Boons and Blessings. Stories and sketches to illustrate the advantages of temperance ... Illustrated, etc

Front matter

BOONS AND BLESSINGS. Frontispiece. E. M. Ward, K.A.] [Dalzie] hiothers. THE FIRST DROI Boons and Blessings. Sbtortcs anU gbkctcfjcs TO ILLUSTRATE THE ADVANTAGES OF TEMPERANCE. By Mrs. S. C. HALL. " Spirit of Temperance ! hail ! what mighty things, — High boons to soul and body — Temperance brings." fUttstratcb bg Œngrabings stout ""pcsistws bg tmtiunt JUtiets. LONDON : VIRTUE, SPALDING, AND CO., 26, IVY LANE, PATERNOSTER ROW. *875. LONDON PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO., CITY ROAD. TO THE RIGHT HON. THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY, K.G., etc. My Lord. I have the honour and the pleasure to dedicate this Book to you who have been so long doing the work of God for the good of man. and to whom Society, of all orders and of every grade, is indebted for many useful and practical reforms that have advanced the cause of virtue, social progress, and vital religion. I have the honour to be, my Lord, Your faithful servant and friend, ANNA MARIA HALL. Avenue Villa, 50, Holland Street, Kensington.

Introduction

. I have been induced to collect into a volume these Stories and Sketches, some of which were written so long ago as to be almost as old as the Temperance movement in England and Ireland. They have been in circulation ever since, as "Tracts" issued by Temperance Institutions; and in that form have, I humbly trust, aided a cause that is of the highest and deepest importance to every class and order of society. Several of these stories are now first published : for the more prominent of those I reprint, " Building a House with a Tea cup " and " Digging a Grave with a Wine-glass," I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. T. B. Smithies ; and for the Irish sketch, " It's only a Drop," to that of Dr. William Chambers. It is also my pleasant duty to express my grateful thanks to the fifteen artists who have powerfully assisted me in combining art with literature : thus aiding the efforts of many valuable Societies that are labouring — earnestly, zealously, and with great success — to convey conviction that "the national vice " is the national curse, and that the labours of the Pastor, the Schoolmaster, and all the other engines of religious, as well as moral, social, and intellectual, progress, must comparatively fail, while intoxication, not only " fills our jails, our lunatic asylums, and our workhouses with poor," but

INTRODUCTION.

. degrades to poverty so many households, and effectually frus trates all efforts for the discharge of duty to God and neighbour. I could not manifest the Boons and Blessings of Tem perance without exhibiting the terrible evils of Intemperance ; I have endeavoured to do both. It is to public opinion we must mainly look for the suppres sion of this " National Vice : " happily, help is energetically and effectually given by the Press : the artist and the author are well employed — doing the work of God and man — who advance a cause so vital to the interests of humanity. ANNA MARIA (MRS. S. C.) HALL PAGE i. The Drunkard's Bible i . Illustrated by E. M. Ward, R.A., and W. J. Allen. The Engraving by Dalziel Brothers, and J- D. Cooper. (The Frontispiece by E. M. Ward, R.A.) A Rolling Stone 21 Illustrated by Fred.

Goodall, R.A. The Engraving by Butterworth and Heath. 3. What He Lost 37 Illustrated by A. J. Woolmer. The Engraving by Butterworth and Heath. 4. It's Never too Late 47 Illustrated by P. R. Morris. The Engraving by Butterworth and Heath 5. Marv Riley's Simple Story 59 Illustrated by Mrs. E. M. Ward. The Engraving by Dalziel Brothers. 6. The Worn Thimble 65 Illustrated by H. R. Robertson. The Engraving by W. J, Palmer. 7. Rest and be Thankful 87 Illustrated by F. D. Hardy. The Engraving by J. D. Coopbr CONTENTS. X page 8. Building a House with a Tea-Cup 95 Illustrated by George Cruikshank. The Engraving by Dalziel Brothers. 9. Pepper and her Foes n3 Illustrated by E. Sherard Kennedy. The Engraving by Dalziel Brothers. 10. The Two Friends l63 Illustrated by F. D. Hardy. The Engraving by J. and G. P. Nicholls. . 11.

