Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 November 1887 — W. C. T. U. DEPARTMENT. [ARTICLE]

W. C. T. U. DEPARTMENT.

, “for God and Home and native land.” —Francis E. Willard [Contributed by Mary E. Baleh, Supt. Preea Department W. C. T. D., Frankfort, Ind.J NEW SHOES. “I wonder if there can be a pair of shoes in it?” Little Tim sat on the ground close beside a very ugly, dark-colored stone jug. He eyed it sharply, but finding it quite impossible to see through its sides, pulled out the cork and peered anxiously in. “Can’t see nothin’, but it’s so dark in there I couldn’t see if there was anything. I’ve a great mind to break the hateful old thing.” He sat for a while thinking how badly he wanted a pair of shoes to wear to the Sunday school picnic. His mother had promised to wash and mend his clothes, so that he might go looking very neat indeed, but the old shoes were far past mending, and how could he go barefoot? Then he began counting the chances of his father being very angry when he should find his bottle broken. He did not like the idea of getting a whipping for it, as was likely, but how could he resist the temptation of making sure about these shoes? The more he thought of them, the more he couldn’t. He sprang up and hunted around until he found a good sized brickbat, which he flung with such vigorous hand and correct aim that the next moment the old bottle’lay in pieces before his eyes/ How eagerly he bent over them in the hope of finding not only what he was so longing for, but perhaps other treasures. But his poor little heart sank as he turned over the fragment with trembling fingers. Nothing, could be found among the broken bits, wet on the inside with a bad-smelling liquid. Tim sat down again and sobbed as he had never sobbed before; so hard that he did mot hear a step beside him until a voice said: “Well! what’s all this?” He sprang up in great alarm. It was his father, who always Blept late in the morning, and was very seldom awake so early as this. “Who broke my bottle?” he asked. “I did,” said Tim, catching his breath half in terror and half between his sobs. “Why did you?” Tim looked up. The voice did not sound quite so terrible as he had expected. The truth was, his father had been touched at sight of the forlorn figure, bo very small and sorrowful, which had bent over the broken bottle. “Why,” he said, “‘I was was looking for a pair of new shoes. I want a pair of shoes awful bad, to wear to the pic nic. All the other chaps wear shoes!” “How came you to think you’d find shoes in a bottle?” “ Why, mamma said so. I asked her for some new shoes, and she said they had gone into the black bottle, and that lots of other things had gone into it, too —coats and hats, and bread and meat and things— and I thought if I broke it I’d find ’em all, and there ain’t a thing in it—and mamma never said what wasn’t so before—and I thought ’twould be so, sure.” And Tim, hardly able to sob out his words, feeling how keenly his trust in bis mother’s word had added to his great disappointment, sat down again and cried harder than ever. His father seated himself on a box in the disorderly yard, aud remained quiet for so long a time that Tim at last looked timidly up.— —— —:—'T . “I’m real sorry I broke your bottle, father. I’ll never do it again,” “No, I guess you won t,” he said, laying a hand on the rough little head as he went away, leaving Tim overcome with astonishment that father had not been angry with him. Two days after, on the very evening before the picnic, he haaded Tim a parcel, telling him to open it,. “New shoes! new shoes!” he shouted. “Oh, father! did you get a new bottle, and were they in it?” « “No, my boy, there isn’t going to be a new bottle. Your mother was right all the time —the things all went into the bottle; but you see getting them out is no easy matter, so I’m going to keep them out after this.”—N, Y. Observer, A WORD TO tWk BOYS. If we are to have drunkards in the future some of them are to come from the boys to whom I am now writing,and I ask you again if von want to be one of them 7. No! of course you don’t. Well, I have a plan for you that is just as sure to save you from such a fate as the sun is to rise to-morrow morning. It never Jailed; it never will fail; and I think it is worth knowing. Never plan, and it is not only worth knowing bat it is worth patting in practice. I Enow yon don’t drink nqw, and it

seems to you as if you never would. But your temptation will come, and it probably will come in this way: Yon will find yonraelf gome time withi a number qf companions, aud they will have a bottle of wine on the table. They will drink and offer it to you. They will look upon it as a manly practice, and very likely thev will look upon you as a milk-sop if you don’t indulge wita them. Then what will you do? Ah, what will you do? Will you say, No, no! none of that stuff for met I know a tries worth half a dozen of that! or will you take the glass with your own common sense protesting, and your conscience making the whole draught bitter, and a feeling that you have damaged yourself, and then go on with a hot head and a akulky sonl that at once be* gins making apologies for itself and will keep doing so during all its life? Boys, do not become drunkards.—Dr. Holland. Canon Farrar has an article in the Contemporary Review for July on “Africa and the Drink Trade,” He tells how “Africa is being slowly and surely desolated by the foremost missionary nation of the world,” Our own nation sent in the year 1884-5, over $240,000 worth of rum to Africa. Is it any wonder that Bishop Taylor of the M. E. church, “has been forced to record, in recent letters, the comparative failure of Christian missions in Liberia?”