Lewistown gazette. [volume] (Lewistown, Pa.) 1843-1944, 1867-09-04

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glass with fashionable companions, and
in the saloons of refinement and taste.
Charlie at length married-married
one Of the lovellest of her sex.
Mary Glenn was no ordinary girl
well educated, refined, and in every
way companion for one like Charlie.
They were married with all the
fashionable display of the present day,
and Immediately went to housekeep-
ing in q handsome, we'll furnished
house, and everything seemed to prom
Use happiness.
| Several important cases were placed
! in Charles hands, and eloquently he
pleaded-earnestly he fought for sue
cess, and nobly he won it, and Charlie
Wentworth was called one ofthe ablest
lawyers in the State.
After they had been married two
years, and the house had been made
cheerful by the prattling of little
babe, Mary's father died, and it was
found after his death that he died in
solvent.
Sincerely Mary mourned for him,
but she turned to her husband and
child for comfort, and as she was an only y
child and motherless, they became
! dearer than ever to her.
Time passed on, and it began to be
whispered about that it would not do
to trust an important case to Charlie
Wentworth, for during the last year
he had lost several cases by forgetting
himself; and indulging too freely in
wine, when be needed clear head to
plead the cause of his client.
}, Business began to fall off, the pleas
ant home was mortgaged, and taken
from him; he moved his family to q
neat little cottage, and still INDUCED
in his ever increasing appetite for
drink, managed to gain meager sub
! sistence.
2 In vain Mary pleaded with HMM
f vain she urged the claims of the two
: bright-eyed little girls who called him
father-in vain she appealed to his
manhood; he had lost it forever in the
t sea of strong drink, and day by day
, he hugged the viper still closer to his
bosom.
At length he discontinued all at
/ tempts at business, moved his family
| into a miserable attic in one of the
/ back streets of the city, and spent his
5 time in grog shops, and few who
looked upon the ragged, bloated crca-
: ture staggering through the streets,
f would have recognized in him, bright,
talented, promising lieWentworth,
who eight years before was the pride
2 and favorite of the graduating class at
Yale College.
1t happened that two classmates
who had not seen him since bis gradu-
alton, men who had risen to occupy
high positions among their tellow,men
: -one a minister, the other an editor
were passing through the city of
Hartford, and determined to sec their
old friend and gifted companion.
They found his wife in the last stage
of consumption; she was nearing that
home from whence no traveller re-
turns and feeling that her hours on
:. earth were numbered, they set out in
search of Charlie.
They found him in one of the low
dens of iniquity that infest the city,
and telling him his wife was dying,
they led him from the place and con-
Quoted him up the rickety stairs to tho
bedside of his wife; he fell upon the
floor besides her bed, and she twined
her thin arms about his neck, and in
weak, trembling voice said:
ooh, Charlie, | am dying! | cannot
stay with you and the children any
longer, but when | am gone, oh, what
will become of the little girls if you
do not give up strong drink? ?
Mary said the half-drunken crea-
ture, turning his bloodshot eyes up to
= her in meaningless gaze, Pll tell you
what I'll do If you die tonight, FL
l. box up the girls and send them to
g HI after YOU
! Yes, that was the awful reply of
Charlie Wentworth, once the pride Of
the college, the man of letters, and
= deep scholar, the able lawyer, made
:. to his dying wife.
- That was the power drink had over
q one of its victims. All his bright,
= beautiful mind enclouded; all his pride
!, scattered to the winds; all that was
, pure, good, true and noble, crushed
q ont of his nature, and the iend of
! darkness and of sin, ruling there in
j. stead.
a The wasted arms of his wife relaxed
e their hold, her head sank powerless
upon her bosom, and they knew she
G was dead.
q nv +,ro friends who had Lpowp