“Mr. Gray, I cannot permit any one to speak to me thus.”

“Be not offended at me, John.  I utter but the truth.”

“I will not stand to be insulted by any one!” was the young man’s angry reply, as he turned suddenly away from his aged friend, and entered the drinking-house.  He did not go up at once to the bar, as had been his habit, but threw himself down upon one of the lounges, took up a newspaper, and commenced; or rather, appeared to commence reading, though he did not, in fact, see a letter.

“What will you have, Mr. Barclay?” asked an officious attendant, coming up, a few moments after he had entered.

“Nothing just now,” was the reply, made in a low tone, while his eyes were not lifted from the newspaper.  No very pleasant reflections were those that passed through his mind as he sat there.  At last he rose up quickly, as if a resolution, had been suddenly formed, and left the place where clustered so many temptations, with a hurried step.

“I want you to administer an oath,” he said, entering the office of an Alderman, a few minutes after.

“Very well, sir.  I am ready,” replied the Alderman.  “What is its nature?”

“I will give you the form.”

“Well?”

“I, John Barclay, do solemnly swear, that for six months from this hour, I will not taste a drop of any kind of liquor that intoxicates.”

“I wouldn’t take that oath, young man,” the Alderman said.

“Why not?”

“You had better go and join a temperance society.  Signing the pledge will be of as much avail.”

“No—­I will not sign a pledge never to drink again.  I’m not going to make a mere slave of myself.  I’ll swear off for six months.”

“Why not swear off perpetually, then?”

“Because, as I said, I am not going to make a slave of myself.  Six months of total-abstinence will give me a control over myself that I do not now possess.”

“I very much fear, sir,” urged the Alderman, notwithstanding he perceived that the young man was growing impatient—­“and you must pardon my freedom in saying so, that you will find yourself in error.  If you are already so much the slave of drink as to feel yourself compelled to have recourse to the solemnities of an oath to break away from its bewitching power, depend upon it, that no temporary expedient of this kind will be of any avail.  You will, no doubt, keep your oath religiously, but when its influence is withdrawn, you will find the strength of an unsupported resolution as weak as ever.”

“I do not believe the position you take to be a true one,” argued young Barclay—­“All I want is to get rid of present temptation, and to be freed from present associations.  Six months will place me beyond the reach of these, and then I shall be able to do right from an internal principle, and not from mere external restraint.”