THE HOME CIRCLE by H. E. Ward

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, Cal. · Nov 14, 1878

THE HOME CIRCLE.

By H. E. Ward

Temperance Story.

We were orphans, Minnie and I, and we lived in the great brown house just over the hill. Our parents had both been dead many, very many years, and having no other relatives that we knew of, we were left alone as it were, she at the age of fourteen, I, at the age of ten.

Yet not alone, for two old and faithful servitors of our father had remained with us, as they had ever stood by our family through good report and through ill, in prosperity and adversity. They asked no wages, else we should have been compelled to part with them, but from boyhood up I had resolved to repay them in some way, for the disinterested faithfulness which alone had enabled us to get along and maintain a semblance of respectability—which had enabled me to secure an education qualifying me for almost any part in life.

When I used to confide my day-dreams in boyhood to old Thomas and his wife, they used always to laugh, and declared that they should both find their last resting-place on earth long before I was old enough to enter into the stern realities of the great battle of life.

But as years passed, and I grew up to manhood's estate, they ceased to talk thus, only saying they were amply repaid for all their service by our gratitude, and the pleasure of serving us.

I had entered the profession of law, and was employed in pouring over old dusty volumes of eminent jurists, with an earnest determination to overcome every impediment to my progress, when the advance waves of the great temperance reform which swept over the country just after John Hawkins and his confreres had signed the pledge in the Baltimore bar-room, and when the gentleman who spoke in our village said that more laborers were needed, a sudden desire to benefit my fellow-men rushed over me, and forgetting Coke, and Blackstone, and Littleton, I dropped my law books and entered the temperance field as a lecturer.

I became successful at once, beyond my most sanguine expectations. Thousands thronged to hear me speak, and old men, degraded by long years of inebriation, as well as many of those who were comparatively but just entering the fatal path, came forward tearfully to sign the redeeming pledge.

At last I was called to go to the metropolis, and there the way I was to reward the kind friends, who under the name of servants had remained steadfast through our season of adversity, came upon me like a flash. Old Thomas and Mary once had a son, a truly noble-hearted boy, yet wayward, who had for some petty misdemeanor fallen under the ban of the law, and had fled from his home to the vast Babylon whither I was going. They had heard from him but once after he went away, and then he had written them that he had been involved in the vortex of intoxication and that they must forget one who was unworthy of their love.

I was old enough when this letter was written to comprehend its purport, its wild despairing pathos, and the agony which they endured.

Now, I resolved to seek him if he were yet living, though to search for him within the immense city seemed almost a task of utter hopelessness. I resolved to seek him and save him, were it possible.

Fortified with my resolution, I searched the city, and a wearisome task it was, but I found him at last, in one of the lowest purlieus, plunged deep into the great gulf of shame and misery which surrounds the drunkard and the sot.

I found him, and then commenced my herculean task of reclaiming one who seemed to have lost all sense of honor, all manhood, and even all shame. Many times the case seemed hopeless, but remembering the debt of gratitude to his aged father and mother, I did not yield one moment to despair.

At last my efforts were successful. We had held an unusually interesting meeting near the Five Points, and at its close many came forward to sign the pledge, and he came also, and I saw at once a look in his eye I had never seen before—a look which told me he would keep it.

I waited and saw the firmness of his resolution put to the test—waited until I was sure he was saved, and then I went South to continue the work. It was in 1860, and the war clouds were already gathering upon the horizon of our nationality.

Ere my work was completed they broke in a dreadful storm of fratricidal war, and then for terrible days, and months, and years, I found myself isolated from my home—shut in with the ambition-blinded men of the confederacy.

During all this time I received no word from home, nor was I able to communicate with any beyond "the lines." I knew not what had become of my sister, I could form no conjecture in relation to the state of affairs at the North, and I suffered the keenest agony to think that when the hour of my deliverance should come, she might be in her grave, and my former friends gone forever.

I rejoiced when I was pressed into the southern army, because I believed it would afford me an opportunity to escape by desertion. But I was closely watched, and it was a long time before the opportunity came, as it finally did.

I did not tarry long after finding myself once more under the glorious folds of the stars and stripes before I hurried to the village we called our home.

