It was Mr. Joel Stratton. He
greeted me with a smile of approbation, which nerved and strengthened
me for my task, as I tremblingly observed every eye fixed upon me. I
lifted my quivering hand and then and there told what rum had done for
me. I related how I was once respectable and happy, and had a home,
but that now I was a houseless, miserable, scathed, diseased, and
blighted outcast from society. I had scarce a hope remaining to me of
ever becoming that which I once was, but, having promised to sign the
pledge, I had determined not to break my word, and would now affix my
name to it. In my palsied hand I with difficulty grasped the pen, and,
in characters almost as crooked as those of old Stephen Hopkins on the
Declaration of Independence, I signed the total abstinence pledge, and
resolved to free myself from the inexorable tyrant.
Although still desponding and hopeless, I felt that I was relieved from
a part of my heavy load. It was not because I deemed there was any
supernatural power in the pledge which would prevent my ever again
falling into such depths of woe as I had already become acquainted
with, but the feeling of relief arose from the honest desire I
entertained to keep a good resolution.
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