A SOLEMN SCENE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 43, 19 February 1881, Page 4

A SOLEMN SCENE.

Erom an American paper we clip the following story : — The inhabitants of a thriving town in Pennsylvania assembled to decide what number of spirit licenses the town should petition trom the county court. A magistrate presided, and on the platform were tbe pastor, one of his deacons, and the physician. A respectablo citizen, after a short speech, moved that the meeting petition for the usual number of licenses for the ensuing year ; he thought it was not best to get up an excitement for refusing to grant licenses ; they had been licensed to good men and let them sell. The proposition seemed to meet with almost universal favour. As the president was about to put tbe question an object rose in a distant part of the building, and all eyes were instantly turned in that direction. It was an old woman, poorly clad, and whose careworn countenance was the painful index of no light suffering, and yet there was something in the flash of her bright eye that told she had once been what she then was not. She addressed the chairman, and said that she had come hearing that they were to decide the license question. " You all know who I am ; you once knew me mistress of one of the best estates in the borough; I once had a husband and five sons, and woman never had a kinder husband, mother never had five better or more affectionate sons — but where are they nowp Doctor, I ask where are they now ? Iv yonder burying-ground there are Bix graves filled by that husband and those five sons, and, oh, they aro all drunkards' graves. Doctor, how came they to be drunkards ? You would come and drink with them, and you told them that temperate drinking would do them good. And you, too, sir (addreseiog the parson), would come and drink with my husband, and my sons thought they might drink with safety and follow your religious example. Deacon, you sold them rum which made them drunkards; you have now got my farm and all my property, and you got it all by rum. And now I have done my errand, I go back to the por-house, for that is my home. You, reverend sir, yeu doctor, and you, deacon, I will never meet again until I meet you at the bar of Grod, where you too will meet my ruined bmband and those five Bons who, through your means and influence, fill the drunkards'" graves." The old woman sat down ; perfect silence prevailed until broken by the president, who rose to put the question to the meeting " Shall we petition the court to issue licenses to this borough for the ensuing year ?" and the one unbroken "No," which made the very walls re-echo with the sound, told the result of the old woman's appeal. There were no more licenses granted.