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brighter than ever, and had danced and sung at this and that party; and he had begun a flirtation with a young lady in the neighbourhood, and appeared likely to succeed in winning her. It was a new and painful idea to me thus to cast off the strong affection of a life, and to feed the poor breaking heart upon husks; but I soon learned, from sad experience, to what cause to attribute the gay spirits of Louie Morris. It was a dull afternoon in winter, just before tea-time, when I was summoned to the drawing room to see her; she jumped from her seat as I entered, and embraced me rather roughly, I thought, compared to her usual gentle, almost timid, caress.

'Dear Mrs. Fletcher,' she said, speaking loudly, 'I have come to take your house by storm. I am going to a party to-night; it will be a delightful time, only I could not get dressed properly at home, for mamma is, well, I must not say it, you know, but she and the bottle are gone to sleep together; and as for her husband, he is out as usual, and I expect by this time drunk; and I wanted some one to advise me a little to-night. I wish mamma had kept awake till I left her. The servant is bringing a box for me; I hope you will not think me very rude.'

I felt annoyed, and was about to make a womanly answer, showing the disgust I felt at this revelation, but the chord of pity was happily touched, and I answered kindly, 'This way, Louie,' and led her to our spare bedroom. 'You seem too excited to-night, Miss Morris,' I added, as I followed her in, and shut the door.

'I will be honest, Mrs. Fletcher, with you, though no one else knows,' she replied. 'I have found out that wine will put me in capital spirits, and I can't stay at home mourning over the past; I should go mad. Mother often advises a little of her drink, but I don't like that much yet.' She saw my horrified look, and added, 'Oh! Mrs. Fletcher, if you had known what I have gone through you would pity me, and not look so angry. Wine has saved me from madness. I look upon it as my only friend, except mamma and you.'

'I should not blame you, Louie,' I replied, for taking a little when it is really needed, for of course wine is a most useful medicine [so I then thought]; but it does seem dreadful to go to a party and raise your spirits for the evening by drinking.'

'I have other news for you, Mrs. Fletcher, which you will disapprove of, I suppose; but I may as well tell you, I am going to be married."

'Not to Wal-,' I began, but Louie shook my arm. 'Hush! hush! I can't bear his name.' She sat on a low

chair, and wept hysterically. It was my turn to soothe, and she soon rallied. 'No, Mrs. Fletcher; I am to be married to a gentleman of good property, who lives at Clareport;' she named a large town about thirty miles distant, and it will be so good to get off from this dreadful place.' She shuddered.

But, Louie,' I asked, 'do you love this gentleman? for without love, dear, there can be no true happiness in marriage.'

I don't expect happiness,' she replied evasively; 'I shall be thankful for peace only.'

'Peace, Louie ? We can only be peaceful when we do rightly. Is it right to marry a man and not give him your heart?'

'He seems very contented,' she answered, kind to me.'

and is very

'But will he be so long if his wife does not love him?" 'You are cruel, Mrs. Fletcher; would you rather have me mad?'

I did not answer these passionate words, and Louie presently started up; 'I must make haste, or I shall not be in time. Mr. Hale expects to meet me to-night.'

I sat where Louie Morris had sat, and watched her attire herself before the glass, rendering the little aids one woman can to another. The box had already arrived, and she drew out the pretty white muslin robe and trimmings, and jewellery, and I wondered not at Mr. Hale's kindness and contentment when I saw her arrayed. The false lustre of her eyes, the brilliant hue of her cheeks, the ready witty answer of her tongue, for which she thanked the poison cup of wine, were sufficient to satisfy many men; and I could also imagine, that when Mr. Hale led her down the room, it would blight the pride as well as blanch the cheek of Walter Kinsman, to see and think of her as belonging to another.

How

Yet the modest tender sweetness of her youth was gone. She was a proud woman now, false to the purity of her nature and her own heart. Yet why should I judge her? Is not her history, like the history of all our erring sisters, more cause for womanly compassion than censorious judgment? know we that, similarly tempted, we might have stood the storm more bravely? Let our indignation, our anger, be hurled against strong drink, that enemy of all things 'pure, and lovely, and honest, and of good report,' without which Louie Morris would never have fallen so low. In less than a month afterwards the wedding took place. Louie brought Mr. Hale to see me, when she bade me good bye. He was considerably older than herself, a kindly, self-possessed man,

who

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who probably, as a rule, contented himself with the surface of things, and dived but small distance below, but he seemed fond and proud of his betrothed bride, and very anxious to please her. His was not a nature to pour oil and wine into heart wounds, but he would never willingly offend or disturb the outside comfort of his wife. It was a better match than could have been expected, and he was too good a man to be married without love. Too good, I say advisedly, for there are a few male flirts who only deserve loveless wives and joyless homes.

Walter Kinsman took no notice to Charlie or myself of Louie's marriage. His time was chiefly passed out of our circle now, and it was whispered that he was a too frequent visitor at the public-houses. After a while, his growing inattention to business made it necessary that my husband should request a dissolution of partnership, as the habits and character of Walter Kinsman were bringing disrepute upon the firm, and it was undesirable that my husband's partner should be a man whom he could not allow to associate freely with his wife and family. A dreadful disturbance ensued, as I felt sure it would. Walter Kinsman abused my husband, swore at him, and threatened him, but Charles was as firm as he was kind when right and justice were at stake, and he pointed out to his partner, clearly and plainly, the loss of confidence in them which was daily becoming apparent, both from their customers and the firms with which they dealt. For some weeks Walter Kinsman obstinately refused to withdraw, and when at last he did so, it was with unkind words upon his lips, and a bitter feeling of enmity in his heart against my husband. So it came to pass that the friendly intercourse which had existed between us was entirely cut off, and the remaining facts of his history I only obtained from others. He possessed a small income inherited from his father, and with this and the capital withdrawn from the tanyard, he determined to get more for the satisfying of his naturally ambitious nature. He departed from the town with a wife whom he had married out of spite soon after Louie's marriage to Mr. Hale, a woman of low, degraded mind and manners, who could only be a companion to him in his worst pursuits, and of whom he had boasted to Charles that he married her to save the expense of a housekeeper.'

