was soon to drink. It was a pensive hour and a suitable place for such reflections. The birds had sung their evening lays, and all nature was hushed.

The footsteps of a traveller aroused him from his reverie. He soon joined him, and found it was a young man with whom he had a slight acquaintance, who had been to a neighboring village to obtain medical aid for his friend. They were soon at the bedside of the dying child, where they found Mr. Willard and his lady. They did not wait for a formal introduction, but did what they could for the consolation of the afflicted family. Mrs. Willard and Mrs. De Van dressed the corpse in a white muslin robe and laid it away; the little chair and empty cradle were carefully set aside, and Franky's toys were gathered up and laid in the drawer by the weeping

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 au 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 оссаsions."

“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."

tance;

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 importhere 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.