Sweet Cicely | Page 5

dissipated. And he wanted Paul's company, and he
wanted Paul's money; and he had a chin himself, and knew how to
manage them that hadn't any.
Wall, Cicely and his mother tried to keep Paul from that bad influence.
But he said it would look shabby to not take any notice of a man
because he wus down in the world. He wouldn't have much to do with
him, but it wouldn't do to not notice him at all. How curius, that out of
good comes bad, and out of bad, good. That was a good-natured idee of
Paul's if he had had a chin that could have held up his principle; but he
didn't.
So he gradually fell under the old influence again. He didn't mean to.
He hadn't no idee of doin' so when he begun. It was the chin.
He begun to drink hard, spent his nights in the saloon,
gambled,--slipped right down the old, smooth track worn by millions of

jest such weak feet, towards ruin. And Cicely couldn't hold him back
after he had got to slippin': her arms wuzn't strong enough.
She went to the saloon-keeper, and cried, and begged of him not to sell
her husband any more liquor. He was very polite to her, very courteous:
everybody was to Cicely. But in a polite way he told her that Paul wus
his best customer, and he shouldn't offend him by refusing to sell him
liquor. She knelt at his feet, I hearn,--her little, tender limbs on that
rough floor before that evil man,--and wept, and said,--
"For the sake of her boy, wouldn't he have mercy on the boy's father."
But in a gentle way he gave her to understand that he shouldn't make no
change.
And he told her, speakin' in a dretful courteous way, "that he had the
law on his side: he had a license, and he should keep right on as he was
doing."
[Illustration: CICELY IN THE SALOON.]
And so what could Cicely do? And time went on, carryin' Paul further
and further down the road that has but one ending. Lower and lower he
sunk, carryin' her heart, her happiness, her life, down with him.
And they said one cold night Paul didn't come home at all, and Cicely
and his mother wus half crazy; and they wus too proud, to the last, to
tell the servants more than they could help: so, when it got to be most
mornin', them two delicate women started out through the deep snow,
to try to find him, tremblin' at every little heap of snow that wus
tumbled up in the path in front of 'em; tremblin' and sick at heart with
the agony and dread that wus rackin' their souls, as they would look
over the cold fields of snow stretching on each side of the road, and
thinkin' how that face would look if it wus lying there staring with
lifeless eyes up towards the cold moonlight,--the face they had kissed,
the face they had loved,--and thinkin', too, that the change that had
come to it--was comin' to it all the time--was more cruel and hopeless
than the change of death.

So they went on, clear to the saloon; and there they found him,--there
he lay, perfectly stupid, and dead with liquor.
And they both, the broken-hearted mother and the broken-hearted wife,
with the tears running down their white cheeks, besought the
saloon-keeper to let him alone from that night.
The mother says, "Paul is so good, that if you did not tempt him, entice
him here, he would, out of pity to us, stop his evil ways."
And the saloon-keeper was jest as polite as any man wus ever seen to
be,-- took his hat off while he told 'em, so I hearn, "that he couldn't go
against his own interests: if Paul chose to spend his money there, he
should take it."
"Will you break our hearts?" cried the mother.
"Will you ruin my husband, the father of my boy?" sobbed out Cicely,
her big, sorrowful eyes lookin' right through his soul--if he had a soul.
And then the man, in a pleasant tone, reminded 'em,--
"That it wuzn't him that wus a doin' this. It wus the law: if they wanted
things changed, they must look further than him. He had a license. The
great Government of the United States had sold him, for a few dollars,
the right to do just what he was doing. The law, and all the
respectability that the laws of our great and glorious Republic can give,
bore him out in all his acts. The law was responsible for all the
consequenses of his acts: the men were responsible who voted for
license--it was not him."
"But you can do