UBRARY 
 
 I

 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 *
 
 i.
 
 flAMAH HAWKINS, 
 
 THB 
 
 REFORMED DRUNKARD'S 
 DAUGHTER. 
 
 BY REV. JOHN MARSH. 
 
 "Temperance is an oasis, a grten spot in the desert of human life.' 
 
 FATHEH MATHEW. 
 
 FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 AMERICAN 1 TEMPERANCE UNION. 
 
 1846.
 
 
 
 Entered according to an Act of Congress, in the year 1843, by 
 
 JOHN MARSH, 
 In the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of the State of New York. 
 
 
 I 
 
 S. W. BENEDICT & CO., STER. AND PRINT., 
 
 16 Spruce Street, New York.
 
 TO LUCIUS MANLIUS SARGENT, ESQ. 
 
 SIR: 
 
 By a series of tales, founded on fact, but embellished 
 and adorned by your graphic pen, you were a favored instru- 
 ment of rousing the American people to the suppression of 
 a vice, which was not only breaking the hearts and wasting 
 the lives of thousands, but sapping the very foundations of 
 our civil and religious institutions. Although, in the recent 
 extraordinary advance of the work of reform, your heart has 
 been pained by scenes which none in their sober judgments 
 can approve, yet, in the gathering up of results, we behold 
 a harvest of miracles, which cannot fail to make us all 
 thankful that we have shared a part in its accomplishment. 
 Fiction has given place to strange reality. What we once 
 fancied in the wide reformation of intemperate husbands 
 and fathers, and the elevation of depressed families to com 
 fort, respectability , and usefulness, has now been witnessed; 
 and notwithstanding some sad relapses, over which we 
 weep, the happy scenes of " The Mother's Gold Ring," no 
 longer an isolated case, are subjects of gratulation and joy 
 in all parts of our beloved country. That your pen may 
 1*
 
 VI DEDICATION. 
 
 still be employed to secure a wise and vigorous prosecu- 
 tion of this most philanthropic enterprise, though its caus- 
 tic point may be dreaded by men, greedy of gain, who will 
 sell the poison, and by the votaries of fashion and folly, 
 who must tread on the brink of a precipice lest they walk 
 with the vulgar on the broad terra firma, is the sincere wish 
 of thousands who, with their families, have been saved 
 from ruin, and who pray for the wide extension of salutary 
 principles among future generations. 
 
 If by seizing upon an incident in the reformation of one 
 who has been distinguished for his rescue, from the fangs of 
 the rumseller, through his own child, and for his untiring 
 labors in the cause of temperance, the writer can, in this 
 little book, instruct and interest the children and youth 
 who are coming up to take our places, he shall be indeed 
 happy in presenting it to you, both as a token of his pro- 
 found respect and sincere affection, and in gratitude for the 
 numerous favors received at your hands. 
 
 New York, December*, 1843. 

 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 IT was some time in the summer of 1841, that 
 the writer of this little book was travelling to the 
 North, when, on leaving a railroad car to go a 
 few miles to visit a friend, he stepped into a small 
 stage-coach, in which were seated a well-dressed 
 man and woman with three children j the eldest, 
 a neat, tidy looking girl of thirteen ; the others, 
 younger but who seemed to be full of enjoyment, 
 in noticing everything of a rural nature, showing 
 that they had been brought up in a city, and knew 
 little of country scenes. 
 
 The mother was of a delicate, tender texture, 
 and evinced, by a pensive look, that she had seen 
 days of sadness ; but there was now and then a 
 kindling up of the eye and a cheerful smile, which 
 betokened that better days were breaking in upon 
 her. The father had a frank and manly counte- 
 nance, a piercing eye, with a voice unusually 
 pleasant : and though it was manifest that his
 
 8 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 education was of an ordinary character, yet there 
 was discoverable in him a vigor of thought and 
 power of expression, which soon showed that he 
 was to be neither an unpleasant nor unprofitable 
 travelling companion. 
 
 It was not long before he addressed himself to 
 his wife as Mrs. Hawkins ; and, in a little time, 
 he spoke to his daughter, saying, " Hannah, look 
 there, my child, see that poor hut ; I suppose 
 some miserable drunkard lives there, who, like 
 your once poor, unfortunate father, is giving him- 
 self up to the intoxicating cup, and becoming a 
 sore affliction and trial to all whom God has com- 
 mitted to his care." The group seemed much 
 affected at the sight ; and, as a little girl, with 
 neither stockings nor shoes, and scarce any cover- 
 ing but a ragged frock, peeped from behind the 
 house, Hannah said, " She is a pretty girl j I 
 wish I could give her something." 
 
 Our little company thus learned that they 
 were associated, in the stage coach, with John 
 H. W. Hawkins, the reformed Baltimorean drunk- 
 ard, and his family, who were on their way to 
 Massachusetts, where the mother and children 
 were to be sustained by the friends of temper- 
 ance, while the father should go from town to
 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 town, and from city to city, relating his affecting 
 experience, and becoming, under God, the instru- 
 ment of delivering other miserable inebriates from 
 the degradation and wo from which he had been 
 rescued. 
 
 The remainder of the ride, which lasted but a 
 few hours, was one of interest to all ; for, with- 
 out any feelings of shame which might have led 
 them to conceal the truth, or any undue eleva- 
 tion from the decent appearance which they now 
 made in their new apparel or from the brighten- 
 ing prospects before them, this rescued family 
 gave, without hesitation, though often with strong 
 emotion, an account of all their deep debasement 
 and severe sufferings. 
 
 In the daughter, as the instrument of her fa- 
 ther's rescue, the company took a peculiar inte- 
 rest ', and though she was a modest and diffident 
 child, they found she had more than usual strength 
 of character, and could readily believe all that 
 was told of her in this extraordinary transaction. 
 
 Months and years have since passed, but a 
 distinct recollection of this interview, connected 
 with the many interesting results of her father's 
 reformation, have led the writer to collect toge- 
 ther whatever he could learn of this child and
 
 I 
 
 10 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 the circumstances attending the change in the 
 habits of her father, and present them, with suit- 
 able reflections, in a small volume ; partly for 
 the entertainment and instruction of children of 
 her own sex, and partly as a standing memorial 
 of what has proved to be an extraordinary era 
 in the temperance reformation. 
 
 At the time of her birth, which was about the 
 year 1828, in the city of Baltimore, the temper- 
 ance reformation had taken root in the country ; 
 and many excellent men, alarmed at the increase 
 of drunkenness, with its consequent poverty, 
 crime, and premature mortality, had resolved that 
 they would abandon the use of all ardent spirits, 
 and try to save their children from intemperate 
 habits. But it was then supposed to be almost 
 impossible to reclaim the confirmed inebriate. If 
 any individual had so far given himself up to the 
 intoxicating cup as to be seen staggering about 
 the streets, or coming home drunk at the mid- 
 night hour, to abuse his wife and children, he 
 was viewed as past recovery. The poor unfor- 
 tunate drunkard's burning appetite so raged for 
 rum, that he would sacrifice every comfort to ob- 
 tain it ; even pawn his clothes and his Bible, and 
 leave all his once dear little ones to the greatest
 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 11 
 
 sufferings ; and it was thought that he must drink 
 on, at least moderately, till he perished, either 
 by some fall from a horse, or by being drowned 
 in a pond, or frozen in a pitiless storm. His 
 own persuasion was, that he should die if he did 
 not drink : nor was he alone in this, it was the 
 belief of the community around him, and even of 
 many physicians from whom he would seek re- 
 lief in his infirmities. 
 
 At that period there were supposed to be in 
 the United States not less than three, hundred 
 thousand common drunkards. The most of them 
 were husbands and fathers. Many had large 
 families. Their houses were generally known 
 by the broken door-yard fence; the fallen gate % ; 
 the windows stuffed with old hats and rags ; the 
 clapboards dangling in' the air ; the barns held 
 up by props and stripped of their boards, which 
 had been used for fuel ; a half-starved horse 
 standing in the street, and several ragged child- 
 ren, who, without hats or shoes, spent their days 
 in dragging brush-wood from the neighboring 
 forests, or in begging pennies from door to door, 
 to buy their mother a loaf of bread. 
 
 In the interior, little was visible either of neat- 
 ness or comfort. No bed but one of straw, laid
 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 on knotted ropes ; here a show of a table, and 
 there a broken chair. A half dozen broken 
 plates, rusty knives and forks, and iron spoons ; 
 a mug for cider, and a bottle for rum. Neither 
 carpet nor plastering were there if it was win- 
 ter, the snow would often lie upon the bed, and 
 the mother and hei children be seen huddled to- 
 gether over a few embers, as their only refuge. 
 Night would come, but no sound of a father's 
 voice with comfortable food to cheer and glad- 
 den. The children would cry themselves to sleep. 
 The mother would sit and " watch the moon 
 go down," till distant footsteps were heard, and 
 horrid oaths vented at not finding the door, caus- 
 ing her heart to quail ; and a monster in human 
 shape, but the father of her children, would burst 
 upon her, and perhaps drive her out in the cold and 
 dreary night, even in a pitiless storm, compelling 
 her to leave her babes to his neglect or cruelties. 
 These were homes witnessed in almost every 
 neighborhood. The inhabitants were as accus- 
 tomed to the spectacle as a necessary appendage 
 to their village, as the church, the school-house, 
 the tavern, the dram-shop, or the comfortable 
 home of the sober and the frugal ; and it attract- 
 ed no particular notice, unless there went forth,
 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 13 
 
 at the midnight hour, a cry of murder : and then, 
 for a little season, all thought something must be 
 done ; the wife must swear the peace upon her 
 husband, and he, by authority, be sent to jail. 
 But this she would not do ; he was her husband ; 
 he promised to reform, and things would be left 
 to pass on much as before. 
 
