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But let not the man who has once been swept down the stream of intemperate excitement, almost to the verge of ruin, dream of any point of security for him. He is like one who has awakened in the rapids of Niagara, and with straining oar and wild prayers to Heaven, forced his boat upward into smoother water, where the draught of the current seems to cease, and the banks smile, and all looks beautiful, and weary from rowing, lays by his oar to rest and dream; he knows not that under that smooth water still glides a current, that while he dreams, is imperceptibly but surely hurrying him back whence there is no return.

Harry was just in this perilous point; he viewed danger as long past, his self-confidence was fully restored, and in his security he began to neglect those lighter outworks of caution which he must still guard who does not mean, at last, to surrender the citadel.

* * * * *

“Now, girls and boys,” said Mrs. G. to her sons and daughters, who were sitting round a centre table covered with notes of invitation, and all the preliminary et cetera of a party, “what shall we have on Friday night?–tea, coffee, lemonade, wine? of course not.”

“And why not wine, mamma?” said the young ladies; “the people are beginning to have it; they had wine at Mrs. A.’s and Mrs. B.’s.”

“Well, your papa thinks it won’t do,–the boys are members of the temperance society,–and I don’t think, girls, it will do myself.”

There are many good sort of people, by the by, who always view moral questions in this style of phraseology–not what is right, but what will ” do.”

The girls made an appropriate reply to this view of the subject, by showing that Mrs. A. and Mrs. B. had done the thing, and nobody seemed to make any talk.

The boys, who thus far in the conversation had been thoughtfully rapping their boots with their canes, now interposed, and said that they would rather not have wine if it wouldn’t look shabby.

“But it will look shabby,” said Miss Fanny. “Lemons, you know, are scarce to be got for any price, and as for lemonade made of sirup, it’s positively vulgar and detestable; it tastes just like cream of tartar and spirits of turpentine.”

“For my part,” said Emma, “I never did see the harm of wine, even when people were making the most fuss about it; to be sure rum and brandy and all that are bad, but wine—-“

“And so convenient to get,” said Fanny; “and no decent young man ever gets drunk at parties, so it can’t do any harm; besides, one must have something, and, as I said, it will look shabby not to have it.”

Now, there is no imputation that young men are so much afraid of, especially from the lips of ladies, as that of shabbiness; and as it happened in this case as most others that the young ladies were the most efficient talkers, the question was finally carried on their side.

Mrs. G. was a mild and a motherly woman, just the one fitted to inspire young men with confidence and that home feeling which all men desire to find somewhere. Her house was a free and easy ground, social for most of the young people of her acquaintance, and Harry was a favorite and domesticated visitor.

During the height of the temperance reform, fathers and brothers had given it their open and decided support, and Mrs. G.–always easily enlisted for any good movement–sympathized warmly in their endeavors. The great fault was, that too often incident to the gentleness of woman–a want of self-reliant principle. Her virtue was too much the result of mere sympathy, too little of her own conviction. Hence, when those she loved grew cold towards a good cause, they found no sustaining power in her, and those who were relying on her judgment and opinions insensibly controlled them. Notwithstanding, she was a woman that always acquired a great influence over young men, and Harry had loved and revered her with something of the same sentiment that he cherished towards his own mother.