“You may rest assured I did not sleep much that night. The drunken aspect of that man haunted me, and I found myself weeping over the injury I had done him. I rose up early the next morning and went to his cottage, with its little garden in front, on the outskirts of the town, where I had often seen him with his wife and happy children playing about, but found, to my sorrow, that he had removed some time ago. At last, with some difficulty, I found him located in a low neighbourhood, not far distant from the public-house he had patronised the day before. Here, in such a home as none but the drunkard could inhabit, I found him laid upon a bed of straw, feverish and prostrate from the previous day’s debauch, abusing his wife because she could not get him some more drink. She, standing aloof with tears in her eyes, broken down with care and grief, her children dirty and clothed in rags, all friendless and steeped in poverty! What a wreck was there! “Turned out of the church in which he was once an ornament, his religion sacrificed, his usefulness marred, his hopes of eternity blasted, now a poor dejected slave to his passion for drink, without mercy and without hope! “I talked to him kindly, reasoned with him, succoured him till he was well, and never lost sight of him or let him have any peace until he had signed the _pledge_ again. “It took him some time to recover his place in the church; but I have had the happiness of seeing him restored. He is now more than ever a devoted worker in the church; and the cause of temperance is pleaded on all occasions. “Can you wonder, then, that I never order strong drink for a patient now?”