The minds of the two young men introduced
in the opening of this chapter were dimmed by
vice and no longer reflected the fair forms of nature.
They walked along insensible to the beauty
of the hour, indifferent to the loveliness of the
scene spread around them. Their conversation
was like their propensities, `worldly, sensual,
devilish.' They were there to gaze upon the
face of modesty with a stare of licentious admiration,
to meet others of either sex with spirits of
kindred with their own; to plan the ruin of the
upright and rejoice in the contemplated fall of
the victim. Yet neither of these young men had
reached the age of maturity. Both had been
morally educated, and lessons of religion had
been inculcated upon them from childhood. The
secret of their moral ship-wreck lies in the false
pride of their friends who despising trades for
them, in which condition their habits would be
less likely to be corrupted by aping fashion, dress
and high life, and when their time would be
wholly employed and their conduct under the
supervision of watchful masters, had placed
them, to make them `respectable' in the most
dangerous place for a young man, in a store in a
large city, where they were under no moral or
other control, where they had their earnings to
themselves, where they were tempted to indulge
in every folly and amusement as necessary and
belonging to their `condition,' and where the
road to ruin is broad as vice and as downward as
indulgence can make it! They were Ralph
Mosley and his friend Ned Lynch; a clerk in an
importing store in Kilby street, and a purloiner
of goods to convert into money to support his extravagancies,
Lynch was a native of Portland
and the son of a respectable Jeweller. But being
educated above his father's profession, he
came to Boston to enter as a clerk. His habits
when he first came had been good; but first tempted
to go out evenings, he was insensibly led to
drink, to the theatre, and ultimately to more disreputable
haunts till losing his self-respect, he
gave himself up to a free course of dissipation.
He, like Mosley, was quite out of funds, and as
he feared his employer suspected him and that he
was watched, he had some weeks feared to abstract
any thing. Consequently his finances
needed replenishing. To him Mosley was now
communicating his designs respecting Henry
Harefoot, whom he represented as likely to yield
to the temptation set for him; in which case he
would have to draw money; that once induced
him to purloin, his situation in one of the most
extensive dry goods stores in the city would give
him opportunity, if he was wary, of embezzling
large sums by which they could both profit so
long as he was undiscovered.

`Now, what I propose is this,' said Mosley, as
arm in arm they approached the opening from
the mall, opposite Winter street, `that you who
know Frank Stanwood very well, go down now
and see him and manage to get him to introduce
you to Harefoot. He and Stanwood are cronies,
and he will readily give his confidence to any one
he introduces. You will then—(There goes a
pretty girl! what a pretty step!) you will leave
and linger about the store till he shuts up and pro
pose to walk. Bring him to the Washington
Gardens where I will meet you as if by accident.
(Did you see that smile! What eyes! But she's
respectable!) If we can get him there and once
get him to drink he's our's, for he will then fear
to cut me as he now does. There go two fine
women, but they are not game!'

Thus with villany in his heart and lust in his
wandering glances did this depraved young man
walk discoursing—the seren heavens above him;
lovely scenes spread around him, and the holy
twilight influence wooing his soul to tenderness.
They then crossed the street to a high board
fence, half overhung with foliage, having a gateway
in it, over which was placed an arched sign
with the words, `Washington Gardens' painted
thereon. A man was just lighting a lamp above
the gate as they entered. Within the attendants
were lighting numerous colored lamps arranged
in fanciful forms in different parts of the garden,
through which run several walks terminating in
alcoves. Without heeding the garden portion of
the enclosure, the two young men entered a large
room on the left, adorned with paintings of hunts,
nymphs bathing, race horses and hounds, game
and engravings of less pure description. On
one side of this apartment which was already
well lighted was a bar, with its dazzling display
of ruby-hued decanters, its tiers of glittering
glass, and its polished soda fountain. The floor
was sanded and contained many chairs, three sofas
and half a dozen tables, on some of which
were newspapers, on others recently emptied
glasses, and around others young men were
drinking and conversing, while the incence of tobacco
smoke ascended in clouds to the god
Bacchus, who was there worshipped.

