"I do not believe the position you take to be a true one," argued young Barclay—"All I want is to get rid of present temptation, and to be freed from present associations. Six months will place me beyond the reach of these, and then I shall be able to do right from an internal principle, and not from mere external restraint."
"I see the view you take, and would not urge a word against it, did I not know so many instances of individuals who have vainly opposed their resolutions against the power of habit. When once an appetite for intoxicating drinks has been formed, there is only one way of safety—that of taking a perpetual pledge of total-abstinence. That, and that alone is the wall of sure protection. Without it, you are exposed to temptations on every hand. The manly and determined effort to be free will not always avail. In some weak and unsuspecting moment, the tempter will steal quietly in, and all will be again lost."
"It is useless, sir, to argue the point with me," Barclay replied to this. "I will not now take the pledge—that is settled. I will take an oath of abstinence for six months. If I can keep to it that long, I can keep from drinking always."
Seeing that further argument would be useless, the Alderman said no more, but proceeded to administer the oath. The young man then paid the required fee and turned from the office in silence.
When Alice left the room in tears, stung by the cutting rebuke of her brother, she retired to her chamber with an oppressed and aching heart. She loved him tenderly. They were, sister and brother, alone in the world, and, therefore, her affections clung the closer to him. The struggle had been a hard one in bringing herself to perform the duty which had called down upon her the anger of one for whom she would almost have given her life; and, therefore, the result was doubly painful, more particularly, as it had effected nothing, apparently, towards a change in his habits.
"But perhaps it will cause him to reflect.—If so, I will cheerfully bear his anger," was the consoling thought that passed through her mind, after the passage of an hour, spent under the influence of most painful feelings.
"O, if he will only be more on his guard," she went on, in thought—"if he will only give up that habit, how glad I should be!"
Just then she heard him enter, and marked the sound of his footsteps as he ascended to his own room, with a fluttering heart. In the course of fifteen or twenty minutes, he went down again, and she listened to observe if he were going out. But he entered the parlours, and then all was, again, quiet.
For some time Alice debated with herself whether she should go down to him or not, and make the effort to dispel the anger that she had aroused against her; but she could not make up her mind how to act, for she could not tell in what mood she might find him. One repulse was as much, she felt, as she could bear. At last, however, her feelings became so wrought up, that she determined to go down and seek to be reconciled. Her brother's anger was more than she could bear.
When she entered the parlours, with her usual quiet step, she found him seated near the window, reading. He lifted his head as she came in, and she saw at a glance that all his angry feelings were gone. How lightly did her heart bound as she sprang forward!
"Will you forgive me, brother?" she said, laying her hand upon his shoulder as she stood by his side, and bent her face down until her fair cheek almost touched his own.
"Rather let me say, will you forgive me, sister?" was his reply, as he kissed her affectionately—"for the unkind repulse I gave you, when to say what you did must have caused you a most painful sacrifice of feeling?"
"Painful indeed it was, brother. But it is past now and all forgiven."
"Since then, Alice," he said, after a pause, "I have taken a solemn oath, administered by an Alderman, not to touch any kind of intoxicating drink for six months."
"O, I am so glad, John!" the sister said, a joyful smile lighting up her beautiful young face. "But why did you say six months? Why not for life?"
"Because, Alice, I do not wish to bind myself down to a kind of perpetual slavery. I wish to be free, and act right in freedom from a true principle of right. Six months of entire abstinence from all kinds of liquor will destroy that appetite for it which has caused me, of late, to seek it far too often. And then I will, as a free man, remain free."
"I shall now be so happy again, John!" Alice said, fully satisfied with her brother's reason.
"So you have not been happy then of late?"
"O, no, brother. Far from it."
"And has the fact of my using wine so freely been the cause of your unhappiness?"
"Solely."
"Its effects upon me have not been so visible as often to attract your attention, Alice?"
"O, yes, they have. Scarcely a day has gone by for three or four months past, that I could not see that your mind was obscured, and often your actions sensibly affected."
"I did not dream that it was so, Alice.'
"Are you not sensible, that at Mr. Weston's, last night you were by no means yourself?"
"Yes, Alice, I am sensible of that, and deeply has it mortified me. I was suffering acutely from the recollection of the exposure which I made of myself on that occasion, especially before Helen, when you alluded to the subject. That was the reason that I could not bear your allusion to it. But tell me, Alice, did you perceive that my situation attracted Helen's attention particularly?"
"Yes. She noticed, evidently, that you were not as you ought to have been."
"How did it affect her, Alice?" asked the young man.
"She seemed much pained, and, I thought, mortified."
"Mortified?"
"Yes."
A pause of some moments ensued, when Barclay asked, in a tone of interest,
"Do you think it has prejudiced her against me?"
"It has evidently pained her very much, but I do not think that it has created in her mind any prejudice against you."
"From what do you infer this, Alice?"
"From the fact, that, while we were alone in her chamber, on my going up stairs to put on my bonnet and shawl, she said to me, and her eyes were moist as well as my own, 'Alice, you ought to speak to your brother, and caution him against this free indulgence in wine; it may grow on him, unawares. If he were as near to me as he is to you, I should not feel that my conscience was clear unless I warned him of his danger.'"
"Did she say that, sister?"
"Yes, those were her very words."
"And you did warn me, faithfully."
"Yes. But the task is one I pray that I may never again have to perform."
"Amen," was the fervent response.
"How do you like Helen?" the young man asked, in a livelier tone, after a silence of nearly a minute.
"I have always been attached to her, John. You know that we have been together since we were little girls, until now we seem almost like sisters."
"And a sister, truly, I hope she may one day become," the brother said, with a meaning smile.
"Most affectionately will I receive her as such," was the reply of Alice. "Than Helen Weston, there is no one whom I had rather see the wife of my dear brother."
As she said this, she drew her arm around his neck, and kissed him affectionately.
"It shall not be my fault, then, Alice, if she do not become your sister—" was the brother's response.
Rigidly true to his pledge, John Barclay soon gained the honourable estimation in the social circle through which he moved, that he had held, before wine, the mocker, had seduced him from the ways of true sobriety, and caused even his best friends to regard him with changed feelings. Possessing a competence, which a father's