GOLD RING. 11 was often darkest before daylight. The farmer and his wife were members of the temperance society, and had signed the pledge ; and I had often heard him say, that he believed it had saved him from destruction. He had, before his marriage, and for a year after, been in the habit of taking a little spirit every day. He was an industrious, thriving man ; but, shortly after his marriage, he became bound for a neighbor, who ran off, and he was obliged to pay the debt. I have heard him declare, that, when the sheriff took away all his property, and stripped his little cottage, and scarcely' left him those trifles, which aro secured to the poor man by law ; and when he considered how ill his poor wife was, at the time, in consequence of the loss of their child, that died only a month before, ho was restrained from resorting to the bottle, in his moments of despair, by nothing but a recollection of the pledge he had signed. Farmer Johnson’s minister was in favor of pledges, and had often told him, that affliction might weaken his judgment and his mor
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