`What'll you take take, Lynch?' asked Mosley
taking out his pocket book and ostentatiously
displaying a roll of money—the wages of his
guilty subserviency to the passions of Silsby

`A soda-brandy! I haven't had any tea, and
this is as good for me. Do you know I don't
have any appetite for eating—I don't know how
it is—but one or two glasses does me as much
good as a dinner;'

`It is so with me,' answered Mosley. I don't
like any thing but an oyster fry and then I have
to prime for it with a three quarter brandy or gin
bitters. I'll take a gin-bitter now, Jim,' he added
to the bar-keeper.

The young men then drank; Mosley offered a
ten dollar bill in pay, and as he suspected, rather
than change it they trusted him. It is true he
had silver in his pocket but that was his own secret.
Lynch then left him and Mosley joined a
group of young men at the end of the room who
were making themselves very merry and showing
their own wit by teasing a poor crazy poet,
whom they had got half tipsy, and who at such
times imagined himself to be Byron. Like him
he wore a wide shirt collar—but Byron's was
clean and was linen—turned broadly over his
collar, and had a red bandanna handkerchief
knotted in front, and the ends hanging down to
his waist. He was dressed in a gray roundabout
with a patch in each elbow and other places
that equally required patches. His pantaloons

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were thin linen and had once been white and
tightly fitted his thin legs, which were terminated
by feet cased in black short hose, and faded
green slippers. He was familiarly called `Lord
Byron,' though his real name was Everett C—.
He had been a student at Cambridge and evinced
while there, poetic genius of a very elevated
rank. But he became dissipated in his Junior
year, and excess destroyed the fine fabric of his
brain, and he fell forever from the high intellectual
seat he had aimed for, and became the wreck
of mind he now was.

`Recite the verses on Quincy Pond,' asked one
of the crowd of young men.

`Yes, Byron,' repeated the rest, with animation.
`Give us the verses.'

`Let me have a place to stand on, gentlemen,'
said the poet in a loud tone:

`I must be above the groveling herd

Nor sink my dignity to the level with the mass.
Genius is god-like and as gods do sit on thrones,
So I must stand upon this barrel, this

Bottle which erst did nectar hold, my sceptre
And — but I'll begin.'

Here the poet threw out one arm and holding
a piece of dirty looking paper before him, thus begun,
his high bold intellectual forehead, his noble
and finely cut features, commanding respect
while his actions and words excited mirth and
ridicule.

`Know, all present, that the Mayor is my patron.
For creating beauty out of deformity, he
has been blackguarded by the press for spending
the city's money. But the time will come
when that pond, which they do call contemptuously
`Quincy Lake,' shall be the ornament to the
Common, as dear to the boys of Boston as the old
Elm our forefathers planted there.'

`We don't want a speech but a poem,' cried
the audience, each one of whom either had a cigar
in his mouth or a glass of liquor in his hand, and
were crowded round him uproariously; a fitting
scene for fathers to intrude upon—a scene over
which humanity might sigh with shame!

We will not add to the degredation of mind by
giving the verses which he recited; which once
burned with the fire of pure genius, were now a
chaos of mad ideas. The drunkard may find
amusement in such exhibitions of a fallen intelligence
for such is allied to his own voluntary
degredation; but a man will never express other
than emotions of pity and painful sympathy for
the misfortunes of those whom God has so fearfully
smitten. The light of mind is kindled at
the altar of the eternal intellect, and the mind
that can find pleasure in seeing it extinguished
in another must itself be dark indeed.

When he had ended his extravagant production,
and the shouts of applause had subsided,
Mosley handed him a glass of brandy and called
upon him for a song; but before he could begin,
another made him swallow a glass of whiskey
in which he had humorously sprinkled Cayenne
pepper; to destroy the painful effects of this
another persuaded him to quaff off a gin cocktail
The poor poet notwithstanding all this tried
to sing, and thus began:

`It chanced one lovely day in June,'

