G. A. Henty - "The Reign Of Terror"

Steele Rudd (Arthur Hoey Davis) - "On Our Selection"

Allen Johnson - "Jefferson and his Colleagues, A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty"

Alice Emerson - "Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: The Lights and Shadows of Real Life

T >> T.S. Arthur >> The Lights and Shadows of Real Life




"Then you think that old, inordinate craving for drink, has been
entirely eradicated?"

"O yes, I am confident of it."

"And heartily glad am I to hear you say so. It doubles the guarantee
for our own and children's happiness. The pledge to guard us on one
side, and the total loss of all desire on the other, is surely a
safe protection. I feel, that into the future I may now look,
without a single painful anxiety on this account."

"Yes, Jane. Into the future you may look with hope. And as to the
past, let it sink, with all its painful scenes,--its heart-aching
trials, into oblivion."

Jonas Marshall and his young wife had, many years before the period
in which the above conversation took place, entered upon the world
with cheerful hopes, and a flattering promise of happiness. They
were young persons of cultivated tastes, and had rather more of this
world's goods than ordinarily falls to the lot of those just
commencing life. A few years sufficed to dash all their hopes to the
ground, and to fill the heart of the young wife with a sorrow that
it seemed impossible for her to bear. Marshall, from habitual
drinking of intoxicating liquors, found the taste for them fully
confirmed before he dreamed of danger, and he had not the strength
of character at once and for ever to abandon their use. Gradually he
went down, down, slowly at first, but finally with a rapid movement,
until he found himself stripped of everything, and himself a
confirmed drunkard. For nearly two years longer, he surrendered
himself up to drink--his wife and children suffering more than my
pen can describe, or any but the drunkard's wife and drunkard's
children realize.

Then came a new era. A friend of humanity sought out the poor,
degraded wretch, in his misery and obscurity, and prevailed upon him
to abandon his vile habits, and pledge himself to total abstinence.
Two years from the day that pledge was signed, found him again
rising in the world, with health, peace, and comfort, the cheerful
inmates of his dwelling. Here is the brief outline of a reformed
drinker's history. How many an imagination can fill in the dark
shadows, and distinct, mournful features of the gloomy picture!

On the day succeeding the second anniversary of Jonas Marshall's
reformation, he was engaged to dine with a few friends, and met them
at the appointed hour. With the dessert, wine was introduced. Among
the guests were one or two persons with whom Marshall had but
recently become acquainted. They knew little or nothing of his
former life. One of them sat next to him at table, and very
naturally handed him the wine, with a request to drink with him.

"Thank you," was the courteous, but firm reply. "I do not drink
wine."

Another, who understood the reason of this refusal, observing it,
remarked--

"Our friend Marshall belongs to the tee-totallers."

"Ah, indeed! Then we must, of course, excuse him," was the
gentlemanly response.

"Don't you think, Marshall," remarked another, "that you temperance
men are a little too rigid in your entire proscription of wine?"

"For the reformed drinker," was the reply, "it is thought to be the
safest way to cut off entirely everything that can, by possibility,
inflame the appetite. Some argue, that when that morbid craving,
which the drunkard acquires, is once formed, it never can be
thoroughly eradicated."

"Do you think the position a true one?" asked a member of the party.

"I have my doubts of it," Marshall said. "For instance: Most of you
know that for some years I indulged to excess in drink. Two years
ago I abandoned the use of wine, brandy, and everything else of an
intoxicating nature. For a time, I felt the cravings of an intense
desire for liquor; but my pledge of total abstinence restrained me
from any indulgence. Gradually, the influence of my old appetite
subsided, until it ceased to be felt. And it is now more than a year
since I have experienced the slightest inclination to touch a drop.
Your wine and brandy are now, gentlemen, no temptation to me."

"But if that be the case," urged a friend, "why need you restrict
yourself, so rigidly, from joining in a social glass? Standing, as
you evidently do, upon the ground you occupied, before, by a too
free indulgence, you passed, unfortunately, the point of
self-control: you may now enjoy the good things of life without
abusing them. Your former painful experience will guard you in that
respect."

"I am not free to do so," replied Marshall.

"Why?"

"Because I have pledged myself never again to drink anything that
can intoxicate, and confirmed that pledge by my sign-manual--thus
giving it a double force and importance."

"What end had you in view in making that pledge?"

"The emancipation of myself from the horrible bondage in which I had
been held for years."

"That end is accomplished."

