When under the influence of liquor, he would pass me in the streets with his head down, a deeper flush mantling his cheek as he hurried by with unsteady step.  Sometimes I met him staggering homeward through a back street, hiding from the gaze of men.  He was at first shy of me when sober, but gradually the constraint wore off, and he seemed disposed to draw nearer to me, as in the old days.  His struggle went on, days of drunkenness following weeks of soberness, his haggard face after each debauch wearing a look of unspeakable weariness and wretchedness.  One of the lawyers who had led him into the mazes of doubt—­a man of large and versatile gifts, whose lips were touched with a noble and persuasive eloquence—­sunk deeper and deeper into the black depths of drunkenness, until the tragedy ended in a horror that lessened the gains of the saloons for at least a few days.  He was found dead in his bed one morning in a pool of blood, his throat cut by his own guilty hand.

My friend had married a lovely girl, and the cottage in which they lived was one of the coziest, and the garden in front was a little paradise of neatness and beauty.  Ah!  I must drop a veil over a part of this true tale.  All along I have written under half protest, the image of a sad, wistful face rising at times between my eyes and the sheet on which these words are traced.  They loved each other tenderly and deeply, and both were conscious of the presence of the devil that was turning their heaven into hell.

“Save him, Doctor, save him!  He is the noblest of men, and the tenderest, truest husband.  He loves you, and he will let you talk to him.  Save him, O save him!  Help me to pray for him!  My heart will break!”

Poor child! her loving heart was indeed breaking; and her fresh young life was crushed under a weight of grief and shame too heavy to be borne.

What he said to me in the interviews held in his sober intervals I have not the heart to repeat now.  He still fought against his enemy; he still buffeted the billows that were going over him, though with feebler stroke.  When their little child died, her tears fell freely, but he was like one stunned.  Stony and silent he stood and saw the little grave filled up, and rode away tearless, the picture of hopelessness.

By a coincidence; after my return to San Francisco, he came thither, and again became my neighbor at North Beach.  I went up to see him one evening.  He was very feeble, and it was plain that the end was not far off.  At the first glance I saw that a great change had taken place in him.

He had found his lost self.  The strong drink was shut out from him, and he was shut in with his better thoughts and with God.  His religious life rebloomed in wondrous beauty and sweetness.  The blossoms of his early joy had fallen off, the storms had torn its branches and stripped it of its foliage, but its root had never perished, because he had never ceased to struggle for deliverance.  Aspiration and hope live or die together in the human soul.  The link that bound my friend to God was never wholly sundered.  His better nature clung to the better way with a grasp that never let go altogether.