Little Lizzie
by
“IF they wouldn’t let him have it!” said Mrs. Leslie, weeping. “O, if they wouldn’t sell him liquor, there’d be no trouble! He’s one of the best of men when he doesn’t drink. He never brings liquor into the house; and he tries hard enough, I know, to keep sober, but he cannot pass Jenks’s tavern.”
Mrs. Leslie was talking with a sympathizing neighbor, who responded, by saying, that she wished the tavern would burn down, and that, for her part, she didn’t feel any too good to apply fire to the place herself. Mrs. Leslie sighed, and wiped away the tears with her checked apron.
“It’s hard, indeed, it is,” she murmured, “to see a man like Jenks growing richer and richer every day out of the earnings of poor working-men, whose families are in want of bread. For every sixpence that goes over his counter some one is made poorer–to some heart is given a throb of pain.”
“It’s a downright shame!” exclaimed the neighbor, immediately. “If I had my way with the lazy, good-for-nothing fellow, I’d see that he did something useful, if it was to break stone on the road. Were it my husband, instead of yours, that he enticed into his bar, depend on’t he’d get himself into trouble.”
While this conversation was going on, a little girl, not over ten years of age, sat listening attentively. After a while she went quietly from the room, and throwing her apron over head, took her way, unobserved by her mother, down the road.
Where was little Lizzie going? There was a purpose in her mind: She had started on a mission. “O, if they wouldn’t sell him liquor!” These earnest, tearful words of her, mother had filled her thoughts. If Mr. Jenks wouldn’t sell her father anything to drink, “there would be no more trouble.” How simple, how direct the remedy! She would go to Mr. Jenks, and ask him not to let her father have any more liquor, and then all would be well again. Artless, innocent child! And this was her mission.
The tavern kept by Jenks, the laziest man in Milanville,–he was too lazy to work, and therefore went to tavern-keeping,–stood nearly a quarter of a mile from the poor tenement occupied by the Leslies. Towards this point, under a hot, sultry sun, little Lizzie made her way, her mind so filled with its purpose that she was unconscious of heat of fatigue.
Not long before a traveller alighted at the tavern. After giving directions to have his horses fed, he entered the bar-room, and went to where Jenks stood, behind the counter.
“Have something to drink?” inquired the landlord.
“I’ll take a glass of water, if you please.”
Jenks could not hide the indifference at once felt towards the stranger. Very deliberately he set a pitcher and a glass upon the counter, and then turned partly away. The stranger poured out a tumbler of water, and drank it off with an air of satisfaction.
“Good water, that of yours, landlord,” said he.
“Is it?” was returned, somewhat uncourteously.
“I call it good water–don’t you?”
“Never drink water by itself.” As Jenks said this, he winked to one of his good customers, who was lounging, in the bar. “In fact, it’s so long since I drank any water, that I forgot how it tastes. Don’t you, Leslie?”
The man, to whom this was addressed, was not so far lost to shame as Jenks. He blushed and looked confused, as he replied,–
“It might be better for some of us if we had not lost our relish for pure water.”
“A true word spoken, my friend!” said the stranger, turning to the man, whose swollen visage, and patched, threadbare garments, too plainly told the story of his sad life. “‘Water, pure water, bright water;’ that is my motto. It never swells the face, nor inflames the eyes, nor mars the countenance. Its attendants are health, thrift, and happiness. It takes not away the children’s bread, nor the toiling wife’s garments. Water!–it is one of God’s chiefest blessings! Our friend, the landlord here, says he has forgotten how it tastes; and you have lost all relish for the refreshing draught! Ah, this is a sad confession!–one which the angels might weep to hear!”