"It is true, my friend. But who is safe? If we dig pits, and conceal them from view, what marvel if our own children fall therein?"
"My sons going to a tavern?" The man seemed utterly confounded. "How CAN I believe it? You must be in error, sir."
"No. What I tell you is the simple truth. And if they go there—"
The man paused not to hear the conclusion of the sentence, but went hastily from the office.
"We are beginning to reap as we have sown," remarked the gentleman, turning to me as his agitated friend left the office. "As I told them in the commencement it would be, so it is happening. The want of a good tavern in Cedarville was over and over again alleged as one of the chief causes of our want of thrift, and when Slade opened the 'Sickle and Sheaf,' the man was almost glorified. The gentleman who has just left us failed not in laudation of the enterprising landlord; the more particularly, as the building of the new tavern advanced the price of ground on the street, and made him a few hundred dollars richer. Really, for a time, one might have thought, from the way people went on, that Simon Slade was going to make every man's fortune in Cedarville. But all that has been gained by a small advance in property, is as a grain of sand to a mountain, compared with the fearful demoralization that has followed."
I readily assented to this, for I had myself seen enough to justify the conclusion.
As I sat in the bar-room of the "Sickle and Sheaf" that evening, I noticed, soon after the lamps were lighted, the gentleman referred to in the above conversation, whose sons were represented as visitors to the bar, come in quietly, and look anxiously about the room. He spoke to no one, and, after satisfying himself that those he sought were not there, went out.
"What sent him here, I wonder?" muttered Slade, speaking partly to himself, and partly aside to Matthew, the bar-keeper.
"After the boys, I suppose," was answered.
"I guess the boys are old enough to take care of themselves."