But now at midnight he will drive them from their
pillows and curse them down the steps, and howl after them as, unclad,
they fly down the street, in night-garments, under the calm starlight.
Who slew that man? Who blasted that home? Who plunged those children
into worse than orphanage--until the hands are blue with cold, and the
cheeks are blanched with fear, and the brow is scarred with bruises,
and the eyes are hollow with grief? Who made that life a wreck, and
filled eternity with the uproar of a doomed spirit?
There are those whose regular business it is to work this death. They
mix a cup that glows and flashes and foams with enchantment. They
call it Cognac, or Hock, or Heidsick, or Schnapps, or Old Bourbon, or
Brandy, or Champagne; but they tell not that in the ruddy glow there
is the blood of sacrifice, and in its flash the eye of uncoiled
adders, and in the foam the mouth-froth of eternal death. Not knowing
what a horrible mixture it is, men take it up and drink it down--the
sacrificial blood, the adder's venom, the death-froth--and smack their
lips and call it a delightful beverage.
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