The Lights and Shadows of Real Life

She was shown up stairs by the mother, who did not recognise her, although both voice and face seemed familiar. On entering the chamber, Mary turned to her and exclaimed—

"Mary Williams! Is it possible!"

"And Mary Graham, is it indeed possible that I see you thus!"—(kissing her)" And Anna—is that pale, worn face, the face of my old friend and companion, Anna Graham?" And she bent down over the bed and kissed the lips and cheek of the sick girl, tenderly, while her eyes grew dim with tears. "How changed in a few short years!" she added, as she took a proffered chair. "Who could have dreamed, seven years ago, that we should ever meet thus!"

In a short time, as the first shock and surprise of meeting passed off, Mary Williams, or rather Mrs. Harwood, entered into a serious conversation with Mrs. Graham, and her daughters, in reference to the past, the present, and the future. After learning all that she could of their history since their father's failure, which was detailed without disguise by Mary—Anna was too feeble to converse—Mrs. Harwood turned to Mary and asked suddenly—

"Do you know this cape, Mary?" alluding to one she had on.

"O, yes—very well."

"You worked it, did you not?"

"Yes."

"For what price?"

"Two dollars."

"Is it possible! I bought it of Mrs.—for French, and paid her for it fifteen dollars."

"Fifteen dollars!" ejaculated Mary, in surprise. "How shamefully that woman has imposed upon me! During the last two years, I have worked at least one hundred capes for her, each of which brought me in only two dollars. No doubt she has regularly sold them for French goods, at from ten to fifteen dollars apiece."

"No doubt of it. I, myself, have bought several from her during that time at high prices, all of which may have been worked by you. I saw you in her store a few days ago, but did not recognise you, although your appearance, as it did several times here before, attracted my attention. I had my suspicions, after I had learned from Mrs.—who you were, that you had wrought this cape, and from having overheard you ask her for an advance of six dollars, as the price of three capes, was pretty well satisfied that two dollars was all you received for it. I at once determined to seek you out, and try to aid you in your severe struggle with the world. It was only last evening that I learned from my brother where you lived—and I also learned, what rejoiced my heart, that there was about occurring a favourable change in your circumstances. If, however, your health should permit, and your inclination prompt you to do so, I will take care that you get a much better price for any capes that you may hereafter work. They are richly worth ten and twelve dollars apiece, and at that price, I have no doubt but that I can get sales for many."

"Bless you, Mary! Bless you!" Anna said, smiling through gushing tears, as she rose up in the bed, and bent over towards her old friend and companion. "Your words have fallen upon my heart like a healing balsam!"

Mrs. Harwood came forward, and received the head of Anna upon her bosom, while she drew an arm round her waist, and bent down and pressed her with tenderness and affection.

A better day had truly dawned upon this ruined and deeply afflicted family. Mrs. Harwood and her brother continued to be their steady friends. For a year Alfred remained in his new situation as an efficient clerk, and at the end of that time had his salary advanced. During that period, Mary, and Anna, whose health had become measurably restored, employed all their spare time in embroidery, which, at the excellent prices which, through the aid of Mrs. Harwood, they were enabled to get for their really beautiful work, brought in a handsome addition to their brother's earnings, and this enabled them to live in independence, comfort and respectability. As for Ellen, her husband had become truly a reformed man, and provided for her comfortably.

It is now nearly two years since this happy change took place, and there is every appearance that another and a still happier one is about to occur in reference to Anna. Charles Williams is seen very often, of late, riding out with her and attending her to public places. The reader can easily guess the probable result. If there; is not a wedding-party soon, then appearances, in this case at least, are very deceptive.

THE RUM-SELLER'S DREAM

"HOW much have you taken in to-day, Sandy?" asked a modern rum-seller of his bar-tender, after the doors and windows of his attractive establishment were closed for the night.

"Only about a dollar, Mr. Graves. I never saw such dull times in my life."

"Only about a dollar! Too bad! too bad! I shall be ruined at this rate."

"I really don't know what ails the people now. But 'spose it's these blamenation temperance folks that's doin' all the mischief."

"We must get up something new, Sandy;—something to draw attention to our house."

"So I've been a thinkin'. Can't we get George Washington Dixon to walk a plank for us? That would draw crowds, you know; and then every feller almost that we got in here would take a drink."