And fervently did I thank God that my sister was still spared. But I found many changes had taken place during the long, dark interval since 1860. Old Thomas and his wife were now sleeping side by side in the green churchyard, dying rejoicingly over their son "who was lost, and had been found"—who had returned in season to comfort them, as hand in hand they descended together into the shadows of the dark valley. And my name lingered gratefully upon their lips as when dying they held the hand of the reclaimed one within their own, and bade him ever stand by the cause and the men that carried the glad news of redemption to the poor victims of the hydra-evil.

And Minnie, my sister. She was indeed changed from the gay-hearted, blithesome girl I had left when I went away.

She had been married a year, she informed me, and declared that wifely cares had made her more sober, and that was all; but I, looking through the sharpened eyes of love, could plainly see that there was something deeper than that—something in her home that was not as it should be.

I did not discover the real trouble for a long while, but one day a certain unsteadiness in her husband's gait revealed the key to the whole matter, and it was that my brother-in-law was a drunkard.

I had seen him enough to know that he was naturally an excellent and kind-hearted man, and I knew she almost idolized him. But he had ventured within the meshes of the tempter's snare, and had fallen.

Of course I went to work with all the power I possessed to effect his redemption, but for some reason which I did not understand, every effort seemed unavailing. My almost frantic appeals only seemed to deepen his craving for the intoxicating cup, and I was compelled at last to almost despair.

Then it was that the son of old Thomas and Mary, the man I had rescued from degradation in New York, came forward in a new and unexpected guise.

For, after the death of his parents, moved by their last request, he had resolved that ignorant and unlettered as he was, he would enter the temperance field as a lecturer, and he hoped by telling his own story in the simplest language, to be able to reach many whom a man never under the power of the demon could not.

He had soon proved himself really eloquent, and was now one of the most popular and effective speakers in the State. The organization under whose auspices he was acting, as I must believe through a special Providence, chanced to send him to our village.

I happened to be present at an assembly where he was to lecture, he saw me and came to speak with me. I related to him the peculiarities of my brother-in-law's case, and my inability to help him.

"Is he here?" he inquired.

"He is here," I replied.

"Then God helping me I will save him," he said, casting his eyes heavenward.

And giving me one more cordial clasp of the hand, he returned to the platform and began to speak.

Seldom have I listened to such words of burning eloquence as fell from his lips that night. I was wrapt—carried away as it were by the irresistible torrent of his soul-moving utterance, until I forgot everything, save that the speaker's lips seemed touched with a coal from the altar, like unto that Ezekiel saw in the vision.

First he pictured the downward career of the inebriate, from the time of his taking the first glass, in colors beside which all the words I had ever uttered on the subject seemed as but mockery. Then he portrayed the fearful power of appetite over its luckless victim with a lucidness and force which thrilled and melted every heart, and caused sympathetic tears to gush from eyes long unused to weep. Then he spoke of the awful struggles of the drunkard trying to reform, and his need of every earthly encouragement, as well as guidance from above.

Then after telling of his own redemption, he begged if there were any in all that audience who had fallen like him, who had suffered as he had, and who wished to begin over, that they would come forward and sign the pledge.

His language had been simple throughout, and his closing appeal was broken by sobs, but it came from the heart and went to the hearts of his hearers.

How I thanked God, by whose aid I had rescued this man from the living death of the drunkard—who had given me the perseverance to overcome all difficulties in saving him.

Ah! And I thanked him again, still more fervently, when I saw my poor inebriate brother-in-law rise erect from his seat in an obscure corner of the hall, and go up to the stand with such a look of resolution upon his countenance as I had never seen upon it, and in a firm bold hand, affix his signature.

My heart was full to overflowing, and I scarcely saw the many who followed his example, for the blinding tears of joy.

And when at the close of the meeting the speaker came to take my hand for adieu, I could not speak. But I pressed his hand in a clasp that meant more than words could express, and felt my eyes suffuse with tears.

He understood me, and merely saying, while a radiant smile spread over his face like a halo, "Your brother-in-law is saved," passed on.

He was saved. I, who had never known the awful reality of the drunkard's passion for liquor, had been powerless to move him, but before the earnest words of one who had passed through the same ordeal, his heart had responded in a chord of sympathy.

The demon who had so long threatened the home of my sister had been driven forth forever, and in its place came peace and the joy of a newer, purer life. And to-day there is not a happier household in the land than her's, nor a brother-in-law of whom one has more reason to be proud than I of mine.

Truly in our efforts to benefit others we often are benefiting ourselves when we least surmise it—the bread we cast upon the waters will often return to gladden our hearts when in sorest need.—H. E. Ward.