But with the last word in the line his head
sank upon his breast and he tumbled off the barrel
upon the floor amid the laughter of all round,
who no doubt thought it a clever joke to get a
crazy man drunk, and then see him fall and endanger
his neck. Fearful indeed was the punishment
of Everett C—for his youthful intemperance.
In his fate was foreshadowed that of
those who now made sport of him for their end
has been either insanity or that more fearful
madness mania potu. But these scenes took
place in years past, when Intemperance was our
fire-side companion; when the Circean cup was
at the lip of the young and the old, of the noble
and the gifled! Ere the mask was torn from her
hideous visage and like the unveiled prophet
Mokanna, her visage of death exposed in all its
horrid truth! Such a scene of a dozen or twenty
young clerks, congregated within a public
garden in the heart of the city, openly drinking,
revelling, and baiting a maniac, could not in this
day of moral improvement occur, though Boston
has nearly doubled her population. Intemperance
is now banished to the dens and holes of infamy,
and it is now shame for a young man or an old
man or any man who would not be the suicide of
his own character in the eyes of his fellow men,
to be seen or to be known drinking, and why?
Intemperance is now a crime! The congress of
human opinion has enacted a great moral law
which solemnly declares it such! The extraordinary
progress of temperance which has produced
such wonderful results, is one of those great
moral eras of our race, for its amelioration,
which occur at their seasons. The invention
of the compass was one; that of printing another;
then followed the reformation; the American
Revolution; the invention of steam; then
blazed the spirit of evangelizing the heathen;
and others of later date have followed. The
wheels of temperance roll on and men guide it,
but there is an unseen power that has set its
wheels in motion. Father Matthew was but an
instrument in the same Almighty hand which is
now plainly working out for mankind a higher
and nobler destiny than the world has yet conceived
of.

The dissipated frequenters of `the Gardens,'
after having with indifference seen the pitiable
object of their late amusement carried out as if
he had been a dog, to be cast into the street,
separated in knots, each seeking some rendezvous
of pleasure. Mosley did not join them,
though the money which he displayed made his
company very much coveted. He lounged into
the garden, and with a cigar in his mouth took
a seat on a bench to wait for Lynch. This
young man took his way to Mr. Cushing's store
which he entered as Harry just finished lighting
up, in which he had been assisted by a younger
clerk who had that afternoon came in place of
Burnham, who had been dismissed for taking a
quarter of a dollar from the draw to buy a circus
ticket the night before, and for denying both the
theft and also having been to the circus, on beiag
accused of it by Mr. Cushing. Henry was
not a little gratified to have one below him, although
he was but a lad, being not quite fifteen.

[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]

Stanwood was reading at the farther end of the
store when Edward Lynch entered. Harry
glanced up from a letter which he took out from
his pocket to read on fin shing lighting the store,
and seeing a slender young man in a dandyish
green coat, buff vest, and white bell-top beaver
hat, swinging a cane round by its silken tassel,
he gave his attention again to the letter, there being
no customers in to be attended to.

`Ah, Frank, how are ye?' said Lynch, going
up to him and clapping his hand on his shoulder!
`Always reading! What you got there?—
`Athenaeum Library' stamped on it, too! Do
you get books there? I went there once with
Bob Silsby to see some naked figures of goddesses,
but was disappointed in 'em! `Marshall's
Life of Washington!' How can you read such
big bores? The day I left school under old master
Cushman, I gave books the go-by? Well,
how are you? I hav'nt seen you for an age!'

`O, quite well, Ned,' said Stanwood, laughing
at him; `but you look pale? I hope I don't
hear true stories about you Ned,' added Frank in
a kind friendly tone.

`What stories?' asked Lynch, who much
wished to share the esteem and confidence of
Stanwood, whose firmness and integrity of character
he admired, though he could not have the
moral strength to imitate it.

`I heard Burnham say, in excuse for going,
that he saw you at the circus last night, and that
you were flushed with wine, and had a female
on your arm, whom he said he knew to be a girl
of the town.'

`Where is the fellow?'

`Mr. Cushing has dismissed him.'

`The little lying rouge! by blacking my character,
he hoped te whitewash his own,' said
Lynch, angrily. `I have not been in the circus,
Stanwood, since it opened, nor have I spoken to
a woman for a week, except my washerwoman.'

`Well, I am glad to hear it! If Mr. Rice
should hear of such things he would dismiss you,
and then, as your reference would have to be to
him as the last place you kept in, I fear you
would not get employment again.'

`I should be sorry to have him. He is a noble
and generous man, and treats all his clerks
kindly, yet with dignity, so that we feel that we
are not only in the employ of a gentleman, but
are treated by him ourselves as such. He is not
stern, like many other merchants, to those under
him, but so conciliates them as to command their
respect and win their attachment. I have never
heard of one, and there are many merchants in
this city that have been educated to business under
him, who does not speak of him in the highest
terms of affectionate respect.'

