, weary time of it; we all pity Mrs. Layton and love the dear children. The eldest was sent away, and Mrs. Layton was as nice a lady and as good a mistress, 1 have heard, as ever lived, until she fell into this habit; but, of course. as you are Mrs. Byrne’s friend, you know more about it than I do.” * ‘‘ Indeed,” replied Mary, “I know nothing about it; I have worked for the lady,— Mrs. Byrne bringing me the work,—for a good while; but I never knew she was her nurse ; we poor Irish, | know, are very ignorant: “but we have too much respect for our employ- ers to make a talk about their affairs, particu. WITH A WINE-GLASS. | 47 larly if there’s any cloud over them; and, if Mrs. Byrne was the lady’s nurse, sure she’d bite the tongue out of her head, rather than let it tell of her faults; and if I knew this morning as much as I know now, it’s longs SOrry I’d have been to come by myself; which Peggy, that’s Mrs. Byrne, told me not to do, only she was. delayed ; and time was up and over, and I wanted to be in time, and betwixt the two, I was fairly bothered; and so good morning to you, and be sure of one thing — I wouldn’t, for twenty guineas a year, take your place ; though if such ill luck overtook me, I'd keep a civil tongue in my head to my employer as long as I lived with her, and a, silent one behind her back, a The maid was, for a time, paralyzed by | Mary’s plain‘ speaking. She left her to find her way down stairs; but some rude word, ‘she knew followed her — over the balusters. “The iday,” thought Mary, “the iday of 48 | DIGGING A GRAVE behaving like that; and she aiting her bread. ‘So that was Peggy’s reason,” —so ran her thoughts, as she walked back to Pimlico, — 4 So that was Peggy’s reason for not letting me get sight at that poor lady. Oh dear! but the Lord’s hand is heavy on the country, when such a one falls into those ways; I’ve often argued with Peggy that there is an ex- cuse for the poor crayshures, that get warmth and support from a penn’orth of — poison! when they have neither. food nor fire ; but for the likes of her, with all earth’s blessings blossoming round her, to let herself down .to the level of the staggerers in the street! Sure, t’s past understanding how it can be! and mes with my heart like lead in me ‘bosom on ac- count of that fine handsome boy, whose been the love of my life, before I knew what love was ; I wish I had money enough to be a nun; and wouldn’t I be one to-day before to-morrow, and so shut out the sin and the shame of the WITH A WINE-GLASS. 49 world! Only, God help us; it would be there all the same,’—added poor, simple-hearted Mary, —‘** whether I was a nun or not!” CHAPTER VI. te (QO) HEN Mary had parted from Peggy she | was full of hope that she should Sx be able to convince her old friend that Terence Boyd was all she. wished him to be; for he had promised her the week be- fore, to join the _teetotallers, and Mary was laying in wait to discover how he kept the _pledge. The park and trees looked ereen, and the sunbeams danced on the waters, and ~ the wild fowl were enjoying their baths; and Mary, when she fed them, seemed to show their enjoyment, and was as happy as a lark soaring over a cornfield; but on her return walk she thought the trees looked dusty, and the water WITH A WINE-GLASS. 51 lead-colored, and her feet felt as heavy as her heart. The shoe-black brigade boy had left his box and brushes close to the railings at _ Buckingham palace, and was talking with a knot of youngsters at the entrance to the Bird- cage walk. They were all troubled about something, vesticulating ; and as the boy turned his face towards her, Mary saw two stripes down his face, that had been washed quite clean by tears. Another time she would have inquired the reason, but curiosity was dead within her, and she went heavily homeward, and set about preparing tea in the one really clean and comfortable room that Mrs. Byrne shared with her; it boasted of two windows, and its being at the top of.the house they con- sidered a great advantage, for two rooms had been thrown into one; which, according to Peggy, made it as good as two; and Pegey had “the finest board and the best light in | London, for getting up small things ;”’ and 52 =. —Ss«éDIGGING A “GRAVE Mary another window, —all to herself, — for ‘needle-work ; and no one could bother them passing the door. It was a relief to Marygife weep while she worked, and the scene at Mrs. Layton’s was. obliterated by her anxiety about her lover; she could not go to see alter him herself. N othing she could state (how often her thoughts reverted to that) would do him anything but harm; he was not sober, — and he struck the first blow! No wonder, : sighed poor Mary, that Peggy “talks of the hundreds that dig their own grave with a wine-glass.” It was quite dark, and Mary had lighted her candle before she heard her friend’s well-known steps on the stairs. Mrs. Byrne looked wearied in mind and body ; : he cast off her bonnet, untied her hand- kerchief, so that her neat little white cap showed round her lace, and now that her -cumberous head gear was throwm off, her head looked full and well-shaped ; ; but not so WITH A WINE-GLASS. a 53 enormously large as when it was “ dressed ” for walking. Mary unipinned her:shawl and aced her basket on the bed. = eh don’t see any work for me, Aunt Peooy.” adding, “and but ttle for yourself.’’ “There’s work and plenty, but not the sort that will fill our pockets, my child;” replied the woman, sitting down and resting her arms on the table. | | “Thank God for His many gifts,” she con- tinued, « the cup of tay, before all earthly things ; and you have it all nice and warm for | the ald woman, Mary, and she never wanted. ie it more.” : “ God help you Mary, and brake hard fortune before every honest man’s child.” The two woman, the old and young, drank’ their tea in silence ; and Mary saw that Peggy’s eyes were moist with suppressed tears. | ‘« May I take off your hard boots, Peggy, dear?” said Mary. “That will ease your b4 DIGGING A GRAVE feet; you must have had a long wait at the lady’s, or a long walk after.” ““ Long enough, both, dear ; we'll talk of that. presently ; but if ever you let pass your lips , what you come to the knowledge of this day; the back ss my hand to you, Mary, for ever ~~ more.’ “¢ Never fear, Peggy; you don’t think ra give the wind of the word to such as that; sure I blushed all over with shame to see a. born lady forget what she owed herself.” “ Mary, you little know what I’ve gone - through this blessed day,’ said Peggy, with a long drawn sigh; “lay by the things, dear, take off your thimble ; and — ay, that will. do; sit down just there.” v | And Peggy .told her the tragedy of poor ‘Nelly’s death ; winding up with her ob- — servation,— — “And that wretched mother, the wife of Livermore, whom I remember such a little - WITH A WINE-GLASS. 55 while agone “2 clean, neat, handy boy. And _ pretty Polly Livermore, thought of go well, and he now in prison and she the murderer of their own child; such a heap of rags and wretchedness.”’ “ And you saw it all with your own two eyes, and that was what kept you; sure I wonder the life did not leave you, dear Aunty,” said Mary, drawing closer to her friend. = ped “No, dear ; it has always pleased the Lord to put strength into me equal to the work laid out before me; when we ask for it, it will be given us; and after you left I couldn’t help but go back to Westminster hospital ; ] wanted to see after that poor child I told you of on the steps; and sure enough, before I got there, I met the child in custody.” “She did it, sure enough, Mrs. Byrne,” | said the policeman. “She watched for the woman coming down ‘the steps, flew at her oO DIGGING A GRAVE and battered her with the stones she had all ready.” : : “¢1¢ was awful to see how the child oe in it ; the devil stood upright in her; but the love she bore poor Nellie made her human to me, and I went to the police court to see the end of it. I know the policeman .could have hindered her ; but he wanted to get her sent to the reformatory, and I had to give in ; for it will take her off the streets, anyway, and do more than I could have done; but my poor Mary, — she was not the only one, that I knew there. O! my darling, how many graves are dug with a ‘wine-glass — by rich and poor—every day and magne in this great city.” | : Such a mingled expression of love and — pity came into Mrs. Byrne’s eye as she looked at Mary, that the poor girl shivered from head to foot; she felt instinctively that her old friend had seen Terence _ Boyd at the police court — seen him in custody. WITH A WINE-GLASS. 57 “How white you've turned, Mary, my child — keep a good heart, darling.’’, ig ‘You may spake out, Pegay” she an- sivetdds ‘1 know who you saw Mere besides the child. The policeman was too sudden with him; I could have got rid of him without his meddling ; they’re always interfering with what they’ve no call to.” “hah! thah! my child. If that was all, you'd have been there yourself to give evi- dence; but you could not do it. I guessed who the young woman was; and it’s not id away in the crowd she’d have been, if she ‘could have saved him. I heard the whole story, and as he turned round and saw meg you'd ha’ thought he’d have fainted.” Mary started from her seat, her cheeks flushed, her eyes on fire. ‘¢ Didn’t you spake one word for him, Pegsy ? was there no one to spake a word for him ? ”’ 68 DIGGING A GRAVE © ee did what I could, child; don’t blaze up like that. I tould his honor that I knew | the prisoner to be come of dacent people, well brought up, and that I couldn’t believe he’d insult any female —certainly not, if: it was altogether himself that was in it — and the magistrate, who knows me (for I’ve taken on me the charge. of two or three poor girls at that office and got them well — placed), as he “says, ‘Then who was in it, Mrs. Byrne,’ he Says. | “*Plaze, yer honor, the whisky,’ I says; —fhe’s not the only one in the coort — I 20 bail, yer honor — who has dug his grave with a wine-glags.’ * Bat ote be evem half. drink at this hour of the day, and to strike a policeman, who only told him to move on; even (to the prisoner) you allow that was what pfo- voked you?’ ‘And Terence looked up and said, WITH. A WINE-GLASS. _ 59 -“¢ Tt was so, sir ; it was no business of his ;’ but, of course, none of them would give in to that. So he was fined or to be im- prisoned; he had the money all but half a | crown, and —”’ | | “You gave him that ; I know you did,” exclaimed Mary, as she hid her ecneilacd | face on her old friend’s ample shoulder and pressed her arms round her neck. «T did: but neither for love nor liking, “but for the honor of old Ireland; and he followed hot. foot after me when he was | discharged.” “Well,” sobbed Mary, breathlessly, “and — what*did he Say (°? “<¢ Mrs. Byrne,’ he says; ‘God bless you,’ he says; ‘you've saved ‘me from shame,’ he — | says, ‘for no one belonging to me was ever in a jail: and she to know it; I'll take my pledge, upon the face of the earth,’ he says, ‘to satisfy you.’ 60 . DIGGING A GRAVE 7 “Its. easy to take a pledge,’ I answers, ‘but it’s the keeping of it, Terence ; and that ean’t be done without the help of Him who will. help when we ask it in spirit and in truth.’”’ seta : ‘¢ And what did he say to that?” inquired Mary. | ‘Why, he covered his face sith his. hands, and, with a loud sob, turned away.” “OQ! Peggy, darling,” exclaimed ‘the poor girl, “why did you not take him, then and _ there, to Father Green who gives the pledge.” ~ ©Thah thah!” muttered Mrs. Byrne, “ Father Green is his directer, and if he was so minded, he’d go to the priest’s knee without my taking him; that he would; and it’s sorry I am to say that there’s many a one of Terence’s ae rades who think but little of mass or priest. We'll pray for him, dear, and for all sin- ners. Watch and pray, and he may take a turn for good, who knows. You must wait til] WITH A WINE-GLASS. ae he does; if the sweetheart won’t reform he fore marriage, he’ll never reform after it, if your heart is ever so much set on him. Wait and watch; he had sober parents, and that’s in his favor; for the love of drink runs in the blood like any other disease, and parents should know that and act according. And that reconciles me to that poor Nellie’s death —for surely it must have run in her blood, poor child—and T thought, when the shock of her death was over, what a blessing it was that she was taken before she became what her mother was. God help us! the devil puts many a poisoned cup in our way, but the worst of all is the whisky. O! then, sure, Pll pray that the Lord will save all we know from a drunkard’s burning life and un- happy death.” oe Mary could only answer with her tears ; she knew the truth of what Peggy said. Daily, nightly, she saw the crimes that arose 62 DIGGING A GRAVE — from drink. It was the active agent in mur- | der — the instigator of all crime in her class. But great as was her distress at Terence’s Z misfortune,” love — the love that. springs up in the heart of every true woman, no matter how sinful or unlovely the object ‘is in other eyes— furnished many apologies for him; “he was over-persuaded, 7. over-— taken ; >”? she was certain it was the first time he ever touched a drop in the morning. But she would wait, she would watch, and she would never marry him unless he had kept the pledge unbroken for six months. But: onus packslidings did fit impress her with the same dismay, as the scene she | had witnessed in Woburn Place. She under- stood perfectly how poor men and women in her own sphere were tempted by °“ the drop ;” and once beguiled into the habit, how glass — followed glass, until the grave Pegey talked _ of was dug and filled. She had seen how WITH A WINE-GLASS. — 663 the terrible temptation of gin dogged the steps of poverty, and heard daily of crimes fostered by drunkenness; but that a lady, enshrined in all the elegance of life, should descend to such a habit, was something be- yond her understanding, and she shivered when she thought of it. CHAPTER VIL. s HE lady you saw to-day, Mary,” said Pegoy, after a long pause, “‘ has ¢ taken a fancy to have ye for her maid.” | | “Td die first!” was Mary’s impulsive answer. “ ‘ “She may write to you; or, if she takes it into her head to come here after you, | what would you do then?” | ‘She could not force me to live with her against my will. Why, have you anything to do with her, Peggy? You have lashings of work from plenty of sober ladies.” Pegey smiled ; but it was a bitter, regret- 64 WITH A WINE-GLASS. —— «65 -— ful smile, and she “ thah-thahed” more than usual. “True for ye, Mary,” she said at last; “but I love the smallest bone in her’ body more’ than the bodies of all my customers put together.” | * Pegay “Ay, do I; her mother was the sweetest lady that ever broke this ‘world’s bread. My mother and grandmother, and great grandmother, all lived in the family ; wor born in the family, farther back than I can tell. They had estates in both England and Ireland, the great family I mean; sometimes oo in one country, and by-times in anoth- | ; but my people held on that they were ee and my sweet lady used to say, ‘stick, - to. that, Peggy! Thah! thah! just to think of it.’ | “Think of what, Peggy?” “Of the world’s changes;. wonderful to 66 DIGGING A GRAVE look -at, hard to bear. Well, Mary, Mrs. Layton’s mother was an angel ; and I was brought up, as one may say, to run at her foot; and when she married —and she mar- — ried as fine a looking gentleman and as noble, as you'll meet on the face of | the earth; kind and gentle, too, when it was himself was in it; and with the prospéct — of riches; he thought he loved the ground she walked on; yet, he broke her ‘heart ; she withered off the earth, with the sorrow and the shame he brought her to. My poor dear darling, when she married I went to be her maid; and it was not long before I saw that the young master was seldom to call himself - after ‘dinner ; the love of the drink was in him. And sore sorry was I to find that his father had the same fault - a. jolly companion,’ they called him, down > in the gay hunting country, where he was bred and born; and when my poor young WITH A WINE-CLASS. PASO lady’s husband was only a three years old babby, his papa’s glory was to stand him on the table and make him drink off a brim- ming glass of port, without drawing his breath; that was his first lesson, but his mother did her best for him as long as she lived; but still the taste was given him in his babyhood and strengthened by . his father’s precept and example —it never left him. The ould gentleman’s constitution was as hale as a March morning, and who knows he might have lived till now; but though he was put straight on his saddle, with his whip and his bridle in his hands, as he’d often been before, after a day’s hunting and a night’s carouse; and went off rocking in the saddle like a cradle, tallyhoing the hounds so that the leaves of the trees quivered at the sound, he fell and broke — his neck at his own avenue gate, which the lodge: keeper had been too drunk to open 68 _ DIGGING A GRAVE. at the right time. I shall never forget the night that we got the news. .My dear young dady was expecting the mother’s. blessing soon too come into the world, but. still she would wait up for master. Now he was kind and loving to her; but so he was to his friends, and they could twist him, when he was with them, like a silken ‘thread; 3 and though he’d promise my darling to be - homie early, they’d get over him; and she always said the way to get round him was, the more he stayed away, the kinder to grow ; ‘but master was too soft. I hate men that have not a good stiff backbone, to make them stand up manfully for the right. Why, : he knew from what the doctor had told him, that every glass of Spirits he took, was a glass of poison; and yet he'd take it. If she was by, he’d let her coax it from his lips; if she wasn’t, he’d £0 — glass after glass; ay, after a while, whether he bee WITH A WINE-GLASS. 69 Soinpanions or not. Well, my dear, just in the chill before daybreak, he came home; and she at last made him understand how it was that his father was dead. I was not in the room, but I was nigh at hand; and bitterly they cried together, for the shock of the news sobered him. He was very re- ligious by fits and starts, and lamented with her, to think of the poor dear gentleman being commanded away where the sin of his life had scorched the heart and brain out of him, and he had not the knowledge or power left to say, ‘Lord, save me, or I perish.’ Of course, my dear lady took the Opportunity to reason with her . husband, lovingly and gently, and he owned to the truth of all she said, as he had done countless times; but he did what he never done before, and which put new life into her, even in her. sorrows—it took that effect on young master, that he knelt down by the 10 DIGGING A GRAVE mistress and took the Scripture in his hands, , and pledged himself to neither touch or taste spirits as long as he lived; and then ordered horses, and away down to what was to be their home evermore in this world. My poor young lady could not go on account — of her situation. When he was leaving us that night, he turned round on the steps and, laying his hand on my shoulder, ‘ Peggy,’ he says, ‘ you have been. faithful to her all. your life, and I leave her in your care; the doctor and nurse are at hand; but if she’s taken il, you send for me at once. She is my very life, Peggy — you know that,’ and out he went into the night. And as he got into the carriage, the light fom her. window, where she was watching him, stream- ed down on the carriage, and he stretched half out of it, kissing his hand and waving | his hat long after she could get sight of him, though the carriage lamps cast a wild, : WITH A WINE-GLASS. a mad sort of whirling light as. they flashed through the darkness. I can see it now,” continued the old woman, pressing a hand over her eyes; “TI can see the whole of it now. The ould master, we heard, had a wondertul funeral, for he was well beliked in the country. My darling said she did not know how they would get on by-and-by, for her husband had little taste for field’ Sports; but I could see, and thanked God for it, that her dear head was at peace | —she rested on the oath he took against ‘stimulants,’ which was what she called all kind of spirits. I prayed every night, on my two bended knees, that God would give him | | strength to keep that pledge; but I trembled for her happiness; for I knew that he was a man of sand,—no strength in him; a kind give-way sort of heart; never able to say no, and fond from his cradle of the drop,— but leve adds to woman’s weakness: a@ woman 72 DIGGING A GRAVE WITH A WINE-GLASS. | will go on believing that what she wishes s to be true is. true; ay, while. the man of her ; heart lies and laughs at her! Sure, I’ve done et myself; and if that vagabone husband of mine came back —ould as I am—Td do it again. She was full of the joy of faith,— ‘there’s nothing so sweet to a woman as the © feeling that she can trust the man she loves without thought ‘or question,— and she be- | lieved in the core of her heart, that he’d never break that oath.” - - CHAPTER VILL. (o|(\ER time came, poor lady, and I got a letter wrote to, the master to come © home; but long before he could get the letter, the baby was born ; and to be sure he did come as quickly as he could, and she was asleep at the same time, and the doctor SO charged us to keep her quiet, that I ran to meet him and to hinder him from going in, - because it might startle her, and she so weak ; but my heart went down into my shoes, for ] ‘smelt the smell and saw the flush on his cheek’ and the fire in his eye, that I knew was never kindled by beer or wine; and my _ heart died in my bosom, when I thought of 73° 14. DIGGING A GRAVE. the br shiek oath, and how she’d feel it a weight on her soft, pure, Christian heart for ever more. He would see her at once, and she saw hm. Considering the weak way she was in, l thought it would have killed her, but it did not, only she was, so to Says maimed for life; she was crushed and soon withered, as I told you, quite withered away}; of course we went down to the family hall, a beautiful place wonst, but the drunkard’s hall now ; all gone to wrack, all more or less following the master’s example. The father’s lot of ‘good fellows’ gathered round the gon, and though bills and debts and dues were as plenty as sand over the sea-shore, the hounds were kept, and dinners and breakfasts and. drinkings went on as bad as ever; the : place well deserved the name Z got, of “Madman'a Ball. i used to see her growing paler and paler, and weaker, day by day; and i in the mor nings sometimes, he’d kiss and WITH A WINE-GLASS. . 12 cry over her and call her his angel, and all that; she saw he was eoing from bad to worse, and it was pitiful when it came near the last, to hear her whispering prayers that “the dear Lord would not take into account his broken oath.’’ I knew how that hung about her heart. It was cruel to see the wreck and ruin of that fine property, but it was harder for me to see her dying, with her baby so rosy and cooing on her breast! ‘She raised herself when the light- ness before death came on her, and turned the baby over, from her bosom to my arm, and pressed my hand over it, and then she called her husband with such a cry —her last in this world; she had never taken her eyes’ off the door since the night fell, and I had sent and sent one after another for - him; they did not believe the messages, and I don’t think he understood them; but when she was really gone, some of the servants (Cyan DIGGING A GRAVE raised a moan through the house; and there came, they said, a sort of hoot round it, and the great hall door blew open, though it had been a, still night before, and there was a sough in the wind blasting through the — house that frightened the drinkers ; and when: they found that DeatH had come, they gath- ered themselves up as well as they could, . and staggered away from the hall, leaving him half. sitting, half lying, at the head. of his table; like a tree once the beauty of the forest, and rent and blasted by lightning. -Inever can forget it; I had come down from the stillness of death, knowing that she had been murdered by his ways. My sweet rose; my lily! The moon-light had flooded the bed and the room, and the infant was coo- ing like a young dove,— poor little mother- less. baby, — and my blood was rushing from my heart to my head, and from my head to my heart, and I felt, as if God had forgotten fx F ois ve - " Zé, SG: y y = SM. hy Zi) oS L LLL MM | Gyo tj) —— = = = = Ne s SS Eos / NI ee BIN OY SU KK os ESS ES es ———— es =o eae Seer: a SS; Pe = Wo OPs 3 ——— NOR | aaa se Niza A SS 7, 7 WA i AN S Zi) ii TY y i MW HAG ay 4) Uy) 3 , Gb Vey yy AG = Wy ———— tae ity Mi Ux eee een) ; o pane o4 , Ran. ’ Ny eis S Sy =e ee 5 | SSS ZZ pS o_O (Des , AALS etna age Li 4 SD ivy SLELEE Se ght a s ee a> cabs WO jp ol e LLLEE JOO 2 - a eT x) a aaa ie 5 SS * why ae stillness of death,”—Page 76. “‘T had come down from the WITH A- WINE-GLASS. v7 me; and the servants, little knowing the say- ageness that was in my heart, kept hustling me into the hall, saying, ‘Go to him, Peggy ; he’ll mind you, Peggy ; he doesn’t understand ;’ and there he was . his blue, watering eyes, unwinking, staring, but seeing nothing, not ‘the broken glasses, nor the sputtering lights | flaring out, nor the slops on the mahogany, and the furniture broken and tossed; the great, grand pictures of his ancestors, looking erim from the broken frames and the smoky walls. His long, white, powerless right hand curled round the half empty tumbler, which it had not strength to hold, and the servants so scared, calling, ‘Go to him, Pegey ;’ and Idid go to him ; I flew at the poor’ helpless drunkard like a wild beast. It was God’s merey I did not murder him. I forgot what he was and what I was. I felt choked with the curses I’d have poured on him; at last I got words for the terrible truth, and the 73 DIGGING A GRAVE — servants seeing how mad I was, held me back; and he quite past understanding, tried — _ to stagger to his feet, to make a speech !” ~ Overcome by the memory of that dreadful night, the Irish woman sank on her knees, ” drew out her rosary and muttered a prayer, _ pressing the cross to her lips; she wiped the drops from her forehead, and looking | | at her young friend, who sat white and tremb- ) ling before her, she said,— | , “There, Mary, that has quieted me; when- ever you're in trouble, Mary, dear, talk to ‘the beads : them’s the comfort! A hearty | : prayer to the Almighty Father will P1lVe you | the strength of a hundred men. They who were so eager to get me to speak to him, - earried me away. I pitied him the next day. I did more; God help me, his agony was so great, I tried to copy her, and ’ forgive » him; and many 4 pull Il took at the beads that — day, and they helped me to keep the devil WITH A WINE-GLASS. 