Hale, merry fellows they were--a little more red of face and loud of talk than was quite seemly in a stranger's eyes, but industrious and "forehanded," and kind of heart to parents, wives and babies.

After dinner we sat under the cherry trees upon the lawn, and one of the sons brought out a round table, another a tray of glasses, another a monster bowl of milk punch.
Everybody pledged the patriarch's health in the creamy potation except myself.

Again, I acted upon general principles.

Were I a wine-bibber I should never touch glasses with a young man, or offer him anything "that could make drunk come." Disliking spirituous draughts of all kinds, and with the object-lesson of my girlhood branded upon memory, I refused to taste the brimming glass, even when the pastor of the household, a genial "dominie," rallied me upon my abstinence.

He offered gallantly, when he found me obdurate, to drink my share, and had his glass replenished by the reddest-faced and loudest-mouthed of the farmer-sons.
"_You're_ the right sort, dominie!" he said, with a roar of laughter, filling the tumbler until it ran over and into the pastor's cuffs.
Whereat the farmer laughed yet more uproariously.
One of the four young men died a while ago of delirium tremens, and not one of the other three has drawn a sober breath in years.