to get gain in corrupting and
destroying our children? To hesitate over some vague ideal of human
liberty when the sword is among us, slaying our best and dearest? Sir!
while you hold back from the work of staying the flood that is
desolating our fairest homes, the black waters are approaching your own
doors."

There was a startling emphasis in the tones with which this last
sentence was uttered; and I do not wonder at the look of anxious alarm
that it called to the face of him whose fears it was meant to excite.

"What do you mean, sir?" was inquired.

"Simply, that your sons are in equal danger with others."

"And is that all?"

"They have been seen, of late, in the bar-room of the 'Sickle and
Sheaf.'"

"Who says so?"

"Twice within a week I have seen them going there," was answered.

"Good heavens! No!"

"It is true, my friend. But who is safe? If we dig pits, and conceal
them from view, what marvel if our own children fall therein?"

"My sons going to a tavern?" The man seemed utterly confounded. "How
CAN I believe it? You must be in error, sir."

"No. What I tell you is the simple truth. And if they go there--"

The man paused not to hear the conclusion of the sentence, but went
hastily from the office.

"We are beginning to reap as we have sown," remarked the gentleman,
turning to me as his agitated friend left the office. "As I told them
in the commencement it would be, so it is happening. The want of a good
tavern in Cedarville was over and over again alleged as one of the
chief causes of our want of thrift, and when Slade opened the 'Sickle
and Sheaf,' the man was almost glorified. The gentleman who has just
left us failed not in laudation of the enterprising landlord; the more
particularly, as the building of the new tavern advanced the price of
ground on the street, and made him a few hundred dollars richer.
Really, for a time, one might have thought, from the way people went
on, that Simon Slade was going to make every man's fortune in
Cedarville. But all that has been gained by a small advance in
property, is as a grain of sand to a mountain, compared with the
fearful demoralization that has followed."

I readily assented to this, for I had myself seen enough to justify the
conclusion.

As I sat in the bar-room of the "Sickle and Sheaf" that evening, I
noticed, soon after the lamps were lighted, the gentleman referred to
in the above conversation, whose sons were represented as visitors