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Show THE FAIR APOSTATE. 319 soon his old companions learned to do without him, and he dropped into the ranks of the half- forgotten. All at once it began to be whispered that Elwood Briarly was drinking a great deal; and then that he was drinking altogether too much, and very soon after, that he was a drunkard, and in an amazingly short space of time that he was an abandoned drunkard, and that his late lease was vacated and the farm to be relet. And so it was that when his little Marian was only three years old, she was taken home to grandfather James, and Elwood Briarly plunged down, down, down along the course of those given over to the national vice of Free ( and " Merrie ") England. Counted as already dead by those nearest him, he became a com-mon laborer for the means of gratifying his appetite. His sorrow had yielded to time, but now habit dragged him down. When reason asserted her sway he struggled to his feet for a few days or weeks, then fell again, and each time deeper than before. And now his habits and associates had changed his original nature. At the church or social gathering he was never seen; his only recreation worth the name was at the workingman's club ; there he easily learned to crit-icise every body but himself, and to blame every one for his troubles, the government most of all. The genial young farmer had become first a snarling critic, then a radical, a cynic, a misanthrope. Again he struggled to his feet, and in one of his sober moods, on a calm Sabbath afternoon, started with his little girl for a stroll upon the village common. His attention was attracted by a small group of people who had gathered around a rude stand, extemporized by piling a few stones together. On this stood a man of peculiar ap-pearance, with what Briarly thought an unpleasant nasal tone, and a complexion that was certainly not English. " It's one o' them new-fangled preachers from America," said a neighbor, as he came up ; and for want of some better amusement, he decided to wait and listen. There was a general air of critical indifference in the small audience, idle and seeking only entertainment as they were; but they were respectful. The preacher seemed to fix his eye on Briarly as he pronounced his text : " If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him." JAMES i : 5. Slowly repeating the text, as if to fix the meaning of each word, the missionary cast a glance over his congregation. In that sweeping inspection he had noted those whom he would most likely reach. " My friends, brethren and sisters, all; this means you. It don't nean the Pope of Rome is to have all wisdom. It don't mean His |