 The writer of this once went to a funeral in a 
 drunkard's home. It was the funeral of a little 
 child. The house had but two small rooms. In 
 one, in which was the corpse, and where the 
 prayer was made, was a bed of straw, on which 
 lay the drunkard's wife, too sick to rise. He 
 well remembers the outer covering, which was 
 all of rags, stitched together. Under her head 
 was no pillow. She seemed a woman of deep 
 sorrow. Her miserable husband tried to act the 
 part of a man, but while the people were assem- 
 bling, he went twice to his bottle, and became 
 officious and troublesome in regulating the cere- 
 monies. One little boy and three girls, clothed 
 by the neighbors in black, went with him, follow- 
 ing the coffin of their young brother to the grave. 
 It was a sad spectacle, and yet it was in the 
 midst of a Christian community, and the indivi- 
 dual who day by day sold him rum, was a mem- 
 2
 
 14 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 ber of a Christian church. Such "was the dark- 
 ness of the times.* 
 
 Sometimes the drunkard was a man of wealth, 
 living in luxury and splendor. His groves, his 
 gardens, his walks, the furniture of his house, all 
 betokened great prosperity to him, or, more gen- 
 erally, to his father before him. But 0, the 
 agony within ! Few knew its depth. Occasion- 
 ally the fair, the beautiful, but heart-broken wife, 
 would communicate to a friend the distresses of 
 her soul her sinking of heart when she first dis- 
 covered that her own husband, and the father ot 
 her sons and daughters, was a drunkard the 
 repeated mortifications she had experienced at 
 his staggering gait, and silly speech, and unbe- 
 coming behavior ; and, most of all. her terrible 
 sufferings at the midnight hour, when, in his 
 drunken mania, he had dragged her, from room 
 to room, by the hair of her head. These were 
 secrets known to few, and yet those who knew 
 them would still keep the wine cup flowing. 
 Such was the united power of appetite and 
 fashion ; such the pride of wealth. 
 
 * The writer is happy to say. that this man has since 
 been entirely reformed, and now provides well for his 
 family! he is a respectable member of the commuuty, and 
 frequents the house of God on the Sabbath.
 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 15 
 
 Not in a house of this character did little Han- 
 nah have her birth ; but in one of deepest desti- 
 tution. The following is the account her father 
 once gave of himself in a public meeting : 
 
 " I was born of respectable parents, and was 
 educated by a minister, and then bound out to 
 the hatting business, in as perfect a grog-shop as 
 ever existed. A few days before I left Baltimore 
 I found the old books of my master ; there were 
 the names of sixty men upon it, and we could 
 recollect but one that did not go to a drunkard's 
 grave. Another hatter says it was just so on his 
 books. At one time there were twelve of us as 
 apprentices; eight of the twelve have died drunk- 
 ards ; one is now in the almshouse in Cincinnati, 
 one in the almshouse of Baltimore, one is keep- 
 ing a tavern in Baltimore, and here am I. 
 
 u For a while I was prosperous, notwithstand- 
 ing I drank on ; I did not expect the appetite to 
 conquer me. When twenty-two years old, in 
 18 18, I went to the West. As soon as I was 
 away from parental care, [ gave way ; all went 
 by the board, and my sufferings commenced. For 
 six months I had no shoes, and only one shirt 
 and one pair of pantaloons. Then I was a vaga- 
 bond indeed. But I returned, ragged and bloat-
 
 16 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 ed, to my mother's home. When I got to the 
 edge of the town, I was ashamed even to walk 
 on the ground of my nativity. In the dusk of 
 evening, I crept along to ray mother's, and was 
 soon dressed up decently. My mother only said, 
 'John, I am afraid you are bloated.' I then 
 drank nothing for a while ; but it was so hard to 
 do without, that at length I took a glass of ale, 
 and all was over with me again : my appetite 
 rushed on like a flood and carried all before it. 
 And for fifteen years, time after time, I rose and 
 fell ; was up and down ; would quit all, and then 
 take a little glass. I would earn $15 a week, 
 be happy and well, and with my money in hand 
 start for home, and in some unaccountable way, 
 imperceptibly and irresistibly fall into a tavern, 
 and think one glass only would do me good. But 
 I found a single glass of ale would conquer all 
 my resolutions." 
 
 At another time he said, he was a genteel 
 drunkard, well dressed, yet not different from the 
 drunkard clothed in rags. He would often get 
 a ten dollar bill changed ; go and buy a single 
 glass, fully determined not to take more,but that 
 would prove a fatal glass, and he would drink 
 himself to the most degrading drunkenness, blast-
 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 17 
 
 ing all the hopes of his wife and children. < He 
 was a moderate drinker when he married. His 
 wife never dreamed of any risk. But 0, what 
 suffering had she not endured !" 
 
 O 
 
 What the early joys and sorrows of little Han- 
 nah were, cannot, of course, be here narrated. 
 It is kindly ordered by our heavenly Father, that 
 the children of the poor and the vicious know but 
 little, in their younger days, of their condition, as 
 compared with that of other children, or of what 
 it might be, if their parents were faithful to them- 
 selves, or to those committed to their trust. Like 
 the little animals, they have great enjoyment in 
 the use of their limbs, in the scanty fare that is 
 imparted to them, and in all their juvenile sports 
 and plays. Even on their miserable beds, and 
 with snow upon the rags which cover them, their 
 sleep is sweet ; and at the morning dawn, the 
 drunkard's hovel often rings with the merry voices 
 of his unoffending but hapless children. 
 
 The writer once often passed the home of a 
 drunkard, and he was impressed with the cheer- 
 ful faces, the loud halloo, and merry laugh of his 
 little boys, as, in bleak November, they were 
 dragging brush from the neighboring woods, as 
 fuel for their fire. Kind Providence ! he ex- 
 2*
 
 18 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 claimed, as he contrasted the condition of these 
 children with those of some wealthy families, 
 whose little ones are first ruined by hot rooms, 
 downy beds, and rich cake, and then pine away 
 under patent drugs and nostrums. 
 
 It is only as the child of the drunkard advances 
 in life, that it learns the degradation of its condi- 
 tion, and feels the iron entering the soul. When 
 the little girl sees her mates, with whom she once 
 played on terms of perfect equality (for little 
 children in a neighborhood make no distinction 
 of rank), now pass, in their neat dress, with their 
 books and satchels, on their way to school, and 
 avoid her when the little party is made in the 
 village, and she is not invited when the Sabbath 
 bell rings, and she cannot go to the Sunday- 
 school, for she has neither shoes nor decent 
 clothing ; above all, when she, now a tall and 
 comely girl, is compelled to go, day after day, to 
 the store, with her father's jug for rum, and is 
 pointed at by the rude boys as the drunkard's 
 daughter ; then it is that, with bitter tears, she 
 asks, why is it thus ? 
 
 It is a merciful Providence to the intemperate 
 parent, that filial feelings are not destroyed by 
 the degradation, and even cruel suffering, to which
 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 19 
 
 a child may be subjected. On the contrary, the 
 child pities his infirmities, and strives to screen 
 him from the abuse of rude boys, and protect him 
 from the tempest which would beat too heavily 
 upon his head. 
 
 The writer has not unfrequently seen the little 
 boy endeavoring to lead his poor, unfortunate 
 father home, crying, and entreating him to leave 
 the log on which he was sitting, for the nightfall 
 was coming, and he would freeze if he remained 
 there till morning. And the reader of this little 
 book may well remember the story of a gentle- 
 man in St. Louis, who was found drunk in the 
 street by a sailor, who urged him to go home : 
 but the gentleman, by profession an actor, conti- 
 nued to drink, until he fell to the ground. Just 
 as the watch were about removing him to prison, 
 a little girl, about eight years old, barefooted and 
 ragged, came into the room, sobbing most bit- 
 terly. No sooner did she see her father, than she 
 ran to him and knelt down by his side, saving, 
 " Don't take my father away while he sleeps." 
 It was a sight, said the account, to wring the 
 heart of more than a man to see that pure and 
 innocent creature, with her little head bare, and 
 her white shoulders peeping out from her tattered
 
 I 
 
 20 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 frock, leaning with fond affection on her drunken 
 father, as if her affection strengthened with the 
 unworthiness of the object. At length the sailor 
 came forward, and speaking kindly to the little 
 girl, took her away in his arms, wrapping her 
 little feet carefully in the skirts of his coat. When 
 the wretched man came to himself in the watch- 
 house in the morning, he said, " I was not always 
 the miserable wretch to which drunkenness has 
 reduced me. But I contracted bad habits, my 
 business was neglected, my wife died of a broken 
 heart. I have wandered without a home in search 
 of whiskey. I have yet a daughter ; at least, I 
 had yesterday, a beautiful creature, who s'ill 
 loves me, despite of my unworthiness." At this 
 moment the sailor entered the room with the lit- 
 tle girl, of whom he had taken a kind care, and 
 placed her in her father's arms. The tears of 
 the father flowed freely, nor was there a dry eye 
 in the room. 
 
 Hannah Hawkins early discovered strong sym- 
 pathies for her father. When sober, he was a 
 pleasant father; and driving, as he sometimes 
 would for months, a good business, as a hatter, 
 he would bring his family many comforts. She 
 knew, too, that he was fallen, and did not occupy
 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 21 
 
 the place that he should in his native city. When 
 she went occasionally to her grandmother's, than 
 whom there was not a more venerable and excel- 
 lent woman in the city of Baltimore, and stopped 
 in at the houses of her aunts, and saw their neat 
 carpets, and handsome furniture, and well sup- 
 plied tables, she could not but contrast it all with 
 the wretched destitution of her father's house. 
 But what prompted in her a deeper sympathy for 
 her poor father, was, perhaps, the sickness of her 
 mother. Mrs. Hawkins was often weeks and 
 months confined to her bed, and then it was that 
 little Hannah was compelled to put forth her in- 
 fant energies to save her father. 
 
