“Oh yes, I know.  You must go, of course.”  She had taken her husband’s hand, and was holding it with a close pressure.  He had to draw it away almost by force.

“Good-night, dear, and God bless you.”  His voice trembled a little.  He stooped and kissed her again.  A moment after and she was alone.  Then all the light went out of her face and a deep shadow fell quickly over it.  She shut her eyes, but not tightly enough to hold back the tears that soon carne creeping slowly out from beneath the closed lashes.

Ralph Ridley was a lawyer of marked ability.  A few years before, he had given up a good practice at the bar for an office under the State government.  Afterward he was sent to Congress and passed four years in Washington.  Like too many of our ablest public men, the temptations of that city were too much for him.  It was the old sad story that repeats itself every year.  He fell a victim to the drinking customs of our national capital.  Everywhere and on all social occasions invitations to wine met him.  He drank with a friend on his way to the House, and with another in the Capitol buildings before taking his seat for business.  He drank at lunch and at dinner, and he drank more freely at party or levee in the evening.  Only in the early morning was he free from the bewildering effects of liquor.

Four years of such a life broke down his manhood.  Hard as he sometimes struggled to rise above the debasing appetite that had enslaved him, resolution snapped like thread in a flame with every new temptation.  He stood erect and hopeful to-day, and to-morrow lay prone and despairing under the heel of his enemy.

At the end of his second term in Congress the people of his district rejected him.  They could tolerate a certain degree of drunkenness and demoralization in their representative, but Ridley had fallen too low.  They would have him no longer, and so he was left out in the party nomination and sent back into private life hurt, humiliated and in debt.  No clients awaited his return.  His law-office had been closed for years, and there was little encouragement to open it again in the old place.  For some weeks after his failure to get the nomination Ridley drank more desperately than ever, and was in a state of intoxication nearly all the while.  His poor wife, who clung to him through all with an unwavering fidelity, was nearly broken-hearted.  In vain had relatives and friends interposed.  No argument nor persuasion could induce her to abandon him.  “He is my husband,” was her only reply, “and I will not leave him.”

One night he was brought home insensible.  He had fallen in the street where some repairs were being made, and had received serious injuries which confined him to the house for two or three weeks.  This gave time for reflection and repentance.  The shame and remorse that filled his soul as he looked at his sad, pale wife and neglected children, and thought of his tarnished name and lost opportunities, spurred him to new and firmer resolves than ever before made.  He could go forward no longer without utter ruin.  No hope was left but in turning back.  He must set his face in a new direction, and he vowed to do so, promising God on his knees in tears and agony to hold, by his vow sacredly.