uttered a wild shriek, and fell down in a
fainting fit. From that period the balance of her mind was destroyed.
Long before this, her friends saw that reason wavered. Frank had been
her idol. A pure, bright, affectionate boy he was, when she removed
with him from their pleasant cottage-home, where all the surrounding
influences were good, into a tavern, where an angel could scarcely
remain without corruption. From the moment this change was decided on
by her husband, a shadow fell upon her heart. She saw, before her
husband, her children, and herself, a yawning pit, and felt that, in a
very few years, all of them must plunge down into its fearful darkness.

Alas! how quickly began the realization of her worst fears in the
corruption of her worshipped boy! And how vain proved all effort and
remonstrance, looking to his safety, whether made with himself or his
father! From the day the tavern was opened, and Frank drew into his
lungs full draughts of the changed atmosphere by which he was now
surrounded, the work of moral deterioration commenced. The very smell
of the liquor exhilarated him unnaturally; while the subjects of
conversation, so new to him, that found discussion in the bar-room,
soon came to occupy a prominent place in his imagination, to the
exclusion of those humane, child-like, tender, and heavenly thoughts
and impressions it had been the mother's care to impart and awaken. Ah!
with what an eager zest does the heart drink in of evil. And how almost
hopeless is the case of a boy, surrounded, as Frank was, by the
corrupting, debasing associations of a bar-room! Had his father
meditated his ruin, he could not have more surely laid his plans for
the fearful consummation; and he reaped as he had sown. With a selfish
desire to get gain, he embarked in the trade of corruption, ruin, and
death, weakly believing that he and his could pass through the fire
harmless. How sadly a few years demonstrated his error, we have seen.

Flora, I learned, was with her mother, devoting her life to her. The
dreadful death of Willy Hammond, for whom she had conceived a strong
attachment, came near depriving her of reason also. Since the day on
which that awful tragedy occurred, she had never even looked upon her
old home. She went away with her unconscious mother, and ever since had
remained with her--devoting her life to her comfort. Long before this,
all her own and mother's influence over her brother had come to an end.
It mat