Frank Oldfield | Page 8

say what it was not
than what it was. Let us follow the owner himself as he comes in from
his work, jaded and heart-sore, the night after Samuel's departure.
The house is the worst in the row, for it is the cheapest--the tyrant
"Drink" will not let his slave afford a better. The front door opens
opposite the high dead wall of another block of houses, so that very
little daylight comes in at the sunniest of times--no loss, perhaps, as the
sunshine would only make misery, dirt, and want more apparent. A
rush-bottomed chair--or rather the mutilated framework of one, the seat
being half rotted through, and the two uppermost bars broken off with a
jagged fracture--lies sufficiently across the entrance to throw down any
unwary visitor. A rickety chest of drawers--most of the knobs being
gone and their places supplied by strings, which look like the tails of
rats which had perished in effecting an entrance--stands tipped on one
side against the wall, one of its legs having disappeared. A little further
on is a blank corner, where a clock used to be, as may be traced by the
clusters of cobwebs in two straight lines, one up either wall, which
have never been swept away since the clock was sold for drink. A
couch-chair extends under the window the whole length, but one of its
arms is gone, and the stump which supported it thrusts up its ragged top
to wound any hand that may incautiously rest there; the couch itself is
but a tumbled mass of rags and straw. A table, nearly as dilapidated,
and foul with countless beer-stains, stands before the fire, which is the
only cheerful thing in the house, and blazes away as if it means to do its
best to make up for the very discouraging state of things by which it
finds itself surrounded. The walls of the room have been coloured, or
rather discoloured, a dirty brown, all except the square portion over the

fire-place, which was once adorned with a gay paper, but whose
brilliancy has long been defaced by smoke and grease. A broken pipe
or two, a couple of irons, and a brass candlestick whose shaft leans
considerably out of the perpendicular, occupy the mantelpiece. An old
rocking-chair and two or three common ones extremely infirm on their
legs, complete the furniture. The walls are nearly bare of ornament; the
exceptions being a highly-coloured print of a horse-race, and a sampler
worked by Betty, rendered almost invisible by dust. The door into the
wash-house stands ajar, and through it may be seen on the slop-stone a
broken yellow mug; and near it a tub full of clothes, from which there
dribbles a soapy little puddle on to the uneven flags, just deep enough
to float an unsavoury-looking mixture of cheese-rinds and
potato-parings. Altogether, the appearance of the house is gaunt, filthy,
and utterly comfortless. Such is the drunkard's home.
Into this miserable abode stepped Johnson the night after his son's
disappearance, and divesting himself of his pit-clothes, threw them
down in an untidy mass before the fire. Having then washed himself
and changed his dress, he sat him down for a minute or two, while his
wife prepared the comfortless tea. But he could not rest. He started up
again, and with a deep sigh turned to the door.
"Where are you going?" cried his wife; "you mustn't go without your
tea; yon chaps at the `George' don't want you."
"I'm not going to the `George,'" replied Thomas; "I just want a word
with Ned Brierley."
"Ned Brierley!" exclaimed Alice; "why, he's the bigoted'st teetottaller
in the whole village. You're not going to sign the pledge?"
"No, I'm not; but 'twould have been the making on us all if I had signed
years ago;--no, I only just want a bit of talk with Ned about our
Sammul;" and he walked out.
Ned Brierley was just what Alice Johnson, and scores more too, called
him, a bigoted teetotaller, or, as he preferred to call himself total
abstainer. He was bigoted; in other words, he had not taken up total

abstinence by halves. He neither tasted the drink himself, nor gave it to
his friends, nor allowed it an entrance into his house. Of course,
therefore, he was bigoted in the eyes of those who could not or would
not understand his principles. But the charge of bigotry weighed very
lightly on him; he could afford to bear it; he had a living antidote to the
taunt daily before his eyes in a home without a cloud, an ever- cheerful
wife, healthy, hearty, striving, loving sons and daughters. And, best of
all, Ned was a Christian, not of the talk-much-and-do- little stamp, nor
of the pot-political-mend-the-world stamp. He loved God,