miseries! We talk of his wife and children in rags. Let the rags continue;
but suppose them to be the effects of an innocent cause. Suppose his wife
and children bound to him by a strong love, which a life of labor for their
support, and of unlearned kindness has awakened; suppose them to know that
his toils for their welfare had broken down his frame; suppose him able to
say, "We are poor in this world's goods, but rich in affection and
religious trust. I am going from you; but I leave you to the Father of the
fatherless, and to the widow's God." Suppose this; and how changed these
rags!--how changed the cold, naked room! The heart's warmth can do much to
withstand the winter's cold;--and there is hope, there is honor, in this
virtuous indigence.

What breaks the heart of the drunkard's wife? It is not that he is poor,
but that he is a drunkard. Instead of that bloated face, now distorted with
passion, now robbed of every gleam of intelligence, if the wife could look
on an affectionate countenance, which had, for years, been the interpreter
of a well-principled mind and faithful heart, what an overwhelming load
would be lifted from her! It is a husband, whose touch is polluting, whose
infirmities are the witness of his guilt, who has blighted all her hopes,
who has proved false to the vow which made her his; it is such a husband
who makes home a hell,--not one whom toil and disease and Providence have
cast on the care of wife and children.

We look too much at the consequences of vice,--too little at the vice
itself. It is vice which is the chief weight of what we call its
consequences,--vice, which is the bitterness in the cup of human woe.
W. E. Channing.


XIII.