19 tearing in me down; you know, Mary, he murdered her, all the same as if he took a knife and cut her throat. And the oaths that man took, and the promises he made against the drink, would choke the Pope! God forgive me! And yet, would you be- lieve it, the day of her funeral he could. hardly stand upright. Think of that! Mary Machree; think of that! I’m sure it was nothing but the knowledge I had, that she depended on me to be as a tmother-to her child, that kept the life in me ; but for that I should have been thankful to have my grave made at her feet, for the world was still a long way before me, and I knew pretty well, what sort of a world it was; and immediately after the funeral, he gave up entirely, and the creditors fell upon the place; and when it was all up, those who might have looked _ after him, wouldn’t walk the same side of. the road with him; and he’d come and. look Be | DIGGING A GRAVE at me and the @ baby SO viet, and the house at the same time, full. of bailiffs,— the dirty fe crew,— and ask me, with his white and tremb- ling lips, if I wasn’t glad she was gone! 7 Well, of course, among the lawyers and the creditors, they made ducks and drakes of _ the property ; and his relations were only too glad to get him out of the country on an allowance, and so we were. sent off to — France for ease and cheapness. | “To France!” repeated Mary, opening her great eyes; “no wonder you’re such a well- learned woman, after such travelling.” 2 “‘ Brandy was cheap there,’’ continued Peo- : es = but the village we were in was sober, and somehow the delight he took in the - child, weaned him off wonderful from the | heavy drinking ; he would dander about with — her,. from hour to hour. And: ak to tell, his ways and his mind were almost childish, and from’ quiet and early hours and fresh WITH A WINE-GLASS. 81 air, he got back some of the beauty that won my poor lost mistress’ heart. I kept the spirits as much out of his way as I could; for in spite of me, he’d sometimes steal a spoonful or two of his punch to the child, and make her cunning enough not to tell me. I had such a terror over me, that she might grow up with his family taste for it, that IL watched her, and one evening I was almost turned to stone, for coming sudden into the sitting room, I saw the little cray- thur dabbing her hands where some brandy had been spilt on the table, and sucking her fingers as children suck sweeties; she knew I never let her taste anything of the kind, and down went her pretty hands the minute. she saw me, and then she said, ‘ Smelling i dear Nursy, it smells so sweet.’ Oh, how the devil plants lies on lips that the dear Lord made innocent 2?” CHAPTER IX. [ME wore on, and my heart turned W@ to the poor master; for he was a rale gentleman for more than two hundred years, and she had so loved him; and I was grieved to the heart to see him 3 wanting so many things, and no sign of any » proper teaching for the child. But in an ill hour a lady (she called herself) came to the village for. quiet—a great, stalking | -baragagh of a woman— and ‘somehow, she put comehether on the poor, weak master, and the upshot of it was, he married her, and placed her as a mother over that darlin’ -ehild. I put up with her hardness. to the ss : WITH A WINE-GLASS. 83 child a little, and her hatred to me altogether ; for | knew I was most of all in the world to the sweet one who loved me, and I hum- bled myself to her as if she’d been a born lady. But she was determined to get us both out of the way; and the master, always aisy led, gave in; and my jewel was sent: to a convent school and I in a foreign country, packed off with a month’s wages, which I had the comfort to fling in the woman’s face. Ay, think of a gentleman, born, bred and reared, that had such an angel for his first choice, and stood six foot two in his stocking -vamps, taking up with such thrash as that, and wanting my little darling child to call her mamma!” “And you, Peggy, dear; what did you - do.in a strange country? Oh, how could any gentleman treat you like that— you that had been the blessing to his wife and child?” - “Well,” answered Peggy, slowly, ‘look 84 DIGGING A GRAVE _ here, I think he was glad to eet rid of me; _ the very sight of me reminded him of what he had been and what he was! I do. think that, indeed! It’s a good thing we can’t sce the inside of each other’s hearts; we’d find worse readin’ in many of ’em than has ever been put in print. But if ever poor craythur was broken to bits, it was me : and though _ I was that eager to find the child, that though my knees, praise the Lord, are ready and quick at kneeling for prayers, I almost broke them, they were that stubborn, trying to kneel to ax her to tell me where she had sent the } darlin’; but she wouldn’t; and there was | alone, and my heart in my bosom shriveling — 7 for want of something living to love; doing a hand’s’ turn for the poor craythurs that war that ignorant. they, had not a word of English, and asking them to lend me a cat ‘or company ; for I had no money to get back to England, and, sure the master and his new 4, o WITH A WINE-GLASS. 85 wife quitted the place, and I could find neither tale nor tidings of them. Poor gentleman! my heart ached for him; and it was just at that time I had the heavy trial to meet with | my husband. He was flush of money and I was hard up for something to fill my heart with, or Vd never have had him. Thah! thah! The beauty of the world he was, with a tongue like a smoothing iron; the greatest vagabond, Mary, dear, and the biggest liar that ever broke the world’s bread ! Well, anyhow, we got back to England, and I tried to make out my master’s lawyers, and my dear mistress’s people had been broken stock and lock, and the estates gone in some estates’ court, and the family emigrated. And it’s no good to tell you of all I went through with such a husband as the devil himself sent me; but, anyhow, I found myself free, one fine morning, to work hard for twenty- one years. 86 DIGGING A GRAVE “The Lord be praised for his mercies! ve had a turn at every thing, especially “nursing in and out of hospitals and clear starching, since the strength has gone out of my back; and that brought me again among. the gentry.” ots “But how did. you find Mrs. Layton?” inquired Mary. “One lady recommended me to another, and that’s the way of it; and the first word she spoke me, I felt my heart swaying back-— | wards and forwards, up and down; and I stood and looked at her, trembling all over, and the sight left my eyes, and I should have fallen down all as one as dead, if she had not caught me and was as tender, as her mother would have been— tender in heart and hand — and wanted to know what ailed me, and brought me a glass of wine; but I called for water, and then asked if she did not know me, and she said she had never seen. WITH A WINE-GLASS. ST me before: but the young forget. I was fool enough to ask if she remembered her Irish nurse; not she! and I told her a few things I remembered — not many, I was so con- fused—and at last I said, ‘Have you the mark of two cherries on the instep of your right foot —ripe, red cherries—if-so, you were once Maud Langley, and your mother, my own dear mistress, gave you to me when — she was dying.’ She started, the color flush- ing to her cheeks and the tears to her eyes ; and she made me sit down, and sat down beside me, and tould me her father had her from a convent and charged her, if ever she could make me out, to remember what I had -been to her mother and her, and how sorry he was we thrée was ever parted ; for that terrible woman, after almost breaking his heart, left him, and never was his wife, for she had a husband before she saw him, who never died at all, small blame to him. 88 DIGGING A GRAVE Oh dear! a was wonderful to see how, bit by_ bit, “memory opened up to her the past 5 and she was a warm-hearted darling, but with more of the father, than of the mother in her; and her husband—a kind, noble gen- -tleman—was so interested and kind, when she told him about her old Irish nurse. And she was expecting her confinement, for 1t was about the babby’s bits o’ things, its beautiful caps and laces, I went there to get them up, you know. But she had other things to talk about, her poor father’s death, and how shattered and broken he was, and I could not ask her, his own child, if he stuck to the drink to the last, though she hinted that though always kind and loving to her, he was not always himself; and she told me how she met with friends, that, somnshow or other, got her more of.the property than | she expected ; ; and after a while, she said, she got married and aad se a good hus- < ee WITH A WINE-GLASS. 89 _ band; and the way he took her joy at meet- ing with her old nurse was more than J - could have thought of; and nothing would serve her, but she must have me in the house, to see after her babby when it came, as I had done after her, quite thirty years before! I tried to insense her I was not fit for that work now; still she held on to her fancy, and I went into the house to satisfy her: it wasn’t thes babby, but the first one. Such a kind, good, considerate husband as she has—a dear gentleman — and everything her heart can wish for. i “Thah! thah! I had not been long in the house when I saw that at times she was flushed and excited, and ‘took .more wine than I thought right, only I did not let on to. the servants that I noticed it. And the doctor, I laid the blame to him, he would talk about keeping up her streneth by stim- | ulants, instead of nourishments ; and the fine 90 | DIGGING A GRAVE lady nurse she had engaged before _ she hit on me, she encouraged her; and if she only looked a little pale, she would bring her brandy and water, what she was ready enough ‘to call for herself. I did my best, and I knew the nurse would have choked me, if she could, when I said the finest babbies in the world were nursed'on praties and milk. She had . her wine and brandy, too, and so much of it, that the master noticed it, and told her if he saw her again in that state she must leave the house, and he would speak to his wife about it; and she was that crafty, that whenever she felt bewildered, she would. lie on the sofa, and say her head ached. - You may believe it was a cruel trial to me, who had her sainted mother before me night and day with her, that was now a woman, ‘cooing in her blue-eyed innocence, to see she had. the bad of her father in her, and _ to know that she was poisoning the uncon- WITH A WINE-GLASS. | 91 scious babe that lay under her bosom, with the drink —that she was digging her own grave with a wine-glass.’’ CHAPTER x. T last her husband saw what made ® a . him lock up wine and spirits, and | only give it out himself : but she’d / get it somulionn | the devil always finds the means. Many a word I said when Td get her alone, and she’d always agree with me, and be harder against those who took to the drop even than I would be; but, oh! ag I gaid before, she had more of her father _ than of her mother in her. She got over her time wonderful, but the babby was a funny little morsel, and glad enough. I was when the fine, flashy, monthly nurse left, and I had _her to myself, and she would nurse the babby, | 92 WITH A WINE-GLASS. 