When I got nearly home, I learned that I was the last of the returning wanderers. The other boys had already returned to the paternal roof, which was a comfort to me, but oh, how ashamed I was to go home to father's. The nearer I got home, the slower I went, until, one evening after dark, I entered the old familiar kitchen. All the folks were glad to see me, glad that I had reached home alive. I had learned the lesson, that there is no place like home for a boy, and that there are no friends like father and mother.

Dear young friends, if you ever leave the blessed scenes of home, do so with the consent of your parents, with their counsel to guide you, and their blessing to follow you.

Temperance

The autumn of 1861 found me at the village of Port Elgin, situated on Lake Huron, in the county of Bruce. On my way there I stayed all night in the town of Goderich. As I was sitting in the bar room a number of men were engaged in drinking beer. All at once an old gentleman arose, and thus addressed the crowd, "You have been drinking and treating one another all the evening, and here I sat all the time, and you never acted as if you thought I had a mouth on me." And he looked as if his mouth watered for the taste of the foaming liquid.

As I saw the poor old man in his dilapidated clothing humbling himself for a glass of liquor, I thought, "What ruin rum has wrought!" and I said down deep in my heart. "No rum for me."

A couple of evenings afterward, I met with another wreck of humanity at Southampton. He entered the room where I was sitting. His face was bloated all out of shape, and his eyes were deep in his head; such a bloated specimen of rum ruin I had never beheld, yet there was an air of intelligence and gentlemanly breeding about him. He sat down by my side and entered into conversation. I found he was an intelligent and well-informed man. He gave me a brief account of his fall under the power of the demon drink. His money, reputation, friends, were all gone. All hope for his life and the next gone, and he a poor stranded wreck on the shores of time. In the morning he stepped up to the bar, and drank a glass of liquor. As he set the glass down, he said. "Another nail in my coffin," and went out. I thought,