At first,
his wife opposed a gentle remonstrance; but he became impatient and
angry at a word, and she shrank back into herself, choosing rather
to bear silently the ills of poverty and degradation, which she saw
were rapidly approaching, than to run the risk of having unkindness,
from one so tenderly loved, added thereto.
Affliction came with trouble. Death took from the mother's arms, in
a single year, three children. The loss of one was accompanied by a
most painful, yet deeply warning circumstance. The father came home
from the village one evening, after having taken a larger quantity
of liquor than usual. While the mother was preparing supper, he took
the babe that lay fretting in the cradle, and hushed its frettings
in his arms. While holding it, overcome with what he had been
drinking, he fell asleep, and the infant rolled upon the floor,
striking its head first. It awoke and screamed for a minute or two,
and then sank into a heavy slumber, and did not awake until the next
morning. Then it was so sick, that a physician had to be called. In
a week it died of brain fever, occasioned, the doctor said, by the
fall.
For a whole month not a drop of liquor passed the lips of the
rebuked and penitent father.
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