"True. But the obligations of my pledge are perpetual."

"That is a mere figure of speech. You fully believed, I suppose,
that perpetual total-abstinence was absolutely necessary for your
safety?"

"I certainly did."

"You do not believe so now?"

"No. I have seen reason, I think, to change my views in that
respect. The appetite which I believed would remain throughout life,
and need the force of a solemn bond to restrain it, has, under the
rigid discipline of two years, been destroyed. I now feel myself as
much above the enslaving effects of intoxicating liquors, as I ever
did in my life."

"Then, it is clear to my mind, that all the obligations of your
pledge are fulfilled; and that, as a matter of course, it ceases to
be binding."

"I should be very unwilling to violate that pledge."

"It would be, virtually, no violation."

"I cannot see it in that light," Marshall said, "although you may be
perfectly correct. At any rate, I am not now willing to act up to
your interpretation of the matter."

This declaration closed the argument, as his friends did not feel
any strong desire to see him drink, and argued the matter with him
as much for argument sake as anything else. In this they acted with
but little true wisdom; for the particular form in which the subject
was presented to the mind of Marshall, gave him something to think
about and reason about. And the more he thought and reasoned, the
more did he become dissatisfied with the restrictions under which he
found himself placed. Not having felt, for many months, the least
desire for liquor, he imagined that even the latent inclination
which existed, as he readily supposed, for some time, had become
altogether extinguished. There existed, therefore, in his
estimation, now that he had begun to think over the matter, no good
reason why he should abstain, totally, from wine, at least, on a
social occasion.

The daily recurrence of such thoughts, soon began to worry his mind,
until the pledge, that had for two years lain so lightly upon him,
became a burden almost too intolerable to be borne.

"Why didn't I bind myself for a limited period?" he at last said,
aloud, thus giving a sanction and confirmation by word of the
thoughts that had been gradually forming themselves into a decision
in his mind. No sooner had he said this, than the whole subject
assumed a more distinct form, and a more imposing aspect in his
view. He now saw clearly, what had not before seemed perfectly
plain--what had been till then encompassed by doubts. He was
satisfied that he had acted blindly when he pledged himself to
total-abstinence.

"Three hundred signed the pledge last night," said his wife to him,
a few weeks after the occurrence of the dinner-party, just
mentioned.

"Three hundred! We are carrying everything before us."

"Who can tell," resumed the wife, "the amount of happiness involved
in three hundred pledges to total-abstinence? There were, doubtless,
many husbands and fathers among the number who signed. Now, there is
joy in their dwellings. The fire, that long since went out, is again
kindled upon their hearths. How deeply do I sympathize with the
heart-stricken wives, upon whom day as again arisen, with a bright
sun shining down from an unclouded sky!"

"It is, truly, to them, a new era--or the dawning of a new
existence.--Most earnestly do I wish that the day had arrived, which
I am sure will come, when not a single wife in the land will mourn
over the wrong she suffers at the hand of a drunken husband."

"To that aspiration, I can utter a most devout amen," Mrs. Marshall
rejoined, fervently.

"A few years of perseverance and well-directed energy, on our part,
will effect all this, I allow myself fondly to hope, if we do not
create a reaction by over-doing the matter."

"How, over-doing it?" asked the wife.

"There is a danger of over-doing it in many ways. And I am by no
means sure that the pledge of perpetual abstinence is not an
instance of this."

"The pledge of perpetual abstinence! Why, husband, what do you
mean?"

"My remark seems to occasion surprise. But I think that I can make
the truth of what I say apparent to your mind. The use of the
pledge, you will readily admit, is to protect a man against the
influence of a morbid thirst for liquor, which his own resolution is
not strong enough to conquer."

"Well."

"So soon, then, as this end is gained, the use of the pledge
ceases."

"Is it ever gained? Is a man who has once felt this morbid thirst,
ever safe from it?"

"Most certainly do I believe that he is. Most certainly do I believe
that a few years of total abstinence from everything that
intoxicates, will place him on the precise ground that he occupied
before the first drop of liquor passed his lips."

"I cannot believe this, Jonas. Whatever is once confirmed by habit,
it seems to me, must be so incorporated into the mental and physical
organization, as never to be eradicated. Its effect is to change, in
a degree, the whole system, and to change it so thoroughly, as to
give a bias to all succeeding states of mind and body--thus
transmitting a tendency to come under the influence of that bias."

