"I did all for the best, madam! all for the best! It was an error in his case. But I meant him no harm." "You put poison to his lips, and destroyed him. You have made his wife a widow and his children orphans!" "Madam!--"The doctor knit his brows and spoke in a stern voice. But, ere he had uttered a word more, the stricken-hearted woman gave a wild scream and fell upon the floor. Nature had been tried beyond the point of endurance, and reason was saved at the expense of physical prostration. A few weeks later, and Doctor L--, in driving past the former residence of Mr. Hobart, saw furniture cars at the door. The family were removing. Death had taken the husband and father, and the poor widow was going forth with her little ones from the old and pleasant home, to gather them around her in a smaller and poorer place. His feelings at the moment none need envy. How many, like Mr. Hobart, have died through the insane prescription of brandy as a preventive to cholera! and how many more have fallen back into old habits, and become hopeless drunkards! Brandy is not good for health at any time; how much less so, when the very air we breathe is filled with a subtle poison, awaiting the least disturbance in the human economy to affect it with disease. THE TEMPERANCE PLEDGE. "I WANT a quarter of a dollar, Jane." This was addressed by a miserable creature, bloated and disfigured by intemperance, to a woman, whose thin, pale face, and heart-broken look, told but too plainly that she was the drunkard's wife. "Not a quarter of a dollar, John? Surely you will not waste a quarter of a dollar of my hard earnings, when you know that I can scarcely get food and decent clothes for the children?" As the wife said this, she looked up into her husband's face with a sad appealing expression. "I must have a quarter, Jane," said the man firmly. "O, John! remember our little ones. The cold-weather will soon be here, and I have not yet been able to get them shoes. If you will not earn any thing yourself, do not waste the little my hard labor can procure. Will not a sixpence do? Surely that is enough for you to spend for--" "Nothing will do but a quarter, Jane, and that I must have, if I steal it!" was the prompt and somewhat earnest reply. Mrs. Jarvis laid aside her work mechanically and, rising, went to a drawer, and from a cup containing a single dollar in small pieces, her little all, took out a quarter of a dollar, and turning to her husband, said, as she handed it to him-- "Remember, that you are taking the bread out of your children's mouths!" "Not so bad as that, I hope, Jane," said the drunkard, as he clutched the money eagerly; something like a feeble smile flitting across his disfigured and distorted countenance. "Yes, and worse!" was the response, made in a sadder tone than that in which the wife had at first spoken. "How worse, Jane?"