through the world, and perhaps genius to astonish and delight their fellow men. They may be the children of honest and sober parents, reared in the lap of the heart's best and noblest affections, loaded with blessings and the abundant enjoyments of life from their very cradle, educated and brought up as ladies and gentlemen, the centres of attraction in peaceful and happy homes, the future hope and joy of those who love them; and yet we see them day by day falling into the horrible pit dug for them by this deceitful, cruel, earthly god! all unhappy examples in the past, all solemn warnings for the future, unheeded or despised; husbands robbing and starving their wives and children; wives insanely driving their husbands away from their hearths and homes; children arrayed against their parents! See the terrible conflagration in which lives are lost, and hundreds of thousands of pounds' worth of merchandise destroyed, caused by one miserable drunkard trying to get into his bed. Read of the dreadful war which has arisen between two friendly nations through the unreasonable obstinacy of a king or a minister inflamed by wine. What a long list of abominable crimes, of vicious folly, of malicious injury to peaceful and innocent people, of poverty and degradation, has intemperance to show us! And to think that it ruins the peace of thousands of families, and makes a hell where we should expect, not a heaven, indeed, but a comparatively happy home. Was this the curse that made Absalom a rebel and a traitor to his father and his king; bade him listen to the parricidal counsel of Ahitophel, and drove the wretched David to cry out in the bitterness of his heart, "O my son, Absalom——"'
'Stop, stop, for Heaven's sake!' broke in the Doctor. 'You are enough to drive any ordinary man wild. I'll have to clap you into the tenth dungeon with Astoragus if you go on much longer. I thought I was a bit of an elephant
