eetings and speeches were all the
mode; young men of the first standing were its patrons and supporters;
wine was quite in the vocative, and seemed really in danger of being
voted out of society. In such a turn of affairs, to sign a temperance
pledge and keep it became an easy thing; temptation was scarce presented
or felt; he was offered the glass in no social circle, met its
attraction nowhere, and flattered himself that he had escaped so great a
danger easily and completely.

His usual fortune of social popularity followed him, and his visiting
circle became full as large and importunate as a young man with any
thing else to do need desire. He was diligent in his application to
business, began to be mentioned with approbation by the magnates as a
rising young man, and had prospects daily nearing of competence and
home, and all that man desires--visions, alas! never to be realized.

For after a while the tide that had risen so high began imperceptibly to
decline. Men that had made eloquent speeches on temperance had now other
things to look to. Fastidious persons thought that matters had, perhaps,
been carried too far, and ladies declared that it was old and
threadbare, and getting to be cant and stuff; and the ever-ready wine
cup was gliding back into many a circle, as if, on sober second
thoughts, the community was convinced that it was a friend unjustly
belied.

There is no point in the history of reform, either in communities or
individuals, so dangerous as that where danger seems entirely past. As
long as a man thinks his health failing, he watches, he diets, and will
undergo the most heroic self-denial; but let him once set himself down
as cured, and how readily does he fall back to one soft indulgent habit
after another, all tending to ruin every thing that he has before done!

So in communities. Let intemperance rage, and young men go to ruin by
dozens, and the very evil inspires the remedy; but when the trumpet has
been sounded, and the battle set in array, and the victory only said and
sung in speeches, and newspaper paragraphs, and temperance odes, and
processions, then comes the return wave; people cry, Enough; the
community, vastly satisfied, lies down to sleep in its laurels; and then
comes the hour of danger.

But let not the man who has once been swept down the stream of
intemperate excitement, almost to the verge of ruin, dream of any point
of security for him. He is like one who has awakened in