sought to treat him, and from no one would he accept drink. He was
a man of such inborn honesty, that the usurping demon of a vile
thirst had not even yet, at the age of forty, been able to cast it
out. The last little glory-cloud of his origin was trailing behind
him -- but yet it trailed. Doubtless it needs but time to make of a
drunkard a thief, but not yet, even when longing was at the highest,
would he have stolen a forgotten glass of whisky; and still, often
in spite of sickness and aches innumerable, George laboured that he
might have wherewith to make himself drunk honestly. Strange
honesty! Wee Gibbie was his only child, but about him or his
well-being he gave himself almost as little trouble as Gibbie caused
him! Not that he was hard-hearted; if he had seen the child in
want, he would, at the drunkest, have shared his whisky with him; if
he had fancied him cold, he would have put his last garment upon
him; but to his whisky-dimmed eyes the child scarcely seemed to want
anything, and the thought never entered his mind that, while Gibbie
always looked smiling and contented, his father did so little to
make him so. He had at the same time a very low opinion of himself
and his deservings, and justly, for his consciousness had dwindled
into little more than a live thirst. He did not do well for
himself, neither did men praise him; and he shamefully neglected his
child; but in one respect, and that a most important one, he did
well by his neighbours: he gave the best of work, and made the
lowest of charges. In no other way was he for much good. And yet I
would rather be that drunken cobbler than many a "fair professor,"
as Bunyan calls him. A grasping merchant ranks infinitely lower
than such a drunken cobbler. Thank God, the Son of Man is the
judge, and to him will we plead the cause of such -- yea, and of worse
than they -- for He will do right. It may be well for drunkards that
they are social outcasts, but is there no intercession to be made