"We can't get him, Sandy. He's secured over at the—. But, any how, the people are getting up to that kind of humbuggery; and I'm afraid, that, like the Indian's gun, it would cost in the end more than it came to."

"Couldn't we get a maremaid?"

"A mermaid?"

"Yes, a maremaid. You know they had one in town t'other day. It would be a prime move, if we could only do it. We might fix her up here, just back of where I stand, so that every feller who called to see it would have to come up to the bar, front-face. There'd be no backing out then, you know, without ponying up for a drink. No one would be mean enough, after seeing a real maremaid for nothing, to go away without shelling out a fip for a glass of liquor."

"Nonsense, Sandy! Where are we to get a mermaid?"

"Where did they get that one from?"

"That was brought from Japan; and was a monkey's head and body sewed on to a fish's tail,—so they say;"

"Well, can't we send to Japan as well as any one? And as to its being a monkey's head on a fish's tail, that's no concern. It would only make a better gull-trap."

"And wait some two years before it arrived? Humph! If that's the only thing that will save me, I shall go to the dogs in spite of the—"

"Don't swear, Mr. Graves. It's a bad habit, though I am guilty of it myself,"—the bar-tender said, with vulgar familiarity. "But, why need we wait two years for a maremaid?"

"Did you ever study geography, Sandy?"

"Jografy?"

"Yes."

"What's that?"

"Why, the maps, at school."

"I warn't never to school."

"Then you don't know how far Japan is from here?"

"Not exactly. But 'spose it's some twenty or thirty miles."

"Twenty or thirty miles! It's t'other side of the world!"

"O, dear! Then we can't get a maremaid, after all. But 'spose we try and get a live snake."

"That won't do."

"Why not?"

"A live snake is no great curiosity."

"Yes, but you know we could call it some outlandish name; or say that it was dug up fifty feet below the ground, out of a solid rock, and was now all alive and doin' well."

"It wouldn't do, Sandy."

"Now I think it would, prime."

"It might if these temperance folks were not so confounded thick about here, interfering with a man and preventing him making an honest living. If it wasn't for them, I should be clearing five or ten dollars a day, as easy as nothing."

"Confound them! I say," was Sandy's hearty response; while he clenched his fist, and ground his teeth together. "If I had a rope round the necks of every mother's son of 'em, wouldn't I serve 'em as old Julus Cesar did the Hottentots? Wouldn't I though! But what could they say or do about it, Mr. Graves."

"They'd pretty quick put it on to us in their temperance papers about the good device we had. They'd talk pretty fast about the serpent that seduced Eve, and all that. No, blast 'em! A snake won't do, Sandy."

"How will a monkey do?"

"A monkey might answer, if he was a little cuter than common. But we can't get one handy."

"Try a band of music."

"That would soon wear out; and then we should have to get up something else, and the people would suspect us of trying to gull them."

"Then what is to be done, Mr. Graves? We can never stand it at this rate."

"I'm sure I don't know." And the rum-seller leaned upon his bar, and looked quite sad and dejected.

"I wonder what has become of Bill Riley?" he at length asked, rising up with a sigh. "He hasn't been here for a week."

"Dick Hilton told me to-day that he believed he had joined the teetotallers."

"I feared as much. He was one of my very best customers; worth a clear dollar and a half a week to me, above the cost of the liquors, the year round. And Tom Jones? Where can he be?"

"Gone, too."

"Tom Jones?" in surprise.

"It's a fact. They got him on the same night Bill Riley was caught."

"Foolish fellow, to go and throw himself away in that style! Them temperance men will get from him every dollar he can earn, to build Temperance Halls, and get up processions, and buy clothes for lazy, loafing vagabonds, that had a great sight better be sent to the poorhouse. It is too bad. My very blood boils when I think what fools men are."

"And there's Harry Peters,—Dick Hilton told me that he'd gone, too."

"Not Harry Peters, surely!"

"Yes. He hasn't been near our house for several days.

"Well, something must be done to get up a new set of customers, or we are gone. We must invent some new drink."

"What shall it be?"

"O, that's no consequence. The name must be taking."

"Have you thought of one?"

"No, Can't you think of something?"

"Well—Let me see. But I'm sure I don't know what would do."

