ANNE OF BASLE: OR, A WIFE'S INFLUENCE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 12, 14 January 1871, Page 4

ANNE OF BASLE: OR, A WIFE'S INFLUENCE.

On & certain September nisht, in the town of Basle, nearly a hundred years ago, a company of citizens were drinking in the public room of the " G-olden Shin of Beef." Carl Kirkmeyer was in the chair. It would, perhaps, be an exaggeration to say of these citizens that they were, on that particular evening, drunk ; but not one of them, by a very long way, was sober. Least of all, Carl Kirkmeyer. His capacity for drink, and his passion for drinking in the society of well-to-do citizens, were beyond all conception. He would sit for hours in the tavern, every night during a succession of weeks, and renew his bouts with every new company as they came in. In the end, of course, it always happened to him as to less potent drinkers. And night after night, the half-drunken remnant at the table had their laugh, when they saw the mighty man staggering as he crossed the floor to go home. But Carl was above their derision. He was a substantial citizen, and. a town magistrate besides. And apart from that — what to him was the laughter of men, who all the while looked up to him and admired him as the greatest drinker in Basle ? There was just one thing in Citizen Kirkmeyer in the midst of all that was burnt up and wasted in his life through drink, which had a green fresh look about it. He was sincerely proud of his wife. She was the finest looking lady in Basle, and, in his opinion, the best. And he never tired of sounding her praise. It was not once, nor a hundred times only, that his drinking companions had to listen to the story of his first meeting with her. But on this particular night, he had told it with more gusto than ever before. "Ay, it is just twelve years ago, this very September. I was a clerk then, where lam a partner now. And I was .sent to Hagenau in Alsace for some hides which our house bad purchased. It was the evening of the second day after my arrival. My work was done, and I was preparing to leave 5 but I happened to saunter out for a walk, and I went from one" lane into another, and from cross-road to cross-road, till I lost my way, and striving to recover it, only lost it the more. So I went up to a cottage with a green.painted door to ask my way ; and in the blue-eyed girl who opened the door I found my wife. Something told me at the moment she would be my wife, and I never went back from the thought. It is twelve years since that. In two years more I took her home to Basle ; and I hold her for the best and lovingest wife in all Basle." But in those ten years much had changed for the young bride of Hagenau, and his wife's opinion of him had changed, He had been the very brightest object her young soul had ever looked at. And his love for her was the charm of her life. But when he began to frequent the tavern with other citizens, and to keep late hours, a"nd to come home dsized with drink, the roses faded out of her cheeks, and her blue eyes lost, their happy gleam. Many a time, after she had sent the children and servants to bed, she would waft up to let him in with her own hand, that neither child nor servant might see him the worse for drink. And in those weary hours, in the shadow twilights of summer, in the long, black nights of winter, she could not help letting her thoughts flow back into the past, and contrast the happier days ■; when. her Carl took nothing more than a solitary glass of beer of an evening in her parlor, beside herself, or with a friend — with the dreary times which were passing over her now. From the parlor window in Upper Basle, where she lived, she could look down on the Rhine ; and oftentimes, as she was spending those sad hours and saw the great river sweeping past, now in shadow, now in moonlight, she would fill her mind with the ftfffcy that it was hurrying on to some morning land, and wish herself borne away In its breast to the light and blessedness of that land. The times, when this heavy trial fell on her, had little cheer for distressed hearts. These were the times which preceded the French devolution ; the times when Voltaire was rolling out what faith in Christianity still remained, and Frederic^ tha Great was converting his Prussians into a nation of fighting men, and sowing the seeds of bloody war in the future. '. A dismal old time, in which nearly everywhere in Europe, things that were base were not counted base, and whole worlds of life, which seemed stable ■as the Alps, were being prepared for the fires of Divine wrath, in the revolution which was marching on. It is to the praise of Anne Kirkmeyer that, in an age when the very women were living away from Christ, she was still a Christian. And before abstinence societies were dreamed of, she became on abstainer. Reading io her Testament one night, as she was sitting up waiting for her husband, she came on the remarkable

