Sowing and Reaping - A Temperance Story | Page 5

but before then
your glad light eyes will be dim with tears, and the easy path you have
striven to walk will be thickly strewn with thorn; and whether you
deserve it or not, life will have for you a mournful earnestness, but
notwithstanding all your frivolity and flippancy there is fine gold in
your character, which the fire of affliction only will reveal."

Chapter III
[Text missing.]

Chapter IV
"How is business?"
"Very dull, I am losing terribly."

"Any prospect of times brightening?"
"I don't see my way out clear; but I hope there will be a change for the
better. Confidence has been greatly shaken, men of[?] business have
grown exceedingly timid about investing and there is a general
depression in every department of trade and business."
"Now Paul will you listen to reason and common sense? I have a
proposition to make. I am about to embark in a profitable business, and
I know that it will pay better than anything else I could undertake in
these times. Men will buy liquor if they have not got money for other
things. I am going to open a first class saloon, and club-house, on M.
Street, and if you will join with me we can make a splendid thing of it.
Why just see how well off Joe Harden is since he set up in the business;
and what airs he does put on! I know when he was not worth fifty
dollars, and kept a little low groggery on the corner of L. and S. Streets,
but he is out of that now--keeps a first class Cafe, and owns a block of
houses. Now Paul, here is a splendid chance for you; business is dull,
and now accept this opening. Of course I mean to keep a first class
saloon. I don't intend to tolerate loafing, or disorderly conduct, or to
sell to drunken men. In fact, I shall put up my scale of prices so that
you need fear no annoyance from rough, low, boisterous men who don't
know how to behave themselves. What say you, Paul?"
"I say, no! I wouldn't engage in such a business, not if it paid me a
hundred thousand dollars a year. I think these first class saloons are just
as great a curse to the community as the low groggeries, and I look
upon them as the fountain heads of the low groggeries. The man who
begins to drink in the well lighted and splendidly furnished saloon is in
danger of finishing in the lowest dens of vice and shame."
"As you please," said John Anderson stiffly, "I thought that as business
is dull that I would show you a chance, that would yield you a
handsome profit; but if you refuse, there is no harm done. I know
young men who would jump at the chance."
You may think it strange that knowing Paul Clifford as John Anderson
did, that he should propose to him an interest in a drinking saloon; but

John Anderson was a man who was almost destitute of faith in human
goodness. His motto was that "every man has his price," and as
business was fairly dull, and Paul was somewhat cramped for want of
capital, he thought a good business investment would be the price for
Paul Clifford's conscientious scruples.
"Anderson," said Paul looking him calmly in the face, "you may call
me visionary and impracticable; but I am determined however poor I
may be, never to engage in any business on which I cannot ask God's
blessing. And John I am sorry from the bottom of my heart, that you
have concluded to give up your grocery and keep a saloon. You cannot
keep that saloon without sending a flood of demoralizing influence
over the community. Your profit will be the loss of others. Young men
will form in that saloon habits which will curse and overshadow all
their lives. Husbands and fathers will waste their time and money, and
confirm themselves in habits which will bring misery, crime, and
degradation; and the fearful outcome of your business will be broken
hearted wives, neglected children, outcast men, blighted characters and
worse than wasted lives. No not for the wealth of the Indies, would I
engage in such a ruinous business, and I am thankful today that I had a
dear sainted mother who taught me that it was better to have my hands
clear than to have them full. How often would she lay her dear hands
upon my head, and clasp my hands in hers and say, 'Paul, I want you to
live so that you can always feel that there is no eye before whose
glance you will shrink, no voice from whose tones your heart will quail,
because your