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of Mr. Dickens, cannot surely be open to the charge of favoring intemperance. It is a sad comment on the unbridled appetite of the drunkard. It warns the moderate drinker to beware of that which "biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder.”

"THE DRUNKARD'S DEATH.

"We will be bold to say, that there is scarcely a man in the constant habit of walking, day after day, through any of the crowded thoroughfares of London, who cannot recollect, among the people whom he knows by sight,' to use a familiar phrase, some being, of abject and wretched appearance, whom he remembers to have seen in a very different condition, whom he has observed sinking lower and lower by almost imperceptible degrees, and the shabbiness and utter destitution of whose appearance at last strike forcibly and painfully upon him as he passes by. Is there any man who has mixed much with society, or whose avocations have caused him to mingle, at one time or other, with a great number of people, who cannot call to mind the time when some shabby, miserable wretch, in rags and filth, who shuffles past him now in all the squalor of disease and poverty, was a respectable tradesman, or a clerk, or a man following some thriving pursuit, with good prospects and decent means; or cannot any of our readers call to mind, from among the list of their quondam acquaintance, some fallen and degraded man, who lingers

about the pavement in hungry misery: from whom every one turns coldly away, and who preserves himself from sheer starvation, nobody knows how? Alas! such cases are of too frequent occurrence to be rare items in any man's experience; and they arise from one cause, drunkenness, that fierce rage for the slow, sure poison, that oversteps every other consideration; that casts aside wife, children, friends, happiness, and station, and hurries its victims madly on to degradation and death.

"Some of these men have been impelled by misfortune and misery to the vice that has degraded them. The ruin of worldly expectations, the death of those they loved, the sorrow that slowly consumes but will not break the heart, has driven them wild; and they present the hideous spectacle of madmen, slowly dying by their own hands. But by far the greater part have wilfully, and with open eyes, plunged into the gulf from which the man who once enters it never rises more, but into which he sinks deeper and deeper down, until recovery is hopeless.

"Such a man as this once stood by the bedside of his dying wife, while his children knelt around, and mingled low bursts of grief with their innocent prayers. The room was scantily and meanly furnished; and it needed but a glance at the pale form from which the light of life was fast passing away, to know that grief and want and anxious care had been busy at the heart for many

a weary year. An elderly female, with her face bathed in tears, was supporting the head of the dying woman - her daughter - on her arm. But it was not towards her that the wan face turned: it was not her hand that the cold and trembling fingers clasped. They pressed the husband's arm: the eyes so soon to be closed in death rested on his face; and the man shook

beneath their gaze. His dress was slovenly and disordered, his face inflamed, his eyes bloodshot and heavy. He had been summoned from some wild debauch to the bed of sorrow and death.

"A shaded lamp by the bedside cast a dim light on the figures around, and left the remainder of the room in thick, deep shadow. The silence of night prevailed without the house, and the stillness of death was in the chamber. A watch hung over the mantle-shelf. Its low ticking was the only sound that broke the profound quiet but it was a solemn one; for well they knew, who heard it, that before it had recorded the passing of another hour, it would beat the knell of a departed spirit.

"It is a dreadful thing to wait and watch for the approach of death; to know that hope is gone, and recovery impossible; and to sit and count the dreary hours through long, long nights, such nights as only watchers by the bed of sickness know. It chills the blood to hear the dearest secrets of the heart, the pentup, hidden secrets of many years, poured forth by the

unconscious, helpless being before you; and to think how little the reserve and cunning of a whole life will avail when fever and delirium tear off the mask at last. Strange tales have been told in the wanderings of dying men, tales so full of guilt and crime, that those who stood by the sick person's couch have fled in horror and affright, lest they should be scared to madness by what they heard and saw; and many a wretch has died alone, raving of deeds, the very name of which has driven the boldest man away.

“But no such ravings were to be heard at the bedside by which the children knelt. Their half-stifled sobs and moanings alone broke the silence of the lonely chamber. And when at last the mother's grasp relaxed; and, turning one look from the children to their father, she vainly strove to speak, and fell backward on the pillow, all was so calm and tranquil, that she seemed to sink to sleep. They leant over her: they called upon her name, softly at first, and then in the loud and piercing tones of desperation; but there was no reply. They listened for her breath, but no sound came. They felt for the palpitation of the heart, but no faint throb responded to the touch. That heart was broken, and she was dead.

"The husband sunk into a chair by the bedside, and clasped his hands upon his burning forehead. He gazed from child to child; but, when a weeping eye met his, he quailed beneath its look. No word of comfort was

whispered in his ear, no look of kindness lighted on his face. All shrunk from and avoided him; and when, at last, he staggered from the room, no one sought to follow or console the widower.

"The time had been when many a friend would have crowded round him in his affliction, and many a heartfelt condolence would have met him in his grief. Where were they now? One by one, friends, relations, the commonest acquaintance even, had fallen off from and deserted the drunkard. His wife alone had clung to him in good and evil, in sickness and poverty; and how had he rewarded her? He had reeled from the tavern to her bedside in time to see her die.

"He rushed from the house, and walked swiftly through the streets. Remorse, fear, shame, all crowded on his mind. Stupefied with drink, and bewildered with the scene he had just witnessed, he re-entered the tavern he had quitted shortly before. Glass succeeded glass. His blood mounted, and his brain whirled round. Death! Every one must die, and why not she? She was too good for him: her relations had often told him Curses on them! Had they not deserted her, and left her to whine away the time at home? Well, she was dead, and happy perhaps. It was better as it was. Another glass, one more! Hurrah! It was a merry

So.

life while it lasted;

and he would make the most of it. "Time went on. The three children who were left to him grew up, and were children no longer: the father

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