One of the boys who attended the same school with me, and whose father’s residence was very near my father’s, was, even at that early period, both vulgar and profane in his talk.  He seemed destitute of all sense and propriety, caring nothing for what was due from him to others, and equally regardless of the good-will of his teacher and of his companions.  When I returned to the place, after a few years’ absence, and inquired for him, I was told that he was growing up, or rather had grown up, in habits of vice, which seemed likely to render him an outlaw from all decent society:  that even then he had no associates except from the very dregs of the community.  In my visits to my native place ever since, I have kept my eye upon him, as a sad illustration of the progress of sin.  He has been for many years—­I cannot say an absolute sot—­but yet an intemperate drinker.  He has always been shockingly profane; not only using the profane expressions that are commonly heard in the haunts of wickedness, but actually putting his invention to the rack to originate expressions more revolting, if possible, than anything to be found in the acknowledged vocabulary of blasphemy.  He has been through life an avowed infidel—­not merely a deist, but a professed atheist,—­laughing at the idea both of a God and a hereafter; though his skepticism, instead of being the result of inquiry or reflection, or being in any way connected with it, is evidently the product of unrestrained vicious indulgence.  His domestic relations have been a channel of grief and mortification to those who have been so unfortunate as to be associated with him.  His wife, if she is still living, lives with a broken heart, and the time has been when she has dreaded the sound of his footsteps.  His children, notwithstanding the brutalizing influence to which they have been subjected, have, by no means, sunk down to his standard of corruption; and some of them at least would seem ready to hang their heads when they call him “father.”  I cannot at this moment think of a more loathsome example of moral debasement than this person presents.  I sometimes meet him, and from early associations, even take his hand; but I never do it without feeling myself in contact with the very personification of depravity.

Now, I am not surprised at all this, when I go back to the time when he had a mother, and remember what sort of a mother she was.  She was coarse and vulgar in her habits; and I well recollect that the interior of her dwelling was so neglected, that it scarcely rose above a decent stable.  The secret of this, and most of her other delinquencies was, that she was a lover of intoxicating drinks.  I believe she sometimes actually made a beast of herself; but oftener drank only so much as to make her silly and ridiculous.  It happened in her case, as in many similar ones, that her fits of being intoxicated were fits of being religious; and though, when she was herself, she never, to my knowledge, made any demonstrations of piety or devotion; yet the moment her tongue became too large for her mouth, she was sure to use it in the most earnest and glowing religious professions.  A stranger might have taken her at such a time for a devoted Christian; but alas! her religion was only that of a wretched inebriate.