A TRUE STORY.
BY REV. J. T. CRANE
To most people there is something pleasant in a fall of
snow. In our earliest recollections, it is associated with merriment
and lightness of heart. We all remember the wonder
with which we beheld, for the first time, the whole air filled
with soft noiseless flakes, coming down in swift succession, hiding
the surface of the earth, and the roofs of the houses beneath a
fleecy covering, and quietly loading the trees and shrubbery,
till every twig became a white graceful plume. Light hearts
still hail the snow as the boon of heaven. When the clouds
have passed away, and the sun-beams light up the earth with
dazzling radiance, as they smile upon the architecture of the
storm, the whole community is roused to noise and bustle.
Then the modest country beaux, after many a vain effort to
summon up courage for the perilous feat, invite the young ladies
to accompany them in an excursion. Then the streets are in a
ferment with sleighs swiftly gliding past; and school boys pelting
each other with snow-balls, and the cold bracing atmosphere
vibrates with joyous shouts, and merry peals of laughter, mingled
with the jingling sound of myriads of bells.
During the winter of 1848-9, when I was a resident of the
town of Orange, N. J., there occurred one of those snows, which
gladden the hearts of the young and the gay, and cause even
gray heads to remember, more vividly, the innocent pleasures
of their own early days. The broad main street of the beautiful
village was soon polished by the gliding runners, so that its
smooth surface shone like glass. And during the long bright
evenings, when the snow glittered in the soft radiance of the
moonlight, the number of vehicles increased, the merry voices
of the votaries of pleasure rung more loudly, and the whole
scene became more full of life and joy.
The evening of the third of January was such as I have
just described. The next morning, as I was passing down the
street, and had proceeded only some two hundred yards from
my door, my attention was called to certain strange marks in
the snow, on the margin of the footpath. There were many
prints as of struggling hands, for several yards, along the little
declivity; and near a post, there was a large red spot, as of
blood. On my asking the meaning of these things, I was
pointed to the cellar of a house near by. I went to the place
and descended the steps. It was a cheerless apartment, apparently
given up to the wind and the snow which came driving
in at the open windows. In the middle of the floor lay the
corpse of a man. He was clothed in coarse garments, soiled
and ragged; and outside the door, in the snow, lay an old
battered hat. The lower part of the face seemed to bear the
brutalized expression of one who had fallen into degrading
habits, and had been given up to the sway of debased appetites;
but the broad high forehead, surrounded with thick clusters of
dark hair, was such as we usually associate with intellectual
power. The body was unattended. No relative, no friend
was there; and no one seemed to be making preparations for
the burial. As I stood alone with the dead, musing upon the
sad spectacle, a person or two came down the steps, looked a
moment, and passed away; and I thought of the touching salutation
of the Arabs, as they pass each other in their wanderings
in the desert.—“May you die among your kindred.”
After much inquiry, of all whom I supposed to have any
knowledge of the deceased, I learned the main facts in his
history, an outline of which I give, as a warning to all whom
it may concern.
J— B— was born in England, about the year 1810.
Of his parentage, and early life, I could ascertain nothing. It
may be that a christian father guarded his youth, and sought to
impart lessons of wisdom and virtue. It may be that a pious
mother watched over his childhood, and taught him to fold his
infant hands in prayer. He grew up, and in mind, and in
energy of character, as well as in stature, became a man. He
chose him a wife, and loved, and was loved, as fervently,
probably, as other men. He possessed considerably property
too, and his earthly prospects were, doubtless, deemed very
flattering.
He emigrated to the United States, and settled in the city
of Philadelphia, where he became the keeper, perhaps the
proprietor, also, of what is termed, in phrase polite, a “respectable
hotel.” But while he placed the cup of death in the
hands of others, he learned to taste it himself. While he
miled blandly upon his victims, and taught them specious
apologies for their sin, the habit of drinking grew strong upon
him, and after a time, those who loved him began to be
alarmed. Nothing could induce him to pause in his career.
The friends of temperance sought to reason with him; but he
scorned their interference, and called their earnestness weakness
and fanaticism. Drunkards were perishing around him. The
reeling forms, and the bloated faces which he so well knew,
one by one disappeared; but he spoke of them, as dealers in
alcohol now speak of him, with a sort of contemptuous pity.
His course worked out its natural results. He was a fallen
man. His now reputable companions deserted him; his property
wasted away till all was gone. His sorrowing wife sickened
and died. His child, too, was taken from the evil to come,
and was laid in the earth beside its mother. J— B— was
alone in the world, a friendless, hopeless victim of despotic
appetite. He became a mere wreck. Sometimes, in his sober
moments, a fitful gleam of intellect would shine forth; but the
strength of the manly frame was gone, and his sad countenance
betrayed the heaviness of his despairing heart. The man of
forty years tottered along with faltering steps, and all the weakness
of four score.
In the summer of 1848, he came to Orange, seeking employment
in the simpler parts of the hatter's vocation, for he
must needs do something to enable him to meet the demands
of his master passion. The chains of evil habit were riveted
upon him, and he spent his scanty earnings either at the bar of
the licensed tavern, or in the den of the lawless dealer in alcohol.
