CHAPTER VI.

A LECTURE AND A SERMON.

WHAT Dilly saw growing before her astonished eyes was the picture of a little boy. Just a few dashes of the crayon, made quite at random it seemed to her, and there he was; as sweet and pure a boyish face as could have been imagined. Dilly, looking earnestly, suddenly turned and gave such a bewildered, yet delighted, gaze into the face of the young gentleman beside her, that he was seized with a desire to know her thought.

"What now? What does that handsome little chap say to you?"

"Why, it is your picture," whispered Dilly, "the one your mother has in the velvet case on her dressing-table. Don't you see how exactly it is like that? The pretty curls, and all; oh! I wish your mother could see this."

"Not lasting enough," said Hart, composedly. "It will fade away with one brush of the hand; see if it doesn't."

He would not have let the little girl know that he was strangely touched by her words, nor would he have admitted to her for anything, that he recognized the likeness, but the truth was, that there was something in the sweet mouth, and curly hair, and laughing eyes of the picture, which took him back to his early childhood, and made him almost ready to sigh over his own apparently thoughtless words, "Not lasting enough."

They were truer of the picture before him than he had supposed; even while he watched, the face began to change: the artist was talking and working. He printed on the board the word, "discontent." He told, in a most vivid way, of how this boy, surrounded as he was by all comforts and delights of life, yet let the wicked spirit of discontent come into his life. How he thought it was hidden in his heart, where no one could see, but how mistaken he was; for what grows in the heart paints its picture on the face. "I'll show you how," said the artist.

A quick dash of his skilled crayon, and, sure enough, the sweet mouth had lost its sweetness, was a trifle drawn at the corners, and a scowl had gathered on the forehead. Then the word "Envy," was printed; a large heart was made with a single sweep of the artist hand, an ugly serpent grinned within it, and from its mouth appeared to be hissing out those two words, "Discontent," "Envy." The brief story of the boy's desire for what was not his own, was told, and the marks which the thought made on his face all unconsciously to him, were plainly shown. Then, the serpent Vanity began to get possession of him; his dress was finer than others, his house was grander, his watch was more elegant; sure enough, with a touch, such as Dilly tried in vain to watch, to see in just what it consisted, and the face before her grew more and more unlovely; she would have been sure he was a vain and hateful boy.

As vanity and discontent grew on him, he became insolent; and the lines which this brought out about the once lovely lips, completely spoiled their beauty; Dilly remembered a boy who spoke great swelling words of pride and insolence, even to his mother, and the face on the board began to grow like his!

Vain and impudent and discontented boys were nearly always lazy, the speaker said; and while he told of one who was caught by this evil spirit, he disarranged the curly head on the board, hung the hair in sulky masses over the eyes, drooped the shoulders, and with several quick touches brought before them the picture of a lazy, repulsive boy. Then, "Did they need to be told," he asked, "that such a boy was always selfish? The evil spirit of selfishness was sure to get hold of him, and when it did, it made such lines as these."

It was the last demoralizing touch on the once sweet face, and poor Dilly almost held her breath in astonished sorrow as she gazed on the wreck which the artist's hand had wrought.

"You see how it is," he said, "I did not spoil the face; bless you, I wouldn't spoil a sweet child face for all the money there is in the world! But when all these evil spirits get hold of him they are as sure to make his face like that as he is to live. You can see their names if you spell the word which is formed by the first letter of these words. I know of no truer name for habits which will work such ruin as this on a face that God meant to be beautiful."

The children sat very still; they were solemnized by this wreck of a beautiful life, so plainly pictured before them. Some of the older children shaded their faces with their hands, and went back over their lives, and remembered, if one may judge by their faces, certain times when some of these evil spirits were allowed to come in and make havoc.

As for poor Dilly, she stole a half-frightened glance at Hart, and wondered if she did really see the drawn look about his mouth which marked lines of discontent; certainly his face had changed since the picture was taken which the mother kept in the velvet case, and Dilly had herself seen him do things which she instinctively felt he would not have done if the spirit of selfishness had not been admitted. Were there lines of that in his face? She could not be sure, but she was afraid there were. He looked steadily at the picture, and tried to smile, and appear perfectly indifferent; but there was a little drooping of the eyes which would have told one who understood human nature, that he was by no means so indifferent to the changes on that young face as he professed to be.