"You advance a thing, Jane, which will not hold good in practice.
As, for instance, it is now two years since I tasted a drop of wine,
brandy, or anything else of a like nature. If your theory were true,
I should still feel a latent desire, at times, to drink again. But
this is not the case. I have not the slightest inclination. The
sight, or even the smell of wine, does not produce the old desire,
which it would inevitably do, if it were only quiescent--not
extirpated--as I am confident that it is."

"And this is the reason why you think the pledge should not be
perpetual?"

"It is. Why should there be an external restraint imposed upon a
mere nonentity? It is absurd!"

"Granting, for the sake of argument, the view you take, in regard to
the extirpation of the morbid desire, which, however, I cannot see
to be true," Mrs. Marshall said, endeavouring to seem unconcerned,
notwithstanding the position assumed by her husband troubled her
instinctively,--"it seems to me, that there still exists a good
reason why the pledge should be perpetual."

"What is that, Jane?"

"If a man has once been led off by a love of drink, when no previous
habit had been formed, there exists, at least, the same danger
again, if liquor be used;--and if it should possibly be true that
the once formed desire, if subdued, is latent--not eradicated--the
danger is quadrupled."

"I do not see the force of what you say," the husband replied. "To
me, it seems, that the very fact that he had once fallen, and the
remembrance of its sad consequences, would be a sure protection
against another lapse from sobriety."

"It may all be so," Mrs. Marshall said, in a voice that conveyed a
slight evidence of the sudden shadow that had fallen upon her heart.
And then ensued a silence of more than a minute. The wife then
remarked in an inquiring tone--

"Then, if I understand you rightly, you think that the pledge should
be binding only for a limited time?"

"I do."

"How long?"

"From one to two years. Two, at the farthest, would be sufficient, I
am fully convinced, to restore any man, to the healthy tone of mind
and body that he once possessed. And then, the recollection of the
past would be an all-sufficient protection for the future."

Seeing that the husband was confirming himself more and more in the
dangerous position that he had assumed, Mrs. Marshall said no more.
Painfully conscious was she, from a knowledge of his peculiar
character, that, if the idea now floating in his mind should become
fixed by a rational confirmation, it would lead to evil
consequences. From that moment, she began eagerly to cast about in
her mind for the means of setting him right,--means that should
fully operate, without her apparent agency. But one way presented
itself,--(argument, she was well aware, as far as it was possible
for her to enter into it with him, would only set his mind the more
earnestly in search of reason, to prove the correctness of his
assumed positions,)--and that was to induce him to attend more
frequently the temperance meetings, and listen to the addresses and
experiences there given.

"Come, dear," she said to him, after tea, a few evenings subsequent
to the time Marshall had begun to urge his objections to the pledge.
"I want you to go with me to-night to this great temperance meeting.
Mr.--is going to make an address, and I wish to hear him very
much."

"It will be so crowded, Jane, that you will not have the least
satisfaction," objected her husband--"and, besides, the evening is
very warm."

"But I don't mind that, Jonas. I am very anxious to hear
Mr.--speak."

"I am sorry, Jane," Marshall said, after the silence of a few
moments. "But I recollect, now, that I promised Mr. Patton to call
down and see him this evening. There are to be a few friends there,
and he wished me, particularly, to meet them."

Poor Mrs. Marshall's countenance fell at this, and the tears
gathered in her eyes.

"So, then, you won't go with me to the temperance meeting," she
said, in a disappointed tone.

"I should like to do so, Jane," was the prevaricating reply, "but
you see that it is out of my power, without breaking my promise,
which you would not, of course, have me do."

"O, no, of course not."

"You can go, Jane. I will leave you at the door, and call for you
when the meeting is out."

"No, I do not feel like going, now I should have enjoyed it with you
by my side. But to go alone would mar all the pleasure."

"But surely that need not be, Jane. You know that I cannot be always
with you."

"No, of course not," was uttered, mechanically; and then followed a
long silence.

"So you will not go," Marshall at length said.

"I should not enjoy the meeting, and therefore do not wish to go,"
his wife replied.

"I am sorry for it, but cannot help it now, for I should not feel
right were I not to comply with my promise."

"I do not wish you to break it, of course. For a promise should ever
be kept sacred," Mrs. Marshall said, with a strong emphasis on the
latter sentence.

