The fountain and the bottle comprising thrilling examples of the opposite effects of temperance and intemperance |
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THE DRUNKARD'S DREAM. |
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 | The fountain and the bottle |  |
THE DRUNKARD'S DREAM.
From the Dublin University Magazine.
About the year 17—, having been appointed to the
living of C—h, I rented a small house in the town
which bears the same name. One morning, in the
month of November, I was awakened before my usual
time by my servant, who bustled into my bed-room
for the purpose of announcing a sick call. As the
Catholic church holds her last rites to be totally indispensable
to the safety of the departing sinner, no conscientious
clergyman can afford a moment's unnecessary
delay; and in little more than five minutes I
stood, ready cloaked and booted for the road, in the
small front parlour, in which the messenger, who was
to act as my guide, awaited my coming. I found a
poor little girl, crying piteously, near the door, and,
after some slight difficulty, I ascertained that her father
was either dead, or just dying.
“And what may be your father's name, my poor
child?” said I. She held down her head as if ashamed.
I repeated the question, and the wretched little creature
burst into a flood of tears still more bitter than
she had shed before. At length, almost provoked by
to lose patience, spite of the pity which I could
not help feeling towards her; and I said, rather
harshly, “If you will not tell me the name of the person
to whom you would lead me, your silence can
arise from no good motive, and I might be justified in
refusing to go with you at all.”
“Oh! don't say that, don't say that,” cried she.
Oh, sir! it was that I was afeard of, when I would not
tell you: I was afeard when you heard his name you
would not come with me; but it is no use hidin' it
now: it's Pat Connell, the carpenter, your honour.”
She looked in my face with the most earnest anxiety,
as if her very existence depended upon what she
should read there; but I relieved her at once. The
name, indeed, was most unpleasantly familiar to me;
but, however fruitless my visits and advice might
have been at another time, the present was too fearful
an occasion to suffer my doubts of their utility as my
reluctance to re-attempting what appeared a hopeless
task, to weigh even against the lightest chance, that a
consciousness of his imminent danger might produce
in him a more docile and tractable disposition. Accordingly,
I told the child to lead the way, and followed
her in silence. She hurried rapidly through
the long narrow street which forms the great throughfare
of the town. The darkness of the hour, rendered
still deeper by the close approach of the old-fashioned
houses, which lowered in tall obscurity on either side
of the way; the damp, dreary chill which renders the
advance of morning peculiarly cheerless, combined
presumptuous sinner, to endeavour, almost against my
own conviction, to infuse a hope into the heart of a
dying reprobate, a drunkard, but too probably perishing
under the consequences of some mad fit of intoxication;
all these circumstances united, served to enhance
the gloom and solemnity of my feelings, as I
silently followed my little guide, who, with quick
steps, traversed the uneven pavement of the main
street. After a walk of about five minutes, she turned
off into a narrow lane, of that obscure and comfortless
class which are to be found in almost all small old-fashioned
towns—chill, without ventilation, reeking
with all manner of offensive effuviæ, dingy, smoky,
sickly, and pent-up buildings, frequently not only in
a wretched, but in a dangerous condition.
“Your father has changed his abode since I last
visited him, and, I am afraid, much for the worse,”
said I.
“Indeed he has, sir; but we must not complain,”
replied she; “we have to thank God that we have
lodging and food, though it's poor enough, it is, your
honour.”
“Poor child!” thought I; “how many an older
head might learn wisdom from thee! how many a
luxurious philosopher, who is skilled to preach but
not to suffer, might not thy patient words put to the
blush!”
The manner and language of this child were alike
above her years and station; and, indeed, in all cases
in which the cares and sorrows of life have anticipated
do, with melancholy prematurity to the lot of
childhood, I have observed the result to prove uniformly
the same. A young mind, to which joy and
indulgence have been strangers, and to which suffering
and self-denial have been familiarized from the
first, acquires a solidity and an elevation which no
other discipline could have bestowed, and which, in
the present case, communicated a striking but mournful
peculiarity to the manners—even to the voice of
the child. We paused before a narrow, crazy door,
which she opened by means of a latch, and we forthwith
began to ascend the steep and broken stairs,
which led upwards to the sick man's room. As we
mounted flight after flight towards the garret floor, I
heard, more and more distinctly, the hurried talking
of many voices. I could also distinguish the low sobbing
of a female. On arriving upon the uppermost
lobby, these sounds became fully audible.
