About a fortnight before our story opens, Langhurst had been placarded with bills announcing that an able and well-known total abstinence advocate would give an address in the parish schoolroom. Many went to hear, and among them Samuel and Betty Johnson. Young and old were urged to sign the pledge. The speaker pictured powerfully a drunkard's home-- he showed how the drink enticed its victims to their ruin like a cheating fiend plucking the sword of resistance from their grasp while it smiled upon them. He urged the young to begin at once, to put the barrier of the pledge between themselves and the peculiar and subtle array of tempters and temptations which hedged them in on all sides. In the pledge they had something to point to which could serve as an answer to those who could not or would not hear reason. He showed the _joy_ of a home into which the drink had never found an entrance--total abstinence was safety--"never to taste" was "never to crave." He painted the vigour of a mind unclouded from earliest years by alcoholic stimulants; he pointed to the blessing under God of a child's steady practical protest, as a Christian abstainer, against the fearful sin which deluged our land with misery and crime, and swept away every spark of joy and peace from the hearthstones of thousands of English homes. Every word went deep into the hearts of Samuel and his sister: the drunkard's home was their own, the drink was ever before their eyes, the daily sin and misery that it caused they knew by sharp experience--time after time had they been urged to take the drink by those very parents whose substance, whose strength, whose peace had all withered down to the very ground under its fatal poison. How hard had been the struggle to resist! but now, if they became pledged abstainers, they would have something more to say which could give additional strength to their refusal.
The speaker stood pen in hand when he had closed his address.
"Come--which of you young people will sign?"
"I don't mind if _I_ do," he said; and then turning to Betty, when he had written his name, "come, Betty," he cried, "you'll sign too--come, stick to the pen."
"Well, I might do worse, I reckon," said Betty, and she also signed. A few more followed, and shortly afterwards the meeting broke up.
