started him down a course which made him learn
from a terrible experience that "at the last it biteth like a serpent,
and stingeth like an adder." Does any one call a glass of wine a small
thing? Read Tom's story and then call it small, if you dare! Whatever
he did was done with his might, drinking not excepted. He boasted of
his power to drink much and keep sober, while he laughed at the
companions who imbibed far less and went to bed drunk. At first Tom
was the master and the bottle his slave, but in three years' time they
changed places. When too late, his parents discovered that the college
had sent back to them a ripe scholar, a trained athlete and a drunkard.
The mother tried to save her son, but failing in every effort, her
heart broke and she died with Tom's name on her lips. The father,
weighed down under the dead sorrow and the living trouble, vainly
strove to rescue his son, and was found one night in the attitude of
prayer, kneeling by the side of the bed where his wife's broken heart a
few months before had ceased to beat. He died praying for his boy!

One evening as the sun was setting, a man stood leaning against the
fence along one of the streets of a certain city. His clothes were
ragged, his hands and face unwashed, his hair uncombed and his eyes
bleared; he looked more like a wild beast hunted and hungry, than a
human being. It was Tom. The boys gathered about him, and made him
the object of their fun and ridicule. At first he seemed not to notice
them, but suddenly he cried out: "Cease your laughter until you know
what you are laughing at. Let me talk to my master while you listen."

He pulled a bottle from his pocket, held it up, and looking at it with
deep hatred flashing from his reddened eyes, he said:

"I was once your master; now I am your slave. In my strength you
deceived me; in my weakness you mock me. You have burned my brain,
blistered my body, blasted my hopes, bitten my soul and broken my will.
You have taken my money, destroyed my home, stolen my good name, and
robbed me of every friend I ever had. You killed my mother, slew my
father, sent me out into the world a worthless vagabond, until I find
myself a son without parents, a man without friends, a wanderer without
a home, a human being without sympathy, and a pauper without bread.
Deceiver, mocker, robber, murderer--I hate you! Oh, for one hour of my
old-time strength, that I might slay you! Oh, for one friend and