 | The fiend's delight |  |
The Glad New Year.
A poor brokendown drunkard returned to his
dilapidated domicile early on New Year's morn.
The great bells of the churches were jarring the
creamy moonlight which lay above the soggy
undercrust of mud and snow. As he heard their
joyous peals, announcing the birth of a new year,
his heart smote his old waistcoat like a remorseful
sledge-hummer.
“Why,” soliloquized he, “should not those
bells also proclaim the advent of a new resolution?
I have not made one for several weeks, and it's
about time. I'll swear off.”
He did it, and at that moment a new light
seemed to be shed upon his pathway; his wife
came out of the house with a tin lantern. He
rushed frantically to meet her. She saw the new
and holy purpose in his eye. She recognised it
and wept. Then stretching the wreck of what
had once been a manly form to its full length, he
raised his eyes to heaven and one hand as near there
as he could get it, and there in the pale moonlight,
with only his wondering wife, and the angels, and a
cow or two, for witnesses, he swore he would from
that moment abstain from all intoxicating liquors
until death should them part. Then looking
down and tenderly smiling into the eyes of his
wife, he said: “Is it not well, dear one?” With
a face beaming all over with a new happiness, she
replied:
“Indeed it is, John—let's take a drink.” And
they took one, she with sugar and he plain.
The spot is still pointed out to the traveller.
| The fiend's delight | |