It's only a Drop • • r73 Illustrated by Alfred Elmore, R.A. The Engraving by Butterworth and Heath 12. Bridget Larkins 189 Illustrated by Erskine. Nicol, A. R.A. .The Engraving by Butterworth and Heath 13. The True Temperance Cordial 195 Illustrated by G. H. Boughton. The Engraving by Butterworth and Heath 14. Mrs. Grant's Perplexities 203 Illustrated by R. Thorburn, A. R.A. The Engraving by C. M. Jenkin. 15. Digging a Grave with a Wine Glass .... 235 Illustrated by N. Chevalier. The Engraving by J. C Griffiths. The Initial letters and Tail-pieces drawn by W. J. Allen The Engraving by W. J. Watson. W. J. Alien.] [J. I). Cooper. 1HE DRUNKARD'S BIBLE.— RESTITUTION. HERE is more money made in the Public line than in any other, unless it be pawn-broking," said Martha Hownley to her brother ; " and I do not see why you should feel uncomfortable ; you are a sober man ; since I have kept your house, I never remember seeing you beside your self; indeed, I know that weeks pass without your touching beer, much less wine or spirits.

If you did not sell them somebody else would. And were you to leave ' The Grapes ' to-morrow, it might be taken by one who would not have your scruples. All the gentry say your house is the best conducted in the parish " "I wish I really deserved the compliment," interrupted B Mathew, looking up from his day-book. " I ought not to content myself with avoiding beer, wine, and .spirits; if I believe, as I do, that they are injurious alike to the character and health of man, I should, by every means in my power, induce others to avoid them." " But we must live, Mathew ; and your good education would not keep you — we must live ! " "Yes, Martha, we must live ! but not the lives of vampires;" and he turned rapidly over the accounts, noting and comparing, and seemingly absorbed in calculation. Martha's eyes became enlarged by curiosity — the small low curiosity that has nothing in common with the noble spirit of inquiry.

She believed her brother to be wise in most things ; but in her heart of hearts she thought him weak in worldly matters. Still, she was curious ; and yielding to what is considered a feminine infirmity, she said, " Mathew, what is vampires ? " Mathew made no reply ; so Martha — who had been " brought up to the bar " by her uncle, while her brother was dreaming over an unproductive farm — troubled as usual about " much serving," and troubling all within her sphere by worn out and shrivelled-up anxieties, more than by the necessary duties of active life — looked at Mathew as if speculating on his sanity. Could he be thinking of giving up his business, because of that which did not concern him ! — but she would " manage him." It is strange how low and cunning persons do often manage higher and better natures than their own.

"Martha," he called to her in a loud voice, "I cannot, and will not, give longer credit to Peter Croft." " I thought he was one of your best customers : he is an excellent workman ; his wife has plenty to do as a clear starcher; and I am sure he spends every penny he earns here" — such was Martha's answer. " And more ! " replied Mathew — " more ! Why, last week the score was eighteen shillings — beside what he paid for." "He's an honourable man, Mathew," persisted Martha. " It is not long since he brought me six tea-spoons and a sugar-tongs, when I refused him brandy (he will have brandy). They must have belonged to his wife, for they had not P. C on them, but E. — something ; I forget what." Mathew waxed wroth. " Have I not told you," he said, — " have I not told you that we must be content with the flesh and blood, without the bones and marrow, of these poor drunkards ?

I am not a pawnbroker to lend money upon a man's ruin. I sell, to be sure, what leads him to it, but that is his fault, not mine." " You said just now it was yours ;" said his sister sulkily. "Is it a devil or an angel that prompts your words, Martha?" exclaimed Mathew impatiently; then leaning his pale, thought ful brow on his clasped hands, he added : " But, however much I sometimes try to get rid of them, it must be for my good to see facts as they are." Martha would talk : she looked upon a last word as a victory. " He must have sold them whether or not, as he has done all his little household comforts, to pay for what he has honestly drank; and I might as well have them as any one else. My money paid for them, and in the course of the evening went into your till. It's very hard if, with all my labour, I can't turn an honest penny in a bargain sometimes, without being chid, as if I were a baby."

" I am sorely beset," murmured Mathew, closing the book with hasty violence — " sorely beset ; the gain on one side, the sin on the other ; and she goads me, and puts things in the worst light : never was man so beset," he repeated help lessly ; and he said truly he was " beset "--by infirmity of purpose, that mean, feeble, pitiful frustrator of so many good and glorious intentions. It is at once a blessed and a wonderful thing how the little grain of "good seed" will spring up and increase — if the soil be at all congenial, how it will fructify ! A great stone may be placed right over it, and yet the shoot will forth — sideways, perhaps, after a long noiseless struggle with the oppressive weight — a white, slender thing, like a bit of thread that falls from the clipping scissors of a little heedless maid — creeps up, twists itself round the stone, a little, pale, meek thing, tending upwards — becoming a delicate green in the wooing sunlight — strengthening in the morning, when birds are singing — at mid day, when man is toiling — at night, while men are sleeping, until it pushes away the stone, and overshadows its inauspicious birth-place with strength and beauty !

