The Madisonian

EFFECTS OF TEMPERANCE.

We entered one day a cottage in the suburbs of Cork. A woman was knitting stockings at the door. It was as neat and comfortable as any in the most prosperous district of England. We tell her brief story in her own words as nearly as we can recall them. "My husband is a wheel-wright and always earned his guinea a week. He was a good workman, and neither a bad man nor a bad husband; but the love for the drink was strong in him, and it wasn't often he brought me home more than five shillings out of his one pound one, 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. Oh! didn't I give thanks on bended knees that night! Still I was fearful it wouldn't last. I spent no more than the five shillings I was 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 passed; and glory be 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 hard earning. So I felt there was no fear for him; and the ninth week, when he came home to me, I had this table bought, and these six chairs—one for himself, four for the children, and one for myself. And I was dressed in a new gown, and the children all had new clothes and shoes and stockings, and upon his own 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 they cost that I'd saved out of his wages, not knowing what might happen, and that always before 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 the healthier man than my husband in the county of Cork, or a happier wife than myself, or dacenter or better fed children than our own four?" It is most unlikely that such a family will again sink into poverty and wretchedness. We might add largely to these cases, not only from what we have heard, but what we have seen.—Hall's Ireland.