in your hand.
He wavers, but you urge him--
Drink, pledge me just this one!
And he takes the glass and drains it,
And the hellish work is done.

And next I will paint a drunkard--
Only a year has flown,
But into that loathsome creature
The fair young boy has grown.
The work was sure and rapid.
I will paint him as he lies
In a torpid, drunken slumber,
Under the wintry skies.

I will paint the form of the mother
As she kneels at her darling's side,
Her beautiful boy that was dearer
Than all the world beside.
I will paint the shape of a coffin,
Labelled with one word--"Lost"
I will paint all this, rumseller,
And will paint it free of cost.

The sin and the shame and the sorrow,
The crime and the want and the woe
That are born there in your workshop,
No hand can paint, you know.
But I'll paint you a sign, rumseller,
And many shall pause to view
This wonderful swinging signboard,
So terribly, fearfully true.

A MAN'S REPENTANCE
(Intended for recitation at club dinners.)

To-night when I came from the club at eleven,
Under the gaslight I saw a face--
A woman's face! and I swear to heaven
It looked like the ghastly ghost of--Grace!

And Grace? why, Grace was fair; and I tarried,
And loved her a season as we men do.
And then--but pshaw! why, of course, she is married,
Has a husband, and doubtless a babe or two.

She was perfectly calm on the day we parted;
She spared me a scene, to my great surprise.
"She wasn't the kind to be broken-hearted,"
I remember she said, with a spark in her eyes.

I was tempted, I know, by her proud defiance,
To make good my promise there and then.
But the world would have called it a mesalliance!
I dreaded the comments and sneers of men.

So I left her to grieve for a faithless lover,
And to hide her heart from the cold world's sight
As women do hide them, the wide earth over;
My God! _was_ it Grace that I saw to-night?

I thought of her married, and often with pity,
A poor man's wife in some dull place.
And now to know she is here in the city,
Under the gaslight, and with _that_ face!

Yet I knew it at once, in spite of the daubing
Of paint and powder, and she knew me;
She drew a quick breath that was almost sobbing
And shrank in the shade so I should not see.

There was hell in her eyes! She was worn and jaded
Her soul is at war with the life she has led.
As I looked o