Evil, be thou my good.'

This is a wild strain, but fit for me: do not seek for me, do not write:
nothing can save me."

Thus abruptly began and ended the letter that conveyed to Augusta the
death doom of her hopes. There are moments of agony when the most
worldly heart is pressed upward to God, even as a weight will force
upward the reluctant water. Augusta had been a generous, a high-minded,
an affectionate woman, but she had lived entirely for this world. Her
chief good had been her husband and her children. These had been her
pride, her reliance, her dependence. Strong in her own resources, she
had never felt the need of looking to a higher power for assistance and
happiness. But when this letter fell from her trembling hand, her heart
died within her at its wild and reckless bitterness.

In her desperation she looked up to God. "What have I to live for now?"
was the first feeling of her heart.

But she repressed this inquiry of selfish agony, and besought almighty
assistance to nerve her weakness; and here first began that practical
acquaintance with the truths and hopes of religion which changed her
whole character.

The possibility of blind, confiding idolatry of any earthly object was
swept away by the fall of her husband, and with the full energy of a
decided and desolate spirit, she threw herself on the protection of an
almighty Helper. She followed her husband to the city whither he had
gone, found him, and vainly attempted to save.

There were the usual alternations of short-lived reformations, exciting
hopes only to be destroyed. There was the gradual sinking of the body,
the decay of moral feeling and principle--the slow but sure approach of
disgusting animalism, which marks the progress of the drunkard.

It was some years after that a small and partly ruinous tenement in the
outskirts of A. received a new family. The group consisted of four
children, whose wan and wistful countenances, and still, unchildlike
deportment, testified an early acquaintance with want and sorrow. There
was the mother, faded and care-worn, whose dark and melancholy eyes,
pale cheeks, and compressed lips told of years of anxiety and endurance.
There was the father, with haggard face, unsteady step, and that
callous, reckless air, that betrayed long familiarity with degradation
and crime. Who, that had seen Edward Howard in the morning and freshness
of his days, could have recognized him in this miserable husband and
fathe