“This way, your honour,” said my little conductress,
at the same time pushing open a door of patched
and half-rotten plank, she admitted me into the squalid
chamber of death and misery. But one candle, held
in the fingers of a seared and haggard-looking child,
was burning in the room, and that so dim that all was
twilight or darkness except within its immediate influence.
The general obscurity, however, served to
throw into prominent and startling relief the deathbed
and its occupant. The light was nearly approximated
to, and fell with horrible clearness upon, the
blue and swollen features of the drunkard. I did not
so terrific. The lips were black, and drawn apart;
the teeth were firmly set; the eyes a little unclosed,
and nothing but the whites appearing; every feature
was fixed and livid, and the whole face wore a ghastly
and rigid expression of despairing terror, such as I
never saw equalled. His hands were crossed upon his
breast, and firmly clenched; while, as if to add to the
corpse-like effect of the whole, some white cloths, dipped
in water, were wound about the forehead and
temples. As soon as I could remove my eyes from
this horrible spectacle, I observed my friend Dr. D—,
one of the most humane of a humane profession, standing
by the bed-side. He had been attempting, but unsuccessfully,
to bleed the patient, and had now applied
his finger to the pulse.
“Is there any hope?” I inquired in a whisper.
A shake of the head was the reply. There was a
pause while he continued to hold the wrist; but he
waited in vain for the throb of life; it was not there;
and when he let go the hand, it fell stiffly back into
its former position upon the other.
“The man is dead,” said the physician, as he turned
from the bed where the terrible figure lay.
“Dead!” thought I, scarcely venturing to look
upon the tremendous and revolting spectacle: “dead!
without an hour for repentance—even a moment for
reflection! Dead, without the rites which even the
best should have! Is there hope for him?” The
glaring eyeball, the grinning mouth, the distorted
brow, that unutterable look in which a painter would
hell—these were my answer.
The poor wife sat at a little distance, crying as if
her heart would break: the younger children clustered
round the bed, looking, with wondering curiosity,
upon the form of death, never seen before.
When the first tumult of uncontrollable sorrow had
passed away, availing myself of the solemnity and impressiveness
of the scene, I desired the heart-stricken
family to accompany me in prayer; and all knelt down,
while I solemnly and fervently repeated some of those
prayers which appeared most applicable to the occasion.
I employed myself thus in a manner which, I
trusted, was not unprofitable, at least to the living, for
about ten minutes; and having accomplished my task,
I was the first to arise. I looked upon the poor, sobbing,
helpless creatures who knelt so humbly around
me, and my heart bled for them. With a natural
transition, I turned my eyes from them to the bed in
which the body lay; and, great God! what was the
revulsion, the horror which I experienced, on seeing
the corpse-like, terrific thing seated half upright before
me. The white cloths which had been wound
round the head, had now partly slipped from their
position, and were hanging in grotesque festoons
about the face and shoulders, while the distorted eyes
leered from amid them—
its head, and lifted its arm, I thought, with a menacing
thoughts at once rushed upon my mind. I had often
read that the body of a presumptuous sinner, who,
during life, had been the willing creature of every
satanic impulse, after the human tenant had deserted
it, had been known to become the horrible sport of
demoniac possession. I was roused from the stupefaction
of terror in which I stood, by the piercing scream
of the mother, who now, for the first time, perceived
the change which had taken place. She rushed towards
the bed; but, stunned by the shock, and overcome
by the conflict of violent emotions, before she
reached it she fell prostrate upon the floor. I am perfectly
convinced, that had I not been startled from
the torpidity of horror, in which I was bound, by some
powerful and arousing stimulant, I should have gazed
upon this unearthly apparition until I had fairly lost
my senses. As it was, however, the spell was broken;
superstition gave way to reason: the man, whom all
believed to have been actually dead, was living. Dr.