This emphasis did not escape the notice of her husband, who felt
that it was meant, as it really was, to apply to his state of mind
in regard to the pledge. For it was a fact, which the instinctive
perception of his wife had detected, that he had begun, seriously,
to argue in his own mind, the question, whether, under the
circumstances of the case, seeing, that, in taking the pledge, the
principle of protection was alone considered, he was any longer
bound by it. He did not, however, give expression to the thoughts
that he had at the time. The subject of conversation was changed,
and, in the course of half an hour, he left to fulfil his
engagement, which had not, in reality, been a positive one. As he
closed the door after him, Mrs. Marshall experienced a degree of
loneliness, and a gloomy depression of feeling, that she could not
fully account for, though she could not but acknowledge that, for a
portion of it, there existed too certain a cause, in the strange and
dangerous position her husband had taken in regard to the pledge.

As Marshall emerged from his dwelling, and took his way towards the
friend's house, where he expected to meet a select company, his mind
did not feel perfectly at ease. He had partly deceived his wife in
reference to the positive nature of the engagement, and had done so
in order to escape from an attendance on a temperance meeting. This
did not seem right. There was, also, a consciousness in his mind
that it would be extremely hazardous to throw off the restraints of
his pledge, at the same time that a resolution was already half
formed to do so. The agitation of mind occasioned by this conflict
continued until he arrived at his friend's door, and then, as he
joined the pleasant company within, it all subsided.

"A hearty welcome, Marshall!" said the friend, grasping his hand and
shaking it warmly. "We were really afraid that we should not have
the pleasure of your good society. But right glad am I, that, with
your adherence to temperance men and temperance principles, you do
not partake of the exclusive and unsocial character that so many
assume."

"I regard my friends with the same warm feelings that I ever did,"
Marshall replied,--"and love to meet them as frequently."

"That is right. We are social beings, and should cultivate
reciprocal good-feelings. But don't you think, Marshall, that some
of you temperance folks carry matters too far?"

"Certainly I do. As, for instance, I consider this binding of a man
to perpetual total-abstinence, as an unnecessary infringement of
individual liberty. As I look upon it, the use of the pledge, is to
enable a man, by the power of an external restraint, to gain the
mastery over an appetite that has mastered him. When that is
accomplished, all that is wanted is obtained: of what use is the
pledge after that?"

"Very true," was the encouraging reply.

"A man," resumed Marshall, repeating the argument he had used to his
wife, which now seemed still more conclusive, "has only to abstain
for a year or two from liquor to have the morbid craving for it
which over-indulgence had created, entirely eradicated. Then he
stands upon safe ground, and may take a social glass, occasionally,
with his friends, without the slightest danger. To bind himself up,
then, to perpetual abstinence, seems not only useless, but a real
infringement of individual liberty."

"So it presents itself to my mind," rejoined one of the company.

"I feel it to be so in my case," was the reply of the reformed man
to this, thus going on to invite temptation, instead of fleeing from
it.

"Certainly, if I were the individual concerned," remarked one of the
company, "I should not be long in breaking away from such arbitrary
restrictions."

"How would you get over the fact of having signed the pledge?" asked
Marshall, with an interest that he dared not acknowledge to himself.

"Easy enough," was the reply.

"How?"

"On the plea that I was deceived into signing such a pledge."

"How deceived?"

"Into a belief that it was the only remedy in my case. There is no
moral law binding any man to a contract entered into ignorantly. The
fact of ignorance, in regard to the fundamental principles of an
agreement, vitiates it. Is not that true?"

"It certainly is," was the general reply to this question.

"Then you think," said Marshall, after reflecting for a few moments,
"that no moral responsibility would attach to me, for instance, if I
were to act independently of my pledge?"

"Certainly none could attach," was the general response; "provided,
of course, that the end of that pledge was fully attained."

"Of that there can be no doubt," was the assumption of the reformed
man. "The end was, to save me from the influence of an appetite for
drink, against which, in my own strength, I could not contend. That
end is now accomplished. Two years of total abstinence has made me a
new man. I now occupy the same ground that I occupied before I lost
my self-control."

"Then I can see no reason why you should be denied the social
privilege of a glass with your friends," urged one of the company.

"Nor can I see it clearly," Marshall said. "Still I feel that a
solemn pledge, made more solemn and binding by the subscription of
my name, is not a thing to be lightly broken. The thought of doing
so troubles me, when I seriously reflect upon it."

"It seems to me that, were I in your place," gravely remarked one of
the company, heretofore silent, "I would not break my pledge without
fully settling two points--if it is possible for you, or any other
man, under like circumstances, to settle them."

