Sowing and Reaping - A Temperance Story | Page 2

the time may come when I shall feel that it was
one of the best investments I ever made. Stranger things than that have
happened. I confess that I felt the loss and it has somewhat cramped my
business. Yet if it was to do over again, I don't think that I would act
differently, and when I believe that Smith's death was hurried on by
anxiety and business troubles, while I regret the loss of my money, I
am thankful that I did not press my claim."
"Sour grapes, but you are right to put the best face on matters."
"No, if it were to do over again, I never would push a struggling man to

the wall when he was making a desperate fight for his wife and little
ones."
"Well! Paul, we are both young men just commencing life, and my
motto is to look out for Number 1, and you--"
"Oh! I believe in lending a helping hand."
"So do I, when I can make every corner out to my advantage. I believe
in every man looking out for himself."
You will see by the dialogue, that the characters I here introduce are the
antipodes of each other. They had both been pupils in the same school,
and in after life, being engaged as grocers, they frequently met and
renewed their acquaintance. They were both established in business,
having passed the threshold of that important event, "Setting out in
life." As far as their outward life was concerned, they were
acquaintances; but to each other's inner life they were strangers. John
Anderson has a fine robust constitution, good intellectual abilities, and
superior business faculties. He is eager, keen and alert, and if there is
one article of faith that moulds and colors all his life more than
anything else, it is a firm and unfaltering belief in the "main chance."
He has made up his mind to be rich, and his highest ideal of existence
may be expressed in four words--getting on in life. To this object, he is
ready to sacrifice time, talent, energy and every faculty, which he
possesses. Nay, he will go farther; he will spend honor, conscience and
manhood, in an eager search for gold. He will change his heart into a
ledger on which he will write tare and tret, loss and gain, exchange and
barter, and he will succeed, as worldly men count success. He will add
house to house; he will encompass the means of luxury; his purse will
be plethoric but, oh, how poverty stricken his soul will be. Costly
viands will please his taste, but unappeased hunger will gnaw at his
soul. Amid the blasts of winter he will have the warmth of Calcutta in
his home; and the health of the ocean and the breezes of the mountains
shall fan his brow, amid the heats of summer, but there will be a
coolness in his soul that no breath of summer can ever dispel; a fever in
his spirit that no frozen confection can ever allay; he shall be rich in
lands and houses, but fear of loss and a sense of poverty will poison the

fountains of his life; and unless he repent, he shall go out into the
eternities a pauper and a bankrupt.
Paul Clifford, whom we have also introduced to you, was the only son
of a widow, whose young life had been overshadowed by the curse of
intemperance. Her husband, a man of splendid abilities and magnificent
culture, had fallen a victim to the wine cup. With true womanly
devotion she had clung to him in the darkest hours, until death had
broken his hold in life, and he was laid away the wreck of his former
self in a drunkard's grave. Gathering up the remains of what had been
an ample fortune, she installed herself in an humble and unpretending
home in the suburbs of the city of B., and there with loving solicitude
she had watched over and superintended the education of her only son.
He was a promising boy, full [of?] life and vivacity, having inherited
much of the careless joyousness of his father's temperament; and
although he was the light and joy of his home, yet his mother
sometimes felt as if her heart was contracting with a spasm of agony,
when she remembered that it was through that same geniality of
disposition and wonderful fascination of manner, the tempter had
woven his meshes for her husband, and that the qualities that made him
so desirable at home, made him equally so to his jovial, careless,
inexperienced companions. Fearful that the appetite for strong drink
might have been transmitted to her child as a fatal legacy of sin, she
sedulously endeavored to develop within him self control, feeling that