`I am glad to hear you say this of him, as he
has recently given me an invitation to take
Freeman's place, who is going into business for
himself.'

`What, the second clerk?' repeated Lynch,
with incredulous surprise.

`Yes,' answered Stanwood, smiling; `he first
asked Mr. Cushing, who referred him to me.'

`And of course you take the berth. It is three
moves above me. But you are worthy, of it,
though Henry Rice's store is the first in Boston.
You are a lucky fellow.'

Lynch might have said, instead of `lucky fellow,
' a `deserving, trust-worthy, and intelligent
young man of business,' and he would have
spoken the truth.

`Who takes your place? I should like it.'

`It will be offered to Henry Harefoot, a clerk
we have had but a couple of months, but who is
very well qualified to fill it. Mr. Cushing has
the utmost confidence in him.'

`He should have, for you are the one that attends
to the bank business, are you not, Stanwood?
' asked or rather remarked Lynch, while
his pulse beat quicker and his eyes sparkled.

`Yes. But I am not certain I shall accept Mr.
Rice's offer, though it is liberal; and I am told
it's pleasanter keeping in an importing house
than in a retail store.'

`Yes, and much more respectable. We consider
retail clerks as beneath us! though there
are good fellows among them. By the by, I
should like to know this Harefoot; will you introduce
me?'

`Certainly,' answered Frank, walking immediately
to the front of the store, where Harry sat
upon the window-sill, reading the letter he had
before taken from his pocket. It was from his
mother, and the same Pierce Wentworth had
brought to him that day. He had read it twice
already, and was now with visible emotion perusing
it for the third time. It was as follows:

Augusta, Kennebec County, State
of Maine,
October 28, 182-

My Dear Son Harry,—Your last letter gave
us all at home a great deal of joy. I was gratified
at your affectionate remembrance of me in
sending the pretty cap, and I gave your love to
little Emma Cutter, as you desired. She is knitting
for you a purse she wants me to send you
with our first package. I am happy to find you
are so well pleased with your place, my son, and
that Mr. Cushing is so well satisfied with you.
You have only now, my dear boy, to do your duty
to be respected. Never consider any thing beneath
you which you are required by Mr. Cushing
or the upper clerks to perform. Pride has
ruined many young men who set out in life as
prosperously as you have. Try and cultivate a
kind demeanor, pleasing manners, and a frank and
unsuspicious bearing; but as true politeness proceeds
from grace in the heart, you must first cultivate
that. Do not omit reading in the little
Bible I wrote your name in, once a day, nor never
neglect committing yourself in prayer to your
heavenly Father when you go to bed nor thanking
Him in grateful adoration when you rise up.
Seek humbly his guidance through the day, and
you will have it. There is no real good or true
happiness that does not first originate in duty to
our Maker. Avoid profane speech, impure language,
and telling impure anecdotes, for they
corrupt the heart. Spend your evenings at home
in reading or writing, and your Sabbaths in the
fear of God, going twice to church. Never
break the Sabbath on any pretence! Let it be a
holy day to you through life. Avoid the society
of all young men whose character you do not

[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]

know to be good; but it is best to have few companions
and but one or two friends. Have no
desire to go to the play, to parties, to frolies, and
other scenes of temptation, and never without
permission from Mr. Cushing, who is now to be
in our place to you. Above all, my son, never
touch a drop of wine. O that I could impress,
as with a seal, this caution upon your heart—engraft
it upon your mind. The sword has slain
its thousands, but wine its tens of thousands.
You must bear with me, Henry, for giving you
such a grave letter of advice, but I have your
welfare closely united to my heart, and I know
that you are surrounded with temptations, and
that you need not only a mother's love, but God's
arm to guard and detend you. One thing more,
Henry. You have, I know, a fondness for the society
and admiration of young ladies. This at
home in our quiet village was, perhaps well
enough, as it improves the manners of youths to
associate early in life with respectable young females.
But in Boston there are, I blush to say,
classes of females here unknown, who, with lovely
countenances, and wearing alluring smiles, are
dangerous for young men to know. `Their
house,' saith the seventh of Proverbs. where she
is described, `is the way to hell, going down to
the chamber of death. Let not thine heart incline
to her ways, go not astray in her paths. For
she hath cast down many wounded; yea, many
strong men have been slain by her.'

