Another day, after having pawned nearly all his instruments for money with which to buy liquor to appease his raving appetite, he was seen to unseal one of the jars containing a fœtal specimen, pour out a quantity of the diluted alcohol in which it had long been preserved, and drink it down with the avidity of a starving man.
His last instrument and case pawned, he sold the coat from his back to buy liquors. He could no longer get practice, no longer pay his board, and he became an outcast from all respectable society, and a frequenter of bar-rooms. A poor and simple old woman in the remote part of the town took compassion on him, and gave him a home. But nothing could chain his uncontrollable passion for intoxicating drinks.
A BAR-ROOM DOCTOR.
The last time I saw him was in the month of December. He was in a grocery, warming himself by the store fire. He wore a crownless hat, a woman’s shawl over his shoulders, and a pair of boy’s pants partially covered his legs; no stockings covered his ankles, and a pair of old, low shoes encased his feet. The light had fled from his once beautiful, lustrous eyes; great wrinkles furrowed his once manly brow; his hair, once dark and glossy as the raven’s wing, was now streaked with gray, uncombed and unkempt, hanging, knotted and snarled, over his neck and bloated face.
“Don’t you recollect me?” he asked, with a shaking voice and a distressing effort at a smile. Ah, it was sickening to the senses.
Alas! Such another wreck may I never behold. What power shall awaken him from his awful condition, and
“Picture a happy past,
Gone from his sight,
Bring back his early youth,
Cloudless and bright;
Tell how a mother’s eye
Watched while he slept,
Tell how she prayed for him,
Sorrowed and wept.
“Point to the better land,
Home of the blest,
Where she has passed away,
Gone to her rest.
O’er the departed one
Memory will yearn;
God, in his mercy, grant
He may return.”
Fatal Errors.
Unfortunately, it is much easier to copy a great man’s imperfections than those qualities which give him his greatness. Too often, also, are their defects mistaken for their marks of distinction,—vice for virtue,—and copied by the young, who have not the ability to imitate their greatness.