“You will ask, where did I get them?” (his new house, furniture, &c.) “I’ll tell you, boy.  These are part payment for my liberty, that I signed away.  Didn’t I sell it at a bargain?  But this is not all.  I’ve got my shop back again, with a good run of custom—­am ten years younger than I was a year ago—­have got the happiest wife and the smartest boy in all creation—­and don’t care a snap for anybody!  So now, S. come down here; bring your wife, and all the responsibilities, and I’ll tell you the whole story—­but I can’t write. Hurrah for slavery! Good bye!

JIM BRADDOCK.”

THE FAIR TEMPTER

OR, WINE ON THE WEDDING-NIGHT.

“WHAT will you take, Haley?”

“A glass of water.”

“Nonsense!  Say, what will you take?”

“A glass of water.  I don’t drink anything stronger.”

“Not a teetotaller?  Ha! ha! ha!” rejoined the young man’s companion, laughing in mingled mirth and ridicule.

“Yes, a teetotaller, if you please,” replied the one called Haley.—­“Or anything else you choose to denominate me.”

“You’re a member of a temperance society, then? ha! ha!”

“No, I am not.”

“Don’t belong to the cold-water men?”

“No.”

“Then come along and drink with me!  Here, what will you take?”

“Nothing at all, unless it be a glass of water.  As I have just said, I drink nothing stronger.”

“What’s the reason?”

“I feel as well—­indeed, a great deal better without it.”

“That’s all nonsense!  Come, take a julep, or a brandy-punch with me.”

“No, Loring, I cannot.”

“I shall take it as an offence, if you do not.”

“I mean no offence, and shall be sorry, if you construe into one an act not so intended.  Drink if you wish to drink, but leave me in freedom to decline tasting liquor if I choose.”

“Well, you are a strange kind of a genius, Haley—­, but I believe I like you too well to get mad with you, although I generally take a refusal to drink with one as an insult, unless I know the person to have joined a temperance society,—­and then I should deem the insult on my part, were I to urge him to violate his pledge.  But I wonder you have never joined yourself to some of these ultra reformers—­these teetotallers, as they call themselves.”

“I have never done so,—­and never intend doing so.  It is sufficient for me to decline drinking, because I do not believe that stimulating beverages are good for the body or mind.  I act from principle in this matter, and, therefore, want no external restraints.”

“Then you are determined not to drink with me?”

“O, yes, I will drink with you.”

“Cold-water?”

“Of course.”

“One julep, and a glass of Adam’s-ale,” said Loring, turning to the bar-keeper.

They were soon presented, glasses touched, heads bobbed, and the contents of the two tumblers poured down their respective gullets.