21. THE INEBRIATE; Waiting for Family

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An Article Previously Written by our treasured author.
From THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, April 1869

In my paper preliminary to the present, in the April number of this magazine, I have entered my weary protest against that “sagacious pharisaism of the fam­ily, which consigns the poor prodigal heart, that has nothing left but its remnant of imperishable love, to the isolation of a Refuge such as this; and then, maintaining a savage silence, keeps it for weeks on the red-hot grid­iron of a longing suspense, in one pro­tracted nightmare and horror of devilish fancies and fears.”

Dispair

Since that was printed, one poor prodigal heart, – the gentlest, humblest, among us, impatient only with itself, – robbed of its remnant of imperishable love, and given over by that same savage silence to its loneli­ness and longing and despair, has taken its pitiful tax and trouble in its hand, and fled from the cruel respectability of fastidious Pharisees to the indiscrim­inate consolations of the Publican’s Christ.