Never, therefore, Henry, form any acquaintance
with any young woman whose family or
friends you do not know; no matter if she rustles
in silks and glitters in laces, has the smile of Hebe
and the beauty of a Helen.

This is the last of the advice, dear Henry, I have
to give you. I hope you will never have to repent
the not keeping it. If a mother's prayers can be
a shield and buckler to your head, you will not be
left exposed, ungarded, my dear child, to the snares
of this wicked world.

If you want your shirts mended, or any thing
of yours fixed nicely, send the things home in a
bundle by Mr. Pearl, when he comes down in the
sloop. The good old black made my heart glad
yesterday when he told me he saw you in Washington
street only last week, and said you were
looking so handsome, and so well, and `like a
born gemman, ebery inch o' him, mistress,' were
Pearl's words. Your father and brothers and sisters
send their love. Now good bye, my son, and
write as often as you can. I have only left room
to write—`Your affectionate mother, Anna.

Henry had finished the letter, and was looking
at it with moistened eyes when he saw Stanwood
approaching. Hastily putting it up and forcing
back the tears to their ungated fountains he met
him with a smile.

`A love-letter, eh?' said Frank, playfully.—
`Henry, let me make you acquainted with Mr.
Lynch, whom his friends call Ned Lynch; a very
nice young gentleman, I believe, though a little
wild, hey, Ned?'

Lynch laughed, shook Henry cordially by the
hand, and entered into conversation with him
while Stanwood went back and resumed his
book. Harry was insensibly pleased with his ease
of manner, prepossessing address and graceful
facility in conversation, which was humorous,
and calculated to please where the effort to please
was made.

Lynch remained until eight o'clock struck, and
they begun to shut up, by which time the two
young gentlemen had got upon quite a social and
familiar footing. The introduction and the friendly
manner of it, forestalled all question in Henry's
mind as to the correctness of character of his
new acquaintance whom he thought the most interesting
and entertaining young man he had ever
seen.

As the youngest lad, whose name was Walter
Berry, was too small to shut up alone, Henry
waited to assist him in closing the windows, and
also to take the key after Stanwood locked the
door, it being Mr. Cushing's rule that the first or
the second clerk should himself see the store locked
up and the key given by him to the one who
was to open it. In Martin's absence, Stanwood
now took the responsibility, and handed the key
to Harry, who was still to open, though he had
now bidden adieu to `lamps and bundles.' Stanwood
parted from them at the door, and with the
small store trunk of bank notes (safes being little
known then) in his hand, took the way to a bank
which kept a private door open till nine, for such
deposits of merchants, while Henry walked towards
his own lodgings, which he usually reached
by first turning up Bromfield lane, and then
through the mall, a walk always delightful to him.

`Where do you spend the evening after taking
the key home, Harefoot?' asked Lynch, familiarly
putting his arm through his, and catching pace
with him.

`I shall stay at home and read.'

`What a literary set you are at Mr. Cushings!
Stanwood is always poring over some dull book
written by men long since dead, and so are not
worth reading.'

`I was not aware that the fact of an author's
being dead had an effect upon his books,' said
Henry laughing.

`Why, I'd just as soon think of reading last
year's newspaper. But all books are bores, and
reading is dull business. It is hard for me to get
through a letter. Baker makes me read invoices
sometimes, and that is as dull as book-reading.

`I should think it might be,' remarked Henry,
with a smile at the half-earnest, half-jesting tone
of his companion. `But here is Bromfield's lane,
where I turn up.'

`So do I,' said Lynch, readily, for it was just
the way he wished to go.

Reaching Tremont street, Henry turned down,
and, when opposite Park street church, was about
to cross to the head of the mall to enter the avenue,
when Lynch slightly detained him by the
arm, saying carelessly—

`Come, let us take this side; it is lighted,
and is pleasanter than the dark shade of the trees.

On that side, a block below, were the Washington
Gardens.' As they approached the entrance
they saw a brilliant light above it, a crowd gathered
round, and ladies and gentlemen going in and
out, while from within came floating the stirring
notes of instrumental music.

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