D— was instantly standing by the bedside, and,
upon examination, he found that a sudden and copious
flow of blood had taken place from the wound which
the lancet had left, and this, no doubt, had effected
his sudden, and almost preternatural restoration to an
existence from which all thought he had been for ever
removed. The man was still speechless, but he seemed
to understand the physician when he forbid his repeating
the painful and fruitless attempts which he
made to articulate; and he at once resigned himself
quietly into his hands.
I left the patient with leeches upon his temples,
and bleeding freely, apparently with little of the drowsiness
which accompanies apoplexy; indeed, Dr.
D— told me that he had never before witnessed a
seizure which seemed to combine the symptoms of so
many kinds, and yet which belonged to none of the
recognized classes; it certainly was not apoplexy,
catalepsy, nor delirium tremens, and yet it seemed, in
some degree, to partake of the properties of all. It
was strange, but stranger things are coming.
During two or three days Dr. D— would not allow
his patient to converse in a manner which could
excite or exhaust him, with any one; he suffered him
merely, as briefly as possible, to express his immediate
wants, and it was not until the fourth day after
my early visit, the particulars of which I have just
detailed, that it was thought expedient that I should
see him, and then only because it appeared that his
extreme importunity and impatience were likely to retard
his recovery more than the mere exhaustion attendant
upon a short conversation could possibly do;
perhaps, too, my friend entertained some hope that if,
by holy confession his patient's bosom were eased of
the perilous stuff, which, no doubt, oppressed it, his
recovery would be more assured and rapid. It was,
then, as I have said, upon the fourth day after my first
professional call, that I found myself once more in the
dreary chamber of want and sickness. The man was in
bed, and appeared low and restless. On my entering
the room he raised himself in the bed, and muttered
twice or thrice, “Thank God! thank God!” I signed
and took a chair beside the bed. So soon as we were
alone he said, rather doggedly, “There's no use now
in telling me of the sinfulness of bad ways; I know it
all; I know where they lead to; I have seen every thing
about it with my own eyesight, as plain as I see you.”
He rolled himself in the bed, as if to hide his face in
the clothes, and then suddenly raising himself, he exclaimed,
with startling vehemence, “Look, sir, there
is no use in mincing the matter; I'm blasted with the
fires of hell; I have been in hell; what do you think
of that?—in hell! I'm lost for ever! I have not a
chance! I am damned already—damned—damned—.”
The end of this sentence he actually shouted; his vehemence
was perfectly terrific; he threw himself back,
and laughed and sobbed hysterically. I poured some
water into a tea-cup, and gave it to him. After he had
swallowed it, I told him if he had any thing to communicate,
to do so as briefly as he could, and in a manner
as little agitating to himself as possible; threatening
at the same time, though I had no intention to do
so, to leave him at once, in case he again gave way to
such passionate excitement.
“It's only foolishness,” he continued “for me to try
to thank you for coming to such a villain as myself at
all; it's no use for me to wish good to you; for such
as I have no blessings to give.”
I told him that I had but done my duty, and urged
him to proceed to the matter which weighed upon his
mind: he then spoke nearly as follows:—
“I came in drunk on Friday night last, and got to my
night, it seemed to me, I wakened, and feeling unaisy
in myself, I got up out of the bed. I wanted the fresh
air, but I would not make a noise to open the window,
for fear I'd waken the crathurs. It was very dark, and
throublesome to find the door; but at last I did get it,
and I groped my way out, and went down as aisy as I
could. I felt quite sober, and I counted the steps one
after another, as I was going down, that I might not
stumble at the bottom. When I came to the first landing-place—God
be about us always! the floor of it sunk
under me, and I went down, down, down, till the
senses almost left me. I do not know how long I was
falling, but it seemed to me a great while. When I
came rightly to myself at last, I was sitting at a great
table near the top of it; and I could not see the end
of it, if it had any, it was so far off; and there were
men beyond reckoning sitting down, all along by it,
at each side, as far as I could see at all. I did not know
at first what it was in the open air; but there was a
close smothering feel in it, that was not natural, and
there was a kind of light that my eyesight never saw
before, red and unsteady, and I did not see for a long
time where it was coming from, until I looked straight
up, and then I saw that it came from great balls of
blood-coloured fire, that were rolling high over head,
with a sort of rushing, trembling sound, and I perceived
that they shone on the ribs of a great roof of
rock that was arched overhead, instead of the sky.
