She was a bright and beautiful child, one who seemed born for a better career, yet one on whom the blight of intemperance had left its impress early.
Her father was a drunkard, a worthless, miserable sot, whose only aim and ambition in life seemed to be to contrive ways and means of satisfying the devouring fire that constantly burned within him.
Her mother had died when she was a mere child, leaving her to grow up a wild flower in the forest, uncultured and uncared for.
Yet she was very beautiful; her form and face were of wondrous perfection and loveliness; her disposition was happy and cheerful, notwithstanding the abuse to which she was continually subjected.
The years went by; she grew to be almost a woman. She could not go to school or church, because she had nothing respectable to wear; and had she gone her wicked father would have reviled her for her disposition to make something better of herself and for her simple piety. He sank lower and lower in the miserable slough of intemperance, and yet, when urged by well-meaning friends, to leave him she clung to him with an affection as unaccountable as it was earnest and sincere.
“If I should leave him he would die,” she said. “If I stay and suffer with him here, some time I may save him and make him a worthy man.”
Many would have given her a home, food and comfortable clothes, but she preferred to share her father’s misery rather than selfishly forsake him in his unhappy infirmity.
The summer passed, the berries ripened and disappeared from the bushes. The leaves turned to crimson and yellow, and fell from the trees. The cold November winds howled through the desolate hollows, while, scantily clad, she crouched in a corner of her inhospitable, unhappy home.
She was very ill; bad treatment, poor food, and exposure had brought on a fatal sickness. Her brow burned with fever. Even her wretched father, selfish and inebriated as he was, became alarmed at her condition as he staggered about the room upon his return at a late hour from the village tavern, where he had spent the evening with a company of dissolute companions.
“Father,” she said, “I am very sick; the doctor has been to see me; he left a prescription. Will you not go to the village and get it filled?”