Yes ! where good seed has been sown, there is always hope that, one day or other, it will, despite snares and pitfalls, despite scorn and bitterness, despite evil report, despite temptations, despite those wearying backslidings which give the wicked and the idle scoffers ground for rejoicing — sooner or later it will fructify ! All homage to the good seed ! — all homage to the good sower ! And who sowed the good seed in the heart of Mathew Hownley? Truly, it would be hard to tell. Perhaps some sower intent on doing his Master's business — perhaps some hand unconscious of the wealth it dropped — perhaps a young child, brimful of love, and faith, and trust, in the bright world around— perhaps some gentle woman, whose knowledge was an inspiration rather than an acquirement — perhaps a bold, true preacher of the word, stripping the sinner of the robe that covered his deformity, and holding up his cherished sins as warnings to the world ; perhaps it was one of Watts's hymns learned at his nurse's knee (for Mathew and Martha had endured the unsympathising neglect of a motherless child hood), a little line, never to be forgotten — a whisper, soft, low, enduring— a comfort in trouble, a stronghold in danger, a refuge from despair.

O what a world's wealth is there in a simple line of childhood's poetry ! Martha herself often quoted the Busy Bee; but her bee had no wings; it could muck in the wax, but not fly home with the honey. As to Mathew, wherever the seed had come from, there, at all events, it was, struggling but existing — biding its time to burst forth, to bud, and to blossom, and to bear fruit ! The exposure concerning the spoons and sugar-tongs made Mathew so angry, that Martha wished she had never had anything to do with them ; but instead of studying how, in future, to avoid the fault, she simply resolved in her own mind never again to let Mathew know any of her little trans actions in the way of buying or barter — that was all ! Mathew, all that day, continued more thoughtful and silent than usual, which his sister considered a bad sign : he was reserved to his customers — nay, worse — he told a woman she should not give gin to her infant at his bar, and positively refused, the following Sunday, to open his house at all.

Martha asked him if he was mad. He replied: "No;" he was " regaining his senses." Then Martha thought it best to let him alone — he had been "worse"— that is, according to her reading of the word "worse" — before — taken the "dumps" in the same way, but recovered, and had gone back to his business " like a man." Peter Croft, unable to pay up his score, managed, never theless, to pay for what he drank. For a whole week, Martha would not listen to his proposals for payment "in kind;" even his wife's last shawl could not tempt her, though Martha confessed it was a beauty, and what possible use could Mrs. Peter have for it now? it was so out of character with her destitution. She heard no more of it, so probably the wretched husband disposed of it elsewhere : that disappointed her. She might as well have had it ; she would not be such a fool again ; Mathew was so seldom in the bar, that he could not know what she did !

After awhile, Martha thought she saw one or two symptoms of what she considered amendment in her brother. " Of course," she argued, " he will come to himself in due time." In the twilight which followed that day, Peter Croft, pale, bent, and dirty, the drunkard's redness in his eyes, the drunkard's fever on his lips, tapped at the door of the room off the bar, which was more particularly Martha's room — it was in fact her watch-tower — the door half-glazed, and the green curtain about an inch from the middle division ; over this, the sharp observant woman might see whatever occurred, and no one could go in or out without her knowledge. She did not say, " Come in," at once ; she longed to know what new temptation he had brought her, for she felt assured he had neither money nor credit left.

And yet she feared — " Mathew made such a worry out of every little thing." The next time he tapped at the window of the door, her eyes met his over the curtain, and then she said " Come in," in a penetrating sharp voice, that was anything but an invitation. " I have brought you something now, Miss Hownley, that I know you won't refuse to lend me a trifle on," said the ruined tradesman ; " I am sure you won't refuse me, Miss Hownley. Bad as I want the money, I could not take it to a pawn broker ; and if the woman asks for it, I can say I lent it, Miss Hownley — you know I can say that." Peter Croft laid a Bible on the table, and folding back the pages with his trembling fingers, showed that it was abundantly illustrated by fine engravings. Martha loved " pictures : " she had taken to pieces a Pilgrim's Progress, and varying the devo tional engravings it had contained with abundant cuttings from illustrated newspapers, and a few coloured caricatures, had covered one side of a screen, which, when finished, she considered would be at once the comfort and amusement of her old age.

After the drunkard had partially exhibited its contents, he stood by with stolid indifference, while she measured the engravings with her eye, looking ever and anon towards the screen. " Very well," she said, uttering a delibe rate untruth with her lips, while her mind was made up what to do — " I don't like it : what did you say you wanted for it ? " He repeated the sum : she took out exactly half, and laid the shining temptation on the table before him. " Have you the heart, Miss Hownley," he said, while fingering, rather than counting, the money — "have you the heart to offer me such a little for such a great deal?" " If you have the heart to sell it, I may have the heart to offer such a price," she answered with a light laugh ; " and it is only a drunkard's bible." Peter Croft dashed the money from him with a bitter oath.

