The use of alcohol is allowed in cases of sickness to the most rigid disciplinarians, and our doctor began to find that keeping his pledge was a more difficult matter than he had at first imagined. Still, for _examples' sake_, of course, a man of his standing in society had only joined for _examples' sake_; he did not like openly to break it. He therefore feigned violent toothache, and sent the servant girl over to a friend's house to borrow a small phial of brandy. The brandy was sent, with many kind wishes for the doctor's speedy recovery. The phial now came every night to be refilled; and the doctor's toothache seemed likely to become a case of incurable _tic douloureux_. His friend took the alarm. He found it both expensive and inconvenient, providing the doctor with his nightly dose; and wishing to see how matters really stood, he followed the maid and the brandy one evening to the doctor's house. He entered unannounced. It was as he suspected. The doctor was lounging in his easy chair before the fire, indulging in a hearty fit of laughter over some paragraph in a newspaper, which he held in his hand. "Ah, my dear J---, I am so glad to find you so well. I thought by your sending for the brandy, that you were dying with the toothache." The doctor, rather confounded--"Why, yes; I have been sadly troubled with it of late. It does not come on, however, before eight o'clock, and if I cannot get a mouthful of brandy, I never can get a wink of sleep all night." "Did you ever have it before you took the pledge?" "Never," said the doctor emphatically. "Perhaps the cold water does not agree with you?" The doctor began to smell a rat, and fell vigorously to minding the fire. "I tell you what it is, J---," said the other; "the toothache is a _nervous affection_. It is the _brandy_ that is the _disease_. It may cure you of an imaginary toothache; but I assure you, that it gives your wife and daughter an _incurable heartache_." The doctor felt at that moment a strange palpitation at his own. The scales fell suddenly from his eyes, and for the first time his conduct appeared in its true light. Returning the bottle to his friend, he said, very humbly--"Take it out of my sight; I feel my error now. I will cure their heartache by curing myself of this beastly vice." The doctor, from that hour, became a temperate man. He soon regained his failing practice, and the esteem of his friends. The appeal of his better feelings effected a permanent change in his habits, which signing the pledge had not been able to do. To keep up an appearance of consistency he had had recourse to a mean subterfuge, while touching his heart produced a lasting reform.