_ AN IMPORTANT ERA. "95

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he reached his father’s stable, was able to sit up, and
even to connect his sentences with some degree of
sense. As we.at last drove into the stable-yard, his
father came angrily forth to learn where he had been
and what was the matter. I threw down the reins,
and, jumping from the sleigh, hastened from the
group. Angry words, with many oaths, between father _
and son, echoed on the still air, until I ran from their
sound,-down through an opposite street. Cold, hungry,
and disquieted, I hardly knew whither I was going.

_ “Oh that I was at home! Oh that I had never left
home!” Iwas ashamed to pass by the lights that
streamed from the windows, so self-condemned did I
feel. “Sunday! And this has been my Sunday!”
I shuddered to think how the day had been spent.
Making a turn in the street, I came to the church
where I had attended public worship. _ It was lighted,
and there was a service. It wasa relief even to go in,
and I hastened up the steps. I took a seat far back
in the gallery, :

“Young man, pause! thy steps are tending down,
y oe”

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