The daily phoenix. [volume] (Columbia, S.C.) 1865-1878, 1870-07-29
THE DRUNKARD's DEATH.
DY CHARLES DICKENS


THE DRUNFkARD'S DEATH.
DY CHARLES DICKENS.
We will be bold to soy that there is
scarcely man in the constant habit of
walking, day after day, through any of The
crowded thoroughfares of London, who
cannot recollect among the people whom
he "knows by sight" to use familiar
phrase. some being of abject and
wretched appearance, whom he remem-
bers to have seen in very different con-
dition, whom he has observed sinking
lower and lower, by almost impercepti-
BILE degrees, and the sbabbiness and
utter destitution of whose appearance
at last, strikes forcibly and painfully
upon him rs lie passes by. Is there any
man who has mixed much with society,
or whose avocations have caused him to
mlngle, at one time or other, with q
great number of people, who cannot
call to mind the time when some shabby,
miserable wretch, in rags and filth, who
shufi1es past him now in all the squalor
OF disease and poverty, was respecta-
PIE tradesman, or clerk, or q man
following some thriving pursuit, with
good prospects and decent means? or
cannot any of our readers call to mind
from among the list of their quontlan,
acquaintances, some fallen and degraded
man, who fingers about the pavement in
hungry misery-from whom every one
turns coldly away, and who preserves
himself from sheer starvation nobody
knows how? Alas! such cases are Of
too frequent occurrence to be rare items
in any mans experience; and but too
often arise from one cause-drunkenness
that fierce rage for the slow, sure
poison that over-steps every other con-
sideration; that onsts aside wife, chill
dren, friends, happiness and station. and
hurries its victims madly on to degrada-
ton and death.
Some of these men have been i'm
PEELED, by misfortune and misery, to the
vice that has degraded them. The ruin
Of worldly expectations, the death of
those they loved, the sorrow that slowly
consumes, but will not break the heart,
has driven them wild; and they present
the hideous spectacle of madmen, slowly
dying by their own hands. But by fur
open Dyes, plunged into the gulf from
rises more, but into which he sinks
deeper and deeper down until recovery
is hopeless.
Such man as this once stood by the
bedside of his dying wife, while his
children knelt around and mingled low
bursts of grief with their innocent
prayers The room was scnntily and
meanly furnished, and it needed but n
glance at the pale form from which the
light Of life was fast passing away, to
know that grief, and want, and anxious
care had been busy at the heart for
many weary year. An elderly female,
with her face bathed in tears, was sup
porting the head of the dying woman
her daughter-on her arm. But it was
not toward her that tho wan face turned;
it was not her hand that the cold and
trembling fingers clasped; they pressed
the husbands arm; the eyes so soon to
be closed in death, rested OH his face,
and the man shook beneath their gaze.
His dress was slovcnly and disordered,
his face iniamed, his eyes blood-shot
and heavy. He had been summoned
from some wild debauch to the bed of
sorrow and death.
A shaded lamp by the bedside cast a
dim light on the figures around, and left
the remainder of the room in thick,
deep shadow. The silence of night pre-
vailed without the house, and the still
ness OF death was in the chamber. A
Watcl nunS over the mantel-Shelf; its
low ticking was tho only sound that
broke the profound quiet. but it was y
solemn one, for we'll they knew who
heard it, that before it had recorded the
passing OF another hour, it would beat
the knell Of a departed spirit.
It is Il dreadful thing to wait and
watch for the approach of death; to know
that hope is gone, and recovery imposs;
BILE; and to sit and count tho dreary
hours through long, long nights-sucll
nights as only watchers by the bed OF
sickness know. 1t chills the blood to
hear tho dearest secrets of the heart-thc
pent-up, hidden secrets of many years
poured forth by tho unconscious help
less boing before you; and to think how
little the reserve and cunning of whole
life will avail, when fever and delirium
tear off the mask ut last. Strange tales
have been told in the wandcrings OF