Excerpt from The Temperance Tales, Vol. 1 of 2

I went out with a heavy heart. It seemed as if the tide of evil was setting against me. As I was passing farmer Johnson's, on mv way home, they called me in. I sat down and rested myself, for a few minutes, in their neat cottage. Farmer Johnson was just returning from the field and when I saw the little ones running to meet him at the stile, and the kind looks, that passed between the good man and his wife; and when I remembered, that we were mar ried on the very same day, and compared my own fortune with theirs, my poor heart burst forth in a flood of tears. They all knew what I was weeping for, and farmer Johnson, in a kind manner, bade me cheer up, and put my trust in God's mercy, and remember that it was often darkest before daylight. The farmer and his wife were members of the temperance society, and had signed the pledge and I had often heard him say, that he believed it had saved him from destruction. He had, before his marriage, and for a year after, been in the habit of taking a little spirit every day. He was an industrious, thriving man; but, shortly after his marriage, he became bound for a neighbor, who ran off, and he was obliged to pay the debt. I have heard him declare, that, when the sheriff took away all his property, and stripped his little cottage, and scarcely left him those trifles, which are secured to the poor man by law and when he considered how ill his poor wife was, at the time, in consequence of the loss of their child, that died only a month before, he was restrained from resorting to the bottle, in his moments of despair, by nothing but a recollection of the pledge he had signed. Farmer Johnson's minister was in favor of pledges, and had often told him, that'aflliction might weaken his judgment and his moral sense, and that the pledge might save him at last, as a plank saves the life of a mariner, who is tost upon the waves.

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