"Because, as I said, I am not going to make a slave of myself. Six months of total-abstinence will give me a control over myself that I do not now possess."
"I very much fear, sir," urged the Alderman, notwithstanding he perceived that the young man was growing impatient—"and you must pardon my freedom in saying so, that you will find yourself in error. If you are already so much the slave of drink as to feel yourself compelled to have recourse to the solemnities of an oath to break away from its bewitching power, depend upon it, that no temporary expedient of this kind will be of any avail. You will, no doubt, keep your oath religiously, but when its influence is withdrawn, you will find the strength of an unsupported resolution as weak as ever."
"I do not believe the position you take to be a true one," argued young Barclay—"All I want is to get rid of present temptation, and to be freed from present associations. Six months will place me beyond the reach of these, and then I shall be able to do right from an internal principle, and not from mere external restraint."
"I see the view you take, and would not urge a word against it, did I not know so many instances of individuals who have vainly opposed their resolutions against the power of habit. When once an appetite for intoxicating drinks has been formed, there is only one way of safety—that of taking a perpetual pledge of total-abstinence. That, and that alone is the wall of sure protection. Without it, you are exposed to temptations on every hand. The manly and determined effort to be free will not always avail. In some weak and unsuspecting moment, the tempter will steal quietly in, and all will be again lost."
"It is useless, sir, to argue the point with me," Barclay replied to this. "I will not now take the pledge—that is settled. I will take an oath of abstinence for six months. If I can keep to it that long, I can keep from drinking always."
Seeing that further argument would be useless, the Alderman said no more, but proceeded to administer the oath. The young man then paid the required fee and turned from the office in silence.
When Alice left the room in tears, stung by the cutting rebuke of her brother, she retired to her chamber with an oppressed and aching heart. She loved him tenderly. They were, sister and brother, alone in the world, and, therefore, her affections clung the closer to him. The struggle had been a hard one in bringing herself to perform the duty which had called down upon her the anger of one for whom she would almost have given her life; and, therefore, the result was doubly painful, more particularly, as it had effected nothing, apparently, towards a change in his habits.
"But perhaps it will cause him to reflect.—If so, I will cheerfully bear his anger," was the consoling thought that passed through her mind, after the passage of an hour, spent under the influence of most painful feelings.
"O, if he will only be more on his guard," she went on, in thought—"if he will only give up that habit, how glad I should be!"
Just then she heard him enter, and marked the sound of his footsteps as he ascended to his own room, with a fluttering heart. In the course of fifteen or twenty minutes, he went down again, and she listened to observe if he were going out. But he entered the parlours, and then all was, again, quiet.