93 why not ? and the mother’s love was so warm for her first-born, that 1 got her to take what was right for the child, and no more; but I suppose it was the Lord’s will, I met with ah accident turning into the square, was knocked down by a horse, and to save the dear babby I twisted myself in a way which held me fast in an hospital for six months, and during that time the child got ill and the doctor would have it weaned, and then, indeed, she fell into her father’s ways — all out. Even to you, Mary, I cannot ex- pose the state Pve seen her in—and how I see her dear, good husband’s love falling away from her, and her servants so cdisrespect- ful that I could knock them down; and she, like the father, so full. of promises to give it up; bowed down to the earth at times, and | as good. as an angel may be for a month, and then breaking out again. The injury I had, made me quite unfit for nursing, 94 ‘DIGGING A GRAVE so I was not always with her; but when she got into one of her drinking fits, the good gentleman himself would come for, me, _ for he said I managed her better than any one else. oe “It’s bad enough for a woman to baie to put up with a drunken husband, but it’s s hell upon earth to have to bear with a drunken wife. Woman should beware of the drops end the half olasses and the tastings that. _ leads them on from little to more, and from more to much; for once they become drunk- - ards, it?s easier to cure ten men than one “woman. Why, dear, that good patient gentle- man at one time had to put her away, under restraint they called it; think of the shame and. breaking of his heart ‘and home ; and the first-born, the little shrivelled baby I tould you of, never took a proper erip of life —looked when it was born like a thing half scalded, as it really | was, from the spirits WITH A WINE-GLASS. 95 she took ; and it dwindled and dwindled away, and died while she was far off, under re- straint. I asked to see it, for I wanted to put a few shamrocks with the flowers they strewed over it, on account of its blessed grand-mother’s country, and while I was look- ing at the poor little atomy, it’s father came in. ‘Don’t go, Peggy, he said ina whisper like; ‘don’t go; you and I know why I am thankful that the spirit is freed from its little suffering body! and the mother away and all; it will half kill her, for she has a tender, loving heart.’ | “Don’t give way, Sir, I says, she may take a thought from this very thing. Who can tell “His face lighted up for a minute, but fell. again, and I left him alone with his dead child, whose erave was dug by its mother, with a wine-glass. She came back after a time, looking as fresh as a rose in June; 96 DIGGING A GRAVE and, if possible, her husband was more lov- ing and attentive to | her than ever, and she sent for her ould nurse ; and the master, God bless him, is always the same; but ait that time she had taken a turn against me, just the way her father did. Sometimes she’d— want me every hour in the day, at others she’d be a week without asking for me, except for the clear-starching. She’s a rich lady, and I’m a poor, hard workin’, lone woman, without chick or child, and hardly as much in my ould stocking as will carry me out. and bury me dacent,— for I could not rest easy in my grave, if the parish had foot or spade ‘in it,— and yet, I would not change with her this blessed moment. God be thanked, night or day, ’m mistress of myself; and even if the body is in rags, as long as the | mind is pure and the head clear, it is the temple of the living God; He made it, and breathed, ‘His spirit into it—His name be praised. oe WITH A WINE-GLASS. OT The old woman’s face looked so elevated, ‘so holy as she said these words, that Mary involuntarily crossed herself; there was a long pause. : a But, Peggy; she’s gone back to it, worse - than ever, hasn’t she ?”’ | “No, not worse, that couldn’t be; but as bad. Until after the birth of that darlin’ child you saw, she kept from her temptation altogether, and it was heaven on earth to go and see the happiness that reigned in that house, for though I believe ke kept a strict eye over the stimulants for ever so long after he brought her back; yet he is often forced to be from home by his business ; and, indeed, I blame the doctor when she was confined, for giving her what she was too fond. of; | you see, dear, when once a person has a turn for that, there is nothing for it but total abstaining ; they must neither touch, nor taste, nor smell; they must. put 98 “DIGGING A GRAVE | it away altogether, as they would poison ; there can be no half measures with drunk- enness —no,— and what’s more, they ‘must pray earnestly to Almighty God. for strength, for without the Lord’s help our best strength is feebleness. The pledge is the safeguard: - it was our Almighty Father that put that into the heart of a good man. The blessed pledge ; ik is a promise, a holy promise. | “Bat, Peery,” Anterrupted Mary, & Mrs. Layton has pledged and promised, and see how she breakes ig _ “She does, God help her, she does; but look ye, Mary, she has never asked OUR Faruer’s help; she trusts to her own ‘strength, and her inclination floors that: She manages, somehow, to get the poison brought her. Mr. Layton’s expected home to-night. ' She som to me to be striving against it, poor thing and knowing | he was coming, I staid as ies as I could, for she never touches it forenint WITH A WINE-GLASS. 99 me. You see that slip of a girl had lost all respect for her; and if she had not insisted on your going to the house about the work —dI can’t bear her to be seen, that’s what it is; for my old heart cherishes her still! . I staid as long as she let me, to-night; and every cab I heard I hoped was the master, for she had quite sobered down. And in general she wants me to stay longer than I can, for she thinks there’s no one so clever about babbies as her own poor ould nurse ;. but I fear she wanted me away, to have: another turn at the drop. I asked to be let | stay to see the master come home; but she wouldn’t. O! Mary, the drink hangs like a curse overhe, Tich and the poor ; the Ingh and the low are poisoned by it. T’m sure if it was only. the experience of this one day, Mary, my darlin’, this one blessed day is enough ; and I could talk till sunrise, for the curse 1s spreadin’. May the Lord look down 100 DIGGING A GRAVE “upon us and stop it? A sudden noise inter- — rupted Peggy’s invocation. _ ee «ys Mrs. Gordon turning out her cat,” said Mary; “she doesn’t take much,’ she ~ continued, “ bait whenever she gets a drop ‘she’s sure to turn out that poor old cat.” Ce ee observed Peggy, ‘oin and human- ity can’t put up their horses together. But — that’s not Mrs. Gordon and her cat; its some one sect mp the stairs; hold the light, Mary.”’ 3 Mary opened the door, and in less than a minute, Mr. Layton, white and panting, rushed into the room. The women looked at him in ast tonishment, while he waited for power to speak. At last Peg gey exclaimed, “The babby, sir; does anything ail it?” MNO, Peggy, worse than that ; come with me at once! she has asked for you — sent me for you. Woman, what do you lose time ) for,”’ he added, almost: “with the fierceness : WITH A WINE-GLASS. 101 of a maniac. “The doctors say she cannot — live. When I came home—TI ran up stairs —to find her —my wife—in flames— they say she had not rung the bell—TI hear you were with her a long time —late — tell me —truly —I can bear anything— when you left her, was she herself.” | «When I left: her — she was,” said Peggy trembling from head to foot. “¢ What o’clock was that ? ”’ 3 “YT can’t mind now, sir; but it was late.’ “She cannot tell how It happened — that’s no proof— the agony she suffers must be- wilder her — but she asked for you.” Mary was trying to put on Peggy’s bonnet and shawl, for the old nurse seemed almost. paralyzed. | “Come, come,” he repeated. “ And yet I ‘cannot bear her groans—my darling! to find a blaze of fire curling over her! But she was quite herself when you left her— you are sure of that — quite herself?” eit. : : DIGGING A GRAVE > “* Yes, sir — quite. f Tt seemed possible that he onild draw consolation from that assurance, for he re- peated the question again and again. The ‘two women followed him down stairs. Mr. | Layton and Peggy drove off, and Mary re- turned to her lonely room; but she did not go to bed. _ After a little time she sank on ‘her knees and prayed’ most devoutly, drop- - ping bead after bead ; sometimes those simple, ernest prayers were interrupted by heavy sobs, which however, lifted (as she would have expressed it) “ the weight off her heart.” _ Never had Peggy’s “preachings” against “‘ the drink” appeared to her so forcibly. keceidiided: to see men and women in her own sphere soothing their want and weariness, : as well as expressing their happiness, by : taking an extra “drop,” the every-day occur- rence of those libations had in a great degree a the habit of its horrors, reconciled _ WITH A WINE-GLASS. 103 | her to dram drinking as to a fate—a destiny that could not be avoided. How could she think badly of the « poor craythers’’? who took a drop to “rise their heads”’ when the world was down on them?” Happily she ‘ could not abide” the taste or smell of spirits ; but surely, Peggy, she often thought, was “ mighty hard in her judgments.’ She could not understand how any one would “take to the drop”’ except they were poor or in trouble, and then it “ got over them.’’ She was a good, kind-hearted and affectionate girl, but Pegey’s temperance lectures often wearied her; and they were frequently scoffed at and laughed at by her companions, but Mary felt she should never be able to bear that again. CHAPTER XI. ‘HE events of one day were so appal- . ling, that she needed no farther ev- idence to prove the wide-spread pes- tilence that prostr ated alike the rich and poor. Though her fair, soft face was bathed in fone. she registered a resolve that, unless _ i her lover gave up “the drop” out and out, and proved he had done so by a whole year ‘of abstinence, she would’ ‘give him up — yes, _ though the effort wrenched the life, out of ~ her heart. — "What terrible experiences of the curse that attends intemperance were gathered into that one day’s experience: the poor little, 104 ; | WITH A WINE-GLASS. 105 bright, wild-eyed child, who had crossed the road as with winged feet, so agile and go full of life, assailed by her drunken mother — struggling. beneath the wheels — dead — dead in half an hour. The playmate of her childhood, whom she believed ‘loved her — poor, faithful, foulish girl —as she loved him : toying and flirting with one another—a - painted doll —a characterless girl like that — unable to walk steadily, and. then bursting into a senseless quarrel — all — all the doings of drink. Now, everything had clouded since she had passed through the park ! She thanked God when the clock struck twelve, and pressed her hands tightly on her brow to shut out the past; but it would return — again and again, the’ scene winding up in, Woburn Place with the fearful sufferings of the poor lady, that she did not perceive ' the candle had flickered out, until she found herself in’ darkness. There was neither 108 = _ DIGGING A GRAVE blinds nor curtains, and after a time she perce’ ved the dim, mysterious twilight, so heavy and murky, stealing around her. She | opened the window, and, folding herself in — her shawl, waited as patiently as she could, for daybreak; gathering up the wandering | sounds of life for companionship ; now count ing the olimmering stars as they seemed — to retreat behind the opposite houses ; then ; listening to the measured step of the police- man starting at the sudden bang of a street — door, and trembling at the half-shouted, half. | ~ muttered eloquence of an intoxicated wan- derer. . | a light glimmered from a distant window, | and she could hear the tender tones of a watching mother soothing the. querulousness ofa sick child; then the nearest clock strack out the hour fiercely on the air, while others, afar off, seemed its echo. I doubt very much H ns one, who has not waited for day- WITH A WINE-GLASS. 107 break in the murky city, can thoroughly appreciate the beauty and blessing of light. Gradually the dark atmosphere became gray, and the sparrows, those pariahs of the air, began to rustle and twitter round the chim- nies and keep from under the water-spouts. The watching mother. extinguished her light, | and both men and women, going to the early work of honest, though hard industry, stepped _ firmly on the pavements. Poor Mary won- dered, as the light increased, where the stars went to; she lit the fire and hung up the kettle, and, adjusting her dress, after laving her face and smoothing her beautiful black hair, determined to go and walk up and down Woburn Place and wait until she could see Pegey, She Was about to set forth, when there was a stumbling in the street, a sound of shuffling rather than walking feet, and an — attempt to chorus one of the drunkard’s songs, “ We shan’t get home till morning ”— a party IS; DIGGING A GRAVE of youngsters staring home from a night’s | debauch — three youths — young lads, little more than boys — linked together arm within arm, gibbered and sang and swore. - She thought how fortunate it was shé had not been on her way and met them. ‘She list- ened until certain they ° were gone. When she got to the door-step, a sweep, with his long, folded broom and empty soot bag, _ passed; and then round. the corner came the early morning cry, « Fresh water cree—e— 99 ses,” and the swift, yet ‘even-footed milk woman, her face blooming as a peony, within 3 a hedge of white frilling, stopped to fill the jug that waited her on the “airy ” railing, and answered the cat’s mew from, below with, “ Take it easy, ee you'll have your share. me ce : | “ Oh, then, the top of the morning to you, - Mary,” she added to Mary’s smiled good. morning! “ you’re early aloot for ye, and and I’m late.” WITH A WINE-GLASS. 109 “Tm going across the park to try to get sight of our dear ould Peggy, who was called out last night.” | | ‘And so was my mother,” replied her ac- quaintance. ‘Poor Jenny Devereux had her brains as. good as beat out by that blackouard of hers, and my mother went to settle them for her and make her lock him up, but she says she won't turn him over to the law, because when he’s sober, honest man! he’s like a lamb, and would go through fire and water for her; but mother says she can’t get over it, the hurt is so bad; if Mrs. Byrne was here,” added the woman, as she tripped off, “ she’d say that’s another grave dug with a wine-glass! ” , “Judy,” exclaimed Mary; “ stop, dear ; don’t smile at that saying, never more! never! never! I tell you, you just look and see that graveyard forenimst us, how full it is. I tell 110 DIGGING ‘A GRAVE you, and it’s as true as that you’ re standing there, that half the oraves there, ay, and more, have been dug—not by spade and shovel, but by a wine-glass! it’s a quare way of put- ting it, but ’ts the TRUTH. What ails you, Mais Ty, you’re as white as a May blush, and your ips all of a tremble, said the milk woman. , : oe Because,” replied Mary, “I never saw the curse and destruction of drink as I saw it yesterday never understood what it does, and keeps doing every hour of the day and night ; never took it in before, though its been the ruin- ation of me and mine, off an on, these hundred years! and sure Peggy has seldom the word for two hours together out of her lips ; ; but it never came home to me, until the last twelve hours, and. now I can hear or see nothing! nothing but the curse’ drink hase brought on big and little, young and old, rich.and poor, on the shrivelled corpse in %, : WITH A WINE-GLASS. | 111 its coffin, and the withered baby that hangs. to the breast of a drunken mother.” She went her way. ‘¢The Lord save us!” ejaculated the milk woman, looking after. “T b’leve there’s,@-dale of truth in it; only, if there is, what fools we all are !— giving our time and health and strength, our body and bones, to make palaces of gin shops ; starve in the dirt, and die in the cutters ourselves.” 4 The woman pursued her walk with a thoughtful countenance, and Mary saw, with an aching heart, when she reached Woburn Place, that every shutter was closed over the windows which yesterday admitted air and sunshine and the sounds of life. She knew the lamp of that life was ex- tinguished, and she sat down weeping and shuddering on the door step; at last the kind voice, and the kind pressure of Peggy’s | hand roused her. 112 DIGGING A GRAVE WITH A WINE-GLASS. = Stand up, child,” she said, “I was going home.” | | | cory: The poor lady ; its all over with. her. O, Mary dear; I would lay down my head on this door step, and die a happy woman, were f sure that hers would be the last grave in our country dug by a wine-glass!” la THE CLARENCE MORTIMER. | Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, By HENRY HOYT, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of Massachusetts THE FIRST GLASS OF WINE. CHAPTER L THE BOYS’ MISTAKE. OQ. come up stairs with me, Hal!” t} said Clarence Mortimer to his anes 7 “Tam going to stand treat, and we will have some prime fun. Dick and Ben said they would come in this afternoon and help us be jolly.”’ rea | ““T am glad of the chance,” said Hal ‘Bennet. ‘It is such a dull afternoon that 3 4. THE FIRST GLASS OF WINE; I was just wondering what I should do with myself.” | : The és boys mounted, two steps at a time, to the third story front room, witch had been given to them by Mrs. Mortimer for their own. ake It was as comfortable a room as one could well wish to see, — large, airy; and hand- somely furnished. A bright fire burned in the grate, and the crimson curtains at the windows hung from the ceiling to the floor. There was everything in this room that boys like in the way of tools and playthings, and yet it was neatly kept and cosily arranged. ee This looks something like comfort!” said Clarence, throwing himself into the arm-chair by the fire, and thrusting the poker in among the glowing coals. «* No matter how glooin y the weather may be « out= = i. r ‘ \ & eae it Aes © eat 2 y OR, CLARENCE MORTIMER. 5 side, as soon as I come into my own room, I begin to have a good time.” ‘¢T thought you said you had a treat in store,” sad Hal. <‘* If you have, out with it, and let me see what it amounts to.” I suppose you would like to know a little about the history of these two boys who have come into my story so unceremoni- ously. Well, then, Clarence Mortimer was the only son of a widow. He was about twelve years of age, anda very bright, encacing little fellow, —had always had a pretty good time of it ever since he was born. He had been too young when his father died, to feel any grief at his loss, and his mother had devoted herself to his happiness. She gave him his choice as to the room he would best like to occupy, and. then fitted it 6 THE FIRST GLASS OF WINE; | up exactly according to his taste. More than that, though she had plenty of servants to attend to things about the house, she al- ways attended to that particular room her- self. Perhaps the reason for this was, that — she loved Clarence so much, it was a comfort to her, when he was away at school, to han- _ dle and care for the things that belonged to : him. | | I think the least that Clarence could do in return for so much love and indulgence was to be a very good boy, and to try to im- prove, so that he might become a real com- fort and support to his widowed mother, as he grew older. | I wish I could say with truth that this was the case; but I cannot. Clare was far from being as good a boy as he might have been. He meant well, and he was ¢ OR, CLARENCE MORTIMER. 7 Se rather an amiable boy, but he had no strength of principle, and so he 7 easily to temptation. Do you know what I mean, by strength of principle? When a person refuses to do things because they are wrong, even if they . ate very agreeable to him, and does things because they are right, even if they happen tu be quite disagreeable, I feel confidence in that person. I know that he has strength of principle, and so is to be depended upon. : But when I meet with a boy who never asks or cares whether things are right or not, but only seeks to find out whether they are pleasant, then I know that such a boy is not one to be trusted. People without prin- ciple are often as agreeable as people with principle, when you just meet them occasion- a THE FIRST GLASS OF WINE; ally, but when you are thrown with them in- timately, and begin to see into their charac- ter, you will soon find that they are not to be trusted, and then you will begin to de- spise them so much that you cannot take any pleasure in their society. | ; dl an very sorry that Clarence Mortimer was not a boy of good principles, for his mother’s sake, as well as his own, for such boys as he manage to inflict many a heart- ache upon all who love them. Hal Bennet a Clare’s cousin, and had come from the country to be educated with © him, partly because Mrs. Mortimer had — taken a notion that her boy would be more contented if he had a companion about his own age, and partly that Hal might have the benefit of going to a good school. Hal was a pretty good fellow, but he was OR, CLARENCE MORTIMER. 9 too easily led by those he loved, and being a little younger than Clare, he was too apt to follow his example in all things. But. to return to the boys. ‘‘ I have got a treat,” said Clarence, « but. I have no notion of getting it out yet. Did IT not tell you that Dick and Ben said they would come in to help us out with our frolic.” Just at this moment there was a low, peculiar whistle under the window. ‘¢ There they are now?” said Clare, and in another moment two boys came into the room. One exceedingly homely, with a sandy complexion and red hair, the other very handsome, with ruddy cheeks, blue eyes, and curling brown hair, but having rather a disagreeable expression of face for all that. . | | 10 HE FIRST GLASS OF WINE; Neither Ben nor Dick were good boys, . and so they were very unsafe companions 2 for boys like Clare and Hal, who had no fixed principles to = them in the right place. The four boys ny bei to enjoy them- 3 selves ‘in good earnest. First, they played some games, then they told wonderful stories to each other, and then Clare thought the _ time had come for the feast to begin. He took from a cupboard in the corner of the room a small drum of figs, a basket of nuts, and a half dozen large oranges, and placed them in the middle of the table. —** Come, boys, this is my treat,” he said, ‘¢ Now draw up and-be jolly.” Hal instantly drew his chair nearer to the table, but Dick and Ben regarded these preparations with a critical air. OR, CLARENCE MORTIMER. 1] ‘* Who ever heard of a feast among young gentlemen without a drop to wet one’s whistle!” said Dick, with a sneer. We can see from this speech, that Dick was not only not a good boy, but that he - was accustomed to associate with low com- panions, who had taught him to use vulgar, slang expressions... | ‘¢T looked out for all that,” said Ben, laughing. ‘‘I stole into the governor’s pantry after dinner, and helped myself. See here.” | He drew a small, black bottle from his pocket as he spoke, and also a wineglass, both of which he placed upon the table. ‘*Now we can enjoy ourselves in ear- nest,” said Dick; « There’s nothing like a drop of the ready to keep things in motion.” _. The fun and the merry-making went on, 12 #=‘THE FIRST GLASS OF WINE; and in a few moments the black bottle was uncorked, and the. St was filled with sparkling, ruby wine.’ | +s Drink, pretty creature, avin 1 We said Ben, laughing and holding the glass to Clare’s lips. But Clare drew back. “ My mother has forbidden me to drink wine,” said he, ‘‘ and really I do not care fre ee ‘¢Oh, what a good boy he is! I never should have believed it!” said Ben, in a tone of ridicule. | ‘¢ Mammy’s own pet! He had better go and tie himself to her apron-strings, for fear he might get into mischief,” said Dick. © Before I would be afraid of my moth- er,” said Ben. ‘* What a brave man you will make, if you can’t even take a glass of wine.” a D tty yg ar an! SUPE a oa TH Syer a tia i test i Uae : I nu IY ary Cat WW HA LE Page 12. 199 ink dr ‘‘Drink, pretty creature, OR, CLARENCE MORTIMER. 13 ~ Clare’s cheeks became very red under this ridicule, but instead of being ashamed of himself for having chosen such wicked, ill-bred companions, he was ashamed of being influenced by his good, gentle, lady- like mother. This is a sort of. false shame that I have often seen in boys, and it surprises me very musk, 75: | ‘< Pm not afraid to take a glass of wine if I choose. Here, Ben, give it to me,” said Clare, holding out his hand. And when Ben did hand it to him, he drank the whole without stopping, although it burned his throat, and he did not like it at all. | What do you suppose he did that for? He did it because he thought it would be- manly, and would prove that he was a boy of spirit. (14 THE FIRST GLASS OF WINE; What a mistake some boys make about manliness. They think it is manly to give up doing what they know to be right, to do’ : what they know to be wrong, and to run the risk of grieving all their true friends, just \ because they are afraid that some bad boy may laugh at them if they are true to them- _ selves. Do you think such conduct is manly; > Tikit is sheer cowardice, mean- ness, and wickedness. Clare drank the wine, and Hal followed his example. It was the first glass of wine that the boys had ever taken, and. it caused the blood to fly to their cheeks in a manner — that was quite unpleasant ; but still they felt as if they had really gained a great deal by this experience in sin and disobedience. Dick and Ben were soon taking their turn _at the wine bottle. It was not their first | “¥ Fee “ ‘shal Othe ne tise F Woe. 4 Ree Pe See Sa 63 OR, CLARENCE MORTIMER. 