'But you will find that a wife justly expects many things a mere housekeeper would not,' said Charles, smiling.

'My wife needs not expect more, but less,' he answered savagely.

The pair went abroad, and in German watering-places and
French

French cities, carried on a system of gambling that would have imprisoned or transported them in England. Two wretched children were born to be the companions of their parents in evil-doing. Has death met them there? and when he advanced, not as a white winged angel of hope, but as a black shrouded spectre of terror and despair, did conscience whisper to Walter Kinsman, the once gay, handsome, clever man, the once beloved object of a fond woman's heart, that life had been wasted, eternity darkened, and God dishonoured through his unbending pride?

I must return to the fate of poor Louie Hale. It was not long before her husband discovered the secret sin to which his wife was addicted, not long before he found her drunk, not long before he heard her confess in times of half-stupefied intoxication, her love for Walter Kinsman, and her carelessness in regard to himself. A more passionate man would have been excited to jealousy; a less kind man might have left her to herself; but he gravely reasoned with her in her sober senses, and tried to implant the love that had never existed in her heart for him. She was not thus to be won. Not even when innocent babyhood nestled in her bosom did the old tenderness revive. She never loved her children with more than mere animal affection, hardly with that. Once, when he brought her over to see her friends with their eldest child, a fine little boy of five years, Mr. and Mrs. Hale called upon us. It was pitiful to see the change in the man's honest face, as he looked at Louie, no longer with the kind, loving glance of old times, but sadly, as if he had never received and now did not expect consideration from her; and when I praised the boy to Louie and expected her words of interest about him, it was Mr. Hale who spoke. He is a very dear child, Mrs. Fletcher; but I don't think my wife is very proud of him.'

'I never did care about children,' said Mrs. Hale, and turned the subject.

Another five years passed, and Louie Hale had left her husband's home to become an abandoned wanderer in the streets of Clareport. The disappointed Mr. Hale, unable to bear the disgrace in his native town, sold his business at a great sacrifice, and went to live in London in seclusion, leaving a friend to dispense a weekly sum to his wife, which she generally sent a companion to receive. For a while Louie lived in guilty splendour, then she sank lower and lower, through every step of her downward path carrying in her tight embrace the instrument of her ruin-the bottle-till she came to a neglected death-bed, in a lonely garret, and a dishonoured grave.

Do

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Do you wonder that whenever I think about partner and the sad love-story between himself and Louie my husband's Morris, I feel I can never do too much to root out the drinking customs from my country? Self-reproach lends me zeal. If I had only warned that young girl more earnestly against wine, if I had only known that it was wrong to take any, how much good I might have done to her. Oh! my sisters, you who understand these matters as I do now, on whom the glorious light of the great temperance reformation has shone, take heed that you use the influence it gives you to the wellbeing of your fellow-creatures and the glory of your God. There is no enemy so dangerous to a weak, a sorrowing, or a tempted woman as strong drink; no means so well adapted to bring her away from the path of holiness and purity, and lead her to the habitations of darkness and misery and death.

THE SOCIAL SCIENCE CONGRESS, 1865.

THE HE ninth, or 'Sheffield,' Congress of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, was opened on Wednesday, the 4th, and closed on Wednesday, the 11th of October. The Presidential Address, delivered by the Right Hon. Lord Brougham, ranged, as usual, over a universe of topics; not forgetting the Co-operative Movement, which his lordship reported to be still progressing at a rate limited, indeed, by the increased vigour of the rules agreed to, and the arrangements enforced with the view to profit, but therefore limited not altogether without advantage. His lordship remarked that the strong recommendations given at York to employ co-operation in agriculture, and the signal success of Mr. Gordon's experiments in Suffolk, had had their effect in Ireland, where, on the Vandaleur property, no doubt equal success would have followed, but for the unfortunate insolvency of the landlord. As far as it went, nothing could be more satisfactory. Mr. Craig, its able superintendent, had stated that when the co-operation had been continued some time, the greatest improvement had taken place, both in the comfort and the moral condition of the inhabitants, who had in the first instance felt very hostile, and had even carried their opposition to the length of actual breach of the peace. His lordship added, with justice, that the cause of co-operation in all its branches owed almost everything to Mr. Henry Pitman, whose constant exertions and self-sacrifice could not be too gratefully acknowledged by all co-operative societies, and who required their efforts to aid him in his great work, the conduct of 'The Co-operator. Nothing could be more gratifying in all respects than the spread and success of co-operation, both as regarded the comfort and the improvement of the people; and if the middle classes had gained much, the working classes had had a larger share of the benefit. It must ever be kept in mind that the primary object of co-operation was self-help-the enabling the working man to obtain his goods of the best quality, and at the lowest price, to gain his fair wages, and to secure his share in the profits arising from his labour. The poor man's gains were as far as possible to be employed in the education of his children, and his own improvement. In this he might be assisted by his wealthier neighbours in providing for his relaxation and social intercourse during the hours of his rest. The want of room in his house often obliged him to attend a club; therefore the best assistance that could be rendered him was to facilitate the forming of clubs, which, among other advantages, had the great merit of coming in competition with the alehouse.

Sir R. J. Phillimore, D.C.L., President of the Department of Jurispruden the Amendment of the Law, opened the general business of that section by a paper on the Codification of the Laws of this Country.

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