e drunkard--I differ with her in the remedy proposed.

If drunkenness were irremediable, and beyond the reach of legislation,
then would I accept her remedy as the final resort. But regarding
divorce as, at best, only affording a choice of evils, and drunkenness
as equally within the power of legislation, I propose that drunkenness
be legislated out of existence, and thus the necessity for divorce,
which it creates, be avoided.

Let a thoroughly prohibitive law destroy the traffic, and the drunkard
will be found "clothed" again and "in his right mind." It will come to
this glorious consummation at last; and, though years may intervene,
it becomes us to act with reference to the discerned future, and
beware that transient evils do not betray us into planting life-long
regrets. Allow me to illustrate my idea by narrating incidents of a
case in point, and which is inwoven with the recollections and
tenderest sympathies of my whole life.

The young and lovely mother of five little ones procured a divorce
from her husband, whose incompetency and unkindness was the result
solely of intemperance, and that intemperance the consequence of his
strong social bias and inability to resist the temptations of a
period, when every man put the bottle to his neighbor's month as proof
of his generosity, his friendship, and his good-breeding. His father,
on whom the family were dependent for support, urged it upon the wife,
as a duty to her children and due to her own self-respect, to procure
a divorce, when, at last, the miserable husband had been sent to
prison for a forgery, involving a small sum, and which he had thought
to meet--before the note came to maturity--undetected.

She submitted, and, before the period of his imprisonment expired,
married again, by the advice and persuasion of her kind father-in-law,
to a wealthy and excellent man, who offered a father's care and home
to her children, in proof of his affection for herself. But the heart
never yielded its first love; and, when more than twenty years had
passed, she confessed to a friend "that, should he reform at the
eleventh hour, she must be the most wretched of women." He did reform!
and for many years has exhibited those cheerful graces of the
Christian, which, added to his naturally amiable disposition and
unselfish deportment, make his three-score and tenth year seem rather
the morning than the evening of a life, stretching far away into the
glories of eternity.