 The writer once heard Mr. Hawkins relate 
 the following, in a public meeting in the city of 
 New York. " I would come home, late at night, 
 open the door, and fall prostrate on the floor, 
 utterly unable to move. My daughter Hannah, 
 sitting up for me, and watching with her poor 
 sick mother, would come down with a pillow 
 and a blanket ; and there, as she could not raise 
 me and get me up stairs, she would put the pil- 
 low under my head and cover me with the blan- 
 ket, and then lie down beside me like a faithful 
 dog. I would feel it to the bottom of my soul.
 
 22 
 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 It cut. me to the quick, and I would say, ' Han- 
 nah, why do you not go up to your poor sick 
 mother ?' She would reply, ' father, I would 
 rather stay here. I am afraid, if I go, you will 
 want something.' " 
 
 Surely such filial love in the children of the 
 unfortunate is not to go unrewarded. It is a 
 school of adversity, in which it might have been 
 well for some who have known no sorrow, and 
 yet are murmuring at their allotment, to have 
 been trained, that they might at least have felt 
 for the suffering, and done some good in the 
 world. By these little incidents, daily occurring
 
 
 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 23 
 
 in a drunkard's home, but which must be for 
 ever unknown to the world, it was that this child 
 was training, as we shall see in the sequel, to 
 be the instrument of reclaiming her father, and 
 preparing him to rescue thousands of others in 
 the like captivity. 
 
 Of this affectionate child and her lost father, 
 however, we might never have heard, had it not 
 been for that extraordinary movement, in the 
 providence of God, which had already com- 
 menced in the city of Baltimore, and which has 
 since extended its blessings to thousands of mis- 
 erable families throughout the country. 
 
 On the fifth of April, 1840, six men, devoted 
 in no small degree to their cups, and usually 
 known as intemperate men, were spending an 
 evening, in their usual manner, in a tavern in 
 Baltimore, when, by a singular concurrence of 
 circumstances, they were brought to the resolu- 
 tion that they would drink no more spiritous or 
 malt liquors, wine, beer, or cider. They signed 
 a pledge to that effect, and formed themselves 
 into a society, which they called the Washington 
 Temperance Society, whose object should be 
 the complete reformation of every drunkard in 
 Baltimore.
 
 24 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 Such an event, though yet in its earliest stage, 
 and without a promise of its final extensive re- 
 sults, must have been known to the father of Han- 
 nah, and may have produced agitations in his bo- 
 som which could only be quieted by signing the 
 pledge. How this happy event was effected ; 
 what an interesting part this child had in it, and 
 the complete restoration of the father, is best re- 
 lated in his own words. It is a tale which has 
 made many an eye overflow with weeping, and 
 shown the power of grace to save the lost. 
 
 " June 15, 1840," said Mr. Hawkins, in one 
 of his public addresses, " I drank and suffered 
 awfully I can't tell how much I suffered in mind 
 in body everything, but in mind more. I 
 drank dreadfully the two first weeks of June 
 bought by the gallon, and drank, and drank, and 
 was about taking my life drunk all the time. 
 On the 14th, I was a wonder to myself; aston- 
 ished I had my mind left, and yet it seemed, in 
 the goodness of God, uncommonly clear. I lay 
 in bed long after my wife and daughter were up, 
 and my conscience drove me to madness. I hated 
 the darkness of the night ; and when lis,'ht came, 
 I hated the light. 1 hated myself my existence. 
 I asked myself, ' Can I refrain ; is it possible ?*
 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 25 
 
 Not a being to take me by the hand, and lead or 
 help me along, and say you can. I was friend- 
 less ; without help or light ; an outcast. My 
 wife came up stairs, and knew I was suffering, 
 and asked me to go down to breakfast. I had a 
 pint of whisky, and thought I would drink ; and 
 yet I knew it was life or death with me as I de- 
 cided. Well, I told my wife I would come down 
 presently. Then my daughter came up and asked 
 me down. I always loved her more because 
 she was the drunkard's friend my only friend. 
 
 " She said, ' Father, don't send me after whis- 
 ky to-day.' * I was tormented before, but this 
 was an unexpected torture. I told her to leave 
 the chamber, and she went down crying, and said 
 to her mother, Father is angry with me. Wife 
 came up again, and asked me to take some cof- 
 fee ; I told her I did not want anything of her, 
 and covered myself in the bed. I soon heard 
 some one enter the room, and I peeped out and 
 saw it was my daughter. I then thought of my 
 past life ; my degradation ; misery of my friends ; 
 and felt bad enough. So I called her and said, 
 ' Hannah, I am not angry with you, and I shall 
 not drink any more.' She cried, and so did I. 
 
 * See Frontispiece 
 3
 
 26 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 I got up and went to the cupboard, and looked 
 at the enemy, and thought, * Is it possible I can 
 be restored ?' and then turned my back upon it. 
 Several times, while dressing. I looked at the bot- 
 tle, but thought I should be lost if I yielded. Poor 
 drunkard ! there is hope for you. You cannot 
 be worse off than I was ; not more degraded, or 
 more of a slave to appetite. You can reform if 
 you will. Try it try it. I felt badly, I tell 
 you. 
 
 " Well, Monday night I went to the Society 
 of Drunkards, and there I found all my old 
 bottle companions. I did not tell anybody I was 
 going, not even my wife. I had got out of diffi- 
 culty, but did not know how long I would keep 
 out. The six-pounders of the Society were there. 
 We had fished together ; got drunk together. 
 You could not break us up when drunk. We 
 stuck like brothers, and so we do now we are 
 sober. One said, here is Hawkins, the ' regula- 
 tor,' the old bruiser; and they clapped me and 
 laughed, as you do now. But there was no laugh 
 or clap in me. I was too sober and solemn for 
 that. The pledge was read for my accommoda- 
 tion. They did not say so, and yet I knew. 
 They all looked over my shoulder to see me
 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 27 
 
 write my name. I never had such feelings be- 
 fore. It was a great battle. I once fought the 
 battle at North Point, and helped to run away 
 too, but now there was no running away. I 
 found the Society had a large pitcher of water ; 
 drank toasts and told experiences. There I laid 
 my plan ; I did not intend to be a drone. Alco- 
 hol promised me everything, but I found him a 
 great deceiver, and now 1 meant to do him all 
 the harm I could. 
 
 " At eleven I went home. When I stayed out 
 late, I always went home drunk. Wife had 
 given me up again, and thought I would be home 
 drunk again, and she began to think about break- 
 ing up and going home to mother's. My yard is 
 covered with brick, and as I went over the brick, 
 wife listened, as she told me, to determine whether 
 the gate-door opened drunk or sober, for she 
 could tell, and it opened sober and shut sober; 
 and when I entered, my wife was standing in the 
 middle of the room to see me as I came in. She 
 was astonished, but I smiled and she smiled, as I 
 caught her keen black eye. I told her quick ; I 
 could not keep it back. ( I have put my name to 
 the temperance pledge, never to drink as long as 
 I live.' It was a happy time. I cried and she
 
 28 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 cried ; we could not help it, and crying waked 
 up our daughter, and she cried too. I tell you 
 this, that you may know how happy the reforma- 
 tion of a drunkard makes his family. I slept 
 none that night, my thoughts were better than 
 sleep. Next morning I went to see my mother, 
 old as she was. I must go to see her and tell 
 her of our joy. She had been praying twenty 
 years for her drunken son. Now, she said, ' It is 
 enough, I am ready to die.' It made all my con- 
 nexions happy." 
 
 From this time a new era dawned upon Han- 
 nah and her suffering mother. Mr. Hawkins 
 soon felt himself strong in his pledge, and he 
 entered with great zeal into the work of reclaim- 
 ing others. He had, in early life, been a pro- 
 fessor of religion, member of a Methodist church. 
 A recovery from his horrid courses seemed to 
 awaken in him deep penitence for the past, and 
 lively gratitude to the Father of mercies ; and 
 he resolved to devote himself anew to his service, 
 and give him all the praise of his restoration. 
 
 Possessed of a clear, strong, and mellow 
 voice, and having unusually warm affections ; 
 being entirely willing to relate the whole of his 
 bitter experience, and doing it, not in a spirit of
 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 29 
 
 boasting, but contrition, he soon became a pro- 
 minent speaker ; and under his addresses, large 
 and intelligent audiences were often in tears. In 
 the course of the ensuing winter, he attended the 
 anniversary of the Maryland State Temperance 
 Society, at Annapolis, and related his experience 
 before the members of the State Legislature, with 
 much effect ; the house, it is said, were dissolved 
 in tears. In the following March, he, with four 
 other reformed men from Baltimore, came by 
 invitation to New York, where, under the rela- 
 tion of their personal experience, before immense 
 crowds, commenced the Washingtonian reform 
 of that city. At the first meeting, while Mr. 
 Hawkins was speaking, in the Green Street 
 Methodist Church, a poor drunkard cried out in 
 the gallery, " Can I be saved too ?" " Yes," said 
 Mr. Hawkins, " you can. Come clown and sign 
 the pledge." With a little solicitation, the man 
 came down, and, supported by two others, came 
 up to the altar and signed the pledge. The vic- 
 tory was now gained. The work of redemption 
 among poor drunkards commenced. Another 
 uttered forth the feelings of his heart, and was 
 induced to come down and sign the pledge. 
 Five or six others of the miserable class soon fol- 
 3*
 
 30 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 lowed, and some thirty or forty besides, well 
 known as hard drinkers or drunkards. It was 
 the first fruits of a great harvest. 
 