On Wednesday evening, January 3d, he came up into town, a
distance of a mile and a half, to drown his sorrows in the lethe
of rum. He went to the house of a lawless seller of the poison;
but she (for the vender was a woman,) makes oath that he did
not obtain any alcohol there that evening. He then went to
the tavern and asked for liquor, but according to the oath of the
attendants there, he was refused, and went out. This was
about nine o'clock in the evening. Whither he next directed
his steps is a secret, hidden, perhaps, in silence only; but more
probably in perjury. One thing is certain, he obtained rum, he
drank, and became intoxicated; and about midnight, as near as
can be conjectured, he was turned out of doors to find his way
home.
All was still in our peaceful village. The moon shone
bright upon the snow. The wind blew from the north, and
the night was intensely cold. The poor man began his weary
journey; but the misdeeds of years had rendered him decrepid,
he was now intoxicated and benumbed, and his palsied feet
were placed upon an uncertain, icy path. He slowly labored
on a little way, but soon he slipped and fell. In his efforts to
rise, he rolled from the sidewalk, down a little declivity of a
foot or so, towards the street. Again he attempted to rise, but
he was weak, and chilled by the intense cold, and he failed.
He tried to draw himself up the bank, by laying hold upon the
snow with his hands: but the frozen crust broke in his grasp,
leaving the bloody prints of his fingers, as tokens of the earnestness
of his struggle. He tried it long, for it seemed his only
hope. As the marks of bloody hands bore witness, he dragged
himself along to a post, and tried to raise himself by its means.
He battled hard with death, in vain. The cold was curdling
his blood, and life was fast departing. At last he gave up, and
stretched himself out to die. Perhaps he called for help; but
his feeble cry was lost in the whistling winds. Perhaps he
thought of the loved ones he had lost, and wept an icy tear.
Perhaps he thought on his God, and prayed.
At early dawn, a young man, passing down the street, saw
the prostrate form, and gave the alarm. Speechless, but still
alive, he was lying with his eyes wide open, gazing upwards as
if into the world to come. He was carried into a house, at whose
very door he had lain all this time. As those who bore him,
brought him towards a fire, he groaned, made a feeble effort to
stretch out his hand toward it, and died. His pocket contained
Three Cents, And A Bottle Of Rum.
The coroner called together his jury, and made inquisition
in the case. The rum-sellers, legal and illegal, who were suspected
of knowing anything of the matter, were summoned to
the inquest, and strictly interrogated; but they were all as
innocent as lambs! None would admit, even when under
oath, that they had sold him liquor the previous evening; and
it was with great difficulty that some could be made to recollect
that they had even seen him for some days. The verdict, of
course, could not go beyond the facts-legally elicited.
The community in general expressed much pity for the
friendless stranger, and they gave his remains decent burial.
Quite a number assembled in the Methodist church, at his
funeral, and a sermon was preached from the words:—“By it,
being dead, he yet speaketh.” A few men followed the body
to the cemetery, where a cold grave had been dug in the snow,
and the icy ground. The coffin was lowered, the frozen earth
was replaced; thanks were returned, in the name of our common
humanity, to those who had thus shown their sympathy for the
stranger; and we left him to await that morn when “they that
sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting
life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.”
“By it, being dead, he yet speaketh.”
Every man's faith, or his unbelief, has a voice; and the
result of his course, whatever that course may be, speaks
lessons of wisdom. Unlike as pious Abel and poor J—B—
were, there are yet certain points of resemblance.
1. J—B—, like Abel, was murdered. His death was
caused by certain means, which were employed by himself and
others, knowing that untimely death would result. He knew
that his evil habits were killing him. The venders who sold
him alcohol knew it; yet for paltry coppers they helped him
on in his wanton sacrifice of life, and thus became accessory
to virtual murder.
2. He was slain by a brother's hand. The ocean-storm did
not engulf him; the flame did not devour, nor the beast of
prey rend. The icy wind merely extinguished the taper
which a destructive life had already caused to wax dim.
Alcohol was the real instrument of his death; and that instrument
was placed at his lips by his brotehr man, amid smiles,
and pleasant words, and ringing laughter.
3. Those guilty of the murder denied all knowledge of it.
When the question was put to the first murderer—“Where
is thy brother?” he answered “I know not,” and then indignantly
added—“Am I my brother's keeper?” Point the vender
of alcohol to the wide-spread ruin which his own hand has
scattered around and ask him, who did this? and he answers.
“I know not.” Point him to the prisons and the alms-houses
which he has filled, and the untimely graves which he has
dug; and he replies, sometimes with coward rage, sometimes
with a cold sneer, “Am I my brother's keeper?”
4. The blood of the slain cries unto God from the ground.
That bloody spot which J— B— left on the snow,
long remained. I often stopped to look at it, and pondered til
my zeal for the giorious temperance cause was fired afresh.
There the red witness of murder lay, in the bright sunshine,
or in the paler beams of the moon, crying unto God and man,
till the descending rain, the tear-drops of pitying heaven, fell
upon it, and wept it away.
5. A mark was set upon the murderer. The cry of the slain
reaches Heaven, and the wrath of Him who is the Judge of all
men, rests upon all the agents in the bloody deed. The curse
of the Almighty is pronounced against them; the disapprobation
of all good and honorable men rests upon them; the orphan's
eye, dim with weeping, follows them with bitter reproach.
In the view of truth and justice, and every right and honorable
principle, a mark as dark, and as withering as that which
branded the first murderer, is fixed upon them. And if they
repent not, there let it rest, evermore.
