No. 54. JUNE 6, 1816.

The Drunken Husband.

IT was about the middle station in society that was occupied by the respectable parents of Ellen Eastbrook. With a lovely face, and a fine person, Ellen possessed a sprightly intellect, tolerably well cultivated, and one of the most friendly tempers in the wide world. Her voice was music; her manners casy and graceful; and her ever ready and benevolent smile fascinated all beholders.

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My readers will find no difficulty in believing that such a girl would early have admirers among the youth who had opportunities of becoming acquainted with. her. Indeed she had not quite completed her eighteenth year, when she found herself surrounded with at least half a dozen of young men, more or less wor. thy, who were suing for her heart and hand. It is very remarkable, and deserving of much praise, that all this homage did not corrupt the simplicity of her mind. Courted and flattered as she was every day, she remained the same artless, modest, unassuming maiden as before.

With the rest of her lovers came Frederic Fielding. He was a gentleman about five years older than Ellen. His brilliant talents had been polished by liberal studies; and he was just commencing the practice of the law. I will not dwell upon his personal accomplishments. Suffice it to say that as his fortune and prospects recommended him to the parents, so his appearance and manners were abundantly suited to attract the eye and seize the fancy of the daughter. And now Ellen committed her first great fault; she suffered her affections to become fixed upon Frederic too rapidly, without a due investigation of the whole of his character. A wise and faithful friend of hers, perceiving how things were going on, warned her once and again of the danger which lay in her path; assuring her, from indubitable authority, that her favoured swain

was already much too fond of the bottle; that he had several times been seen intoxicated; and that he was also an eager votary of the gaming table. Here poor Ellen fell into two errors more. Instead of candidly weighing the proofs, she laboured hard, and of course not without a degree of success, to persuade herself that these stories concerning her lover were either mistakes or slanders; and she was displeased, avowedly displeased, with her friend for making the communication. By the by, to tell a friend needful but disagreeable truth is one of the most self-denying and noble instances of attachment. Put when Ellen could not set her feelings entirely at case by resisting evidence, her next resource, such power has love to blind and to deceive,-was the indulgence of a hope. that her tenderness, her dutiful conduct, and her entreaties, would soon reclaim Frederic from the irregularities into which he might have fallen. Under a denomination so palliative did she disguise to herself vices the most degrading and the most perilous. Cased in such feeble armour, she disregarded even the car nest cautions of her father and mother, which they gave her as soon as the facts came to their knowledge. Nothing would do for her but she must be married to her dear Frederic; and accordingly married they were, amidst the sad apprehensions of many who felt an ins terest in her welfare.

For some weeks, perhaps I may safely say months, all proceeded delightfully. The enamoured Frederic had no relish for any pleasure out of the company of his blooming and charming bride; and this bride thought herself transported into an elysium where no chilling blasts were ever to blow. But how precarious are the calculations and enjoyments of man! Ellen had almost as many varieties of attraction as onc fine woman could have, and was devoted to her hus band with as much love as her precious little heart could hold. Yet to him the novelty of the scene bcgan to wear off; and as that novelty departed, the de-,

lirium of lfis passion began to subside. Affection, tender and lasting affection, ought to have succeeded; and would, had it not been for those fatal habits of vice which he had contracted. His professional business led him to public places. His former companions came about him, and his former temptations recurred. For a while he restrained his bad inclinations in some measure, on account of his wife; and especially he took care to conceal his shameful practices from her. But his desires gained strength by his yielding to them, and concealment became impossible. He frequently returned home from court in a state far from sober. His wife's tears, and sometimes a few words of meek, soft expostulation which she whispered to him in his cooler moments, roused his conscience, and pierced him to the very quick. At such moments he acknowledged his offences to her, begged her forgiveness, which was always readily and endearingly granted, and formed excellent resolutions for the future. But habit and temptation prevailed over all. Ellen's mildest supplications, even her looks of distress, and the pearly drop that trickled, in spite of her wishes, from her fading eye, he at length began to consider as reproaches which it befitted him, as a man of spirit, to resent. His behaviour to her assumed the style of peevishness, and not rarely that of cruelty. In the main, he shunned her society, and plunged continually deeper into sin and folly.

But I will not attempt to trace any farther the particular steps of so dreadful a progress to ruin. In the course of seven years, this pair had four interesting children. Frederic had now brought his family to poverty, and constant fear of the sheriff; partly by gaming; for his debts of honour were to be paid, and that in the first place too, so long as he had the means; and partly by the loss of his employment as a lawyer; for no client would commit his cause to the manage ment of a drunkard, nor suffer his money to be colTected by an inveterate gamester. He had become a

confirmed sot. His understanding was much impaired; though one might, at intervals, observe a flash of its original brightness. His affection for the partner of his bosom, his once beloved Ellen, appeared to be utterly extinguished; and his rosy-cheeked, promising little ones seemed to excite in his depraved breast no emotions of fatherly regard. He loved nothing but the inebriating poison which was destroying him, both soul and body. Stay; there was one other thing, a being in female shape, for whom he had a low and most criminal fondness. How, shall I describe her? A homely, insolent yellow slave; whom he basely made the object of his preference, almost under the very sight of his injured wife. That hapless wife, she who used to be the beauteous, cheerful, joy-inspiring Ellen, to what was she now reduced? Though still in the prime of her days, she was worn down, ema ciated, by trouble and sorrow, to the semblance of a skeleton. In looking at her sallow cheeks, and her languid, sunken eyes, one could not help inquiring, in melancholy silence, whither all that sparkling loveliness had fled which had been so loudly celebrated. Her children, however, were dear to her heart; and she took the utmost pains to bring them up in the ways of piety and virtue. In discharging, to the best of her ability, the duties of a Christian mother, she found some relief from the woes of her condition. Yet there were hours when the remembrance of happy scenes long past, and never to return, would fill. her soul with anguish; and cause her to shed bitter tears over her own deplorable lot, and the fall of her wretched husband.

Nearly a twelvemonth before the last date of which I have been writing, it had pleased the God of mercy to bestow upon this daughter of affliction an experimental knowledge of his salvation. From an early stage of the work of grace, her reliance upon God. through Jesus Christ was strong and abiding. And that reliance did not fail to afford her its consolatory

balm. She has often told a friend that she had bidder adieu to almost every earthly joy and hope; that religion was all her support under her heavy trials; and that she expected no resting place on this side of hea

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During a number of years I have seldom had any intelligence respecting this family. I can only learn that these years have rolled on without producing any change for the better in its situation...

And now, young ladies, the fairest ornaments of my native land, my story contains an important lesson for you. But I will not affront you, on the score of your good sense, by telling you what this lesson is you will discern it, and I trust you will apply it to practice with unwavering decision, if the occasion shall arise. May Heaven guide you to true felicity in the paths of wisdom and discretion.

No. 55. JULY 11, 1816.

Profaneness Inconsistent with Politeness. THE practice of common cursing and swearing has often been proved to be full of impiety. It is an insult to the majesty of the great God, the consequences of which will one day make the guilty tremble.

This practice has also been represented as striking. at the vital interests of society, by diminishing the obstacles in the way to perjury. Is this mere speculation? I think not. Why do we use oaths at inductions into office? Why do we impose them upon witnesses and jurymen in the administration of justice? Is it not to bind men to their duty by the solemnity of an appeal to God, the Searcher and the Judge of all hearts? And has not the crime we are considering a sure tendency to render the heart less sensible to the force of such an appeal?

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These things, however, are not precisely in my