 While Mr. Hawkins, with his companions, 
 were for three successive weeks addressing 
 crowded assemblies in New York, a lady who 
 spoke with great detestation of the wine-cup, 
 was charged with monomania. The charge in- 
 duced her to pen the following lines, which she 
 requested might be sent to Mr. Hawkins, for the 
 use of his daughter, in case she should at any 
 time have the same charge to encounter. 
 
 Go, feel what I have felt ; 
 
 Go bear what I have borne ; 
 Sink 'neath a blow a father dealt, 
 
 And the cold, proud world's scorn : 
 Thus struggle on from year to year, 
 Thy sole relief, the scalding tear. 
 
 Go, weep as I have wept, 
 
 O'er a lov'd father's fall ; 
 See every cherished promise swept 
 Youth's sweetness turned to gall ; 
 
 Hope's faded flowers strewed all the way 
 That led me up to woman's day. 
 
 Go, kneel as I have knelt ; 
 
 Implore, beseech, and pray : 
 Strive the besotted heart to melt, 
 The downward course to stay 
 Be cast with bitter curse aside 
 Thy prayers burlesqued thy tears defieu.
 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 31 
 
 Go, hear what I have heard 
 
 The sobs of sad despair 
 As memory's feeling fount hath stirred, 
 And its revealings there 
 Have told him what he might have been, 
 Had he the drunkard's fate foreseen. 
 
 Go, hear, and see, and feel, and know, 
 
 All that my soul hath felt or known, 
 Then look within the wine-cup's glow 
 See if its brightness can atone : 
 Think, if its flavor you would try, 
 If all proclaimed, 'Tis drink and die. 
 
 Near the close of their visit in New York, 
 the father of Hannah, with one of his compa- 
 nions (Mr. William Wright), were invited to 
 Boston, Massachusetts, to repeat there the story 
 of their restoration. They complied with the 
 invitation, and many thousands were deeply 
 affected by their honest and heart-touching ex- 
 perience. The depth of Mr. Hawkins' feelings 
 at his sudden transition from fifteen years of low 
 debasement and public scorn, to so high a place 
 as he had now attained, may be seen in the open- 
 ing of his speech before two thousand people in 
 Faneuil Hall, the cradle of American liberty. 
 
 " When I compare," said he, " the past with 
 the present ; my days of intemperance with my 
 present peace and sobriety ; my past degrada-
 
 32 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 tion with my present position in this Hall the 
 cradle of liberty I am overwhelmed. It seems 
 to me holy ground. I never expected to see this 
 hall. I had heard of it in boyhood. 'T\vas 
 here that Otis and the elder Adams argued the 
 principles of Independence, and we now meet 
 here to declare ourselves free and independent ; 
 to make a second Declaration not quite so 
 lengthy as the old one, but it promises life, liber- 
 ty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our forefathers 
 pledged their lives and fortunes and sacred honors ; 
 we, too, will pledge our honor, our life, but our 
 fortunes have gone for rum ! Poor though we 
 drunkards are, and miserable, even in the gutter, 
 we will pledge our lives to maintain sobriety. 
 
 "The cause of Temperance ! what is it, but the 
 cause of humanity ? I need not talk long to 
 show its connection with humanity. I have suf- 
 fered from every description of drunkenness 
 have borne the heat and burden of the day in 
 rum-mills (grog-shops), and know all about it 
 and I rejoice to say, in this Cradle of Liberty, 
 that whereas I was once a drunkard, I am now a 
 sober man." 
 
 After giving an account of his restoration and 
 the restoration of many in Baltimore, he thus
 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 33 
 
 spoke of the consequences of the work to the 
 families of the reformed. 
 
 " Go to Baltimore and See our now happy 
 wives and families. Only look at our procession 
 on the 5th of April, when we celebrated our an- 
 niversary. Two thousand men, nearly half of 
 them reformed within a year, followed by two 
 thousand boys of all ages, to give assurance to 
 the world that the next generation shall all be 
 sober. But where were our wives on that occa- 
 sion ? at home, shut up with hungry children in 
 rags as a year ago 1 No, no ! but in carriages 
 riding round the streets to see their sober hus- 
 bands ! 
 
 " My family were in a hack, and I carried ap- 
 ples, cakes, &c., to them, and wife said, ' how 
 
 happy all look ; why, husband, there is all 
 
 dressed up and only think, I saw old in 
 
 the procession as happy and smart as any of 
 them ;' and so she went on telling me who she 
 had seen. And where do you think the grog- 
 sellers' wives were ? Were they out ? Not 
 they ! ! ! Some of them peeped out from behind 
 their curtains ! We cut down the rum tree that 
 day in Baltimore, under ground j not on the top
 
 34 HANNAH HAW E1X5. 
 
 of the ground leaving a stump, hut under ground, 
 roots and all ! !" 
 
 Of the dangers and results of the drinking 
 usages of society, and the horrid traffic in intoxicat- 
 ing liquors, he spoke with an honest but just indig- 
 nation, showing talents of no ordinary character. 
 
 " This drinking has killed more men, women 
 and children, than war, pestilence, and all other 
 evils together. You cannot bring upon man so 
 awful a curse as alcohol ; it cannot be done ; no 
 machinery or invention of death can work like 
 it. Is there a moderate drinker who says he can 
 use ' a little,' or ' much,' and ' quit when he 
 pleases V I tell him from experience he can't 
 do it. Well he can if he will, but HE WON'T 
 WILL, that is the difficulty, and there is the fatal 
 mistake. Does he want to know whether he 
 can ? I ask him to go without his accustomed 
 morning bitters or his * eleven o'clock,'" to-morrow, 
 and he will find how he loves it ! We have 
 come up out of the gutter to tell him how he 
 loves it, and how he may escape. It is the mo- 
 derate use the little ; the pretty drink, the gen- 
 teel and fashionable, that does the mischief the 
 moderate drinker is training to take the place of 
 the drunkard.
 
 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 35 
 
 "This making the drunkard by a thousand 
 temptations and inducements, and then shutting 
 him up in prison, is a cruel and horrible business. 
 You make the drunkard, and then, if he comes 
 into your house, you turn him out ; let him come 
 to the church and you turn him out ; friends cast 
 him off; the grog-seller turns him out when his 
 money is gone, or midnight comes. When he 
 serves his time out in the prison, he is turned out 
 with the threat of flogging if he is ever caught 
 again : and yet you keep open the place where 
 he is entangled and destroyed. You are bound 
 to turn the whole tide of public opinion against 
 the traffic. The seller will pour down your son's 
 throat a tide of liquor, and you do so to his son 
 and he would cut your throat. Ask him if he is 
 willing you should make his daughter a drunk- 
 ard, and why should he make your son one ?" 
 
 When the good people of Boston saw how 
 Mr. Hawkins was reformed and how capable he 
 was of exerting a wide influence in favor of tem- 
 perance, they told him to go back to Baltimore 
 and bring his wife and children to Massachusetts, 
 and they would there provide for all their wants. 
 This was indeed a great change for Hannah and 
 her mother, brother and sister. The writer one?
 
 36 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 went to see them in their poor habitation in the 
 environs of Baltimore. It was indeed a drunk- 
 ard's home. Now they were to quit it for ever ; 
 and, instead of tears for their meat, they were to 
 be nourished by kind friends and raised to a 
 respectable condition in society. It was on their 
 way to their new friends, that he met them in the 
 stage-coach, as narrated in the commencement 
 of this tale. While the father entered on those 
 arduous labors in the cause of temperance, which 
 have made him so great a blessing, travelling 
 many thousand miles and often speaking to 
 crowded assemblies four and six times a week, 
 Mrs. Hawkins found an abode among those who 
 sympathized with her in her sufferings, and loved 
 her husband for his labors ; while Hannah and 
 her brothers were placed in schools, where they 
 are now receiving an education which will secure 
 to them, it is hoped, permanent usefulness and 
 hrppiness. 
 
 In perusing this little volume, a variety of 
 reflections will doubtless crowd upon the minds 
 of its youthful readers, some of which, if suitably 
 improved, cannot fail to be highly profitable.
 
 H.4NKAM HAWKINS. 37 
 
 Probably some will first of all exclaim, " Well, 
 I am thankful I was not born a drunkard's 
 daughter." And well they may. They know 
 little of her woes. And yet it is no virtue of 
 theirs that they were not. It was no fault of the 
 child, whose history we have related, that it was 
 her allotment. It is God who has ordered the 
 birth of every individual as it has pleased him ; 
 and while we have no right to complain of our 
 humble, obscure or even most afflictive condition, 
 it is very wicked for any to feel proud of their 
 birth, because it has given them every blessing. 
 How much misery has been entailed upon at least 
 a million children in the United States by drunk- 
 en parents, can never be told. It constitutes an 
 item in this awful sin, which the human mind 
 cannot estimate. A drunkard's daughter ! Who 
 loves her ? Who cnres for her ? Who dandles 
 her on the knee? Who soothes her sorrows? 
 W T ho gives her little presents to make her happy ? 
 Children of wealthy and respectable parents 
 know little of the worth of their blessings or of 
 the comforts of their home, while the storm is 
 beating upon the house of the poor drunkard ; 
 nor how happy a hundred little articles of cloth- 
 ing which they might cast away, and the very 
 4
 
 38 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 food they leave upon their tables, would make 
 this child of sorrow. 
 
 It is an aggravated but not uncommon case, 
 where a rich father becomes a drunkard and all 
 his property is wasted for drink, and his fine 
 house is sold, and his wife and little ones are 
 driven penniless upon the world. O what an 
 allotment then has the drunkard's daughter ! The 
 writer has in his possession a beautiful poetic 
 lament from some unknown pen, which he will 
 here insert for the perusal of his little readers, 
 hoping it may excite in them thankfulness that 
 their fathers have been preserved from this awful 
 vice. 
 