" Oh, very well," she said ; " take it — or leave it." She resumed her work. The only purpose to which a drunkard is firm, is to his own ruin. Peter went to the door, returned, took up the money — " Another shilling, miss ? it will be in the till again before morning." Martha gave him the other shilling; and after he was fairly out of the room, grappled the book, commenced looking at the pictures in right earnest, and congratulated herself on her good bargain. In due time, the house was cleared, and she went to bed, placing the Bible just inside her table, amongst a miscellaneous collection of worn-out dusters and tattered glass-cloths, " waiting to be mended." That night the master of " the Grapes " could not sleep ; more than once he fancied he smelt fire ; and after going into the unoccupied rooms, and peeping through the key-holes and under the doors of those that were occupied, he descended to the bar, and finally entering the little bar-parlour, took his day book from a shelf, and placing the candle, sat down, listlessly turning over its leaves, but the top of the table would not shut, and raising it to remove the obstruction, Mathew saw a large family Bible; pushing away the day-book, he opened the sacred volume.

It opened at the 23rd chapter of Proverbs, and, as if guided by a light from Heaven, his eyes fell upon the 29th verse, and he read : " Who hath woe ? who hath sorrow ? who hath contentions ? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes ? " They that tarry long at the wine ; they that go to seek mixed wine. " Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth its colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. " At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder ! " He dashed over the leaves in fierce displeasure, and, as if of themselves, they folded back at the 5th of Galatians : " Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like : of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God."

" New and Old, New and Old," murmured Mathew to him self — " I am condemned alike by the Old and New Testa ment." He had regarded intoxication and its consequences heretofore as a great social evil ; the fluttering rags and the fleshless bones of the drunkard and his family, the broils, the contentions, the ill-feeling, the violence, the murders, wrought by the dread spirit of alcohol, had stood in array before him as social crimes, as social dangers ; but he did not call to mind, if he really knew, that the Word of God exposed alike its evils and its sinfulness. He was one of the many who, however good and moral in themselves, shut their ears against the voice of the charmer, charm he ever so wisely ; and though he often found wisdom and consolation in a line of Watts's hymns, he rarely went to the Fountain of living waters for the strengthen ing and refreshing of his soul.

He turned over the chapter, and found on the next page a collection of texts, written upon a strip of paper in the careful hand of one to whom writing was evidently not a frequent occupation. Proverbs, the 23rd chap. — " For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty, and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags." 1 Corinthians, 6th chap., 10th verse — " Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extor tioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God." "Again that awful threat ! " murmured Mathew ; "and have I been the means of bringing so many of my fellow-creatures under its ban ? " 1 Samuel, the 1st chap. — "And Eli said unto her, How long wilt thou be drunken ? put away thy wine from thee." Luke 21 — "And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you un awares."

" Ay, that day," repeated the landlord — " that day, the day that must come." Ephesians, 5th chap. — " And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess ; but be filled with the Spirit." Proverbs, 20th chap. — " Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging ; and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise." Again, there was a passage from the prophet.Habakk.uk, "Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken ! " * He rose from the table, and paced up and down the little room; no eye but His who seeth all things marked the agitation of that man ; no ear but the All-hearing heard his sighs, his half-muttered prayers to be strengthened for good. He said within himself : " Who will counsel me in this matter ? — to whom shall I fly for sympathy ? — who will tell me what I ought to do ? — how remedy the evils I have brought on others while in this business, even when my heart was alive to its wickedness ?

" He had no friend to advise with — none who would do aught but laugh at and ridicule the idea of giving up a good business for conscience' sake ; but so it was that it occurred to him — "You have an Immortal Friend, take counsel of Him — pray to Him — learn of Him — trust Him ; make His Book your guide ; " and opening the Bible he read one other passage. " Keep innocency, and take heed to the thing that is right, for that shall bring a man peace at the last." * The idea that wine, spirits, and beer are to be classed among the good things given of God for the enjoyment of man is exploded by science as well as experience. "Alcohol can in no sense be regarded as a good creature of God ; " it is an artificial, not a natural product — " a product ot fermentation, an educt of distillation ; " in the process, the primitive character of the grape and the grain undergoes an entire change.

