said Anderson falling back on the bed suddenly stricken with paralysis.
While in another room lay his younger son a victim to delirium tremens,
and dying in fearful agony. The curse that John Anderson had sent to
other homes had come back darkened with the shadow of death to brood
over his own habitation. His son is dying, but he has no word of hope to
cheer the parting spirit as it passed out into the eternity, for him the
darkness of the tomb, is not gilded with the glory of the resurrection.

The best medical skill has been summoned to the aid of John Anderson,
but neither art, nor skill can bind anew the broken threads of life. The
chamber in which he is confined is a marvel of decoration, light streams
into his home through panes of beautifully stained glass. Pillows of the
softest down are placed beneath his head, beautiful cushions lie at his
feet that will never take another step on the errands of sin, but no
appliances of wealth can give peace to his guilty conscience. He looks
back upon the past and the retrospect is a worse than wasted life; and
when the future looms up before him he shrinks back from the
contemplation, for the sins of the past throw their shadow over the
future. He has houses, money and land, but he is a pauper in his soul,
and a bankrupt in his character. In his eager selfish grasp for gold, he
has shriveled his intellect and hardened and dried up his heart, and in
so doing he has cut himself off from the richest sources of human
enjoyment. He has wasted life's best opportunities, and there never was
an angel, however bright, terrible and strong, that ever had power to
roll away the stone from the grave of a dead opportunity, and what John
Anderson has lost in time, he can never make up in eternity. He has
formed no taste for reading, and thus has cut himself off from the
glorious companionship of the good, the great, and the wise of all ages.
He has been selfish, mean and grasping, and the blessing of the poor and
needy never fall as benedictions on his weary head; and in that