The Lights and Shadows of Real Life Part 66

That evening Jim Braddock sat down to a good supper with a smiling wife, and three children, all cleanly dressed, and looking as happy as they could be. The husband and father had not felt so light a heart bounding in his bosom for years. He was free,--and felt that he was free to act as reason dictated,--to work for and care for his household treasures.

Nearly a year has pa.s.sed, and Mr. James Braddock has built himself a neat little frame house, which is comfortably furnished, and has attached to it a well-cultivated garden. In his parlour, there hangs, over the mantelpiece, his original pledge, handsomely framed.

Recently in writing to a friend, he says--

"You will ask, where did I get them?" (his new house, furniture, &c.) "I'll tell you, boy. These are part payment for my _liberty_, that I signed away. Didn't I sell it at a bargain? But this is not all. I've got my shop back again, with a good run of custom--am ten years younger than I was a year ago--have got the happiest wife and the smartest boy in all creation--and don't care a snap for anybody!

So now, S. come down here; bring your wife, and all the _responsibilities_, and I'll tell you the whole story--but I can't write. _Hurrah for slavery!_ Good bye!

JIM BRADDOCK."

THE FAIR TEMPTER

OR, WINE ON THE WEDDING-NIGHT.

"WHAT will you take, Haley?"

"A gla.s.s of water."

"Nonsense! Say, what will you take?"

"A gla.s.s of water. I don't drink anything stronger."

"Not a teetotaller? Ha! ha! ha!" rejoined the young man's companion, laughing in mingled mirth and ridicule.

"Yes, a teetotaller, if you please," replied the one called Haley.--"Or anything else you choose to denominate me."

"You're a member of a temperance society, then? ha! ha!"

"No, I am not."

"Don't belong to the cold-water men?"

"No."

"Then come along and drink with me! Here, what will you take?"

"Nothing at all, unless it be a gla.s.s of water. As I have just said, I drink nothing stronger."

"What's the reason?"

"I feel as well--indeed, a great deal better without it."

"That's all nonsense! Come, take a julep, or a brandy-punch with me."

"No, Loring, I cannot."

"I shall take it as an offence, if you do not."

"I mean no offence, and shall be sorry, if you construe into one an act not so intended. Drink if you wish to drink, but leave me in freedom to decline tasting liquor if I choose."

"Well, you are a strange kind of a genius, Haley--, but I believe I like you too well to get mad with you, although I generally take a refusal to drink with one as an insult, unless I know the person to have joined a temperance society,--and then I should deem the insult on my part, were I to urge him to violate his pledge. But I wonder you have never joined yourself to some of these ultra reformers--these teetotallers, as they call themselves."

"I have never done so,--and never intend doing so. It is sufficient for me to decline drinking, because I do not believe that stimulating beverages are good for the body or mind. I act from principle in this matter, and, therefore, want no external restraints."

"Then you are determined not to drink with me?"

"O, yes, I will drink with you."

"Cold-water?"

"Of course."

"One julep, and a gla.s.s of Adam's-ale," said Loring, turning to the bar-keeper.

They were soon presented, gla.s.ses touched, heads bobbed, and the contents of the two tumblers poured down their respective gullets.

"It makes a chill go over me to see you drinking that stuff," Loring said, with an expression of disgust on his face.

"Every one to his taste, you know," was Haley's half-indifferent response.

"You'll be over to-night, I suppose?" said a young man, stepping up to him, as the two emerged from the "Coffee"-house--precious little coffee was ever seen there.

"O, yes,--of course."

"You'd better not come."

"Why?"

"Clara's got a bottle of champaign that she says she's going to make you taste this very night."

A slight shade flitted quickly over the face of Haley, as the young man said this. But it was as quickly gone, and he replied with a smile,

"Tell Clara it's no use. I'm an incorrigible cold-water man."

"She'll be too much for you."

"I'm not afraid."

"You'd be, if you were as well acquainted with her as I am. I never knew that girl to set her head about anything in my life that she didn't accomplish it. And she says that she will make you drink a gla.s.s of wine with her, in spite of all your opposition."