"You'll be safer with the brandy than without it."
"Very well. If you think so, I will use it."
On parting with the doctor, Mr. Hobart went to a liquor store and ordered half a gallon of brandy sent home. He did not feel altogether right in doing so, for it must be understood, that, in years gone by, Mr. Hobart had fallen into the evil habit of intemperance, which clung to him until he run through a handsome estate and beggared his family. In this low condition he was found by the Sons of Temperance, who induced him to abandon a course whose end was death and destruction, and to come into their Order. From that time all was changed. Sobriety and industry were returned to him in many of the good things of this world which he had lost, and he was still in the upward movement at the time when the fatal pestilence appeared.
On going home at dinner time, Hobart's wife said to him, with a serious face—
"A demijohn, with some kind of liquor in it, was sent here to-day."
"Oh, yes," he replied, it is brandy that Doctor L—ordered me to take as a cholera preventive."
"Brandy!" ejaculated Mrs. Hobart, with an expression of painful surprise in her voice and on her countenance, that rather annoyed her husband.
"Yes. He says that he takes it every day as a preventive, and directed me to do the same."
"I wouldn't touch it if I were you. Indeed I wouldn't," said Mrs.
Hobart, earnestly.
"Why wouldn't you?"