 " * 9m ' 
 
 THE DRUNKARD'S DAUGHTER. 
 
 I was a gay and happy girl, 
 And once I lived in wealth and pride, 
 
 My father was a noble man, 
 
 With smiling children by his side. 
 
 But now our marble house is changed 
 Into a hut, with crumbling walls ; 
 
 The splendid pictures all are sold, 
 That once adorned our Grecian halls. 
 
 My mother plays no more the harp, 
 
 Or sings as she was wont to do ; 
 But oft she clasps me to her breast, 
 
 With face of almost death-like hue.
 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 39 
 
 She used to weep when first the curse 
 Made wreck of all our peace and joy : 
 
 But, oh, she has not shed one tear 
 
 Since cold death claimed her only boy. 
 
 On brother once she fixed her hopes, 
 
 When father blighted all her joy: 
 Oh, little did she think that he 
 
 Would all her ardent hopes destroy. 
 
 Yes, Edward fills a drunkard's grave ! 
 
 He died from home without a friend 
 To calm his dark and troubled soul, 
 
 Or kind assistance him to lend. 
 
 Oh, brother, when I think of thee, 
 
 As thou, dear one, I fear art now, 
 And then reflect how thou wast once, 
 
 I would in deep submission bow. 
 
 Sweet sister Helen pined away, 
 
 When first she heard of brother's death; 
 
 The roses faded from her cheek, 
 And now she sleeps in silent death. 
 
 I've planted, near her lonely grave, 
 The snow-white rose and violet blue, 
 
 And as I see them fade away, 
 I think death soon will call me too. 
 
 I love to lead my mother there, 
 
 And point her to the deep blue sky, 
 
 Then try to calm her troubled sou], 
 And pray to God who dwells on high.
 
 40 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 But when I think of the sad cause, 
 That filled our house with pain and wo, 
 
 Deep grief clings to my very soul, 
 And tears of burning anguish flow. 
 
 Oh, then I pray that God above, 
 Would hear a lonely mourner's cry, 
 
 And give my wretched father grace, 
 From the vile tempter's charms to fly. 
 
 But the writer trusts that it is not merely a 
 feeling of gratitude at their own favored allot- 
 ment which will be excited by this little story ; 
 but also such an exercise of sympathy, as will 
 for ever prevent the drunkard's daughter from 
 being despised or wounded in her feelings. 
 
 There are many little girls who would on no 
 account be seen walking with such an one in 
 the street, or sitting by her in school, or inviting 
 her to their homes, and who will in a variety of 
 ways, perhaps not intentionally, but from want 
 of care, wound her feelings. How wrong this 
 is, need not be told. Her allotment is not a 
 crime, and she may be a precious gem in the 
 sight of her heavenly Father. What a treasure 
 was little Hannah to her poor sick mother, when 
 sitting up late with her while the father was outon 
 his drunken sprees : and what a comfort was she
 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 41 
 
 to him when he came home; bringing him a 
 pillow and a blanket as he lay drunk upon the 
 floor, and lying down by him till morning 1 , lest 
 he should suffer ! Such a child fulfils her high 
 destiny, which is to take care of her poor father 
 and mother ; and more, infinitely more is she to 
 be envied, than all the trifling daughters of gaie- 
 ty and fashion, who spend their midnight hours 
 in dancing and revelry. Jesus Christ says, 
 " Take heed that ye do not despise these little 
 ones." God will own them when he shall make 
 up his jewels. 
 
 It is a subject of gratitude that the Sunday 
 School system has come in to search out and bless 
 this destitute and forsaken class of little girls, by 
 placing them within the means of instruction ; a 
 thing which could never be expected of institu- 
 tions whose basis is pecuniary profit. Nor is this 
 all that it does. It furnishes a class of teachers 
 who look after their pupils, if they are in any 
 way detained from the schools; procure them 
 clothing, if they are destitute; and soothe and 
 calm their feelings if they are wounded imi- 
 tating their great Master who took the lambs in 
 his arms and carried them in his bosom. " A 
 bruised reed he will not break." The writer 
 4*
 
 42 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 recollects an incident related by a Sunday school 
 teacher, remarkably showing both his own kind- 
 ness and that the drunkard's daughter is not 
 always, as many suppose, a rough and unfeeling 
 child. 
 
 Eliza B., said the teacher, was a promising 
 scholar, in my class in the Sunday-school. She 
 had been absent three Sabbaths from school, and 
 unavoidable circumstances prevented my visiting 
 her parents, to ascertain the cause of her absence 
 and that of her two sisters. 
 
 I was out quite early one morning, and on 
 passing a grocery, saw my scholar coming from 
 it, with something in her hand ; which, as she 
 saw me, she vainly attempted to hide under her 
 tattered garment. 
 
 It was too plainly seen, a bottle of whisky, 
 and it might also have been seen in the distress- 
 ed and confused looks of poor Eliza, who had 
 often heard me speak of the misery and sin at- 
 tached to the use of ardent spirits. 
 
 " What have you there V 3 said I. 
 
 The tear started in her eye as she said, in a 
 faint tone " It's for father :" and again tried to 
 find a covering behind her scanty and torn frock. 
 Her feet were bare, though the morning was cold ;
 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 43 
 
 and her pinched looks and uncombed hair show- 
 ed neglect and poverty. 
 
 " Why have you not been to school this long 
 time, Eliza?" said I. "I have missed you, and 
 wondered at your staying away. . 
 
 Indeed I had, for she often showed deep feel- 
 ing, and something within frequently whispered 
 to me, " The Lord has thoughts of love towards 
 this child." 
 
 " Mother would not let me," said she. 
 
 " Why not ?" 
 
 " Because I had no shoes, and father says he 
 cannot get any." 
 
 " Has your father work, and is he well ?" 
 
 " Yes, ma'am, but" and here her voice falter- 
 ed, and the tears again started in her eyes. She 
 brushed them away, and said " Mother says she 
 will try to get me a frock, the week to come, for 
 this is worn out." 
 
 It was a case that touched my heart. I took 
 her by the hand and said, " Brush away your 
 tears. I will see that you have all you need, and 
 you shall come again to the school. Pray for 
 your poor father, that he may be reclaimed from 
 his habits and become once more a blessing to 
 his family.
 
 44 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 Another reflection which must arise in the 
 minds of those who read these pages, relates to 
 the good which even a little girl may be the in- 
 strument of being to her poor suffering parents, 
 and even to thousands of others in the world. 
 
 Most little girls feel that they have nothing to 
 do but to obey the commands of their parents 
 and teachers, and then seek to the utmost their 
 own pleasures. But while they are called to the 
 discharge of no great offices, they have each an 
 immortal mind committed to them; and by a 
 sweet and attentive disposition, by having a cha- 
 racter and judgment of their own, and expressing 
 modestly but firmly their opinion, they may often 
 become the means of great good to those around 
 them. A little maid in the house of Naaman the 
 Syrian, was instrumental in directing her master 
 to the cure of his leprosy. " For she said unto 
 her mistress, Would God my lord were with the 
 prophet that is in Samaria, for he would recover 
 him of his leprosy." And many a little girl, by 
 showing an early spirit of obedience and filial 
 affection, has gained an influence over a father 
 and a brother, which have deterred them, in mo- 
 ments of temptation, from ruin, and even rescued 
 them from the fangs of the destroyer. It was a
 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 45 
 
 remark of the Rev. Dr. Beman, of Troy, that he 
 had known more vicious young men reclaimed 
 through a sister's influence than through any 
 other means whatever. 
 
 Had little Hannah Hawkins been a wicked 
 and drunken child had she despised her poor 
 father and mother, and been cruel to him, he 
 never would have suffered her to say, " Father, 
 don't send me for any whisky to-day." She 
 would have received a blow which would have 
 felled her to the floor, and her father himself 
 would have drank the more fiercely for it. But 
 when his little Hannah, who had sat up late for 
 him at night, and who had covered him with a 
 blanket, put a pillow under his head and laid 
 down by him, as he expressed it, like " a faithful 
 dog," said, in tones of daughter-tenderness, " Fa- 
 ther, don't send me for any whisky to-day," it 
 was more than he could bear. He, at first, thrust 
 her out. But when she came back, and he saw 
 it was his daughter, he then thought of his past 
 life, his degradation, the misery of his friends, 
 and he called her to him and said, " Hannah, I 
 am not angry with you, and I shall not drink any 
 more." Both cried. He got up and went to the 
 cupboard, and looked at the enemy, and thought,
 
 46 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 " Is it possible I can be restored ?" and then turn- 
 ed his back upon it. Several times, while dress- 
 ing, he looked at the bottle, but thought he should 
 be lost if he yielded. The firmness and love of a 
 little daughter proved a father's rescue. And 
 what a rescue ! From a drunkard's grave. 
 
 Some of the little readers of these pages may 
 recollect the history of Julia Harwood. It was 
 related by a gentleman who had been spending 
 a few days in one of the lovely villages which 
 beautify the valley of the Connecticut, and so 
 nearly resembles the case before us, that it may 
 here find an appropriate location. 
 
