"Well! this is the best joke of the season: Tom Cary preaching
temperance. When do you expect to join the Crusade? But, Oh! talk is
cheap."

"Cheap or dear, John Anderson, when I saw you giving liquor to that
innocent boy, I couldn't help thinking of my poor Charley. He was just
such a bright child as that, with beautiful brown eyes, and a fine
forehead. Ah that boy had a mind; he was always ahead in his studies.
But once when he was about twelve years old, I let him go on a
travelling tour with his uncle. He was so agreeable and wide awake, his
uncle liked to have him for company; but it was a dear trip to my poor
Charley. During this journey they stopped at a hotel, and my brother
gave him a glass of wine. Better for my dear boy had he given him a
glass of strychnine. That one glass awakened within him a dreadful
craving. It raged like a hungry fire. I talked to him, his mother pled
with him, but it was no use, liquor was his master, and when he couldn't
get liquor I've known him to break into his pantry to get our burning
fluid to assuage his thirst. Sometimes he would be sober for several
weeks at a time, and then our hopes would brighten that Charley would be
himself again, and then in an hour all our hopes would be dashed to the
ground. It seemed as if a spell was upon him. He married a dear good
girl, who was as true as steel, but all her entreaties for him to give
up drinking were like beating the air. He drank, and drank, until he
drank himself into the grave."

By this time two or three loungers had gathered around John Anderson and
Thomas Gary, and one of them said, "Mr. Gary you have had sad
experience, why don't you give up drinking yourself?"