Page:Live and Let Live.djvu/12

12 We would only add this to the thousand examples before the eyes of parents, to admonish them that to secure to the future man temperance and health, the child's appetites must be subdued to obedience.

When Mrs. Lee discovered her husband's weakness, she was inexperienced and hopeful. She remonstrated and supplicated, he promised and she believed. For years they went on, he sinning and she sheltering him and enduring in silence. But love and fidelity have no shelter broad enough to conceal such habits—they betray themselves—Richard Lee forfeited the confidence of the community. He lost his business, and his property melted away. He moved from place to place, and finally went to the city of New-York, where, during one of those episodical reforms that occur in every drunkard's life, he resolved to turn over a new leaf. He obtained copying from a prosperous lawyer who had been a college contemporary. For a while the stimulus of a new position operated favorably and the wants of his family were supplied by his labor. But excess soon followed abstinence. Returning home late in a cold evening from a grog-shop, he fell on the ice, broke his leg, and lay exposed to the inclemency of the weather till rescued and conveyed to his home by a watchman. A long and fatal illness followed.