It is a gross slander to describe alcohol as a production of Nature ; il alcohol does not exist in plants, but is a product of vinous fermentation." " Alcoholic liquors are no more found in creation than pistols and powder, bullets and bowie-knives." Intemperance, " for who selicense the authority of Holy Writ is blasphemously pleaded by the deluded victims." The Bible con tinually exhibits the evils of the use of strong drinks. A volume of com ments on 700 illustrative texts has been published by Dr. F. R. Lees and the Rev. Dawson Burns. " Its execution shows accuracy, conscientious ness, and fidelity." It sets before us the whole matter. Pondering on this blessed rule of life, so simple and so comprehensive, he turned back the pages, repeating it over and over again, until he came to the first fly-leaf, whereon were written the births, marriages, and deaths of the humble family to whom the Bible had belonged ; and therein, second on the list, he saw in a stiff, half-printed hand, the name — Emma Hanby, only daughter of James and Mary-Jane Hanby, born so-and-so, married, at such a date, to Peter Croft !

"Emma Hanby" — bom in his native village; the little Emma Hanby whom he had loved to carry over the brook to school — by whose side in boy-love he had sat in the meadows — for whom he had gathered flowers — whose milk-pail he had so often lifted over the church-stile — whom he had loved as he never could or did love woman since — whom he would have married, if she, light-hearted girl that she was, could have loved the tall, yellow, awkward youth, whom it was her pastime to laugh at, and her delight to call " Daddy " — was she then the wife — the torn, soiled, tattered, worn-out, insulted, broken spirited wife — of the drunkard Peter Croft ! It seemed im possible ; her memory had been such a sunbeam from boy hood up ; the refiner of his nature — -the dream that often came to him by day and night.

While passing the parochial school, when the full tide of girls rushed from its heat into the thick city air, his heart had often beat if the ringing laugh of a merry child sounded like the laugh he once thought music ; and he would watch to see if the girl resembled the voice that recalled his early love. He had seen with loathing, this miserable betrayer of his home, this moral and social deserter of his wife, this traitor to his children, this disgrace to his neighbours, this dishonour to his native town — he had seen him often degraded to a state far lower than that of the lowest brute that revels in filth — and the remembrance came to him as an audible curse ; for well he knew that from him had the temptation come, and with it the ruin — the never-ending ruin of, it might be, a whole family ; for who will dare to say of the drunkard that " he is no man's enemy but his own."

Nay — and he recalled the fact with a sensation amounting to horror — he had seen the young child of Peter Croft's wife, a very short while ago, bearing from the house of the publican to the home of the drunkard, a large can of the poisonous trash he had sold — he had seen that child stopping at the street corner, taking her first draught, taking a lesson in theft as well as in drunkenness : and he remembered his self-reproach when conscience accused him of thus laying the foundation of a future of misery and sin. What of the woman — the wife of such a man, the mother of such a child ! " And I have helped to bring her to this," he repeated over and over to himself; " even I have done this — that has been my doing." He might have consoled himself by the argument, that if Peter Croft had not drunk at "the Grapes," he would have drunk somewhere else ; but his seared conscience neither admitted nor sought an excuse ; and after an hour or more of earnest prayer, with sealed lips, but a soul bowed down, at one moment by contempt for his infirmity of purpose, and at another elevated by a stern resolve of great sacrifice, Mathew, carrying with him the Drunkard' s Bible, tried to rest.

He slept the feverish, unrefreshing sleep which so frequently succeeds strong emotion. He saw troops of drunkards — blear eyed, trembling, ghastly spectres, pointing at him with their shaking fingers, while, with pestilential breath, they demanded him " who had sold them poison." Women, too — drunkards, or drunkards' wives — in either case, starved, wretched creatures, with scores of ghastly children, hooted him as he passed through caverns reeking of gin, and hot with the steam of all poisonous drinks ! He awoke just as the dawn was crowning the distant hills of his childhood with glory, and while its munificent beams were penetrating the thick atmosphere that hung as a veil before the bedroom window. To Mathew the sunbeams came like heavenly messengers, winging their way through the darkness and chaos of the world for the world's light and life.

He had never thought of that before ; but he thought of and felt it then, and much good it did him, strengthening his good intent. A positive flood of light poured in through a pane of glass that had been cleaned the previous morning, and played upon the dull cover of the Drunkard's Bible. Mathew bent his knees to the ground, his heart full of emotions — the emotions of his early and better nature — and he bowed his head upon his hands, and prayed in honest resolve and earnest zeal. The burden of that prayer, which escaped from between his lips in murmurs sweet as the murmurs of living waters, was — that God would have mercy upon him, and keep him in the right path, and make him, unworthy as he was, the means of grace to others — to be God's instrument for good to his fellow-creatures ; to minister to the regeneration of his own kind.