“Oh, sho! he’s done that time and again. You remember the temperance flurry we had three years ago? I helped the thing along then, mostly on account of such fellows as Dan. Don’t believe in so much fuss myself, although I don’t make a practice of using the stuff. But, as I was saying, Dan signed the pledge. Wasn’t the least bit of use; he was dead drunk in less than a week. I wouldn’t give that,”—snapping his fingers,—“for all his promises and pledges.”
“I confess I should have little faith myself were it not that now he has an Endorser whose word never fails,” rejoined Mr. Sherman, quietly.
Mr. Vance looked his surprise, and politely waited for his host to proceed.
“I do not say he will not fall again,” resumed Mr. Sherman, “but I do say that so long as he keeps his trust where it is now, on the Divine arm, he will stand firm. Dr. Helps called my attention to his case first. He said he believed the man had become a Christian, and he was anxious to get him employment out of doors, away from those low groggeries around the mills. I could quite easily create a supply for the evident demand, and am not sorry I did. One can’t do a better thing than to extend a helping hand to a fallen brother.”
“Oh, of course, of course; but my word for it, he’ll give in to his appetite again, sooner or later. It’s in the nature of things. I haven’t your faith in this church business. Haven’t been inside one myself for twenty years, to say the least; never brought up my boy to, either. Folks all prophesied he’d go to destruction, but I ain’t ashamed to stand him alongside of Carter’s boy, to-day.”
Mr. Sherman lifted his eyebrows slightly.
What but the very church influences the father despised had checked the boy in his downward career and led him up to better things?
“Dick is very steady at church,” he remarked.
“Yes, oh, yes! he and his mother have taken to it of late. I let them have their own way; that’s my creed—every man as he thinks—liberal, you see. Freedom is what our forefathers came over here for.”
“Freedom to worship God,” amended Mr. Sherman, quietly. “I believe in that liberality. If a man will truly worship God after the dictates of an enlightened conscience, I won’t quarrel about his creed. But I want him to let the true light shine on his conscience, not merely the flickering flame of reason or science.”