"Tom," said the old man suddenly, after a pause in which his thoughts seemed busy with the past, "when I was a young fellow like you I did not think that at seventy I should be just an old tinker; there's a place over across the river that used to just suit my fancy and it was my ambition to get rich enough to buy it and take a sweet girl I knew in those days over there and live out my time, growing old, respected and looked up to as your grandfather was. Do you know why I failed? My boy, I threw away just thirty years of my life! That is why I failed. Your father can tell you how he has seen me reeling through the streets in those days. There were half a dozen of us fellows and I am the only one left--the only one who has escaped a drunkard's grave. And I have only just escaped. It was after I had squandered my money, broken my wife's heart, made my children outcasts and ruined my health that I was saved. All the rest went down, drinking to the last. I tell you, my boy, never touch it! _Never tamper with temptation!_ Yes, I can fix the old clock and make it run about as well as ever, but you can't mend up an old drunkard and make him tell off the remaining hours of his life with any certainty. Whiskey somehow uses up the inside works and it is a poor sort of a service that a worn-out old rum drinker can render his Master. And Tom, I say, let rum alone! And Nellie, don't have anything to do with a young fellow that will not sign a pledge!" The old clock adorns our lower hall, is much looked at and admired; but to Tom and me, every stroke as it tells off the hours comes as a warning voice, and we seem to hear the old man saying, "Never tamper with temptation." F. H. [Illustration: "HIS THOUGHTS SEEMED BUSY WITH THE PAST."] _Volume 13, Number 20._ Copyright, 1886, by D. LOTHROP & CO. _March 20, 1886._ THE PANSY. [Illustration: "SHE THOUGHT IT OVER!"] WHERE I WENT, AND WHAT I SAW.