“Of little value, my friend, will be, in far too many cases, your precepts, if temptation invites our sons at almost every step of their way through life.  Thousands have fallen, and thousands are now tottering, soon to fall.  Your sons are not safe; nor are mine.  We cannot tell the day nor the hour when they may weakly yield to the solicitation of some companion, and enter the wide open door of ruin.  And are we wise and good citizens to commission men to do the evil work of enticement—­to encourage them to get gain in corrupting and destroying our children?  To hesitate over some vague ideal of human liberty when the sword is among us, slaying our best and dearest?  Sir! while you hold back from the work of staying the flood that is desolating our fairest homes, the black waters are approaching your own doors.”

There was a startling emphasis in the tones with which this last sentence was uttered; and I do not wonder at the look of anxious alarm that it called to the face of him whose fears it was meant to excite.

“What do you mean, sir?” was inquired.

“Simply, that your sons are in equal danger with others.”

“And is that all?”

“They have been seen, of late, in the bar-room of the ’Sickle and Sheaf.’”

“Who says so?”

“Twice within a week I have seen them going there,” was answered.

“Good heavens!  No!”

“It is true, my friend.  But who is safe?  If we dig pits, and conceal them from view, what marvel if our own children fall therein?”

“My sons going to a tavern?” The man seemed utterly confounded.  “How can I believe it?  You must be in error, sir.”

“No.  What I tell you is the simple truth.  And if they go there—­”

The man paused not to hear the conclusion of the sentence, but went hastily from the office.

“We are beginning to reap as we have sown,” remarked the gentleman, turning to me as his agitated friend left the office.  “As I told them in the commencement it would be, so it is happening.  The want of a good tavern in Cedarville was over and over again alleged as one of the chief causes of our want of thrift, and when Slade opened the ‘Sickle and Sheaf,’ the man was almost glorified.  The gentleman who has just left us failed not in laudation of the enterprising landlord; the more particularly, as the building of the new tavern advanced the price of ground on the street, and made him a few hundred dollars richer.  Really, for a time, one might have thought, from the way people went on, that Simon Slade was going to make every man’s fortune in Cedarville.  But all that has been gained by a small advance in property, is as a grain of sand to a mountain, compared with the fearful demoralization that has followed.”

I readily assented to this, for I had myself seen enough to justify the conclusion.

As I sat in the bar-room of the “Sickle and Sheaf” that evening, I noticed, soon after the lamps were lighted, the gentleman referred to in the above conversation, whose sons were represented as visitors to the bar, come in quietly, and look anxiously about the room.  He spoke to no one, and, after satisfying himself that those he sought were not there, went out.