The thorn and the thistle harvest that society reaps every year is fearfully great, and the seed from which too large a portion of this harvest comes is its drinking customs.  Men of observation and intelligence everywhere give this testimony with one consent.  All around us, day and night, year by year, in palace and hovel, the gathering of this sad and bitter harvest goes on—­the harvest of broken hearts and ruined lives.  And still the hand of the sower is not stayed.  Refined and lovely women and men of low and brutal instincts, church members and scoffers at religion, stately gentlemen and vulgar clowns, are all at work sowing the baleful seed that ripens, alas! too quickly its fruit of woe.  The home saloon vies with the common licensed saloon in its allurements and attractions, and men who would think themselves degraded by contact with those who for gain dispense liquor from a bar have a sense of increased respectability as they preside over the good wine and pure spirits they offer to their guests in palace homes free of cost.

We are not indulging in forms of rhetoric.  To do so would only weaken the force of our warning.  What we have written is no mere fancy work.  The pictures thrown upon our canvas with all the power of vivid portraiture that we possess are but feeble representations of the tragic scenes that are enacted in society year by year, and for which every, member of society who does not put his hand to the work of reform is in some degree responsible.

We are not developing a romance, but trying, as just said, to give from real life some warning pictures.  Our task is nearly done.  A few more scenes, and then our work will be laid for the present aside.

There are men who never seem to comprehend the lesson of events or to feel the pressure of personal responsibility.  They drift with the tide, doing as their neighbors do, and resting satisfied.  The heroism of self-sacrifice or self-denial is something to which they cannot rise.  Nothing is farther from their ambition than the role of a reformer.  Comfortable, self-indulgent, placid, they move with the current and manage to keep away from its eddies.  Such a man was Mr. Birtwell.  He knew of some of the disasters that followed so closely upon his grand entertainment, but refused to connect therewith any personal responsibility.  It was unfortunate, of course, that these things should have happened with him, but he was no more to blame for them than if they had happened with his neighbor across the way.  So he regarded the matter.  But not so Mrs. Birtwell.  As we have seen, a painful sense of responsibility lay heavily upon her heart.

The winter that followed was a gay one, and many lag entertainments were given.  The Birtwells always had a party, and this party was generally the event of the season, for Mr. Birtwell liked eclat and would get it if possible.  Time passed, and Mrs. Birtwell, who had sent regrets to more than half the entertainments to which they received invitations said nothing.