friends. While the two gentlemen who had been strangers but a few moments before, were mutually making arrangements for the funeral, each anxious to do his part on this mournful occasion.

Mr. and Mrs. Willard resolved to spend the night with their new friends, and watch the corpse. After an appropriate prayer by their minister, the Rev. Mr. Bradley, in which he earnestly besought God to temper the winds to the shorn of his flock, Mr. and Mrs. D. walked home.

Mr. D. broke the silence by remarking that he liked the appearance of his new friend very much. Mrs. D. replied that he had shown himself very kind, "but there is one thing that I am sorry to learn of him."

"What is that, Jane?"

"If I have been correctly informed, he has brought into our little village a

quantity of liquors, amounting to several hundred dollars."

"What harm is there in that? He is a gentleman who knows how to dispose of it properly. We have a large farming country around us, and there are several large buildings to be erected this season, and every laboring man you know, my dear, must have it, and our winters are long and cold, and we are subject to influenza. I think Willie would have died last winter, when he had that severe attack, if it had not been for the hot slings and rum sweats which we gave him."

"I know Willie was very sick, but I think that it was other medicines that Dr. Williams gave him that removed the disease. Be this as it may, my husband, one thing is sure, that drunkenness is an acquired habit. If our heavenly Father had approved

of the sale of intoxicating liquor, he would not have said, 'Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness.""

"This isolated text of scripture would prohibit the use of wines, for Noah was made drunk by the juice of the grape."

Mrs. D. modestly said, "I saw in the newspapers a few days since, a short sketch giving the history of the intoxicating properties of the different wines that were used in those days, and should judge from this account that there was a small proportion of the wines in the days of Noah that contained intoxicating properties. And therefore the use of them could not have been as dangerous as it is at the present day."

"You would then, my temperate

Jane, exclude wines on all occasions."

"I would, if it was in my power, rid my country, and especially this little village, from an evil that is calculated to ruin our young men, and to blunt the sensibilities of those who have been hitherto pillars in society."

Our friend had not been in the habit of hearing his wife express herself so freely, and especially upon a subject that he considered of so little importance; there was but one drunkard in town, and he saw no occasion for so much alarm. He was now willing to drop the subject, by asking Mrs. D. if she knew that James Radford went for Dr. Smith. She answered in the affirmative.

CHAPTER II.

THE NIGHT VIGILS.

"There is mourning in the hall,
Where, beneath the snowy pall,
Waiting for the hungry grave,
Like a lily on the wave,
Sleeps an infant's tiny form,
Now with life no longer warm."

OUR good friends had now reached their quiet home, where they found their children seated in their pleasant little parlor; Affie was reading aloud, Amelia being her only auditor, for Willie had been in bed a full half hour, but he could not say his prayers and go to sleep, until he had confessed that he had been a naughty boy while his father was saying grace. Affie kindly told him that God would forgive him if he forsook his sins; Willie