against brothers in fratricidal warfare; we have forgotten it all, and only remember that we are all members of the great brotherhood of man. Yesterday a car load of those noble women, the Sisters of Charity, passed through our city on their way South to nurse the sick and dying; and as I saw them on their way, clad in the simple paraphernalia of their holy mission, I thanked God we had a religion in this country that recognized the precepts taught by the Saviour in the beautiful story of the Good Samaritan.

All this is well; it is one of those spontaneous outpourings of human sympathy for human suffering that is the legitimate offspring of our holy religion. It matters not whether the hands that wipe the dew of death from the suffering brow, and administer the soothing draught, were wont to tell the beads on the rosary of the Catholic devotee, or turn the gilded pages of the prayer-book of the Established Church:

"For if the page of truth they sought,
And comfort to the mourner brought
These hands a richer meed shall claim
Than all that wait on wealth or fame."

Yes, all this is well; but, strange inconsistency in a Christian people! there is a plague in our land more terrible than that now ravaging the South, and we are comparatively indifferent to its horrors. There is a pestilence more deadly than the exhalations of the fabled Upas tree, and a Christian people support it by law, sustain it by fashion, and spread its ravages by license and public approval.

One hundred thousand are dying annually from the effects of this pestilence, as it sweeps over the country like the waters of a mighty inundation. This great army of one hundred thousand men and women are marching past us to death every day. We see it, and know it well, but time and custom have made us familiar with its countless horrors, and it passes by unheeded. The law supplies it with recruits, and it moves on as unceasingly as the tides of the ocean or the waters of a great river.

For a moment let us observe this mighty host as it marches on toward the shore of that dark and silent river, whose ferryman is Death.

your loving Guard well, look well to

In its ranks are seen men whose brilliant intellects have made them famous in the world of oratory and song; men celebrated in science, in art, and for learning. The forum, the church, the halls of legislation, have all furnished their numbers to swell the awful army of inebriates that is marching on to a death of infamy and drunkards' graves. From the king and warrior, whose word was law to nations, to the hewers of wood and drawers of water, every station in life has furnished its numbers to swell the innumerable host that has gone before. We know this as well as we know any physical fact in nature, and yet we wonder from whence come its recruits. MOTHERS! they come from your arms, from breasts and even your prayers do not save them. I pray you, the inmate of the cradle by your side; the influences that surround your little son at home. Soon he will be restive of a mother's control, but he will never lose a mother's influence; soon he will go away from the parent nest, but he will carry with him, either for good or evil, the lessons you have taught him by precept and example. Has he ever seen the wine cup at your lips-those lips whose kisses he will remember for long years to come? Has he ever seen it circulating among the gay and thoughtless company assembled in your parlors? If so, God help him; for I have seen many a son, whose ruin could be traced to just such influences, taken from our court-room to prison in chains.

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A poor, heart-broken mother once knelt to me, and with uplifted hands prayed me, in frenzied tones of agony, to save from prison her only son. "Oh!" said she, "it will kill me; oh! that I could suffer in his place, for it is my fault. He was under the influence of liquor when he committed the crime, and taught him to love it in his infancy."

I could only tell her to look to her God for consolation in her great trouble, for human skill and power could not avail. And still this great army moves on, and we wonder from whence come the recruits.

FATHERS! they come from your knees, from your homes, from under your influence, to swell the great and terrible number who find drunkards' graves. Had your example anything to do with it? Did you teach your son to shun the wine cup

as the first temptation? Have you been a temperate drinker, and by your example encouraged your child in the path that leads to crime and death?

Once in our court, an only son had been sentenced to the penitentiary for arson-a crime committed by him in a fit of drunken anger, because he had been ejected by a rumseller from the bar-room, where the liquor sold him made him drunk and disorderly. "Oh !" said his father to me, "I dare not go home and tell his mother-it will kill her. I gave my boy a good education, I started him in business, but he became dissipated in spite of all I could do."

"Did you yourself ever drink?" I inquired.

"Yes," said he, "I was always a temperate drinker, but never drank to hurt me, or to excess."

"Did your son ever see you drink?" I asked.

I once

"Yes," said he, "God forgive me, he has ; and he thought that because I could control my appetite, he could his. kept a hotel. My son was my clerk, and I think there was where he acquired the habit which ruined him ;" and as he said this, I thought of the stern and inflexible justice of the divine decree: "With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again."

This man had been for years engaged in the business of making other men's sons drunkards. He had accumulated wealth in the nefarious traffic. Other fathers had sorrowed over sons who had fallen by his influence; other mothers had been heartbroken by the ruin he had wrought. And now he would have freely given all the "wages of sin" he had accumulated, to save his own poor boy from prison. While in my heart I pitied him, yet again that same stern and inflexible justice whispered in my ear, "As he has done to others, so has it been done to him."

Verily, verily, in this world "the father's eating sour grapes shall set the children's teeth on edge." But while I have been writing this page, another score of that great army have dropped into drunkards' graves, yet there is no diminution in their number. New recruits are constantly falling into their ranks. The young and thoughtless are coming; the middleaged are coming; the aged, whose span of life is almost ended, are coming; from everywhere, from every station in life, still

they come. The recruiting offices for this awful army are established by law on every pathway in life trodden by the foot of man. They are licensed by the courts, and approved and sanctioned by a Christian people. How can we arrest the terrible evil? The words of inspiration answer: "Lay then the axe at the root of the tree, and let every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit, be hewn down and cast into the fire."

CHAPTER XI.

WHY HE WAS DIVORCED, AND HOW HE CAME

TO GET MARRIED AGAIN.

OLD Henry K. and his good wife had lived together in the bonds of matrimony for forty years, and while it is proverbial that the course of true love never did run smoothly, it is es pecially true that the stream of connubial. felicity does not always flow calmly and uninterrupted by rock or ripple. While they agreed in the main, yet there were some slight differences of opinion between them which sometimes cast their shadows over the matrimonial pathway, as clouds flitting across the sky cast their shadows over the landscape. The differences were few, and Henry thought immaterial. For instance: The old lady was a warm advocate of temperance and total abstinence, while Henry was not. The old lady was a pious and exemplary Christian, Henry was not. The old lady was frugal and industrious, and here again they differed. Furthermore, the old lady believed it a duty to work six days in the week, and rest on the seventh, while Henry believed that if he rested hard all the six days of the week, there was no harm in going a-fishing the seventh.

With the exception of these unimportant differences, they