The loom was in that room and the
spinning wheels; an old churn and many other things, too numerous to
mention.
Mr. Benson reached up his hand, to take down a large bunch of woolen
yarn that hung suspended on a nail. His wife sprang forward, saying,
"Do not touch that--it is not mine."
"I don't care whose it is. I must and will have something that will
sell."
At that moment, seeing the package of dried apple, he pounced upon
it, like a tiger upon its prey, and bore it rapidly away, with the
remonstrances of a weeping wife ringing in his ears.
And the traffickers in human souls bought it at a price, paid him in
liquid fire, and he returned to his home, more fiend than when he left
it. The wife's dress was gone; the comfortable things she hoped to
procure for the children were gone. She sat up and toiled late at
night--and all for what? To procure that poison for her husband that
was contaminating his and her own soul, and cast such a blight upon
her home. Was it not enough that their house and land were mortgaged,
their horse and carriage gone? but must she toil with her own hands,
to satisfy that appetite that cries, "give, give?" As these thoughts
passed through Mrs. Benson's mind, she mentally exclaimed,
"O, it is a sad thing to be a drunkard's wife."
A few weeks after she went to an old chest that stood in one corner of
the room, to get a piece of woolen goods she had carefully prepared
for the market, which would bring her several dollars.
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