 " It was," says he, " a chilly afternoon in Oc- 
 tober when I entered the grave-yard. The winds 
 moaning through the leafless branches, seemed 
 as if chanting a funeral dirge. I stood beside the 
 grave of a little girl, named Julia Harwood. On 
 her tombstone was this inscription * Yea, saith 
 the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors, 
 and their works do follow them.' The name 
 awoke many painful recollections, for Henry 
 Harwood had been the companion of my boy- 
 hood. We had mingled in our sports and studies, 
 and together graduated. Since that time I had 
 not seen him, and his letters had become less fre-
 
 HAXNAH HAWKINS. 47 
 
 quent, until I was ignorant of his situation alto- 
 gether. I was wondering whether this little girl 
 could be his daughter, when a voice said, ' George, 
 my old friend, is that you ?' I turned and recog- 
 nized Henry Harwood, the companion of my 
 youth. His features bore the impress of grief. 
 * This little girl,' said he, ' was my daughter. 
 When I abandoned myself to the intoxicating cup 
 it was she who would move among us like an 
 angel of mercy, shedding a ray of happiness 
 wherever she was. \Vhen her mother was sad, 
 she would cheer her lonely hours with scenes of 
 brighter days to come ; and on my return, in 
 tones of tenderness beseech me to let the poison 
 cup alone. If my heart had not been stone, it 
 would have melted, but I cruelly repulsed her 
 kindness, and bade her be silent. She obeyed 
 me ; but after that, her cheek was paler and her 
 step more feeble. And shall I say it ? Yes. I 
 plunged more deeply into the vortex of sin and 
 folly. The day before her death, Julia called me 
 to her bedside ; and pressing my hand tenderly 
 to hers, addressed me thus : " Soon, dear father, 
 I shall die, and your daughter will depart from 
 you. Must it be a final separation ? Shall we 
 never meet again but at the judgment-day ? Oh,
 
 48 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 beloved father, will you not grant me the last 
 request I shall ever make ? Night and day I 
 have prayed that you might have grace to resist 
 the temptation ; and thus light up with joy hearts 
 now pining with sorrow. Will you not, dear 
 father '? Oh, say yes. Promise now, at the bed- 
 side of your dying Julia, that you will never taste 
 the poison again that which destroys your in- 
 tellect, and will send you to the drunkard's dread- 
 ful home." I left her, even while, in gentle ac- 
 cents, she entreated me ,to smile on her forgive- 
 ness, for pressing so importunately that which 
 was so near to her heart. I left her to drown 
 my feelings of remorse in intoxication. When 1 
 saw Julia again she was a corpse, and her pale, 
 sad face seemed reproaching me for my cruelty. 
 Since that moment I have not " touched, tasted, or 
 handled the accursed thing.' " My friend ceased, 
 overcome with emotion ; and I felt how true it 
 is that our ' works do follow' us." 
 
 Thousands of little girls will say, when asked 
 to sign the temperance pledge, " I have no in- 
 fluence." 
 
 " What if the little rain should say, 
 
 So small a drop as I, 
 Can ne'er refresh, those thirsty fields, 
 I'll tarry in the sky !
 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 49 
 
 What if a shining beam at noon. 
 
 Should in its fountain stay, 
 Because its feeble light alone, 
 
 Cannot create a day 1 
 
 Doth not each rain drop help to form 
 
 The cold refreshing shower: , 
 And every ray of light to warm 
 
 And beautify the flower ?" 
 
 No influence! Ah! then they will soon be 
 led into the paths of ruin. A little girl who has 
 no influence, and means to have none, and to do 
 no good, will have no character, and will soon 
 be led astray by inhuman destroyers. This is the 
 first thing that she is to learn, that she has influ- 
 ence, and that she is exerting it over her little 
 companions every day and every hour ; and if it 
 is not for good, it is for evil ; and if it can be an 
 influence to save a beloved brother or a kind fa- 
 ther from ruin, what will be its value ? 
 
 But to pursue our reflections. No one, the 
 writer is sure, not even a child, can read these 
 pages, or any of the numerous accounts of ruined 
 fathers, which, in the last two years, have been 
 so graphically presented to the public, without 
 acquiring the greatest abhorrence of a drunk- 
 aid's course, and of all those usages of society 
 5
 
 50 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 which have brought degradation and ruin upon 
 the happiest families. 
 
 The poor unfortunate man himself has been 
 abhorred perhaps sufficiently ; and his family too, 
 far beyond their deserts. But while these have 
 been cast off as loathsome, a nuisance and a bur- 
 den to community, all the usages of society which 
 have proved their ruin, have been most assidu- 
 ously cherished. Pride and fashion have stamped 
 them as honorable, and the men who have made 
 money by the sale of the intoxicating cup, and 
 brought clown some of the noblest spirits to the 
 deepest degradation and ruin, have filled high 
 places in society, sat at communion tables, and 
 gone with their children to peaceful graves. 
 Amazing infatuation ! Incomprehensible blind- 
 ness ! In all other cases we compassionate the 
 sufferer, and abhor and shrink from the cause of 
 his ruin. If a man, by a course of fraud and mis- 
 representation, involves another in deep pecuni- 
 ary distress and ruin, brings him to a jail, and 
 casts his family, once rolling in wealth, penniless 
 upon the world, the whole of society, though 
 they cannot relieve the latter, or his family, yet 
 view the former, and all his arts, with the utmost 
 detestation. If any article of food, how delicious
 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 51 
 
 soever, is proving the death of a child, it is hence- 
 forth viewed with fear and terror ; and every par- 
 ticle of it is for ever removed from under the roof. 
 And if any individual is pursuing a business 
 which brings yellow fever, or plague, upon the 
 community, sweeping them into the grave, the 
 civil authorities at once lay their hand upon it, 
 and say, you shall pursue it no farther. But the 
 people of the United States, witnessing the ruin 
 of families almost without number, from immo- 
 derate drinking, seeing 30,000 go annually to 
 the drunkard's grave, and knowing that no drunk- 
 ard hath any inheritance in the kingdom of God, 
 still, to an amazing extent, cling to the wine cup. 
 Legislatures license the horrid dram-shop ; and 
 the manufacturer and the vender move among 
 the respectable classes of society. Parents who 
 love their children, set, day by day, upon their 
 table that which intoxicates ; and even some 
 ministers of the gospel, while they pray that all 
 sin and sorrow may be done away, still help, by 
 example, to keep open those fountains of liquid 
 fire which burn up for ever body and soul. 
 
 It is only a recollection of the delusion which 
 was once on all minds, and involved the whole 
 community in the use of intoxicating drinks, that
 
 52 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 secures the mantle of charity for those yet uphold- 
 ing the hydra in its power. It is not demanded 
 of the children coming upon the stage of action, 
 that they should abhor the drunkard and his suffer- 
 ing family ; rather let them pity such, as are ruin- 
 ed by the vices of a father, induced by the usages 
 of society. For drunkenness there is no excuse 
 and no palliation. ]t is a sin of deepest dye in 
 the sight of God, and the parent of other sins. 
 And its guilt is charged, not only upon each suc- 
 cessive act, but also back upon that moderate 
 drinking and those early habits which induced it. 
 These should be the objects of their detestation 
 and abhorrence. The sparkling champagne, a 
 token of genteel society ; the pleasant cordial, a 
 holiday offering; the foaming beer and the 
 strengthening ale, offered as spring breaks forth 
 in its beauty, or summer depresses by its heat ; 
 the sweet fermented cider from the autumnal har- 
 vests yea, the wine sauce and wine custard, the 
 brandied peaches and preserves, and brandied 
 pies all deceitful should be shunned and fear- 
 ed as the viper's tooth ; be detested as the arch- 
 demon among the flowers of paradise, who, by 
 his smooth and flattering speech, would betray 
 the soul to endless night.
 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 53 
 
 It is hoped that this will not be viewed as the 
 language of a cold ascetic, who would deprive 
 all others of the enjoyment in which be has no 
 participation. He is aware that there have been 
 many who have gone through life in the daily 
 indulgence of the intoxicating glass, perhaps the 
 beloved parents of those children, into whose 
 hands this book may fall, and yet never, so far as 
 the eye of man reaches, been injured by it. Nor 
 is he forgetful that, in the land in which the bless- 
 ed Saviour had his birth, the fruit of the vine was 
 accounted among its chief blessings, and was 
 often extolled by seers and prophets, although 
 the Holy One, merciful to save, declared ' wine 
 a mocker,' and that " whoso is deceived thereby 
 is not wise." And how are we to avoid decep- 
 tion, but to shun the paths of the deceiver ? How 
 save ourselves from being mocked, but to hold 
 in abhorrence the ways of the mocker ? Who 
 was ever made a drunkard, but by listening to 
 the tempter 'I Who was ever mocked, but in mo- 
 derate drinking 1 
 
 The writer once received an account from a 
 
 lady in Baltimore, of a beautiful child in that 
 
 city, who was early taught to drink the health of 
 
 her papa and mama at her father's table. She 
 
 5*
 
 64 
 
 IANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 became a great proficient in music and dancing, 
 and loved the exhilarating cup ; for she thought 
 it gave life to her step, a thrill to her voice, 
 sharpness to her wit, and caused soft words to 
 flow melodiously. When she walked abroad 
 with her companions, she stopped at the confec- 
 tioner's, for she was rich, and treated them with 
 
 the nicest cordials. \Yh< 
 
 was married, new 
 
 cares devolved upon her; and new desires tc 
 please, made her seek the stimulus the more. To 
 escape the notice of her husband, she would steal 
 wine from his closet, and send her servants, in 
 the darkness of the night, for gin, ht-r favorite 
 drink. At length, her vacant eye, and bloated 

 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 55 
 
 face, and silly speech, and feeble gait, were na- 
 ture's signals of distress. The heart of her hus- 
 band was broken. Her children were covered 
 with shame. She died, years after, in a hospi- 
 tal, of the drunkard's mania. We ask every lit- 
 tle girl who reads this book, to pause a moment 
 and contemplate her end ; and then say whether, 
 despite of friends or a flattering world, she will 
 not abhor her sparkling champagne, and bran- 
 died delicacies. 
 