Meantime, the artist was again at work. He was making the picture of another boy; life-size, erect, handsome, well-dressed, bright-eyed; a very king among boys. Briefly, while he worked, the artist told his story; high-spirited, kind-hearted, winning, lovable, his mother's joy, the pride of his teachers. The artist had known him well; loved him, as every one loved the beautiful boy. Ten, twenty, thirty years passed. "And now," said the artist, "I will make him again as I saw him one day in my office in New York."

Oh! Poor, wretched wreck. Ragged, bloated, shaggy-haired, staggering, utterly repulsive! Could it possibly be that the two whose pictures appeared on the board side by side, were one and the same?

"It is true," said the artist, deep feeling in his voice; he saw the question on the faces of his startled audience; "it is too bitterly true. I wish it were not; I wish I had not known him; I wish I could blot his image from my memory; but he was the friend of my boyhood, and I loved him, and he came to me years afterwards, the wreck that you see him here. I tried hard to help him, even then, and failed. You know the name of the demon who had gotten hold of him, and changed his face, and his form, and wrought his ruin, body and soul.

"You need not think I have given you the whole story; I have shown you only two pictures; I could make dozens of the same face. Those changes did not come in the course of a few months; he did not spring from the handsome boy of whom all his friends were proud, into the bloated wreck I have shown you; it was the work of years. A glass of wine now and then, on special occasions; a little egg-nog with a friend; a few spoonfuls of brandy when he was not well; a hot sling after exposure to intense cold. Little by little the work was done; I could show you, if I had time, the slight changes which these little indulgences began to make in the handsome face; changes which he did not guess, and few people looked closely enough to see, and only his mother was sure of. Boys, I loved him; and I tried to save him and failed."

There was no mistaking the depth of feeling in the speaker's voice; it was a true story he had been telling. Those were photographs on which the people had been gazing.

Dilly drew a long, quivering sigh as the artist left the platform and the audience was dismissed and filed quietly out. She could not get away from the feeling that she had been present at the wrecking of a human life.

"There's a temperance lecture for you," said a gentleman passing out just in front of them. "Lecture and sermon all in one; I never heard a stronger appeal in my life. Talk about getting that man to 'amuse the young!' I would rather have had my boy hear him and see him this morning than to attend the best temperance lecture that ever was given."

"I think that is true," said Dilly, gravely, as soon as they were outside where she dared to talk; "I think what that man said about temperance lectures was true. I don't know how any boy could ever begin to drink anything which had alcohol in it, or to keep on drinking it, if he had begun, after hearing that, do you?"

Said Hart: "Whew! It is pretty warm here, I should say; it must be boiling in town. I wonder what time it is. Too late for the train, as sure as preaching! Well, I don't care; I heard her screeching when that fellow was making his picture, but I felt too lazy to start. You see the spirit of laziness got hold of me then; that was one of his little imps, wasn't it? He's sharp, that fellow is, as sharp as steel, and original too."

"And should you think," said Dilly earnestly, still pursuing the train of reasoning which the last picture had awakened, "that anybody who had brains would begin using stuff which might make such dreadful changes in them in just a little while? I know it does; there is an old man, old Jock, they call him—why, you know old Jock, don't you? He isn't so 'very old,' only he looks so; father used to know him in the North, and he says there wasn't a finer-looking boy in all the town than he; and now, who would imagine such a thing! I think it is the strangest thing anybody begins to use liquor!"

Hart gave her a sharp, searching look, but nothing more innocent and earnest than her quiet face could be imagined. "I wonder if his mother lived until he looked like that?" she said, her tone very mournful. "Poor mother! I hope she didn't."

"Perhaps she was a mother who did not care." Hart made an effort to speak in a gay and indifferent tone.

Dilly shook her head decidedly. "Oh! I don't think that can be; such a handsome boy as he was! He must have had a mother who cared, and who cried. It is dreadful to make mothers cry. Once," and now her voice was trembling,—"once I wanted to go to the woods with some girls, and my mother needed me at home, and I grumbled, and said I didn't see why I could never have any good times like other girls; that none of them had to help their mothers iron; and my mother looked so sad and tired; and when she went into her bedroom I saw the tears coming down her cheeks. I hated myself then, and I ironed all the afternoon as well as I could, and I told mother that night how sorry I was for being cross; but I never had a chance to iron for her again; it was only a few weeks before she died."

And now poor Dilly was crying. Quietly, attracting no attention, but shedding unmistakable tears.

Hart felt very sorry for her, and there was also a remorseful feeling knocking at his heart. He had, more than once, seen the tears in "his" mother's eyes, and knew that anxiety for him had brought them there.