"Good-night, dear, and God bless you." His voice trembled a little.
He stooped and kissed her again. A moment after and she was alone.
Then all the light went out of her face and a deep shadow fell
quickly over it. She shut her eyes, but not tightly enough to hold
back the tears that soon carne creeping slowly out from beneath the
closed lashes.

Ralph Ridley was a lawyer of marked ability. A few years before, he
had given up a good practice at the bar for an office under the
State government. Afterward he was sent to Congress and passed four
years in Washington. Like too many of our ablest public men, the
temptations of that city were too much for him. It was the old sad
story that repeats itself every year. He fell a victim to the
drinking customs of our national capital. Everywhere and on all
social occasions invitations to wine met him. He drank with a friend
on his way to the House, and with another in the Capitol buildings
before taking his seat for business. He drank at lunch and at
dinner, and he drank more freely at party or levee in the evening.
Only in the early morning was he free from the bewildering effects
of liquor.

Four years of such a life broke down his manhood. Hard as he
sometimes struggled to rise above the debasing appetite that had
enslaved him, resolution snapped like thread in a flame with every
new temptation. He stood erect and hopeful to-day, and to-morrow lay
prone and despairing under the heel of his enemy.

At the end of his second term in Congress the people of his district
rejected him. They could tolerate a certain degree of drunkenness