words in Peter, which he addressed to the Christian women of the day, who had Pagan or Jewish husbands. " Likewise, ye women, be in subjection to your own liusbauds, that if any obey not the word, lh«y may, without the word, be won by the conversation of the wives, while they behold your chaste conversation, coupled with fear." It was as if heaven had suddenly opened upon her — as if an angel had cotne down to her side with one of the secrets of redeeming love. She laid down the book. She rose and paced to and fro, filling her soul with the great new thought. There 'was still a morning land for her, as well as for the river that was sweeping past. She threw herself upon her knees, and cried in joyful faith and ecstacy to God. Why should ehe give way .to hopeless regrets any more ? Why should she spend her precious hours lamenting the past ? She would, by God's help, by God'a method, bring back the past. She said to herself, coming back to her seat again and placing the Divine counsel before her, "This is a messase from God to me. If it was good for Christian women married to husbands not Christian in Peter's day, it is good for women in these circumstances still. If Pagans and prejudiced Jews ; could be won — poor, soft-souled iotemperates, like my Carl may be." " Won," she said to herself, reading aloud, "won without the word ! That means by act, by life, by some embodiment of the word which is to convert in life and action." And then, by degrees, the true method shaped itself plainly before her spirit, and she resolved to carry it out. "I shall embody my appeal to Carl, and God's appeal to mine, in my conduct? and by God's grace I shall win him yet back to God and right living." She becarne-'au abstainer. She refrained from even the solitary glass of beer at the evening meal. She neither gave nor took wine at home or abroad. When her husband had frieDds, and she had to sit at the ; table, she supplied the table as abundantly as before ; but no drop of it all passed her . lips. And she did all this, without selfrighteous assertion, or reproach. If possible, she was more humble than ever. And she put forth more love on Carl. The ' further he sunk the more her compassion ■ for him came out. And there was never i a day, in which her heyrfc was not sending < up its prayer to God on his behalf. But sometimes, the battle seemed very hard, '• and her heart well-nigh to breaking. On this particular September night she was very sad. All the past came back again, and the shadow of the present came up to cover it. And although she had striven to possess her soul with patience, there was an aching and a longing for some fruit to her labor which would -not be ■ suppressed. Indeed, "the tears had sprung to her eyes. Indeed she was about to take refuge in prayer when she heard voices &nd footsteps in the street, and !hen.tbe loud knocking of her husband at the door. , The foolish fellow had carried his brag about his wife to the length of a wager. Not only like Collatine — the husbaud of,"* Lucrece — had he, before all his boon companions, by his boasting — ' " Unlocked the treasure of his happy state, The priceless weal'h the heaven had him lent; In the possession of his beauteous mate; Reckoning his fortune as such high-proud rate, That kings might be espoused to more fame, But king nor peer to such a peerless dame." But .going beyond thi3, he ventured the reckless assertion, ou which he. took the wager, that midnight though it was, and tipsy though he and they were, if his companions would come home with him at that moment, his wife would receive them with smiles, and spread for them a hospitable repast. ' H6 gained his wager. Anne greeted him with her most cordial smile, and welcomed, without appearance of loathing or restraint, the wild crew at his back. And then, without delay, proceeded to lay out the supper table. It was done so kindly, and with such matronly graciousness, and she was so pleasant to every one, that the men began to be affronted in the presence of her sweetness and purity. And one by one they stole away from the house, more than one of them leaving this reproach on the ear of Carl — " With such a wife as that, what shame is such conduct as thine ! " And the reproach went to the quick of his soul, and sobered him-. When the supper was ready, the guests were gone. And Carl and she were alone together. The poor man 'had nothing to say. Ho was utterly ashamed of himself. And he, for perhaps the first 'fime, felt how poor a life his was beside the life his wife had been leading. It was the beginning 1 of the fruit she had prayed for so long. It was more — it was the beginning of the end of his drinking. In the morning he poured out all his view of himself, and his ways, and laid himself bare to her, and confessed, and was forgiven. And he rose with new thoughts and new resolutions in his heart, and God made him strong to carry out

those resolutions. And the Divine.blessing rested on all his conflict with old desires and ways. And he came out of the conflict, victorious. He became as emineut an example of temperance as he.-had been of its opposite. And he had the joy of seeing a pure and loviifg family rising up around him to call tjheir mother '* the blessed of the Lord." ? There is just one remark I would like to maka before bringing my narrative to a close. I would be sorry if any were to carry away the impression that all this change took place on Carl in so short a space as, in my narrative, it may seem to have dove. Changes of that kin'as-are never so sudden as one's telling of them makes them seem to be. In Carl's case God had been preparing him for the happy change during i'll tha later years of his folly. The daily spectacle of his wife's temperance was preaching its silent sermon to him, and going nearer his conscience every day. And although he went on his old way, it was with an uneasy feeling at his heart, which was really the undermining of the house of his folly. At last came that maddest outbreak of his madness, on that September night. The ground he had been building on gave way and his pleasure-house fell in ruins, and the good that God had prepared for him took place. If you, dear reader, should ever "visit Basle, and find yourselves in the crypt of the Cathedral, there is a brass"plate, I am told, let into the wall, above the 'spot where this noble woman lies, and you will find the equivalents, in Latin, of the following words engraved on that plate : — "To the True Saint of God, Anne Kirkmeyer, of Ilageuau and Basle. Most noble among noble wives and mothers, most humble among humble followers of Christ: this Tablet is inscribed by the Husbaud she saved and the Children she blessed, mdccxci." .