His last instrument and case pawned, he sold the coat from his back to buy liquors. He could no longer get practice, no longer pay his board, and he became an outcast from all respectable society, and a frequenter of bar-rooms. A poor and simple old woman in the remote part of the town took compassion on him, and gave him a home. But nothing could chain his uncontrollable passion for intoxicating drinks. [Illustration: A BAR-ROOM DOCTOR.] The last time I saw him was in the month of December. He was in a grocery, warming himself by the store fire. He wore a crownless hat, a woman's shawl over his shoulders, and a pair of boy's pants partially covered his legs; no stockings covered his ankles, and a pair of old, low shoes encased his feet. The light had fled from his once beautiful, lustrous eyes; great wrinkles furrowed his once manly brow; his hair, once dark and glossy as the raven's wing, was now streaked with gray, uncombed and unkempt, hanging, knotted and snarled, over his neck and bloated face. "Don't you recollect me?" he asked, with a shaking voice and a distressing effort at a smile. Ah, it was sickening to the senses. Alas! Such another wreck may I never behold. What power shall awaken him from his awful condition, and "Picture a happy past, Gone from his sight, Bring back his early youth, Cloudless and bright; Tell how a mother's eye Watched while he slept, Tell how she prayed for him, Sorrowed and wept. "Point to the better land, Home of the blest, Where she has passed away, Gone to her rest. O'er the departed one Memory will yearn; God, in his mercy, grant He may return." FATAL ERRORS. Unfortunately, it is much easier to copy a great man's imperfections than those qualities which give him his greatness. Too often, also, are their defects mistaken for their marks of distinction,--vice for virtue,--and copied by the young, who have not the ability to imitate their greatness. "General Grant smokes!" "_President_ Grant drinks!" These two sentences, with the lamentable fact of their probable truth, have made more smokers of young men in the military and civil walks of life than all other texts in the English language. General or President Grant is not responsible for the lack of brains in the community, to be sure; but if "great men" will persist in bad habits, young men should be taught the difference between them and their virtues, and cautioned to shun them, or their bark will be stranded far out of sight of their desired haven,--the port of their ambition,--and nothing but a worthless wreck remains to tell what better piloting might have done for them. The voyage ended cannot be re-commenced. A student of medicine, in New York, brought a bottle of liquor to our room. I told him where that bottle would carry him.