"What do you think of 'Bank Stock?' That would attract attention."

"I can't say that I like it."

"Or 'Greasers?'"

"Most too vulgar."

"So I think myself. Suppose we call it a 'Mummy?'"

"I'm afraid it wouldn't go. It ought to have 'Imperial,' or

'Nectar,' or something like that about it."

"O, yes, I see your notion. But they've all been used up long ago. It must be some entirely new name, which, at the same time, will hit a popular idea. As 'Tariff,' or 'Compromise.'"

"I see now. Well, can't you hammer out something?"

"I must try. Let me see. How will 'Sub-Treasury' do?"

"Capital! 'Graves' Sub-Treasury' will be just the thing. You see, the young-fellows will say—'Why, what kind of a new drink is this they've been getting up, down at the Harmony House?'

"'I don't know—What is it?'

"'The Sub-Treasury, they call it.'

"'Have you tried it yet?'

"'No.'

"'Well, come, let's give him a call. Novelty, you know, is the order of the day.'

"That's the way these matters work, Mr. Graves. But how are you going to make it?"

"I've not thought of that. But anything will do. Liquor tastes good to 'em any way you choose to fix it."

"True enough. You can leave that part to me. I'll hatch up something that will tickle as it goes down, and make 'em wish their throats were a mile long, that they might taste it all the way."

"Have you tried Graves' new drink yet, Joe?" asked one young man of another, a day or two after the conversation just noted took place.

"No.—What is it?"

"Sub-Treasury."

"Sub-Treasury? That must be something new. I wonder what it is?"

"I've just been wondering the same thing. Suppose we go down and try it."

"I was about swearing off from ever tasting another drop of liquor. But, I believe I will try a 'Sub-Treasury' with you, just for the fun of the thing."

"Well, come along then."

And so the two started off for the Harmony House.

"Give us a couple of Sub-Treasuries," said one of them as they entered; and forthwith a couple of glasses filled with mixed liquors, crushed ice, lemonpeel, and snow-white sugar, were prepared, and a straw placed in each, through which the young men "imbibed" the new compound.

"Really, this is fine, Nelson!" said the one, called Joe, smacking his lips.

"It is, indeed. You'll make your fortune out of this, Graves."

"Do you think so?" the pleased liquor-seller responded, with a broad smile of satisfaction.

"I've not the least doubt of it," Joe, or Joseph Bancroft, said,—"I had half resolved to join the temperance society this day. But your 'Sub-Treasury' has shaken my resolution. I shall never be able to do it now in this world, nor in the next, either, if I can only get you in the same place with me to make 'Sub-Treasury!' Ha! ha! ha!"

"A Sub-Treasury," said another young man, coming up to the bar.

"Here, landlord, let us have one of your—what do you call 'em? O,

Sub-Treasuries!" was the request of another.

"Hallo, Sandy! What new-fangled stuff is this you've got?" broke in a half-drunken creature, staggering up, and holding on to the bar-railing. "Let us have one, will you?"

Both Sandy and Graves were now kept as busy as they could be, mixing liquors and serving customers. The advertisement which had been inserted in two or three of the morning papers, in the following words, had answered fully the rum-sellers' expectations.

"Drop in at the HARMONY HOUSE, and try a 'Sub-Treasury.' 'What is a Sub-Treasury?' you ask. Come and see for yourself, and taste for yourself. Old Graves' word for it, you'll never want anything else to wet your whistle with, as long as you live."

All through the forenoon the run was kept up steadily, dozens of new faces appearing at the bar, and cheering the heart of the tavern-keeper with the prospect of a fresh set of customers. About two o'clock, succeeded a pause.

"That works admirably,—don't it, Sandy?" said Mr. Graves, as soon as the bar-room was perfectly clear, for the first time, since morning.

"Indeed, it does. They havn't given me time to blow. But aint some folks easily gulled?"

"Easily enough, Sandy. This Sub-Treasury they think something wonderful. But it's only rum after all, by another name, and in a little different form. A 'cobbler,' or a 'julep' has lost its attractions; but get up some new name for an old compound, and you go all before the wind again."

"I think we might tempt some of the new converts to temperance with this. Bill Riley, for instance."

"No doubt. I'll see if I can't come across Bill; he is too good a customer to lose."

