WELL DIRECTED EFFORT.

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availing the best meant efforts of benevolence. How painfully is the intelligent listener reminded of this, during the impudent as well as impolitic invectives of some young pulpit orator, exposing his ignorance in every department of this field of effort! More injury is thus done by rendering temperance declamations channels for idiotic maliciousness, than could be effected by all the combined opposition of the intemperate, whom such overflowings of pride are eminently calculated to provoke. We need not seek beyond this cause, for the reason why many of our primitive temperance associations declined in interest, and were finally obliged to suspend operations, while our present Washingtonian organizations, and all those of similar character, are daily becoming more and more popular, with a usefulness as extensive as is their benevolence.

But Mr. Belden was then distant from this scene of sympathy; and with respect to his fate, Providence designed a different plan, a part of which, the old gentleman, our fellow-passenger, proceeded to relate. The remainder has been supplied by subsequent investigation. Properly arranging the facts thus collected, and recording

them in language appropriately brief and expres. sive, is the only share claimed by its author in the preparation of this work.

CHAPTER III.

"Unbound is that sweet wreath of home-alas! the lonely hearth!"

AFTER Mr. Belden had been expelled from the village of H., his first act was to sit down by the road-side, and soberly (as the world would call it, though he felt far otherwise,*) attempt to decide upon what course to pursue. The first thought that occurred to him, was, to return to the village he had just left; and, after apologizing for his conduct, endeavor to obtain employment, and once more seek to maintain his family. he remembered the hazard of confinement, and the condition it would impose of entire restraint from his beloved indulgence; and this project was abandoned. He next partly resolved to return to some of the places where he had lately resided. But when he reflected upon the character he had

But

*The late Mr. Lamb, in his "Confessions of a Drunkard," states that the drinking man is never less himself, than during his sober intervals."

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PLANS FOR THE FUTURE.

there sustained, and the manner in which he had left them, this plan was also renounced. "I am indeed ruined," thought he, "and rejected by all but my little family; and they would be better if I were gone." He remembered, then, the goneby days when he went to the same school with his Elmira-days of innocence and happiness never to return. And memory, ever busy after such excess as that of the evening previous, vividly portrayed the varied scenes through which they had together journeyed, ere crime and infamy had marked him for their own. For the first time during many long years of sin and sorrow, tears began to flow down his sunken cheek, till, unable to endure such anguish both of body and of mind, he arose and wandered on, he knew not where and cared not whither.

How little do they know of man's real nature, who think that the intemperate possess no feeling; and how erroneous is the conduct founded on such persuasion! It is true, there are moments, even hours, of their existence, when all shame is lost, and every moral susceptibility overwhelmed. But amid the deepest degradation to which they may be subjected, how often do intervals of seriousness

RESULTS OF REFORMATION.

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intervene, when even they cast backward their longing eyes to what seems to them as did to an. cient Israel the promised land-the joyous, blooming prospects of departed years! Yet, like that chosen people, they fear to encounter the difficulties of the way; though multitudes have witnessed that in a few days, at most, and the dreaded trial would have passed-the world's best gifts would again cheer their heart—and that peace of mind which is "dearer than all," would restore the hallowed light which once beamed around their path. It is true, some sacrifice is demanded in this cause. Virtue and science have both been imagined to occupy elevations, with rocks and thorns at their first ascent; but whose summits are adorned with flowers of beauty, streams of crystal, and enchanted views. The moral of this figure may be realized by experiment. How melancholy, then, that seasons of reflection do not ever lead to a result so glorious!

The difficulty with Mr. Belden was, that he had renounced all hope. The possibility did not occur to him, that wealth and honor, even greater than he had sacrificed, might again be redeemed. But as he met, in his solitary walk, with the happy