“Oh, yes.  But it was badly kept, and the bar-room visitors were of the lowest class.  No respectable young man in Cedarville would have been seen there.  It offered no temptations to one moving in Willy’s circle.  But the opening of the ‘Sickle and Sheaf’ formed a new era.  Judge Hammond—­himself not the purest man in the world, I’m afraid—­gave his countenance to the establishment, and talked of Simon Slade as an enterprising man who ought to be encouraged.  Judge Lyman and other men of position in Cedarville followed his bad example; and the bar-room of the ‘Sickle and Sheaf’ was at once voted respectable.  At all times of the day and evening you could see the flower of our young men going in and out, sitting in front of the bar-room, or talking hand-and-glove with the landlord, who, from a worthy miller, regarded as well enough in his place, was suddenly elevated into a man of importance, whom the best in the village were delighted to honor.

“In the beginning, Willy went with the tide, and, in an incredibly short period, was acquiring a fondness for drink that startled and alarmed his friends.  In going in through Slade’s open door, he entered the downward way, and has been moving onward with fleet footsteps ever since.  The fiery poison inflamed his mind, at the same time that it dimmed his noble perceptions.  Fondness for mere pleasure followed, and this led him into various sensual indulgences, and exciting modes of passing the time.  Every one liked him—­he was so free, so companionable, and so generous—­and almost every one encouraged, rather than repressed, his dangerous proclivities.  Even his father, for a time, treated the matter lightly, as only the first flush of young life.  ’I commenced sowing my wild oats at quite as early an age,’ I have heard him say.  ‘He’ll cool off, and do well enough.  Never fear.’  But his mother was in a state of painful alarm from the beginning.  Her truer instincts, made doubly acute by her yearning love, perceived the imminent danger, and in all possible ways did she seek to lure him from the path in which he was moving at so rapid a pace.  Willy was always very much attached to his mother, and her influence over him was strong; but in this case he regarded her fears as chimerical.  The way in which he walked was, to him, so pleasant, and the companions of his journey so delightful, that he could not believe in the prophesied evil; and when his mother talked to him in her warning voice, and with a sad countenance, he smiled at her concern, and made light of her fears.

“And so it went on, month after month, and year after year, until the young man’s sad declensions were the town talk.  In order to throw his mind into a new channel—­to awaken, if possible, a new and better interest in life—­his father ventured upon the doubtful experiment we spoke of yesterday; that of placing capital in his hands, and making him an equal partner in the business of distilling and cotton-spinning.  The disastrous—­I might say disgraceful—­result you know.  The young man squandered his own capital and heavily embarrassed his father.