tions--shall pass hand in hand through
life and lie down not reluctantly at its protracted close. To them the
past will be no turmoil of mad dreams, nor the future an eternity of
such moments as follow the delirium of the drunkard. Their dead faces
shall express what their spirits were and are to be by a lingering
smile of memory and hope.

Ahem! Dry work, this speechifying, especially to an unpractised
orator. I never conceived till now what toil the temperance lecturers
undergo for my sake; hereafter they shall have the business to
themselves.--Do, some kind Christian, pump a stroke or two, just to
wet my whistle.--Thank you, sir!--My dear hearers, when the world
shall have been regenerated by my instrumentality, you will collect
your useless vats and liquor-casks into one great pile and make a
bonfire in honor of the town-pump. And when I shall have decayed like
my predecessors, then, if you revere my memory, let a marble fountain
richly sculptured take my place upon this spot. Such monuments should
be erected everywhere and inscribed with the names of the
distinguished champions of my cause. Now, listen, for something very
important is to come next.

There are two or three honest friends of mine--and true friends I know
they are--who nevertheless by their fiery pugnacity in my behalf do
put me in fearful hazard of a broken nose, or even a total overthrow
upon the pavement and the loss of the treasure which I guard.--I pray
you, gentlemen, let this fault be amended. Is it decent, think you, to
get tipsy with zeal for temperance and take up the honorable cause of
the town-pump in the style of a toper fighting for his brandy-bottle?
Or can the excellent qualities of cold water be no otherwise
exemplified than by plunging slapdash into hot water and woefully
scalding yourselves and other people? Trust me, they may. In the moral
warfare which you are to wage--and, indeed, in the whole conduct of
your lives--you cannot choose a better example than myself, who have
never permitted the dust and sultry atmosphere, the turbulence and
manifold disquietudes, of the world around me to reach that deep, calm
well of purity which may be called my soul. And whenever I pour out
that soul, it is to cool earth's fever or cleanse its stains.

One o'clock! Nay, then, if the dinner-bell begins to speak, I may as
well hold my peace. Here comes a pretty young girl of my acquaintance
with a large stone pitcher for me to fill. May she draw