And so saying, Mr. Graves retired from the bar-room, to get his dinner, feeling better satisfied with himself than he had been for a long time. After eating heartily, and drinking freely, he went into his handsomely furnished parlour, and reclined himself upon a sofa, thinking still, and with a pleasurable emotion that warmed his bosom, of the success of his expedient to draw custom. He had been lying down, it seemed to him, but a few moments, when a tap at the door, to which he responded with a loud "come in," was followed by the entrance of a thin, pale, haggard-looking creature, her clothes soiled, and hanging loosely, and in tatters about her attenuated body. By the hand she held a little girl, from whose young face had faded every trace of childhood's happy expression. She, too, was thin and pale, and had a fixed, stony look, of hopeless suffering. They came up to where he still lay upon the sofa, and stood looking down upon him in silence.

"Who are you? What do you want?" the rum-seller ejaculated, raising himself up with a strange feeling about his heart.

"The wife and child of one of your victims! He is dying, and wishes to see you."

"Who is he? What is his name?" asked the tavern-keeper, while his face grew pale, and his lips quivered.

"William Riley," was the mournful reply.

"Go home, woman! Go home! I cannot go with you! What good can I do your husband?"

"You must go! You shall go!" shrieked the wretched being, suddenly grasping the arm of Mr. Graves, with a tight grip, while her hand seemed to burn his arm, as if it were a hand of fire.

A sudden and irresistible impulse to obey the call of the dying man came over him, and as he arose mechanically, the mother and her child turned towards the door, and he followed after them. On emerging into the street, he became conscious of a great and sudden change in external nature. On retiring from his bar an hour before, the sun was shining in a sky of spotless beauty. Now the heavens were shrouded in dense masses of black clouds that were whirling here and there in immense eddies, or careering across the sky as if driven by a fierce and mighty wind. But below, all was hushed and pulseless as the grave; and the stagnant air felt like the hot vapour over an immense furnace. The tavern-keeper would have paused and returned so soon as he became conscious of this fearful change, portending the approach of a wild storm; but his conductors seemed to know his thoughts; and turning, each fixed upon him a stern and threatening look, whose strange power he could neither resist nor understand.

"Come," said the mother in a hollow, husky voice; and then turned and moved on again, while the tavern-keeper followed impulsively. They had proceeded thus, for only a few paces, when a fierce light glanced through half the sky, followed by a deafening crash, under the concussion of which the earth trembled as if shaken to its very centre. The tavern-keeper again paused in shrinking irresolution, and again the woman's emphatic,

"Come!" caused him to follow his guides mechanically.

Soon the storm burst over their heads, and raged with a wild fury, such as he had never before witnessed. The wind howled through the streets and alleys of the city, with the roar of thunder; while the deep reverberations following every broad sheet of lightning that blazed through the whole circle of the heavens, was as the roar of a dissolving universe. Amid all this, the rain fell like a deluge. But the rum-seller's guides paused not, and he kept steadily onwards after them, shrinking now into the shelter of the houses, and now breasting the fierce storm with a momentary desperate resolution.

Through street after street, lined on either side with wretched tenements that seemed tottering and just ready to fall, and through alley after alley, where squalid misery had hid itself from the eye of general observation, did they pass, in what seemed to Mr. Graves an interminable succession; At last the woman and her child paused at the door of an old, wretched-looking frame house, that appeared just ready to sink to the ground with decay.

"This is the place, sir. Come in! Your victim would see you before he dies," the woman said in a deep voice that made a chill run through every nerve, at the same time that she looked him sternly and with an expression of malignant triumph in the face.

Unable to resist the impulse that drove him onward, the rum-seller entered the house.

"See there, sir! Look! Behold the work of your own hands!" exclaimed the woman with startling emphasis, as he found himself in a room, with a few old rags in one corner of it for a bed, upon which lay, in the last sad agonies of dissolution, his old customer, Bill Riley, who, he had been that day informed by his bar-keeper, had joined the temperance society.

"There, sir! See there!" she continued, grasping his arm, and dragging him up to where the miserable wretch lay. "Look at him!—Bill—Bill!" she continued, stooping down, while she still held tightly the rum-seller's arm, and shaking the dying man. "Bill—Bill! Here he is. You said you wanted to see him! Now curse him, Bill! Curse him with your dying breath!" And the woman's voice rose to a wild shriek.

