Then this friend said to me: "Now, I will tell you about that. About
sixty years ago that man was a young fellow of twenty-three, and had just
come home from a three years' whaling voyage. He came into that village
of his, happy and proud because now, instead of being chief mate, he was
going to be master of a whaleship, and he was proud and happy about it.
"Then he found that there had been a kind of a cold frost come upon that
town and the whole region roundabout; for while he had been away the
Father Mathew temperance excitement had come upon the whole region.
Therefore, everybody had taken the pledge; there wasn't anybody for miles
and miles around that had not taken the pledge.
"So you can see what a solitude it was to this young man, who was fond of
his grog. And he was just an outcast, because when they found he would
not join Father Mathew's Society they ostracized him, and he went about
that town three weeks, day and night, in utter loneliness--the only human
being in the whole place who ever took grog, and he had to take it
privately.
"If you don't know what it is to be ostracized, to be shunned by your
fellow-man, may you never know it.
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