“Yes, I do, John; but if I was beginning life, and forming habits as you are, a drop should never cross my lips. Though I never drank a daily dram, and sometimes not for six months, and was never intoxicated in my life, I’ve strong thoughts—yes, I’ve very strong thoughts—of leaving it off altogether.”
“But father drinks, and my brother Ben, and the minister, and everybody I know. When the minister comes to our house, mother gets some gin, sweetens it with loaf sugar, and puts it down on the hearth to warm. I know my mother wouldn’t do anything wrong; she couldn’t.”
“Your father, the minister, and myself may be able to govern ourselves, but a great many others may not, and you may not. Poor Mr. Yelf never thought he should die in a hog-sty.”
“But,” asked Fred, “if it is wrong now, wan’t it always wrong? You never said anything about it before.”
“I’ve been thinking about it this long time, and have been gradually brought to see that it was gaining ground, and getting hold of the young ones; that it was killing people, and making poverty and misery, and have thought something ought to be done. As long ago as when this house of Ben’s was building, I found old Mr. Yelf in a slough, bruised, dirty, and bloody. Ever since that I’ve been thinking about it; it has kept me awake nights. But when I saw the poor old man, whom I had known so well to do, dead among the swine, I felt the time had come. I meant to have begun with older people, and should not have thought of you; but when I heard that you were all on here together, it seemed to me that the road was pinted out; that you had no bad habits to break off, and that it would be beginning at the root of the tree; for if there were no young folks growing up to drink, there would be no old ones to die drunkards.”
“I’ll promise,” said Fred. “I should like to go ahead in something good;” and so said the others.
“I don’t want you to promise without consideration, because I expect you to keep it. A promise made in a hurry is broken in a hurry. I want you to be ‘fully persuaded in your own minds,’ and think what you would do if your own folks should ask you to drink.”
“It costs a great deal,” said John. “Father spends lots of money for spirit to drink and give away; and I don’t think it does anybody any good, for I am as well as I can be without it. I’ll do it, and stick to it.”
“Charles,” said Uncle Isaac, “go to the house and bring up Ben’s big auger, that he bores yokes with.”
When the auger was brought, he took it and bored a hole in the side of the maple. “Now, I want you to put your hands on this auger, and promise not to drink any spirit, without you are sick, till this hole grows up.”