Richmond Palladium

WHAT TEMPERANCE CAN DO.

In Mrs. Hall's book on Ireland, occurs the following passage, which a person will hardly read without emotion:

"We entered one day a cottage in the suburbs of Cork; a young woman was knitting stockings at the door. It was as neat and comfortable as any in the most prosperous districts of England. We tell her brief story in her own words, as nearly as we can recall them.--

My husband is a wheelwright, and always earns his guinea a week: he was a good work-man, but the love of drink was so strong in him, that it wasn't often he brought me more than five shillings out of his one pound on a Saturday night, and it broke my heart to see the children too ragged to send to school, to say nothing of the starved look they had out of the little I could give them. Well, God be praised, he took the pledge and the next Saturday he laid twenty-one shillings upon the chair you sit upon. O, didn't I give thanks upon my bended knees that night! Still I was fearful it would not last, and I spent no more than the five shillings I used to, saying to myself, may be the money will be more wanted than it is now. Well, the next week he brought me the same, and the next, and the next until eight weeks had passed; and glory to God: there was no change for the bad in my husband; and all the while he never asked me why there was nothing better for him out of his earnings. So I felt there was no fear for him, and the ninth week, when he came home to me, I had this table and these six chairs, one for myself, four for the children, and one for him; and I was dressed in a new gown, "and the children all had new clothes and shoes and stockings, and upon his chair I put a bran new suit, and upon his plate I put the bill and receipt for them all, just the eight sixteen shillings, the cost that I'd saved out of his wages, not knowing what might happen, and that always went for drink. And he cried, good lady and gentleman, he cried like a baby, but 'twas with thanks to God; and now where's a healthier man than my husband in the whole county of Cork or a happier wife than myself or decenter or better fed children than my own?'"