"What are they?" asked Marshall, with interest.

"They are the two most prominent points in your case;--two that have
already been introduced here to-night. One involves the question,
whether you are really free from the influence of your former
habits?"

"I have not a single doubt in regard to that point," was the
positive reply.

"I do not see, Mr. Marshall, how it is possible for you to settle it
beyond a doubt," urged the friend. "To me, it is not philosophically
true that the power of habit is ever entirely destroyed. All
subsequent states of body or mind, I fully believe, are affected and
modified by what has gone before, and never lose the impression of
preceding states,--and more particularly of anything like an
overmastering habit--or rather, I should say, in this case, of an
overmastering affection. The love, desire, or affection, whichever
you may choose to call it, which you once felt for intoxicating
drinks, or for the effects produced by them, never could have
existed in the degree that they did, without leaving on your
mind--which is a something far more real and substantial than this
material body, which never loses the marks and scars of former
abuse--ineradicable impressions. The forms of old habits, if this be
true, and that it so, _I_ fully believe, still remain; and these
forms are in the endeavour, if I may so speak, to be filled with the
affections that once made them living and active. Rigidly exclude
everything that can excite these, and you are safe;--but, to me it
seems, that no experiment can be so dangerous, as one which will
inevitably produce in these forms a vital activity."

"That, it seems to me," was the reply of one of the company, "is a
little too metaphysical--or rather, I should say,
transcendental--for, certainly, it transcends my powers of reasoning
to be able to see how any permanent forms, as you call them, can be
produced in the mind, as in the body--the one being material, and
the other immaterial, and, therefore, no more susceptible of lasting
impressions, than the air around us."

"You have not, I presume, given much thought to this subject," the
previous speaker said, "or you would not doubt, so fully, the truth
of my remark. The power of habit, a fact of common observance, which
is nothing but a fixed form of the mind, illustrates it. And,
certainly, if the mind retained impressions no better than the air
around us, we should remember but little of what we learned in early
years."

"I see," was the reply to this, "that my remark was too broad.
Still, the memory of a thing is very different from a permanent and
inordinate desire to do something wrong, remaining as a latent
principle in the mind, and ready to spring into activity years
afterwards, upon the slightest provocation."

"It certainly is a different thing; and if it be really so, its
establishment is a matter of vital importance. In regard to reformed
drinkers, there has been much testimony in proof of the position. I
have heard several men relate their experiences; and all have said
that time and again had they resolved to conquer the habit that was
leading them on headlong to destruction; and that they had, on more
than one occasion, abstained for months. But that, so soon as they
again put liquor to their lips, the old desire came back for it,
stronger and more uncontrollable than before."

"That was, I presume," Marshall remarked, "because they had not
abstained long enough."

"One man, I remember to have heard say, that he did not at one
period of his life use any kind of intoxicating drink for three
years. He then ventured to take a glass of cider, and was drunk and
insensible before night! And what was worse, did not again rise
superior to his degradation for years."

"I should call that an, extreme case," urged the infatuated man.
"There must have been with him a hereditary propensity. His father
was, doubtless, a drunkard before him."

"As to that, I know nothing, and should not be willing to assume the
fact as a practical principle,"--the friend replied. "But there is
another point that ought to be fully settled."

"What is that?"

"No one can, without seriously injuring himself, morally, violate a
solemn pledge--particularly, as you have justly said, a pledge made
more binding and solemn, by act and deed, in the sign-manual. A man
may verbally pledge himself to do or not to do a thing. To violate
this pledge deliberately, involves moral consequences to himself
that are such as almost any one would shrink from incurring. But
when a man gives to any pledge or contract a fulness and a
confirmation by the act of subscribing his name to it, and then
deliberately violates that pledge or contract, he necessarily
separates himself still further from the saving power of good
principles and influences than in the other case, and comes more
fully under the power of evil principles and evil influences. After
such an act, that man's state is worse, far worse than it was
before. I speak strongly and earnestly on this subject, because I
feel deeply its importance. And I would say to our friend Marshall
here, as I would say to my own brother, let these two points be
fully settled before you venture upon dangerous ground. Be sure that
the latent desire for stimulating drinks is fully eradicated--and be
certain that your pledge can be set aside without great moral injury
to yourself, before you take the first step towards its violation,
which may be a step fraught with the most fatal consequences to
yourself and family."