Welsh Journals

-,; 1 tfetent êẅl A«D GENEEAL TEMPERAHCE MONTHLY. No io. BRISTOL, JUNE i, 1872. ONE PENNY. hlut 'tyŵt. THE HAPPY CHANGE. BY M. A. CANNINGHAM. N a wet cold day in winter I was waìldng through a street in one of the most thicldy inhabited parts London, when my attention was arrested by hearing a showily-dressed woman say, " I wish, Bill Winter, you'd set my little girl safely on the other side the street, she goes to school over the way, and I do not want her to get her feet wet, as she would be almost sure to do such a wet day as this ; children are never careful, and my Elsie is so deli- cate." I had halted on hearing the name of a man, as William Winter had been, in years gone by, a familiar name to me; we had been schoolmates and playfellows together, but for several years I had lost sight of him—but could this haggard -loolcing, shabbily-dressed man be the friend I have known in earlier years ? On looking closer, I recognised his features plainly, and could not help feeling sad to see such a change for the worse in him. He took the child and bore her carefully across the wet dirty street, setting her daintily down at the door of her school-mistress. It was a gin shop in which he had been loitering, and the delicate Elsie was the landlady's daughter and pet. As he re-crossed the street, evidently intending to return to the bright comfortable looking place he had just quitted, I stepped up to him and said, '/ How do you do old friend ? I am glad to see you again; having lost sight of you for so long I had often wondered where you had gone to live, and now here you are." He looked stupidly at me for a minute, and then said, " Why, it's never Harry Bell, is it ?" " Yes," I said, " it is, and I should likc to talk over old times if you have an hour to spare ; we may as "well walk to your home, it will not be very far from here I suppose, will it ? And, by the bye was it your little girl I saw you lift so carefully across the street just now ?" Of course I could see the real condition he was in and knew the chiìd had not been his, but I wished to help him if I could; having learned the value of a friend in nced, I wished to become one to my old friend, and, therefore, tried to engage him in friendly convcrsation. " No, Harry," he replied, " the child was not mine, nor have I a home I can take you too, though I should be glad to do so if I could." " How is that ?" said I, "haveyou lost your wife ? you married Jane M. I think, the best girl in the place I remember they used to say. I hope you have not met with such a misfortune as that." His voice seemed husky as he replied. " " No, it would have been much better for her if she had died before she became my wife ; a bad husband I have been to her, she was too good for me." My presence had seemed to soften him, old memories were revived, and he continued. " The children, poor things, it is little they get from their father but unkindness. Yes, you shall come home with me; come —come and see how low the once- respected Will Winter has fallen, what a drunken sot he has become, and what kind of a home he provides íor his wife and children. When we flrst came here we had a comfortable home, enough and