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¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 THE SPOILED CHILD. 3

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 often too has he been obliged to flee to escape the fury of his father. On two occasions he leaped from the chamber window to avoid the death which was threatened. He married a lovely woman, and became the father of two lovely sons.  But his house, like his father’s, was the abode of a drunkard and a fury. His wife was at length obliged to leave him, and of his little boys, one lies in the grave, slain by his father’s hand—beat to death in a manner so revolting as to cause every one who hears the tale to shudder. The father is now suffering the penalty of the law in a state prison. And if that wife could speak, she could tell of scenes. of suffering which would harrow up the soul.

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 The fourth son, O. was a miser, and a drunkard. He went down into a drunkard’s grave about two years since, and no one wept over him; for all rejoiced that death had wiped out so foul a stain upon mankind.

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 The fifth son, L. excelled all that went before him in wickedness. He, too, was a most abandoned drunkard, and died at the early age of about twenty-two years. And to close the scene, a few months since, M. the father died and went to judgment to meet his sons; and he died as he lived, hardened in sin and unyielding in iniquity.

¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 1 In the above simple narrative of fads we may see the influence of paternal example, and the effects of paternal neglect. In the history of M. and his family, we see one half of that family descending to early and unhonored graves, or filling out a life of infamy in a prison-house, purely by the evil example and the neglect of a father. That father was violent and ungoverned in his passions; profane, debauched and vulgar in his habits; a scoffer and a reviler of serious things: and his five sons were like him—they excelled him in depravity. The father had far gone down in the scale of morals, but the sons each of them went still lower; and what is worthy of notice, there was a regular descent. The eldest was worse than his father; the second worse than the   first, the third than the second, and thus on till the fifth, who drank the very dregs of sin.

¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 Again, how much injury one drunkard may do to society and to individuals! Were all the misery of which M. has been the cause to his own family to the families of his sons, and to all connected with them, placed in one view before the mind, the amount would be perfectly astounding.

¶ 7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 0 No. 28.