A TEMPERANCE STORY.
Charley Colt’s father was a grocer. There was a great sign stuck up on the corner with a sugarloaf painted on either end; and outside the door were hogsheads of “Jamaica brandy,” and “Old Cogniac.” He was not a temperance man of course; temperance was not so much talked about in those days as it is now; it was a matter of course that drunkards went reeling home from such places as Mr. Colt’s, and nobody seemed to think the worse of the man who sold such maddening stuff. Many a poor heart-broken woman turned away her head when the fat, jolly Mr. Colt walked, on Sundays, into the best pew in church, and sat up as straight as if he had not taken the bread out of the mouths of so many widows and their children. Nobody thought the worse of Mr. Colt for taking, for liquor, all the wages which a poor man had been all the week earning, instead of telling the foolish fellow to take it home to his destitute family. Mr. Colt sleptjust as soundly as if he had not been doing this for years; and the law did not meddle with him for it; and as to that old-fashioned book, the Bible, which says, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” Mr. Colt never troubled himself to wipe the dust from its covers. Mr. Colt had a bright little boy named Charley, of whom he was very fond; he was an only child. Charley spent all his time in the store when he was not in school, listening to the men who came there to drink, as they lounged round the door, or sat on the counter, or perched themselves on top of the barrels of whisky and rum. Sometimes they would ask him questions, to see what queer old-fashioned answers he would make, and then his father would wink with one eye and say “Oh, he’s a case, that boy, he is going to college one of these days, and going to be a gentleman, ain’t you, Charley?” and then the men would set him up on the barrels and give him the sugar and rum in the bottom of their glasses, and then Charley would talk so fast and so loud that you would think he was crazy, and so things went on at the grocer’s till Charley was a big boy, big enough to go to college. Then his father fitted him out with a great many fine clothes, because he said his handsome Charley should be a gentleman, and gave him a purse full of money, and told him to hold up his head, andnot let any body tread him down. And Charley opened his bright eyes and shook his thick curls, and said, whoever wanted to get the better of him would have “to get up early in the morning.” And so off he went to college “to be made a gentleman of.”
When Charley got there, he found out that the way to be a gentleman in college was to insult his teachers, break windows, run up great long bills at the tailor’s, the hatter’s, the pastry cook’s, and the eating and drinking saloons.
It was very easy work, and when he got through, the bills were sent to his father to pay. As to his lessons, his father had never said any thing about those—it was stupid work studying, well enough for poor men’s sons, whose fathers were not rich, and who would have to earn their own living, but all he was sent there for, was to learn to be a gentleman. His teachers reproved him for neglect of study, and Charley plainly told them it was none of their business to speak to a gentleman in that way; and when his tutor told him that he must not use such language to him, he knocked the tutor down with his gentlemanly fists. To be sure he was drunk when he did it, but the tutor did not seem to think much, even of that gentlemanly excuse, and so Charley was expelled—that is, sent away from college,and went back again to his father. Mr. Colt did not keep the store now; he had made so much money, making drunkards, that he could afford to sell out all his rum-barrels to another man, who wanted to get rich too, by breaking women’s hearts, and starving poor innocent children. Mr. Colt now lived in a fine large house, with great high stone steps like a palace, and a great bronze lion on each side of the door. There were beautiful sofas and chairs inside, and mirrors the whole length of the wall, from floor to ceiling. The carpets were as thick and soft as the moss-patches in the woods, and the flowers in them so beautiful that you hesitated to put your foot on them. Then there was silver, and cut-glass, and porcelain, and a whole army of servants, all bought with the poor drunkards’ money; and Mr. Colt walked up and down his rooms, and thought himself a good man, and a gentleman. Charley Colt thought it was all very fine when he came back from college. But what he liked better than any thing else was his father’s wine-cellar. He smoked and drank, and drank and smoked, and lolled around the streets to his heart’s content. One night he was brought home very drunk, by two policemen, who had found him quarreling in the street; his head was badly cut, and his fine clothes were soiled and covered with mud, andhis hat was so bruised, that you could not have told what shape it was when it was made.
Old Mr. Colt was sitting in his handsome parlor, in his dressing-gown and slippers, reading the evening paper, when the policemen rang at the door; hearing a scuffling in the entry, he opened the door of the parlor and there was his son, bruised, ragged, dirty, bleeding, and dead drunk.
Old Mr. Colt had often seen other men’s sons, whom he had helped to make drunkards, in this condition, without being at all troubled by it; but hisownson—his fine handsome Charley—his only child—to look so beastly—to be so degraded—ah, that was quite another thing. His brain reeled, his knees tottered under him, his hand shook as if he had the palsy; then, for the first time in his life, he knew the misery he had brought to other firesides, other happy homes. All that night he walked up and down the floor of those splendid rooms; now he remembered the poor women who used to come to his shop to coax home their drunken sons and husbands, and all the fine furniture in his rooms seemed to be stained with their tears; now he remembered an old gray-haired man, who prayed him with clasped hands never to sell his son another drop of that maddening drink; and then there seemed to come ahand-writing on the wall, and this it was: “With what measure ye mete, it shall be meted to you again!” and the wretched old man bowed his head upon his breast and said, “Oh, God, thou art just!”