The wretch, thus rudely and suddenly called back from the brink of death into a painful consciousness of existence, half rose up, and stared wildly around him for a moment or two.

"Here he is, Bill! Here he is!" resumed his wife, again shaking him violently.

"Who? Who?" inquired the dying man.

"Why, the rum-seller, who robbed you of your hard earnings, that he might roll in wealth and feast daily on luxuries, while your wife and children were starving! Here he is. Curse him now, with your dying breath! Curse him, I say, Bill Riley! Curse him!"

"Who? Who?" eagerly asked the wretched being, a thrill of new life seeming to flash through his exhausted frame—"Old Graves? Where is he?"

"Here he is, Bill! Here he is! Don't you see him?"

"Ah, yes! I see him now!" And Riley fixed his eyes, that seemed, to the rum-seller, to burn and flash like balls of fire, sending off vivid scintillations, upon him with a long and searching stare.

"Ah, yes," he continued, "this is old Graves, the rum-seller, who has sent more men to hell, and more widows and orphans to the poor-house, than any other man living. How do you do, sir?" rising up still more in his bed, and grasping the unwilling hand of the tavern-keeper, which he clenched hard, and shook with superhuman strength. "How are you, old fellow? I'm glad to see you once more in this world. We shall have a jolly time in the next, though, shan't we?"

A smile of malignant triumph flitted for a moment over the livid face of Riley. Then its expression brightened into one of intelligence.

"Look here," he said, and brought his lips close to the ear of

Graves. Then in a deep whisper, he breathed the words,

"Sub-Treasury!"

The rum-seller started, suddenly, and grew paler than ever.

Instantly a loud, unearthly laugh rang through the room, causing the blood to curdle about his heart.

"Ha! ha! ha! I thought that chord could be touched! Ha! ha! That was a capital idea, wasn't it, old fellow? But you were too late for Bill Riley. You thought the temperance men had him. But that was a little mistake."

The sweat already stood in large drops on the pale face of the tavern-keeper, and his limbs trembled like the quivering aspen.

"Horrible!" he murmured, closing his eyes, to shut out the scene.

"Not half so horrible as the place where I was, just before you came in, Mr. Graves," said Riley in a calmer voice. "And where do you think that was?"

"In hell, I suppose," replied the rum-seller, with the energy of desperation.

"Exactly," was the calm reply. "And what do you think I heard and saw there? Let me tell you. I was dead for a little while, and found myself in strange quarters, as you will say, when you get there. I always thought devils had long tails, and cloven feet, horns, and all that kind of thing. But that's a vulgar error. They are nothing but wicked men like you, who in this world have taken delight in injuring others. You will make a first-rate devil! Ha! ha! I heard 'em say so, and wishing you were only there to help them work out their evil intentions.

"There are a great many little hells there, all grouped into one immense hell, like societies here, grouped into one larger society or nation. And there, as here, every smaller society is engaged in doing some particular thing, and all are in one society who love to do that thing. As for instance, all who, while here, have taken delight in theft, are there associated together, and are all the while busy in inventing reasons to put into the heads of thieves here to justify them in stealing. Murderers, in like manner; and so rum-sellers. They have a hell all filled with rum-sellers there! I was let into it for a little while to see what was going on, and who do you think I saw there. Why, old Adams, that died about a month ago. The old fellow was as lively as a cricket, and as busy as a bee.

"'How is that prime old chap, Graves?' he asked of me, as soon as he found out I was there.

"'I havn't seen him for a week,' I replied. 'I have been sick for that time.'

"'But he's a rum 'un, though, ain't he?' chuckled Adams. 'Many a scheme he and I have laid to get money out of the grog-drinkers. But he was always ahead of me. I used, in my early days, to feel a little compunction when I saw a clever fellow going to ruin. But it never affected him in the least. All was fish that came into his net. I wish we had him with us. We want just such scheming devils as he to help us devise ways and means to circumvent these temperance men. They'll ruin us, if we don't look out. How were they coming on when you left?'

"'Carrying everything before them,' I said. 'The rum-sellers are almost driven to their wit's ends for devices to get customers.'