15 glass, and they took it with a relish that showed they were already in danger of be- coming drunkards, although they were such young boys. Then the boys all sang a patriotic song, and then they might perhaps have gone into fresh carousings if there had not been, just at this moment, a gentle tap on the door. ‘¢ It’s mother, I do believe!” cried Clare, in alarm. ‘* Hide the bottle! Here’s a pretty go!” | A pretty sure sign that Clare knew he was committing a sin, that he was afraid to meet his loving, indulgent mother. That is one feature of sin throughout all its history, that it tries to hide itself, and trembles at the approach of goodness.. It is the sin in our hearts, which puts us at a distance from God, that loving Father, and, 7 on ow 16 THE FIRST GLASS OF WINE, causes us to fear him, and tremble at the thought of him. a | So, boys, when you are doing anything ~ that you want to keep from the knowledge of your parents, be pretty sure it is a bad | thing, and that it will be better for you if | you leave it off directly. Dick caught up the black bottle, and was just in the act of trying to thrust it into one of his pockets, we Mrs. Mortimer walked into the room. — ‘Your Uncle James has come, and he wants to see you, Clare, for a moment,” she began with a pleased smile, as she opened — the door. | | Bnt suddenly she stopped short, as the. guilty looks of the boys, the smell of wine, and the sight of the black bottle arrested her attention. OR, CLARENCE MORTIMER. 17 ‘¢ What does all this mean, Clare?” she said, in quite an altered tone. ‘* Have you boys been up to any mischief?” Dick and Ben were quite bad enough to have attempted to make up some lie to suit the occasion, but Clare had not gone quite so far in wickedness as that, so he just came right out with the truth. ‘¢ T had a little treat this afternoon for the boys, mother,” he said, ‘¢and Ben brought some wine with him, so we all drank Sonik Of Ae yes Clare, I cannot tell you how you have grieved me!” said Mrs. Mortimer. «« You know I have always forbidden you. even to taste of wine, and yet you have wilfully dis- obeyed me. I could not have believed that you would have been guilty of such con- duct ® 2 ‘ ‘ - i ee ea Pe” era = & 18 ‘THE FIRST GLASS OF WINE}; The pained expression of his mother’s face smote Clare to the heart, for he was a kind-hearted boy, though he was weak, | and had not courage and rie enough to dare to do right. | 3 He stood twirling one of the buttons on his jacket, looking the picture of confusion. _ Hal seemed to share in his embarrassment, and even Ben and Dick would have been very glad just at that moment if they could have found themselves anywhere else but where they were. There are a creat many people in the . -» world who do not care how much they sin, © provided they are never found out; but they are covered with shame and confusion. | “when their evil deeds come to light,: 1. | wonder whether such people have forgotten that there is a day coming when for every- OR, CLARENCE MORTIMER. 19 thing which we have done on the earth we saall be called into judgment. However successful we may be in cover- ing up our sins and deceiving the world ag to our character, all is known to God. We shall be obliged one day to meet all our actions face to face, and the wickedness which we thought so secret, will not only be made known to the whole world, but to all the angels of heaven. Mrs. Mortimer, seeing that Clare had nothing to say for himself, turned to Ben, and fixing upon him a searching look, she said — | ‘< Ben, do your parents allow you to take Wine in this manner?” Ben, knowing that the truth could wif’ be found out by Mrs. Mortimer, if she should converse with his mother on the : , | 20 THE FIRST GLASS OF WINE; subject, thought he might as well cons fess. ‘No I took it from the closet without leave,” he stammered. ‘‘Tt is a very bad business,” a Mrs. Mortimer, gravely, «¢ What do you suppose wil become of you, if i you go on as you have begun?” | TI did not think there was any very great harm in a few boys having a good time,” said Ben, trying to speak a word in his own. defence. _, If there is no other way for boys to. , have a good time except by disobeying — parents, taking what does not belong to them, and learning to drink spirits, I think there is decided harm in it,” said Mrs. Mortimer. Now, Ben, I find you are not a good boy, and so you must not come here OR, CLARENCE MORTIMER. 21 any more. I have always liked to have you come and play with Clare, but now that I find you influence him to do wrong, I must forbid you the house, and command him to have nothing more to do with vou. me this night ; but the Lord knows all, and -I will pray Him to bless you for it, and always to keep want and sorrow from you a and yours.’ a “ And the poor woman went back to her wretched home, to gladden the hearts of _ OR, CLARENCE MORTIMER. 35 he: children by her unexpected good fortune. The lady went back to her parlor, happier for the deed of kindness which she had done, and her own cosey fireside seemed the brighter to her that she had tried to give comfort to another home. ‘« « You have been a long time away; my dear,’ said the husband, who had thrown himself upon the sofa, and was already half- dozing. *« What did the woman want?’ ‘<< Tt was a case of great distress, as far as I could judge,’ said the lady. «I did all that I could to-night, and I mean to do still more for her. I seldom have had my sympathies so much moved. I did not ask the woman a question about her circum- stances, and yet I feel sure that she is no common person.’ ‘¢ And then the children gathered eagerly 36 THE FIRST GLASS OF ‘WINE 3 _ around her, euls she gave them an account a of all that had taken place. "Phe chiliven aout all much interested, but the gentleman listened with an incredu- lous smile. ; ‘*«« You have a warm heart, my dear,’ he _ said, ‘ and I like you the better for it; but I am afraid that you let it sway your judg- ment sometimes. J dare say that the woman was only an imposter, and that by _ this time she is ~— over her success in moving your pity.’ | “<«T do not believe it, said the lady, . ‘but I would rather run the risk of that, than to send one of my fellow-creatures out into this cold, pitiless storm, without aid and without comfort.’ | « And the lady was not mistaken. Her charity had been worthily bestowed, and OR, CLARENCE MORTIMER. a -even while she was speaking to her children, the poor woman had reached her miserable lodgings and was entering the door. 3 ‘‘Her home was in the fourth story of a tenement house. ‘here was no carpet upon the floor, and the broken window-panes were carefully stuffed with rags to keep out the keen air of winter. There were but a few coals upon the hearth, and over them three children were closely huddled together, while the snow which had drifted in through the loose framework of the win- dows, lay in little heaps about the room. They sprang up as their mother entered, and looked eagerly towards her, but they _ did not advance to meet her. They seemed scarcely to hope even that she had brought them any relief, and it was so dark that they could not see the basket which she 8 38 THE FIRST GLASS OF WINE; carried in hor hand. She almost smiled as she thought how pleased they would be at the little surprise she had in store for them. , a | “¢ She lighted a tallow candle, which she took from asmall pine table, and then, as _ the children saw the expression of her face, they took courage and advanced towards her. ~The: eldest, a girl of about twelve years of ave, was a fair, delicate child with a pleasing countenance, though it bore traces of want and sorrow. The second was a boy, manly, and rather good looking, but his clothes were much too ta for him > In the arms and legs, and were adorned with many a patch. The had was a girl of | ) seven, pale, sallow, and sickly. She wag plainer looking than either of the others, and seemed prematurely old and careworn. OR, CLARENCE MORTIMER. 39 They had been well brought up; that was plainly shown in the quiet manner with which they went up to their mother. ‘There was no impatient pushing, no complaining, no teasing; but when she opened the bas- ket, and displayed its contents, they all broke out with one accord into the exclama- tion — , “ ‘Oh, mother, mother !’ ‘¢¢ Put on another stick of wood, Alfred, so that we can be warm while we are eating our supper,’ said the mother, in an excited way. ‘It is the night before Christmas, and we will have a good supper for once.’ — ‘©Oh, how quickly was the order obeyed, and how quickly the willing hands and feet went to-work to set out that table for the feast. ‘6s We will save the chicken-pie for to- 40 THE FIRST GLASS OF WINE3 morrow’s dinuer,’ said the poor woman. = ~~ ‘ We shall need it more then; I guess some_ - of this ham and bread and butter will do well enough for to-night.’ _ : ee] guess it will, indeed,’ said the eldest girl, eyeing it wistfully; ‘but you had better let me make you a cup of tea, mother, for you are shivering with the cold.’ — | | ‘¢ The tea was made, the mother asked a blessing, and then that poor family enjoyed for a are time in some oe a hearty meal. | | ‘©* How good this: is!’ said the tess smacking his lips. < I only wish that lady knew how much better I feel for this “re | she has sent me.’ *** Don’t forget. to thank God this Set before you sleep, that he has sent me so kind | OR, CLARENCE MORTIMER, AL a friend, and ask Him to bless her, and to keep her and hers ever safe from harm,’ said his mother. _ © At this moment there was a noise upon the stairs, and then a heavy, rolling sound, as though some one had fallen. That sound | produced the greatest possible excitement in the family assembled around the _ table. The mother snatched up the chicken-pie, and carefully hid it in the corner. The eldest girl secured the cake, and the boy carefully concealed the papers containing the tea and sugar. ‘¢ Another noise, and some one fell heay- ily against the door. The woman hastened to open it, and a rough-looking man came stageering in. At the sight of him, every face was instantly blanched with terror. The three children got as far away from him 42. ‘HE FIRST GLASS OF WINE 5 | as they could, while the boy whispered to his sister — ‘‘ «Father has come, sure enough Pees ‘¢¢ Hather has come! ’ How often have I : heard that joyful ery from some happy child who was running to its father’s arms. But _ how differently the same words sound now, — whispered in tones of fear among those shrinking children. What is the reason of this difference? Ah, the man who has just entered is a miserable drunkard. He gives up everything for the sake of satisfying his taste for strong drink, and does ‘not care what becomes of his family, so long as he can get that. And so when he comes home to them he is always half crazed, and does “not know what he ; is about. This is all the father that those poor children have ever known. No wonder they fear bim, and try OR, CLARENCE MORTIMER. 43 to shrink away out of sight when they say — ‘Father has come !’ | ‘¢é¢ What have we here?’ said the*man, reeling up to the table, and giving it a kick which sent it spinning across the room, to the destruction of all the dishes which re- mained upon it. ‘That is always the way you do. Stay here feasting, while I am wearing myself to death with work! I say, Moll, get me some supper !’ | ‘‘ Having issued this command in a voice that was frightfully loud and stern, he threw himself heavily into a chair, stretched out his feet as far as possible, and plunged his - hands into his pockets. ‘* The shrinking children remained almost breathlessly quiet in their corner, and did not dare to move. They knew by experi- ence on former occasions, that they would 44. THE FIRST GLASS OF WINE; either be knocked down, kicked, or cruelly _ beaten, if they attracted his attention. | . s I’ dare say you are thinking that this , man was a perfect monster of wickedness, and that a case like his is very rarely met with. , ‘¢T wish that you were right, but, alas, my boys, the world is full of just such cases, - and even worse ones than this. The man I - am telling you about, was well qualified to support his family in comfort. He had re- ceived a good education, had learned a prof- itable trade, and was naturally kind-hearted ; but it was the monster ‘Drunkenness,?” | which had made him what he was. It had taken possession of him, perverted his tastes, — —erazed his brain, and dried up all the good © there was in hin, till he ‘was more like a savage beast than a human being, with a mind and soul. OR, CLARENCE MORTIMER. | A5 oa Oh, is not such a foe as this to be care- fully avoided? Can it be possible that in ven of such facts as these, boys will tamper with the wine-cup, and even take pains to _ form a taste which it is so hard to resist, and which may be so fatal in its results. Yes, do you not know that many boys think it is manly to circulate the poison among their young companions on every possible occasion. Oh, boys, avoid it with the deepest abhorrence, for there is death in the draught for this world, and the next.. The Bible expressly says, ‘No drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of God. 7 arate must go back to the poor family I was telling you about. __ The wife tremblingly obeyed the order which had been given to her by her tyrant. She gathered up the fragments of broken 40 THE FIRST GLASS OF WINE; dishes which strewed the room, rearranged the old table as well as she was able, and placed upon it some of the ham and bread and butter. The monster viewed these preparations with an air of satisfaction, and drawing up to the table, ate with a hearti- ness which showed that though he would not, earn bread for his. family, he knew pretty well how to dispose of that which was given to them in charity. _ ** His wife stood silently looking at him, while her hands were tightly clasped over her aching heart, and her features worked — convulsively with nervous anxiety. But at length, seeing him restored to tolerable : good-humor, she timidly said — ‘**¢ You spoke of work, William. Have you been doing anything to-day ? We have only a few sticks of wood left in the house, OR, CLARENCE MORTIMER. AT and perhaps you would like to buy more if you have been earning any money. It would be bad to be entirely out of wood this freezing weather.’ ‘¢ ¢ Wouldn’t you like to know?’ said the man, eruffy. ‘What business is it of yours-whether I work or not, — whether I earn money or not? I suppose you think I am good for nothing but to work for you and those oreat lazy children. Why don’t you work yourselves, and earn money, if you want to spend it ?? “The poor woman was evidently far advanced in consumption; she was very thin and weak, and a hectic flush was painted on her cheek. ‘«©¢Qh, William, I would gladly work,’ she said, ‘if I only knew what to do, and how to set about it; but I am a stranger’ in a strange land, and — and —’ 48 THE FIRST GLASS OF WINE; ‘¢She broke eee here, and, covering her face with her slender hands, cried as if her heart would break. ee ‘¢ What do you think her bain’ did at seeing this? Do you think he pitied 2 her, and felt SOrry that he had been so - unkind, and took her in his arms, and com- forted her poor, wounded heart? N 03 her tears made him very angry, because he ie knew that he alone was to blame for them. He said roughly — dat , | ‘¢« What are you snivelling there for, | - you ‘fool?’ ek. ae ‘¢ And then he raised his cruel hand, and ; | gave her a blow that almost felled her to the floor. And then her ‘tears were dried by the very depth of her misery, and she walked to the window, and leaned her throb- bing head against it, as she looked out into OR, CLARENCE MORTIMER. 49 the cold, dark night, not colder and darker - than her husband’s: heart. And then the brute reeled heavily to the poor bed, threw himself upon it, and slept; and the sickly . wife folded her hands and prayed. ‘¢ And the children saw it all, and their hearts were crushed by the knowledge that all this would happen again and again, and they sank down upon the bare boards and cried themselves to sleep. ‘©All this is a faithful picture of that which happens in a drunkard’s home. Do you like it, Hal? You may answer your _ own question. Do you think it such a dreadful thing to be a drunkard? ” Hal shuddered, as he said — ““Oh, yes, Aunt Ellen, it isa dread ful thing.” ‘‘And what do you say, my Clare? 50 THE FIRST GLASS OF WINE . Would you run the risk of becoming like the “creature { have been describing to you?” ‘*No, indeed, mother,” said Clare. «I would rather die now, while I am a boy, than live to grow up, if I — I shee ever be like that.” | —“*Then, my boy, let ardent spirits in every form entirely alone. Touch mot, taste not, handle not. You have taken your first class of wine this afternoon ;-"see to it that you never take the second.” ‘ and more. } ‘ ‘© The lady who befriended them at first, — never lost her interest in them during all the season of their trials, and was ever ready to — assist them when they needed it, but the _ poor woman never applied to her for money, unless she could not possibly avoid it, and was very particular to pay back the exact amount she borrowed, as soon as she was able. «Thus ends the story of the drunkard’s family, so far as I am able to tell it to you. It teaches you two valuable lessons. The first is that tirtue, perseverance, and indus- - OR, CLARENCE MORTIMER, G9 try, will often triumph over obstacles which seem insurmountable; and the second is, that dissipation and idleness oy lead to misery and ruin.” ; ‘66 Mother,” said cx ‘>I don’t think [ shall ever wish to take a glass of wine again after hearing this story.” “Tt is strictly true,” said Mrs. Mortiser, | 66 er it is far from being one of the worst sketches that could be drawn from life when this curse rests upon it.” CHAPTER V. HOW CLARENCE KEPT HIS RESOLUTION. HAVE ‘said that Dick and Ben were bad boys, and yery unfit associates for ~ a boy of weak principles like Clarence Mor- timer. ‘herefore Mrs. Mortimer was jus- tified in breaking off entirely the intercourse between them and her son. They. how- ever, felt differently about it, and vowed they would be revenged upon her for the slight she had put upon them. «Tam not going to submit to it, I can tell you that, Ben,” said Dick, «‘I will | a 3 CLARENCE MORTIMER. 81 make Clare go with me in spite of all that has come and gone, and I will try to make him do something to vex that precious mother of his, too.” | ‘© I don’t believe Clare will speak to us said Ben. «He heard all that his ‘ mother said.” now,” ‘« Nonsense,” said Dick, angrily. «Did not his mother tell him never to touch wine, and yet didn’t you see how easy it was to make him drink off his glass like a gen- tleman? ” | More evil done by that first glass of wine. First, it involved positive disobe- dience, then a consciousness of sin, then attempted deceit, and now it gives bad boys a hold over the weak boy who yielded to temptation. So Satan has laid his evil snares in one 82 THE FIRST GLASS OF WINE; continuous train, in order that the victim who falls into one may be betrayed into another and yet another, till his ruin is ac- complished. And so, by every sin that we commit, we give Satan a new power over us. Let us beware, then, of the first begin- nings of sin. Let us guard our hearts at gs , every point against Satan’s approaches. ‘That is true,” said Ben. ‘* However much Clare’s mother may watch him, she is by no means sure of him, as she may find out to her cost. He is not a firm boy. But how about Hal?” — | ‘s Why, Hal is made of sterner stuff,” said Dick, thoughtfully. «Still, I am not afraid even about Hal, for Clare can make him do anything. So if I can get Clare, | am sure of Hal, too.” | ‘* Well,” said Ben, ‘* How do you pro . . ” pose to go to work? 5 ee ee cai : OR, CLARENCE. MORTIMER. 83 ced sutend to pull the wool over his eyes,” said Dick, with a hateful grin. Now Ben was not a very bright lad, and though he had been much in the society of his companion, he could not always keep pace with him. He did not at all under- stand what he meant in the present case, and said, somewhat pettishly — «TI do wish you would say plain out what you mean, and not go beating about ‘he bush forever.” : je, << Well, then, I mean I'll pretend to be very kind to Clare Mortimer, and to love him dearly,” said Dick; ‘and then I'll _ make a fool of him.” . : ‘© Won’t that. be too mean?” said Ben, who was pretty good natured in the main. ‘* Not at all,” said Dick. <* Iam bound to do it, just to show what I can do. I would hot advise people to offend me.” 84 THE FIRST GLASS OF WINE; 66 Why dou’t: you give: Clare a beatin , and have done with it, if you are 80 : with him? ” said Ben. " «Because I know it would a his mother a great deal more, if I could make him do anything bad,” said Dick. «* Be- sides, Clare Mortimer always -has more money than any of the other boys, and he is : generally pretty free with it, I cannot afford — to lose him.” So these boys ngroed upon hea sti of ae we Be “~%’. pretended kindness: and real: ame to. Clare. 5 2 . Those companions who would lead you into vice, boys, are not your friends,, how- ever pleasing and amiable they may appear 5 _ they are in truth your worst enemies, for they would tempt you to destruction. Suppose _ you were out at sea, and some OR, CLARENCE MORTIMER. 85 one on the shore should hail your vessel with signals that should lure her on to the most dangerous rocks that were hidden beneath the waters. Should you call that person your friend, even though the signal should be dazzling lights, or swiftly mounting rockets, or gayly colored flags? No, you know you would not. Why then do you give your confidence to those who would tempt you on to far greater danger even than - — -— see ~—: of ene an immortal a you to do wrong , distenet that per- son, and avoid his society ever after as nauch as possible. | . ~All the boys that I have been telling about in this brief story attended the same school, so that it would not have been very easy to Keep. them | ape, if” they had all | agreed i in wishing it. 86 THE FIRST GLASS OF WINE. | 66 Good morning, Clare!” said Dick, in . a a pleasant tone, as the boys happened *to.. — meet in the hall, a few days after he ‘had conversed with Ben, in the manner I have > been describing. - a | 2 Clare, who had feared something disagree- a aide in Sus Grek crmouiter with this violent- tempered fellow, was much relieved by this pleasant salutation, and answered in a friendly manner. | eo “Tam glad to see you don’t feel above | og speaking to a fellow,” said Dick, laughing. **T never thought or feeling above any. one,’ > said Clare, earnestly. ‘* My mother is SO very much afraid for me, it is only that which has kept me away from you.” “Yes, I'know you cannot always do as: you choose,” said Dick, with a tone of pity — 3 that made Clare blush and feel soi: : OR, CLARENCE MORTIMER. SFT somehow. ‘* You havea splendid mother; you do well to think considerable of her though,” he added. | 66 Yes, she is always so kind to me, that. I would not vex her for the world,” said Clare, warmly. | | «The only pity is that women don’t know much about the world. They can’t always. tell just what is suitable four men and boys. My father says that boys who always go ace cording to a woman’s notions are sure to turn out flats,” said Dick. ‘« Flats!” echoed Clare, with a disturbed | look. | oe Yes, soft, sort of spooney. You know what I mean.” a a Both boys were passing into the school- room just as this. conversation was taking place, and as “Dick concluded the last re- 88 THE FIRST GLASS OF WINE mark, they were obliged to part, in order to : go to their respective desks. ne Dick smiled to himself as he saw Clare’s face crimson with a painful flush, but he did Ss not care to say anything more at that time. He had put one little drop of poison into Clare’s deep love for his mother, and: he wanted it to have time to do its work, before he threw any decided temptation in his way. ‘IT should. not like to be a flat,” said Clare to himself, -as he turned. over the pages of one of his books. «* Mother is pretty careful of me, that’s a fact. I wish Thad a father, like other boys.” st The next day Clare had some trouble with one of his sums. He had_ scarcely sufficient time tu do. it, before the class in arithmetic should be called He groaned aloud, as the answer came wrong, time after — time. OR, CLARENCE MORTIMER | 89 “Can't you get it right?” said a dull, heavy sort of boy, who sat next to him. ‘¢T wish I could help you, but I couldn’t do ini sums myself.” Dick heard the remark, and_ silently handed his slate to Clare, with all the sums upon it correctly worked out. Clare elanced at it, saw where his mistake had been, and rectified it in a moment. He could not help saying, ‘‘ thank you,” in his most cordial tone, as he passed the slate back to its owner. | _ At another time the boys were trying skating on a sheet of ice that extended half. over their play-ground. It was rather a small patch, it is true, for such an operation, but still they had considerable sport. In’ the midst of the frolic, Clare’s strap broke, and one of his skates came half off. . 90 #$ THE FIRST GLASS OF WINE; ‘¢ There,” he cried, in a tone of vexation, ‘¢ that is the end of all my fun for to-day.” Dick had just come out of the house with’ his: skates in his hand, and was about to put them on, when he saw what had happened. ‘¢ Here, Clare,” he said, in a voice of cordial kindness, ‘‘ you are welcome to use my skates if you would like them. I don’t. really care to skate myself to-day.” So, by continued acts of kindness, he won upon Clare, till the boy began to think him one of the cleverest fellows in the world. - Although frequently in his company at school, he took pains never to ‘mention his mame to Mrs. Mortimer. - | - Hal knew nothing ~ about it, ” Because having a severe. attack of influenza about this bene: which kept him at home for several days. When he returned to school, | OR, CLARENCE MORTIMER. 