vidence that they used
too freely the deadly drug which they fearlessly handled. If the
temperance reformation had been at that time commenced, they might have
been warned of their danger, and saved from ruin; but nothing arrested
their progress in the path of the destroyer.

Their children, who used to be clad with garments which denoted a
mother's industry, soon began to bear marks of neglect, and were by
degrees withdrawn from the school--their parents, because of _hard
times_, not being able to support them there. They consequently lounged
about, became acquainted with the customers at the bar, and learned
their evil habits, especially that of drinking.

The parents had commenced the sale of intoxicating drinks to become
rich; but at the end of a few years it had reduced them to poverty. They
had lost their respectability, their honesty, and their property, which
was mortgaged for rum; their children had become vagabonds, and their
house a receptacle of vice. Of all their five sons, not one escaped the
infection; they and their miserable parents wallowed in the mire
together.

In consequence of the dreadful excess to which she had abandoned
herself, the imagination of Mrs. ---- became disordered, and conjured up
horrible visions. In her fits of the _delirium tremens_, she fancied
herself bound with a belt of brass, to which was attached a chain held
by the great enemy of souls, who had indeed enchained her with the most
dire and effectual of all his spells. She would cross the room with the
rapidity of lightning, screaming that he was winding up the chain, and
she _must go_--she _could not_ stop. She was afraid to pass her own
threshold, and fancied she heard unearthly voices, and saw spirits black
and hideous all around her. "There they sit," she would say, "J----,
M----," mentioning the names of all her children; "there they sit,
grinning at me, and telling me I sent them to hell: they are on the
beams and in the corners, and wherever I go."

The writer of this has often witnessed her desperate struggles; has seen
her, when a gleam of reason came over her mind, weep in bitterness over
her ruin and misery; has heard her confessions of deeds of villany
committed under her roof; and has heard also her solemn vows to refrain
from that which wrought all this misery and sin; but after all this, has
seen her "seek it yet again."

All the arguments which religion can offer were set before her, and she
often appeared