attracted me from the first, and I rather think I called on the new-comers that very week.  At all events we soon became fast friends, and at the very next communion husband and wife united with my church by letter from —­, but no matter where; I had best give neither names nor dates.  They lived in a quite, simple way, going but little into society, for they were society to each other.  They rarely spent an evening out, if I except the weekly prayer-meeting.  They came together to that.  He very soon went into the Sabbath-school.  A Bible-class of young people gathered about him as if by magic.  He had just the genial way, the social qualities, and the personal magnetism to draw the young to him.  I used to look about sometimes with a kind of envy at the eager attentive faces of his class.

Judge of my surprise when, one day, a warm friend of Charlie’s came to me, privately, and said, “Charlie P. is drinking.”

“Impossible,” said I.

“Alas!” said he, “it is too true.  I have talked with him time and again.  He promises reform, but keeps no promise.  His wife is almost broken-hearted, but carries her burden alone.  You have influence with him, more than any one else I think.  I want you to see him and talk with him.”

I promised, of course.  I made the effort, but without success.  I called once or twice at his office.  He was always immersed in business.  I called at his house.  But I never could see him alone.  I was really and greatly perplexed, when he relieved me of my perplexity.  Perhaps he suspected my design.  At all events one morning he surprised me by a call at my study.  He opened the subject at once himself.

“Pastor,” said he, “I have come to talk with you about myself.  I am bringing shame on the Church and disgrace on my family.  You know all about it.  Everybody knows all about it.  I wonder that the children do not point at me in the street as I go along.  Oh! my poor wife! my poor wife! what shall I do?”

He was intensely excited.  I suspected that he had been drinking to nerve himself to what he regarded as a disagreeable but unavoidable duty.  I calmed him as well as I could, and he told me his story.

He was formerly a temperate though never a total abstinence man.  He was employed on a railroad in some capacity-express messenger I think.  The cars ran off the track.  That in which he was sitting was thrown down an embankment.  He was dreadfully bruised and mangled, and was taken up for dead.  It seemed at first as though he had hardly a whole bone in his body; but by one of those marvelous freaks, as we account them, which defeat all physicians’ calculations, he survived.  Gradually he rallied.  For twelve months he lived on stimulants.  His wife’s assiduous nursing through these twelve months of anxiety prostrated her upon a bed of sickness.  From his couch he arose, as he supposed, to go through life on crutches.  But returning strength had enabled him to substitute a cane.  Her attack of typhoid fever left her an invalid, never to be strong again.  Alas! his twelve months’ use of stimulants had kindled a fire within him which it seemed impossible to quench.