When I seen this, scarce knowing what I did, I got
up, and I said, `I have no right to be here; I must
smiled, and said, `sit down again; you can never leave
this place;' and his voice was weaker than any child's
voice I ever heard, and when he was done speaking
he smiled again. Then I spoke out very loud and
bold, and I said, `In the name of God let me out of
this bad place.' And there was a great man, that I did
not see before, sitting at the end of the table that I was
near, and he was taller than twelve men, and his face
was very proud and terrible to look at, and he stood
up and stretched out his hand before him; and when
he stood up all that were there, great and small, bowed
down with a sighing sound, and a dread came on my
heart, and he looked at me, and I could not speak. I
felt I was his own to do what he liked with, for I
knew at once who he was; and he said, `if you promise
to return you may depart for a season;' and the
voice he spoke with was terrible and mournful, and
the echoes of it went rolling and swelling down the
endless cave, and mixing with the trembling of the fire
over head; so that when he sat down, there was a sound
after him, all through the place, like the roaring of a
furnace, and I said, with all the strength I had, `I promise
to come back; in God's name let me go;' and
with that I lost the sight and the hearing of all that
was there; and when my senses came to me again, I
was sitting in the bed with the blood all over me, and
you and the rest praying around the room.” Here he
paused and wiped away the chill drops of horror which
hung upon his forehead.
I remained silent for some moments. The vision
not a little; for this was long before Vathek and the
“Hall of Ebles” had delighted the world; and the description
which he gave had, as I received it, all the
attractions of novelty, beside the impressiveness which
always belongs to the narration of an eye-witness, whether
in the body or in the spirit, of the scenes which
he describes. There was something, too, in the stern
horror with which the man related these things, and in
the incongruity of his description with the vulgarly
received notions of the great place of punishment, and
of its presiding spirit, which struck my mind with
awe, almost with fear.—At length he said, with an expression
of horrible, imploring earnestness, which I
shall never forget, “Well, sir, is there any hope; is
there any chance at all? or, is my soul pledged and
promised away for ever? is it gone out of my power?
must I go back to the place?”
In answering him I had no easy task to perform; for
however clear might be my internal conviction of the
groundlessness of his fears, and however strong my
skepticism respecting the reality of what he had described,
I nevertheless felt that his impression to the
contrary, and his humility and terror resulting from
it, might be made available as no mean engines in the
work of his conversion from profligacy, and of his restoration
to decent habits, and to religious feeling. I
therefore told him that he was to regard his dream
rather in the light of a warning than in that of a prophecy;
that our salvation depended not upon the word
or deed of a moment, but upon the habits of a life; that,
evil habits, and firmly adhered to a sober, industrious,
and religious course of life, the powers of darkness
might claim his soul in vain; for that there were
higher and firmer pledges than human tongue could
utter, which promised salvation to him who should
repent and lead a new life.
I left him much comforted, and with a promise to
return upon the next day. I did so, and found him
much more cheerful, and without any remains of the
dogged sullenness which I suppose had arisen from
his despair. His promises of amendment were given
in that tone of deliberate earnestness which belongs
to deep and solemn determination; and it was with
no small delight that I observed, after repeated visits,
that his good resolutions, so far from failing, did but
gather strength by time; and when I saw that man
shake off the idle and debauched companions, whose
society had for years formed alike his amusement and
his ruin, and revive his long discarded habits of industry
and sobriety, I said within myself, “there is
something more in all this than the operation of an idle
dream.”
One day, some time after his perfect restoration
to health, I was surprised on ascending the stairs for
the purpose of visiting this man, to find him busily
employed in nailing down some planks upon the landing-place
through which, at the commencement of his
mysterious vision, it seemed to him that he had sunk.
I perceived at once that he was strengthening the floor
with a view to securing himself against such a catastrophe,
“God bless his work.”
