The throng of tipplers and drunkards
was swarming through its hopeless door, to gulp the fiery liquor whose
fumes give all shames, vices, miseries, and crimes a lawless strength
and life, and change the man into the pig or tiger. Murder was done,
or nearly done, within those walls last night. Within those walls no
good was ever done; but daily, unmitigated evil, whose results were
reaching on to torture unborn generations. He had consented to it all!
He could not falter, or equivocate, or evade, or excuse. His dead
friend's words rang in his conscience like the trump of the judgment
angel. He was conquered.
Slowly, the resolve instantly to go in uprose within him, and with it
a change came upon his spirit, and the natural world, sadder than before,
but sweeter, seemed to come back to him. A great feeling of relief
flowed upon his mind. Pale and trembling still, he crossed the street
with a quick, unsteady step, entered a yard at the side of the house,
and, brushing by a host of white, rattling spectres of frozen clothes,
which dangled from lines in the enclosure, mounted some wooden steps,
and rang the bell.
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