The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1889-01-12
ENTIRELY REFORMED,
How an Elephant Was Instrumental in Re-
deeming Drunkard.

One of the strangest stories of a
drunkard's reformation is told in the
Philadelphia Times. William H.,
prosperous tradesman of Eastern
Pennsylvania, lost his property through
unforeseen business troubles, and, leav-
ing his young family, went West to re-
trieve his fortune bat discouraged by
want of success, he took to drink, and
finally became degraded loafer. He
drifted eastward again, and was seen in
Troy. N. Y, hanging around liquor sa-
looms. He had lost his manhood, and
even his very name (having long been
ashamed to be called by it), and men
knew him as "The Worm of the STILL"
Once, soon after tie arrival CT cir
Gus and menagerie combination to ex-
hibit in the city, the drunkard saw one
of the keepers purchase pailful of
whisky for sick elephant, and sneaked
after him to the circus tent, following
the impulse of his raging thirst.
The keeper put the bucket of whisky
down before BETSY" the sick elephant,
and she drank about half of it. The
intelligent brute knew it was medicine,
and did not propose to take more of it
than she thought she needed. The
bucket, still half full of liquor, was left
standing near her, and the keepers at
tention was called away for a moment.
Hardly was his back turned when a
bloated, red face was poked through
under the canvas, and its pair of watery
eyes were fastened greedily upon the
bucket. Betsy fixed her keen little
eyes on the intruder, stopped swaylng
to and fro, and waited to see what he
would do.
He did not notice her. The fasci-
nation Of the whisky blinded him TO
every thing else. The bucket was bey-
ond his reach. He drew himself under
the tent until he could clutch it. The
instant that he did SO, Betsy flung her
powerful trunk around his waist, and
whirled him up IN the air.
She did not mean him any harm, but
he was tampering with her medicine,
and she would not stand that. So he
had barely time to give one wild shrek
of terror, when she tossed him thirty
feet away, where he struck against one
OF the ponderous wheels of Ions cage,
fell to earth with one leg broken, and
three fractured ribs. She did not at
tempt to follow and hurt him, for she
had no malice. He was carried away
on stretcher to the hospital.
The rest of the story is a pathetic
romance. The wretched mans recov-
cry was so slow that fifteen weeks passed
before he could walk on crutches but
in that long time the thorough hospital
treatment had cleansed all the liquor
out of him, and he began to look some
thing like his former self.
One day, when a party of ladies Wis
lted the hospital, distributing flowers
and reading matter to the patients, one
of them a handsome but sad faced
young woman, stopped by his chair,
and gaz. at him as if strangely startled.
"Father," she said, "you don't re-
member me. I am your daughter
Mary"
1t was twelve years since she had
seen him, but she knew him.
She had him conveyed to her home
as soon as possible, where, he was re-
stored to health, found good employ
ment, and began new life of sobriety
and industry, which continued to the
last.
His adventure with the elephant, so
nearly fatal to him, proved the means
of his entire reformation.