"Ah! There it is! Didn't expect me! No supper! This is all I'm to get after spending all my wages on them as don't care to give me a mouthful of meat and a drop of drink when I want 'em!" "Jim! Jim! Don't," exclaimed his poor sister, "oh! Don't! For the Lord's sake! You'll repent it bitterly by-and-by! Oh! It can't be our dear, kind Jim, as God sent to help and comfort us! We'd give you meat and drink, if we had them, but the last crumb's gone, and mother's never bitten to-day!" "Nonsense! Don't tell _me_! None of your humbug and cant with me! If I can't get supper where I ought, I'll get it where I can! I'll not darken this door again as sure as my name's Jim Forbes!" With a scowl, and a curse, and a slam of the door that startled the little ones from their sleep, the miserable son flung himself out of his home. The next day he enlisted; the day following he was gone altogether. Weep! Weep! Ye holy angels! Howl with savage glee, ye mocking fiends! See what the drink can do! And yet, O wondrous strange! There are thinking men, loving men, Christian men, who tell us we are wrong, we are mad in trying to pluck the intoxicating cup away from men and women, and to keep it wholly out of the hands of little children and upgrowing boys and girls. Mad are we? Be it so; but there's method, there's holy love, there's heavenly wisdom in our madness. A month had passed away, but no tidings of Jim Forbes; no letter telling of penitence or love. Oh! If he would only write: only just a word: only to say, "Mother, sister, I love you still." But no; hearts must wither, hearts must break, as the idol car of intemperance holds on its way, crushing out life temporal and eternal from thousands and tens of thousands who throw themselves madly under its wheels. But must it be so for ever?--No! It cannot, it shall not be, God helping us; for their rises up a cry to heaven against the unholy traffic in strong drink; a cry that _must_ be heard.