New Temperance Tales. No. 1: The Son of My Friend | Page 3

enough to join his regiment, it was mustered out of service.
Albert Martindale left his home, as did thousands of other young men,
with his blood untouched by the fire of alcohol, and returned from the
war, as thousands of other young men returned, with its subtle poison
in all his veins.
The dread of this very thing had haunted his mother during all the years
of his absence in the army.
"Oh, Agnes," she had often said to me, with eyes full of tears, "it is not
the dread of his death that troubles me most. I have tried to adjust that
sad event between myself and God. In our fearful crisis he belongs to
his country. I could not withhold him, though my heart seemed
breaking when I let him go. I live in the daily anticipation of a telegram
announcing death or a terrible wound. Yet that is not the thing of fear I
dread; but something worse--his moral defection. I would rather he fell
in battle than come home to me with manhood wrecked. What I most
dread is intemperance. There is so much drinking among officers. It is
the curse of our army. I pray that he may escape; yet weep, and tremble,
and fear while I pray. Oh, my friend I think his fall into this terrible
vice would kill me."
Alas for my friend! Her son came home to her with tainted breath and
fevered blood. It did not kill her. Love held her above despair, and gave
her heart a new vitality. She must be a savior; not a weak mourner over
wrecked hopes.
With what a loving care and wise discretion did she set herself to work
to withdraw her son from the dangerous path in which his feet were

walking! and she would have been successful, but for one thing. The
customs of society were against her. She could not keep him away from
the parties and evening entertainments of her friends; and here all the
good resolutions she had led him to make were as flax fibres in the
flame of a candle. He had no strength to resist when wine sparkled and
flashed all around him, and bright eyes and ruby lips invited him to
drink. It takes more than ordinary firmness of principle to abstain in a
fashionable company of ladies and gentlemen, where wine and brandy
flow as water. In the case of Albert Martindale, two things were against
him. He was not strong enough to set himself against any tide of
custom, in the first place; and in the second, he had the allurement of
appetite.
I knew all this, when, with my own hand, I wrote on one of our cards of
invitation, "Mr. and Mrs. Martindale and family;" but did not think of it,
until the card was written. As I laid it aside with the rest, the truth
flashed on me and sent a thrill of pain along every nerve. My heart
grew sick and my head faint, as thoughts of the evil that might come to
the son of my friend, in consequence of the temptation I was about to
throw in his way, rushed through my mind. My first idea was to recall
the card, and I lifted it from the table with a half-formed resolution to
destroy it. But a moment's reflection changed this purpose. I could not
give a large entertainment and leave out my nearest friend and her
family.
The pain and wild agitation of that moment were dreadful. I think all
good spirits and angels that could get near my conscious life strove
with me, for the sake of a soul in peril, to hold me back from taking
another step in the way I was going; for it was not yet too late to
abandon the party.
When, after a long struggle with right convictions, I resumed my work
of filling up the cards of invitation, I had such a blinding headache that
I could scarcely see the letters my pen was forming; and when the task
was done, I went to bed, unable to bear up against the double burden of
intense bodily and mental anguish.
The cards went out, and the question of the party was settled beyond

recall. But that did not soothe the disquietude of my spirit. I felt the
perpetual burden of a great and troubling responsibility. Do what I
would, there was for me no ease of mind. Waking or sleeping, the
thought of Albert Martindale and his mother haunted me continually.
At last the evening came, and our guests began to arrive, in party
dresses and party faces, richly attired, smiling and gracious. Among the
earliest were Mr. and Mrs. Martindale, their son and daughter.
The light in my friend's