Welsh Journals

AND GENERAL TEMPERAHGE MOBTHLY. No 5. BRISTOL, JANUARY ■ 1, 1872. ONE PENNY. Hìtá Wüt. "IT'S ONLY A DROP." AN IRISH TALE, BY MRS S. C. HALL. must be told," she said; " the T\ death of her father proves the effects of deliberate drunkenness. What I have to say, shows what may happen from being even once unable to think or act. " I had one child," said Stacy ; " one, a darlint, blue-eyed, laughing child. I never saw any so handsome, never knew any so good. She was almost three years ould, and he was fond of her—he said he was ; but it's a quare fondness that destroys what it ought to save. It was the Pattern of Lady-day, and well I knew that Edward would not return as he went: he said he would ; he almost swore he would ; but the promise of a man given to drink has no more strength in it than a rope of sand. I took sulky, and wouldn't go ; if I had, maybe it would not have ended so. The evening came on, and I thought mybabybreathed hard in her cradle ; I took the candle and went over to look at her ; her little face was red ; and when I laid my cheek close to her lips so as not to touch them, but to feel her breath, it was hot—very hot ; she tossed her arms, and they were dry and burning. The measles were about the country, and I was frightened for my child. It was only half a mile to the doctor's ; I knew every foot oí the road ; and so, leaving the door on the latch, I resolved to tell him how my darlint was, and thought I should be back before my husband's return. Grass, you may be sure, didn't grow under my feet. I ran with all speed, and wasn't kept long, the docter said—though it seemed long to me. The moon was down when I came home, though the night was fine. The cabin we lived in was in a hollow ; but when I was on the hill, and looked down where I knew it stood a dark mass, I thought I saw a white üght fog coming out of it; I rubbed my eyes, and darted forward as a wild bird flies to its nest when it hears the scream of the hawk in the heavens. When I reached the door, I saw it was open ; the fume cloud came out of it, sure enough, white and thick, Blind with that and terror together, I rushed to my child's cradle. I found my way to that, in spite of burning and the smothering. But, Ellen—Ellen Murphy, my child, the rosy child whose breath had been hot on my cheek only a little while before, she was nothing but a cinder. Mad as I felt, I saw how it was in a minute. The father had come home as I expected ; he had gone to thecradle to look at his child, had dropt the çandle ínto the straw, and, unable to speak or stand, had fallen down and asleep on the floor not two yards from my child. Oh, how I flew to the doctor's with what had been my baby ; I tore across the country íike a banshee ; I laid it in his arms; I told him if he did not put life in it, I'd destroy him in his house. He thought rne mad ; for there was no breath, either cowld or hot, coming from its lips then. I could'nt kiss it in death ; there was nothing left of my child to kiss—think òf that! I snatched it from where the doctor had laid it. The whole night long I wandered in the woods of Newtownbarry with that burden at my heart." " But her husband—her husband ?"