He perceived my thoughts I suppose, for he immediately
said—
“I can never pass over that floor without trembling.
I'd leave this house if I could; but I can't find another
lodging in the town so cheap, and I'll not take a better
till I've paid off all my debts, please God; but I could
not be aisy in my mind till I made it as safe as I could.
You'll hardly believe me, your honour, that while I'm
working, maybe a mile away, my heart is in a flutter
the whole way back, with the bare thoughts of the two
little steps I have to walk upon this bit of a floor. So
it's no wonder, sir, I'd thry to make it sound and firm
with any idle timber I have.”
I applauded his resolution to pay off his debts, and
the steadiness with which he pursued his plans of
conscientious economy, and passed on.
Many months elapsed, and still there appeared no
alteration in his resolutions of amendment. He was a
good workman, and with his better habits he recovered
his former extensive and profitable employment.
Every thing seemed to promise comfort and respectability.
I have little more to add, and that shall be told
quickly. I had one evening met Pat Connell, as he
returned from his work; and, as usual, after a mutual,
and, on his side, respectful salutation, I spoke a few
words of encouragement and approval. I left him industrious,
active, healthy—when next I saw him, not
three days after, he was a corpse The circumstances
which marked the event of his death, were somewhat
had accidentally met an early friend, just returned
after a long absence, and, in a moment of excitement,
forgetting every thing in the warmth of his joy, he
yielded to his urgent invitation to accompany him
into a public house, which lay close by the spot where
the encounter had taken place. Connell, however,
previously to entering the room, had announced his
determination to take nothing more than the strictest
temperance would warrant. But, oh! who can describe
the inveterate tenacity with which a drunkard's
habits cling to him through life. He may repent—he
may reform; he may look with actual abhorrence
upon his past profligacy; but amid all this reformation
and compunction, who can tell the moment in
which the base and ruinous propensity may not recur,
triumphing over resolution, remorse, shame, every
thing, and prostrating its victim once more in all that
is destructive and revolting in that fatal vice.
The wretched man left the place in a state of utter
intoxication. He was brought home nearly insensible,
and placed in his bed, where he lay in the deep, calm
lethargy of drunkenness. The younger part of the
family retired to rest much after their usual hour; but
the poor wife remained up, sitting by the fire, too
much grieved and shocked at the recurrence of what
she had so little expected, to settle to rest; fatigue,
however, at length overcame her, and she sunk gradually
into an uneasy slumber. She could not tell how
long she had remained in this state, when she awoke,
and immediately on opening her eyes, she perceived
two persons, one of whom she recognized as her husband,
noiselessly gliding out of the room.
“Pat, darling, where are you going?” said she,
There was no answer—the door closed after them;
but in a moment she was startled and terrified by a
loud and heavy crash, as if some ponderous body had
been hurled down the stairs. Much alarmed, she
started up, and going to the head of the staircase, she
called repeatedly upon her husband, but in vain. She
returned to the room, and with the assistance of her
daughter, whom I had occasion to mention before, she
succeeded in finding and lighting a candle, with which
she hurried again to the head of the staircase. At the
bottom lay what seemed to be a bundle of clothes,
heaped together, motionless, lifeless—it was her husband.
In going down the stairs, for what purpose
can never now be known, he had fallen, helplessly and
violently, to the bottom, and coming head foremost,
the spine at the neck had been dislocated by the shock,
and instant death must have ensued. The body lay
upon that landing-place to which his dream had referred.
It is scarcely worth endeavouring to clear up a
single point in a narrative where all is mystery; yet
I could not help suspecting that the second figure
which had been seen in the room by Connell's wife
on the night of his death, might have been no other
than his own shadow. I suggested this solution of the
difficulty; but she told me that the unknown person
had been considerably in advance of the other, and on
reaching the door, had turned back, as if to communicate
Was the dream verified?—whither had the disembodied
spirit sped?—who can say? We know not.
But I left the house of death that day in a state of
horror which I could not describe. It seemed to me
that I was scarce awake. I heard and saw every
thing as if under the spell of a nightmare. The coincidence
was terrible.
| The fountain and the bottle | |