 The writer feels that he may be extending his 
 remarks too far ; but he is sure it is impossible 
 not to reflect on the blessedness of the temper- 
 ance reformation, and the worth of all the early 
 labors in this work of reform. 
 
 A few years ago, he went to a moderate drink- 
 er, and asked him to abstain entirely from all in- 
 toxicating drinks, and sign the pledge of total 
 abstinence. No, said he, it is not necessary for 
 me, but only for the intemperate man. Go to 
 him. Accordingly, he went to one, and asked 
 him to do it. Before giving a reply, he inquired 
 if Mr. B. had agreed to. No, was the answer. 
 He says he only drinks moderately. Well, that, 
 said the drunkard, is all I do besides, I need it, 
 for I am feeble ; but he does not, for he is strong 

 
 66 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 and healthy. It was therefore necessary, before 
 the poor unfortunate drunkard could be reformed, 
 that moderate drinkers, for his sake, if not their 
 own, should give up the use of all intoxicating 
 liquors, and sign the pledge. And it took years 
 of toil, and labor, and great expense, to convince 
 them that, for the good of others, it was a duty 
 to do it. And when the work was done, when a 
 million persons had signed the pledge, and a 
 hundred thousand men were kept sober, who, 
 without the work, would have been drunkards, 
 and an army of temperance men was raised up 
 throughout the land, then the way was prepared 
 for that reformation which commenced at Balti- 
 more, and spread through every State of this fa- 
 vored nation. 
 
 The worth of this reform to each individual 
 and family interested in it ; the relief from posi- 
 tive and indescribable woes ; the comfort, sup- 
 port, self-respect, clothing, fuel, and joys of home, 
 restored ; the education, the Bible, the Sabbath, 
 the hope of salvation introduced, are in value 
 beyond computation. 
 
 In the exuberant joy manifested by numbers as 
 they burst the chains and stood out before their 
 fellow-beings as reformed drunkards,' there was
 
 ^v "4HB 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 57 
 
 something revolting to those who were accus- 
 tomed to look upon them as the most debased of 
 society, and who, if they were even reformed, 
 should spend the rest of their days away from 
 the haunts of men, clothed in dust and ashes. 
 But they were like captives delivered from the 
 dungeon ; like birds escaped from the snare of the 
 fowler. One of our sweetest poets has, in the 
 following sonnet, most graphically given their 
 true and certainly justifiable feelings. It is to be 
 hoped that such as is described will be their 
 spirit of gratitude. 
 
 SONG OF JOHN HAWKINS AND HIS COMRADES. 
 
 BY WM. B. TAPPAN. 
 
 Hurrah! hurrah ! we've burst the chain: 
 
 O God ! how long it bound us ! 
 We run ! we leap ! O God, again 
 
 Thy light, thy air surround us. 
 From midnight's dungeon-depths brought out, 
 
 We hail hope's rising star ; 
 Ho, comrades, give a stirring shout, 
 
 Hurrah ! hurrah ! hurrah ! 
 Debased by drink, we'd lost the sign 
 
 Of manhood, God imprest, 
 The open face, the look divine 
 
 To show what He had blest. 
 Behold ! erect ! with honest brow, 
 
 Restored to Nature's law 
 We're men ! we're men ! heaven knows us now, 
 
 Hurrah ! hurrah ! hurrah ! 

 
 58 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 Of ten men cleansed did one return, 
 
 To bless the healing hour? 
 All of our rescued thousands bum, 
 
 To praise redeeming power. 
 
 Come ! bless God now ! and what for us 
 
 He's done so reads the law 
 We'll do for others ! and the curse 
 
 Root out hurrah ! hurrah ! 
 
 If in the progress of the work of reform there 
 have been some sad relapses, blasting the hopes 
 of friends, and causing triumph to the rum-seller 
 and moderate drinker, there have been perma- 
 nent securities of bliss, at which there is joy in 
 he'aven. Husbands and wives, who had for years 
 been divorced because of intemperance, and 
 whose children had been scattered among rela- 
 tives and friends, have been reunited, and once 
 more gathered their little ones together, under a 
 happy roof. Parents, abandoning their cup of 
 wo, finding plenty now taking up with them its 
 abode, have been to poor-houses to receive again 
 their offspring, who have been cast upon public 
 charity as more pitiable than orphans. Many a 
 sister has received back to her embrace a lost 
 brother ; and many a son has come home to 
 wipe the falling tear from a parent's eye, whose
 
 hANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 59 
 
 grey hairs he was rapidly bringing with sorrow 
 to the grave. 
 
 The writer is acquainted with a family where 
 was not entire destitution, but strife and babbling, 
 and Wo dwelt, and the wife was often driven 
 out by violence. There may now be seen, as the 
 
 curtains of the evening are drawn around them, 
 father, mother, and children, happily seated to- 
 gether around a common table, reading useful 
 books, enjoying each other's society, and grate- 
 ful, too, it is believed, for the mysterious change 
 which has come over them by means of the
 
 60 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 pledge. Sweet scene ! one that the angels 
 might rest upon with unmingled delight. 
 
 It is not long since that he entered a church, 
 on a Sabbath afternoon, which was devoted to 
 the sacrament. After the services had been 
 opened, in a solemn and appropriate manner, 
 several came forward to take upon them the sa- 
 cramental vow. Among them was a man with 
 a rough but saddened look; his wife, with a 
 countenance of tearful gratitude, and an interest- 
 ing daughter of about eighteen, who were all 
 baptized together. This husband and father, but 
 a few months before, was an unfeeling, cruel 
 drunkard, from whose hand this wife and daugh- 
 ter had drank many a cup of sorrow. Now he 
 gave good evidence of an entire reform, and of a 
 saving change of heart. And his extraordinary 
 reformation, with his self-devotedness to his Mak- 
 er, had so affected the heart of his daughter, as 
 to be the means also of her salvation. What a 
 family, the writer thought, to be transplanted to 
 heaven! What grace ! rich grace! 
 
 And yet there are those -who make light of the 
 temperance reform, and refuse to sacrifice their 
 daily or even occasional glass of wine that it may 
 go on and prosper. There are those who, for
 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 61 
 
 money, will still hand out to the poor unfor- 
 tunate drunkard the cup of trembling ; who 
 will manufacture the poison and sell it to young 
 men and boys, and make another generation of 
 drunkards. There are Christian parents who 
 will still give the wine-cup to their children, and 
 through these their own tender offspring, and so 
 far as their example and influence go, through other 
 families, will for ever stop the work of reform. 
 Heaven grant that their eyes may be opened to 
 the sinfulness and bitterness of their course, be- 
 fore they or theirs shall fall a prey to the de- 
 stroyer! For the evil they are causing we 
 devoutly say, " Father, forgive them, they know 
 not what they do." 
 
 The writer cannot draw this little work to a 
 close, without a single reflection upon the 
 amount of misery which would be brought upon 
 this and other families in the like circumstances, 
 by the father's being enticed again into the paths 
 of drunkenness. He cannot think of anything 
 that would equally satisfy the malice of the fiends 
 of darkness, or more fully exhibit the power of 
 sin to blast human hope and bind the guilty and 
 the innocent together in the chains of despair. 
 And yet a slight temptation, a single glass of in- 
 6
 
 62 HANXAH H.VWKIM?. 
 
 toxicating liquor offered in hospitality, or press- 
 ed upon the unfortunate man by the unfeeling 
 vender, to snatch from him a few pence which 
 he may have earned for his wife and children, 
 would do it. Who will say that an article so 
 dangerous to a hundred thousand reformed men, 
 should be tolerated in society and that men 
 should be licensed to sell it 1 Who would believe 
 that any could be found willing to sell it, and 
 that there are Christian families who will yet 
 have it on th^ir tables and circulate it in their 
 social parties, let who will be present 1 The 
 Apostle Paul said, ' ; It is good neither to eat 
 flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby 
 thy brother stumbleth or is offended or is made 
 weak. Surely, if there is no other argument for 
 the entire disuse in the Christian community, 
 there is one drawn from this consideration of ir- 
 resistible force, that such use may never more 
 plunge a happy family into the degradation and 
 wo of a drunkard's home. 
 
 Let some, if they will, throw off all sense of 
 moral obligation, and say in the selfishness and 
 pride of their hearts, " Am I my brother's keep- 
 er V The day of judgment will declare it. " It 
 must needs be that offences come, but wo to that
 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 63 
 
 man by whom the offence cometh." " It were 
 better for him that a mill-stone were hanged 
 about his neck and he were cast into the depth 
 of the sea." 
 
 Seventy of remark, however, is scarcely de- 
 manded excepting toward the unfeeling rum- 
 seller, who, as facts of an appalling character 
 would illustrate, has a peculiar disrelish of a 
 reformed drunkard, and has been known even to 
 put the poison into a cup thought innocent ; but 
 few, with this exception, even of the most invete- 
 rate wine drinkers, will go so far as to set before 
 the reformed man the vile temptation. 
 
 " James," said a father of this description, and 
 who had said if a man becomes a drunkard at 
 my table it is none of my business, I shall never 
 give up my wine for others, " James, invite your 
 friend home to dinner. I understand he has 
 reformed and signed the pledge. It is a good 
 thing, and I shall be happy to encourage him.'* 
 While dinner was preparing and the young men 
 were enjoying themselves with their flutes, a 
 thought of the wine bottle flashed across his 
 mind : " Can I invite this young man, just snatch- 
 ed as a brand from the burning to my table, give 
 him wine, and send him home to-night drunk, to
 
 64 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 the inexpressible grief of his father and mother, 
 and mortification of his sisters 1 No, I cannot 
 do it. Servant," said he, ringing the bell, 
 " remove the decanters." He could not have 
 them upon his table. And who could, under the 
 like circumstances 1 Who would consent, even 
 for worlds, to have his own son thus tempted and 
 allured back to ruin ? Ah ! fashion, cruel tyrant ! 
 heaven be praised, there is a power within to 
 which even thou, inexorable as thou art, must 
 sometimes yield. 
 
