the best in the village were delighted to honor.

"In the beginning, Willy went with the tide, and, in an incredibly
short period, was acquiring a fondness for drink that startled and
alarmed his friends. In going in through Slade's open door, he
entered the downward way, and has been moving onward with fleet
footsteps ever since. The fiery poison inflamed his mind, at the
same time that it dimmed his noble perceptions. Fondness for mere
pleasure followed, and this led him into various sensual
indulgences, and exciting modes of passing the time. Every one
liked him--he was so free, so companionable, and so generous--and
almost every one encouraged, rather than repressed, his dangerous
proclivities. Even his father, for a time, treated the matter
lightly, as only the first flush of young life. 'I commenced
sowing my wild oats at quite as early an age,' I have heard him
say. 'He'll cool off, and do well enough. Never fear.' But his
mother was in a state of painful alarm from the beginning. Her
truer instincts, made doubly acute by her yearning love, perceived
the imminent danger, and in all possible ways did she seek to lure
him from the path in which he was moving at so rapid a pace. Willy
was always very much attached to his mother, and her influence
over him was strong; but in this case he regarded her fears as
chimerical. The way in which he walked was, to him, so pleasant,
and the companions of his journey so delightful, that he could not
believe in the prophesied evil; and when his mother talked to him
in her warning voice, and with a sad countenance, he smiled at her
concern, and made light of her fears.

"And so it went on, month after month, and year after year, until
the young man's sad declensions were the town talk. In order to