91 he had so much to do to make up his back | studies that he did not go out in the recess as usual. On one of those days his les- sons were more difficult than usual, and he went out to study them at the large bay window at the end of the hall, that he could be more quiet than in the schoolroom. One of the small recitation-rooms was close at hand, and as he seated himself, he thought he heard a murmur of voices through the half-open door. He paid little attention to it at first, but in a. few moments he heard some one wy in quite a distinct { tone — | ®... rh cite Mortimer had better look to him- Wave complete hold on him now, and I mean to keep it. The rat has run into ‘the trap I set for him, and now there is nothing left except to spring it.” 6 . Us. 92 THE FIRST GLASS OF WINE; Hal listened eagerly at hearing his couse In’s name thus mentioned, and he felt cer- ( tain that the speaker was no other than Dick. ene e ‘¢T wonder what Mrs. Mortimer will say, niéw,” said another voice, which Hal knew | to be Ben’s. She may find out that her. as precious son is no better than the rest of ”» } ras ‘‘Hush,” said Dick, «don’t speak so loud; some one might happen to overhear a us. Besides, we ought not > to mention names when we are plotting mischief.” — The boys continued their conversation in’ ~ a lower tone, and Hal stole quietly away. He did not want them to know he had been‘ listening to them. He was much troubled, however, for fear that something unpleasant a was going to happen to Clare, all the more’ : - OR, CLARENCE MORTIMER. 93 that he could not in the least guess what form it would take.’ And so much were his thoughts exercised upon this subject, that he made several sad blunders in his lessons, and was detained after school to study them over again. ‘This was unfortunate, for he thus lost an opportunity of talking the | “matter over ith his cousin, and putting him on his guard. e Hal was a boy of more firmness and strength of character than Clare, but his deep affection for his cousin, caused him to be too much influenced by him. If he had not been kept at home by illness, it is more than probable that he, too, would have fol-— fowed Clare’s example, and renewed his © intimacy with Dick and Ben. As it was, coming suddenly to a knowledge of the | plan, he felt annoyed and anxious about it. 94 THE FIRST GLASS OF WINE; J will put a stop to it to-morrow,” he muttered to himself, as he applied himself in earnest to his books. « They cannot do _ Clare any great harm just in one afternoon, | and then he will not pr a with them after school is out.” A. great mistake on Hal’s part. Tee hardly possible for a boy to be on terms of intimacy with evil companions even one hour without receiving some harm from it. ‘Their very talk is harm, because it gen~ erally fills the mind with wicked on S which it is hard to drive away. Boys cannot be too careful in the choice of their associates. It has even been said that you can tell a person’s character by the company he keeps, and though there are, of course, some exceptions to this rule, it is generally true. We choose the society of OR, CLARENCE MORTIMER. 95 those whose actions please us, and we are very apt to try to imitate ourselves that which we admire in others. Clare Mortimer had chosen bad boys for his friends, and his character had not. at all improved under their influence, though he. was not conscious that he had changed in the least. The very knowledge that he was deceiving his kind mother by making her believe that he was following out her wishes, was enough to harm him and make him ready for other sins. | 4 Come, Clare, we will walk home with you, if you would like it,” said Dick, passing his arm through Clare’s in the most friendly manner, while Ben came up on the other side of him. | ‘¢T shall be glad of your company,” said Clare. <«* Hal is.kept in this afternoon, so 96 THE FIRST GLASS OF WINE; that < expected to shave to walk home alone.” Eig ‘‘ It is so pleasant,” said Ben, «that I propose we do not go straight home. Let’s take a little stroll down Broadway, and look at the people.” _ «My mother likes to have me come straight home from school,” said Clare. ‘*¢ Sle never sits down to dinner without me, and it puts her out to be kept waiting.” ‘¢ I don’t see how she is to know it,” said Ben. «6 Hal is kept in, you know, and will not be at home this ever s0 long. How can your mother tell the precise moment you | came out of school. It won’t take you long.” ‘‘J don’t exactly like to disobey my -.@=* mother, though,” stammered Clare, blushing | painfully. OR, CLARENCE MORTIMER. 97 << What nonsense, Clare,” sneered Dick. ‘¢ Don’t you disobey } her every day 0 of your Bhan 4 In going with us?” ‘Yes, L know it,” said Clare. « But then that seemed to me so very unreasonable, to tell me not to have anything to say to | you. Mother : is so good herself, that she is apt to be a little hard on people some- times.” | Clare was trying to apologize to himself, for having yielded to his own wishes in this matter. | ‘‘ Yes, that is just it,” said Ben, eagerly. ‘* Your mother is a splendid woman, but she is a little too-hard on boys. If you hada father, now, you would not be kept half so. close.” hy se *¢ If I were you, Clare,” said Dick, in his _ most insinuating manner, ‘‘I would not give 98 THE FIRST GLASS OF WINE; up to my mother too much. You are quite | ; a large boy now, and ought to be trusted by yourself a little more. You do not mean ‘0 do anything very bad, and your mother ought to have some confidence i inyou. She will expect to watch you always just so, even after you get to be a man grown, if you don’t try to break that sort of thing up now.” oe It is true,” said Clare, with a cloud ‘upon his brow. «I am not allowed to have my own way half ‘as much as other boys.” “It is half your own fault,” said Ben. ‘¢ Other boys would not be so tame as to submit to it. “My! I should. like to see my - mother interfere with me in that sort of way.” | 6 What should you do. if ae did? ” said - Clare. | <6 Just 7 exe on doing the very things a OR, CLARENCE MORTIMER, 99 made a fuss about, and let her see that I thought I could manage my own affairs with- out help,” said Ben. 7 Poor Ben! It would have been well for him if some one had taken. pains to find out how he spent his time, and if he could have had some kind, sensible friend to counsel _ him. But he had never known such care. So it isnot wonderful that he had false views - on that subject as well as every other. His _ father was wholly immersed in business, and took little interest in the pursuits and habits of his children. While his mother, a worldly, fashionable woman ; was too much devoted to her own pleasures, to disturb her- _ self about anything else. «© Tl tell you what, Clare,” ‘aid Dick, ee begin this very afternoon to show your | | Independence. Come and take a walk with 100 THE FIRST GLASS\OF WINE; us, and enjoy yourself a little ina harmless way, without. worrylng all the time about What your mother will say about it.” _ Wiul it be believed that Clare actually began , to feel that he had always been a much wronged and abused boy from the very excess of his mother’s love? Such - was the weakness of this boy’s nature that he did, and not only that, he made up his mind to follow the bad advi nice that, had been | given to him. ‘He made no more attempts. at resistance, but suffered Dick to lead him away. , | They Find: an agreeable walk, and were joined by one or two other young boys, . whom Clare had never seen before. They were jolly, entertaining fellows havcrer. and added so much to the life of the com- pany, that Clare was glad he had become OR, CLARENCE MORTIMER. 101 acquainted with them. They had not gone far, when they caine opposite to a large billiard saloon, 3 a Let's go in here, and have a roll at the balls,” said one of. the stranger youths. ‘* It’s prime fun.” ‘* What do you say, Clare?” said Dick. ‘“‘Would you mind just dropping in a minute ?” Clare felt bashful about expressing his views, and besides could not bear to mar the pleasure of the others. ‘I should like to go in,” he said, «I cannot stay long, though.” | 66 We can come out whenever we like, of course,” said Ben. . And so they all entered the building, and mounted to the room where the billiard tables were. | Clare had never been in just such a set 102 THE FIRST GLASS OF WINE; GS CS before, and he had some doubts about it, himself, as he saw the men lounging about the room. But he was a lively, thoughtless boy, and soon became so much interested in’ . watching the game that now took place, and in listening to the conversation of the differ- ent groups of lookers-on, that time glided almost insensibly away. | “ Try a roll yourself, Clare,” said Ben, when all the others had played. ig Sta BIO The weakness of our own strength is clearly. shown forth in this charming work, whether in the inward growth in grace, or in our . power amid outward trials. | AUNT REBEKAH’S CHARGE. Price 403s. Ss PS No goodness can be otherwise than spasmodic and transient which is not based on a prayerful desire to serve God. CHARITY HURLBURT. A Book for Young Misses. Pree (5, & ss 0 B1,50 School-life faithfully portrayed. The religious power by sien even the very young may come out of its trials victorious tenths described. THE OLD OAK FARM. From the London Sunday School Union. 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Little Ones inthe Fold. . . » 2 « « « $0.90 The Better Life, and How to Find it eee es 0 einidis Guide to Heaven) ape ee ee ro ‘The.lNewaval Melodist 20... ae yang eee ee alts The Blood of Jesus . 7 here Book to Jesus) | a: $0.40 | Blopedmiicsus 5 4 0). 4a. | inc Gnitailcsic eC Lllustrated Works published b y Henry Hoyt. If a JESSICA'S FIRST PRAYER. From the London Religious Tract Society. Price 75 cents, Peter Killip’s King . Pilgrim Street . e Young Apprentice , ~ — = ae hee OP SAG \ SAW Ai Sy N ee at wo a : sae = rae ——— foo AD So Prez Y fae A EE BY THE SAME AUTHOR. $1.25 Little Meg’s Children . . $1.00 - 14.25 Alonein London. . . . 90 1.25 Jessica’s Mother. . . . 675 12 Lilustrated Works published by flenry Floyt. [BOOKS IN SETS, FULLY ILLUSTRATED.] The Prize Library. (1867.) Five Volumes. $7.00. ~ Culm Rock. After Years. Tip Lewis and his Lamp. Old Sunapee. Carl’s Home, The Golden Library. Four Volumes: $6.00. By Mrs. J. MCNAIR WRIGHT. 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Tim the Scissors-Grinder. Tim’s Sister, The Child’s Bi Four Volumes. Library. $5.25. Jenny’s Geranium. A Christmas Story. Daisy Bright. Library. ($4.25. _ Emily’s Bracelet. _ Music Governess. Ellen Vincent. ® Series. $3.75: Sequel to Tim. | ble Stories. $3.25. A charming set, written expressly for small children, by Mrs. C. E. | K. Davis. ~ aS Lilustrated Works published by Henry Hoyt. THE ORIENT BOYS. ity. | ' nt eh ‘| . yf Phy t y : f The most capital boy- Price neh Every page full of interest and instruction. book of the season. 16 LIilustrated Works published by Henry Hoyt. [BOOKS IN SETS, FULLY ILLUSTRATED.] The Fifty-Volume Library. A SPLENDID SELECTION OF CHOICE READING, Fifty Volumes, 18mo, cloth, $20.00. The Mountain. Gems. Four Volumes. 2.50. By Rev. JoHN Topp, D.D. Cush Going to Mill. | Uncle Ben and Uncle Levi. Shaking Out the Reef. The Mother Dove. | The Sunbeam Library, Six Volumes, $2.50. . Mabel’s Pets. Norah’s Lilies, The Morning Hour. . Nellie Wells. The Dead Monkey. _Molly’s Verse. Nearly one hundred illustrations, The Choice Little Library. Six Volumes. $2.50. Emma Herbert. Ned Graham. Ivan. : The Fairest Rose. Eddie and May. | Little Kat: Nearly one hundred illustrations, Choice Reading for the Little Ones. My Pet Library. 640 pages. 10 volumes. $2.25. The Little Home Library. 640 pages. 10 volumes. $2.2 5: The Little Folks’ Library. 640 pages. 10 volumes. 2.25. The Welcome Library. 640 pages. 10 volumes. $2.25. The Little Ones’ Library. 640 pages. 10 volumes. $2.25. wis nabbibbidins tambelidec ttaeedns etd i: SLi okt Seekers i ek a ? behest oh tl 4 “H bad : behest zvtees Vow er Ate ORME Tie ie ; : Vici ao ee se seh) ieaco nen tice bot Lidl etter ett Ea te ; nS Sei ait ats, Seta BUN u etait) eka rss 32 + wha me sa af oR. fee € st ‘ hit Pri eatie! f nt re it BE ‘ * Ls sd 1 : J ate) veri eetter eet are ae Pri r 288 z Seeiee™ Pome Aas es wtawh Pats etek obs. 5 Pees Roe " % , S ares ‘ : a . = deep ; ; Petes See Bonu. ship sein tts ae et ites A Ot aaa Be ery cone Beles pitt : . - pies cctinnhg (aati na Br HREe arturaee got ee aca tte : ; : at os ron i i, i j EPS erie tee i a eee , . tt | nea teh bok od EC stat at Pettis ee ead ee ies sil ; ; peered } pase ; ths eho te nae es as bites ee , , é j ; pd ; ; Br hae ste “a? 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