 Reflections may perhaps have been too much 
 prolonged, but it is impossible to meet with such 
 an incident in a family of once deep obscurity 
 and debasement, yet, in the mysterious provi- 
 dence of God, acting upon hundreds and even 
 thousands of families in different and distant parts 
 of the land, without deriving from it some lessons 
 of wisdom, and endeavoring to make some im- 
 provement for our own good and the good of 
 others. 
 
 The most desirable result, and that for which 
 the writer would most strenuously labor with 
 every dear child, who may chance to read this 
 book, is, to induce her in the morning of life to 
 come to the full and decided resolution, never in
 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. C5 
 
 any form as a beverage, to taste, touch or handle 
 the intoxicating cup, and, both as a personal 
 security and that she may extend security to 
 others, to put her name to the temperance pledge. 
 
 If so much misery as this the father of Hannah 
 brought upon himself and family by the once 
 moderate use of wine, beer, cider or brandy, why 
 should any individual ever be willing to come in 
 the least contact with these bewitching but de- 
 structive poisons? If one saw a beautiful ship 
 filled with passengers swallowed up by the awful 
 Maelstrom, how could he be willing for any 
 pleasurable indulgence to sail around in the 
 most distant circle 1 
 
 Let every little girl, then, as she reads this 
 book, resolve in good faith to place her name to 
 the temperance pledge. A voice may whisper, 
 What good will it do ? She cannot telL Cer- 
 tain it is, it can do no harm. If it does not save 
 herself, it may prevent her from leading others in 
 the road to ruin. It may justify her in saying at 
 a future day to a father, brother, husband or 
 friend, I cannot bring you the intoxicating cup, 
 and with angel influence may bring them to re- 
 flection, and save them from destruction. And if 
 this book should fall into the hands of any young
 
 66 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 lady who may feel that fashion or the laws of 
 society or her own health and happiness forbid 
 her taking a stand on the side of total abstinence, 
 he would take the liberty, for the benefit of such, 
 to introduce an extract or two from the accom- 
 plished and most excellent writer, Mrs. Ellis, in 
 her work, which should be found in every well 
 trained family, "A Voice from the Vintage." 
 
 " I may, perhaps, be allowed to add a few 
 words on the subject of my own experience, 
 which may possibly derive additional weight 
 from the circumstance of my having been, for 
 many years of my life, an obstinate disbeliever 
 in the efficacy of temperance principles to effect 
 any lasting or extensive good ; while of all rt- 
 spectable societies, that for the promotion of total 
 abstinence that which I now esteem it an honor 
 and a privilege t.o advocate, would have been 
 most repulsive to my feelings to join. Indeed, 
 such was my contempt for the system altogether, 
 that I often pronounced it to be a mockery of 
 common sense ; and at the same time frequently 
 asserted my belief, that nothing could be more 
 likely than the restraint of a public pledge to cre- 
 ate an immediate inclination to break it. 
 
 " For two years years, 1 may say, of total
 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 67 
 
 ignorance on this point, during which I took no 
 pains to make myself better informed, I treated 
 the subject with the utmost contempt whenever 
 it was brought under my notice. By degrees, 
 however, it began to wear a different aspect be- 
 fore the world in general, and facts were too 
 powerful in its favor to be disputed. By degrees 
 also it began to assume with me somewhat 
 more of a personal character. I could not see 
 how I was right while indulging in what was so 
 fearfully destructive to others, and to some whom 
 I had known and loved. Yet such was the force 
 of habit; such my willingness to believe what 
 doctors told me, that wine was necessary to my 
 health, at that time far from good ; and such also 
 was my dependence upon stimulants, for increas- 
 ing the strength of which I often felt miserably 
 in want, that three years more elapsed before I 
 had the resolution to free myself practically, en- 
 tirely, and I now trust, for ever, from the slavery 
 of this dangerous habit. 
 
 " Four years of total abstinence from every- 
 thing of an intoxicating nature, it has now been 
 my happy lot to experience j and if the improve- 
 ment in my health and spirits, and the increase 
 of my strength during that time, be any proof in
 
 
 68 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 favor of the practice, I am one of those who ought 
 especially to thank God for the present, and take 
 courage for the future. 
 
 " Like many other women, and especially those 
 who are exempt from the necessity of active ex- 
 ertion, I was, while in the habit of taking wine 
 for my health, subject to almost constant suffer- 
 ing from a mysterious kind of sinking, which ren- 
 dered me at times wholly unfit either for mental 
 or bodily effort, but which I always found to be 
 removed by a glass of wine. My spirits, too, 
 partook of the malady, for I was equally subject 
 to fits of depression, which also were relieved, in 
 some degree, by the same remedies. During the 
 four years in which I have now entirely abstained 
 from the use of such remedies, 1 have been a to- 
 tal stranger to these distressing sensations of sink- 
 ing and exhaustion ; and I say this with thank- 
 fulness, because I consider such aliments infinitely 
 more trying than absolute pain. 
 
 " One single effort conscientiously and prompt- 
 ly made, will enable you to pass through all the 
 duties of social intercourse better without such 
 stimulants than with them. I will not pretend 
 to say, as some do, that the effort is easily made. 
 We forget the weakness of human nature when
 
 HANNAH HAWKINS. 69 
 
 we call it easy ; but I will say, that the difficulty 
 is all in anticipation, and in the lengthened drag- 
 ging out of a half-formed purpose. Two years 
 of trial I myself endured in this manner, before 
 my resolution was fully carried out ; but no soon- 
 er was an entire surrender made of inclination to 
 a sense of duty, than all temptation vanished, all 
 trial was at an end ; while the act of totally ab- 
 staining became so perfectly easy as to call forth 
 no other feelings than those of gratitude and joy, 
 that I was thus enabled, for the sake of others, 
 to share in the self-denials of the tempted, and 
 the privations of the poor." 
 
 And if any parent or Christian has any hesi- 
 tancy on the point before us, the writer begs 
 their attention to the following paragraphs, from 
 the author of Anti-Bacchus, a minister of the 
 gospel, and who has spent no small amount of 
 time and talent in the investigation of this subject : 
 
 " Let us look round our congregations, and 
 enumerate those opening buds of promise which 
 have been withered and blasted, and let us in- 
 quire also into the influence which destroyed our 
 hopes, and the peace and respectability of the 
 offenders, and we shall find that in ninety-nine 
 cases out of a hundred, these drinks have been
 
 70 HANK AH HAWKINS. 
 
 . 
 
 the remote or proximate cause. I have seen the 
 youthful professor, whose zeal, talent, respecta- 
 bility, and consistent piety, have promised much 
 to the church and the world, led on from mode- 
 rate to immoderate draughts, in the end become 
 a tippler, dismissed from the church, disowned 
 by his friends, himself a nuisance to society, and 
 his family in rags. I have seen the generous 
 tradesman, by whose zeal for the gospel, and at 
 whose expense, too, the ministers of religion have 
 been introduced into a destitute village, and 
 eventually a house erected for God, and a flou- 
 rishing church formed, himself excluding himself 
 by his love of strong drink. Would to God these 
 instances were solitary ! But, alas ! they are 
 not. Almost every church and every minister 
 have to weep over spiritual hopes blasted, and 
 Christianity outraged by these drinks. 
 
 " We must here also observe, that if but one 
 member of the church had backslidden, if but one 
 angel of the church had fallen, or but one hope- 
 ful convert had been lost, through the use of al- 
 coholic drinks, the thought that only one had 
 been betrayed and corrupted, ought to make us 
 resolve to abstain. The consideration that what 
 had destroyed one might injure many, would,
 
 HANNAH HAWKINS, i 71 
 
 were not our hearts more than usually hard, 
 prompt us to vow never to touch or taste again. 
 But we have not to tell of one, but of many, that 
 have been ruined. The hopeful ministers of the 
 sanctuary who have fallen are not a few. And 
 as to members and young people of the highest 
 promise, who have been lost to the church through 
 this practice, these might be counted by thou- 
 sands." 
 
 The writer is happy to say, in conclusion, that 
 the father of Hannah is still active in the good 
 cause of temperance, and holds himself, as a brand 
 plucked from the buining, at the service of Him 
 who has so mercifully saved him. In a letter 
 from him, received a short time since, he says 
 
 " I am still travelling, and doing all the good 
 I can, in my weakness, for the poor drunkard. 1 
 have witnessed many, very many happy scenes 
 of reformation. I long to see you, to talk to you 
 and relate some of them to you. I know they 
 would warm your heart. I have travelled since 
 March, 1841, over 17,000 miles, and delivered 
 over 700 addresses, and these not very short. 
 You may judge from this that my labor has been 
 very great. But what is it for ? Thanks be to 
 God for the thought it is for the reformation of
 
 72 HANNAH HAWKINS. 
 
 the poor drunkard and the ultimate salvation ol 
 his soul. Some would say, there is too much re- 
 ligion in this* Oh, how can any say so, espe- 
 cially any reformed drunkard, when he owes 
 gratitude to God for every drop of water he 
 drinks ?" 
 
 That the time may speedily come when no 
 family shall ever be afflicted with a poor unfor- 
 tunate inebriate ; when the destroyer, which has 
 swept its 30,000, year after year, into the drunk- 
 ard's grave, shall be expelled from our land and 
 the world, and when temperance, purity, peace, 
 and righteousness shall everywhere prevail, must 
 surely be the sincere wish of every philanthro 
 pist, patriot, and Christian. Let all do their duty, 
 and we shall soon witness and enjoy this blessed 
 period.
 
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