About twenty years ago, Mr. and Mrs.——, decent and respectable people, removed with a family of children from the country to a neighboring town, where they purchased a small house and lot, and lived very comfortably. Their family, however, increasing to five boys, they removed to the shore—the town being situated on a river—and in addition to their former means of obtaining a living, erected a sign, and provided “entertainment” for such as chose to call on them. They were temperate people, accounted honest, and sent their children to the most respectable school in the place. In a short time it was perceived that they too frequently partook of the “entertainment,” as it is called, which they provided for their customers. The habit of daily measuring the poison to others, induced them to taste for themselves; their house was not as respectable as formerly; restraints were removed; and although they were not drunkards, they gave evidence that they used too freely the deadly drug which they fearlessly handled. If the temperance reformation had been at that time commenced, they might have been warned of their danger, and saved from ruin; but nothing arrested their progress in the path of the destroyer.

Their children, who used to be clad with garments which denoted a mother’s industry, soon began to bear marks of neglect, and were by degrees withdrawn from the school—their parents, because of hard times, not being able to support them there. They consequently lounged about, became acquainted with the customers at the bar, and learned their evil habits, especially that of drinking.

The parents had commenced the sale of intoxicating drinks to become rich; but at the end of a few years it had reduced them to poverty. They had lost their respectability, their honesty, and their property, which was mortgaged for rum; their children had become vagabonds, and their house a receptacle of vice. Of all their five sons, not one escaped the infection; they and their miserable parents wallowed in the mire together.

In consequence of the dreadful excess to which she had abandoned herself, the imagination of Mrs. —— became disordered, and conjured up horrible visions. In her fits of the delirium tremens, she fancied herself bound with a belt of brass, to which was attached a chain held by the great enemy of souls, who had indeed enchained her with the most dire and effectual of all his spells. She would cross the room with the rapidity of lightning, screaming that he was winding up the chain, and she must go—she could not stop. She was afraid to pass her own threshold, and fancied she heard unearthly voices, and saw spirits black and hideous all around her. “There they sit,” she would say, “J——, M——,” mentioning the names of all her children; “there they sit, grinning at me, and telling me I sent them to hell: they are on the beams and in the corners, and wherever I go.”

The writer of this has often witnessed her desperate struggles; has seen her, when a gleam of reason came over her mind, weep in bitterness over her ruin and misery; has heard her confessions of deeds of villany committed under her roof; and has heard also her solemn vows to refrain from that which wrought all this misery and sin; but after all this, has seen her “seek it yet again.”

All the arguments which religion can offer were set before her, and she often appeared to feel their force, and resolved to repent; but the deadly wave seemed to have retired to gather new force, and again swept over her and prostrated her lower than “the beasts that perish.” There can be no more effectual barrier against the voice of conscience, the powerful influence of natural affection, and the strivings of the blessed Spirit of God, than the use of intoxicating drinks.

Her husband had made himself literally a beast: his appearance was scarcely human; bloated, discolored, tottering, uttering curses, and sometimes threatening her life. Her constitution after a while gave away, and she sunk in death, snoring out the few last days of her existence in a state of stupor, covered with rags and filth. Her husband had so benumbed every feeling of humanity by his excess, that he seemed very little affected by her death; and to one who reminded him of their former respectability, and spoke of the wretched state to which they were reduced, urging him powerfully, over the dead body of the self-murdered wife now to desist, he replied stupidly, that there is an eleventh hour.

Four or five years have elapsed, and he is still in the same state of beastly degradation—his property entirely gone, and he occasionally earning a few cents, with which to purchase the poison which is consuming his vitals, and rendering him stupid and dead to every motive that can be urged for reformation.

Two of the sons of this unhappy man have gone down to death in an awful manner. Another, in an affray occasioned by intoxication, received such an injury in the head that his intellect has suffered, and he is subject to fits of partial derangement. The other two are very intemperate; one of them apparently lost to all sense of shame.

The circumstances attending the death of one of these young men were extraordinary. He had become subject to fits in consequence of his intemperate life; and his wife following the same course, they were obliged to give up keeping a public-house, and he maintained himself by fishing. He frequently stopped colored people and others who were advertised as runaways, and obtained a reward for returning them to their masters. He was brutally cruel in his treatment of those who thus fell into his hands, and on one occasion, having apprehended a young colored man on suspicion of his being a runaway, he confined him; and taking him in a boat to his master—who had sent him from home on business—as he was returning, he fell from the boat, probably in a fit, and sunk like lead into the mighty waters. On the following day search was made for his body, which was found swollen and disfigured, and laid in the grave.

His brother, the youngest of the five, had not reached his twentieth year, but had given himself up to the influence of the vice which has proved the destruction of his family, until he also was subject to fits. Not many months ago he was seized with one, being then intoxicated; he was recovered by the by-standers, and crawled to a small sloop lying partly on the shore for repairs: he laid himself down there, and was found, ten minutes afterwards, dead, with his head partly under water. It was supposed that another fit had seized him, and that in his struggle he had fallen and suffocated.

This is a melancholy history, but a true one. Many circumstances rendering it more striking are suppressed, as some of the parties are living. The old man, but a short time ago, was warned again, and the question put to him, “What are the benefits of this practice?” “It fattens graveyards!” he replied, with a distorted countenance and a horrid laugh.

Yes, such are the dire results of intemperance; and of intemperance not born with one, but brought on by a temperate use of ardent spirit. These facts are well known. They are published with the hope of their proving a restraint to some one who, trusting in the strength of principle, may occasionally taste this destructive poison.

“Look not upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright: at the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.” Go to God for strength to resist temptation; practise entire abstinence from all that can intoxicate; repent of sin, and trust in the mercy of Christ; and you shall be safe for the present life, and that which is to come.

PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY.