MIDNIGHT SCENES 
 
 IN THE 
 
 SLUMS OF NEW YORK: 
 
 OR, 
 
 LIGHTS AND SHADOWS. 
 
 BY 
 
 THE REV. FRED. BELL, 
 
 THE "SINGING PREACHER," 
 
 EDITOR OF THE "MIDLAND SUNBEAM," 
 
 NOTTINGHAM. 
 
 W. KENT AND CO., PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 gtottingljam : 
 
 JOHN HOWITT AND SON, CLUMBER STREET.
 
 PR 
 4o99
 
 DEDICATED 
 TO 
 
 THE fiEV. GEORGE GliEGG, 
 
 OF SHEFFIELD, 
 MY SPIRITUAL FATHER.
 
 PREFA CE. 
 
 <H&N sending out this Book, we owe an explana- 
 qp tion or apology, and as a " Preface" is 
 for that purpose, we embrace this opportunity 
 of stating that many of the " Sketches" have 
 appeared in the "Midland Sunbeam,' 1 and 
 11 New York Family Story Paper, 11 but at the 
 request of hundreds of friends, we reproduce 
 them in book form, having revised and 
 dressed them up in their Sunday clothing, 
 though it will be seen at a glance that the 
 Author has wasted no midnight oil over the 
 construction of nicely-rounded sentences, or 
 stately periods, and we hereby give notice to 
 the mere critic to spare himself the trouble of 
 reading our unpretending volume. 
 
 However, here it is ; we hope it will be a 
 welcome visitor, and know our friends will be 
 glad to see it for our sake, and strangers for 
 its own. If it should have a long life, we shall 
 be glad ; if it should die in its infancy we shall 
 still be glad it was born. 
 
 FRED BELL. 
 
 Nottingham, 1881.
 
 I. 
 
 11 §0tn0 to %mmv&" 
 
 €I N 
 
 October, 1871, I left the town of 
 Rotherham, Yorkshire, my boyhood's 
 home, and the home of my kindred, for the 
 New World. 
 
 I loved my island home, but wanted to see 
 more of the world, and had a fancy to taste 
 some of the free new Western life of which I 
 had heard so much, and to see for myself the 
 vigorous young nation, that had just passed 
 through its second bloody baptism and fight 
 for " a right to be." 
 
 I had ten pounds, English money, in my 
 pocket, the price of two fat pigs in my native 
 town. With this, my whole available worldly 
 store, I bade "good-bye" to my family and 
 friends, who strenuously sought to dissuade 
 me from my purpose, declaring I was taking a 
 wrong step, and perhaps making the " mistake
 
 8 GOING TO AMERICA. 
 
 of my life." I set off on my journey, with 
 much curiosity concerning the sea voyage, and 
 with some sadness on my heart, for it was a 
 long journey to take across a mighty trackless 
 ocean, involving many days to cross, and much 
 expense. Much might happen ere I put foot 
 on the dock at New York, and we might never 
 meet again, and he must be very stolid who 
 can bid good-bye to loved ones without some 
 feeling, when sighing and sobbing through 
 that farewell spoken, was the undertone of 
 " perhaps we may meet again, and perhaps 
 never." 
 
 A few hours in the steam cars brought me to 
 Liverpool, where I booked for New York on 
 board the steamer City of Washington, since 
 wrecked. I went, of course, steerage, which 
 took six pounds six shillings of my ten pounds. 
 
 We had a rough passage of it, and if 
 accepted as an omen of my New World life, I 
 was destined to have a rough time. However, 
 signs never had much importance to me ; 
 neither witches, wizards, nor omens, so I was 
 not greatly stirred, except in the manner 
 almost all who, being unaccustomed to it, " go 
 down into the great deep in a ship." Therein
 
 GOING TO AMERICA. 
 
 I was greatly stirred up, having an epigastric 
 earthquake going on in the regions under the 
 waistcoat nearly all the time. Someone has 
 described sea-sickness as that condition of the 
 whole body and mind, of supreme nausea 
 which makes one wish all the time that "he 
 was dead, and yet fearful all the time that he 
 will die," a state of feeling excessively mean, 
 with no immediate prospect of recovery. 
 Indeed, judging from some men's actions, they 
 never do recover, it is a taint that eternally 
 spoils them ; they are for ever sea-sick, and it 
 costs them all they save by it, besides being 
 welcome to it. 
 
 Twelve days brought me to New York. 
 With but three pounds in my pocket and not a 
 friend in that great country, I landed, went in 
 search of a boarding-house, found one, got my 
 luggage to it, and retired for one good night's 
 rest in a bed on shore. 
 
 I could not sleep. I missed being "rocked 
 in the cradle of the deep," and I objected to 
 the change of being pounded in the mortar of 
 a great, throbbing, rushing, pounding city. 
 Besides, everything was new to me, and 
 strange. I was far away from home, indeed.
 
 IO GOING TO AMERICA. 
 
 For twelve days a snorting, smoking, groaning, 
 rolling monster had been bearing me away 
 from all dear and familiar to me, and I was 
 expecting them all the time, but they didn't 
 come. New scenes, faces, voices, modes of 
 speech, and ways of life met my eye and ear, 
 just as though I had been shot out into space 
 a hundred million miles and stepped down 
 into an entirely new world. I was the same, 
 but everything around me was different, and 
 it was a difference three thousand miles wide, 
 and so I couldn't sleep. I don't believe you 
 could either, reader. Morning came, and with 
 it I came down, and, after a hasty breakfast, 
 I started out in search of employment, for I 
 could not idle. I went to work, and so I 
 traversed Broadway in search of a "baker's 
 and confectioner's." I walked and walked, 
 and saw none, and came to the conclusion 
 that it was only to be accounted for from the 
 peculiar habits of the people, that Americans 
 did not eat pastry nor candy. 
 
 I have become wiser since that, however, 
 for a taste for the sweets is a very strong one 
 with that people. I also learned that business 
 etiquette and the hard argument of finances
 
 GOING TO AMERICA. II 
 
 relegate these stores, with others of the kind, 
 to side streets. I soon discerned this, for, 
 when I came to Bleecker Street, I turned off, 
 and had not gone a half a block before I found 
 one, and work, too. 
 
 I remained a few weeks, when the concern 
 stopped business — another thing I learned was 
 not an unusual occurrence — and I was thrown 
 out of a situation. 
 
 Here was a dilemma I had not expected 
 to be in ; I sought for a new place, but it 
 came not. For nearly two months I walked 
 the great city from morning till night, seeking 
 work — 
 
 " Begging a brother of the earth 
 To give me leave to toil." 
 My money began to be very low, and I, too, 
 became very anxious ; still no work. I tried 
 to be hopeful and cheerful, but it's a little 
 difficult to be successful in that line when you 
 reckon a failure every night and morning. My 
 last cent was gone. I had been but partly fed 
 for some days, for I was young and proud, and 
 charity bread never did taste good to me ; 
 what with want for butter, and pride for a 
 plate, it's rather unpleasant eating. I walked
 
 12 GOING TO AMERICA. 
 
 miles on miles in search of employment, my 
 pockets were empty, and so was my stomach, 
 breakfast had not broken the fast for me, 
 •dinner had not paid its respect to me, and 
 it bade fair that supper time would bring 
 no message for me : in my ears rang the 
 gloomy cry, " Don't need any one, sir," It 
 commenced to look like a conspiracy, or bad 
 prophecies coming to early fulfilment, or very 
 blue. It began to affect me, my natural 
 cheerfulness began to flag, courage and hope 
 bade me good day. I was ashamed of being 
 seen. The next day was Sunday. I went to 
 church as usual, but was too hungry to listen ; 
 but I told no one that I was out of work, nor 
 out of food either. I didn't believe in whining, 
 and don't yet much, and hoped something 
 would turn up soon — perhaps next day. Oh ! 
 how often the poor and unhelped say, with a 
 pathos of suffering words can never express, 
 "Monday may bring something." I never 
 broke fast that day. I walked the cold streets 
 until dark, for it was February now. I would 
 not go to my boarding place, for I had no 
 money, and I would not eat up other people's 
 victuals, and so I stayed in the streets, and
 
 GOING TO AMERICA. 1 3 
 
 often I had to go into the alleyways and yards, 
 and get down on my knees and pray God to 
 take my hunger away, which He did every 
 time. Starving in the streets of New York is 
 not a very agreeable thing ; I have tasted 
 some of the bitter fruit of that tree. I know 
 what three words mean — homeless, friendless, 
 hungry : very full words, full of loneliness, 
 pain, sorrow, and tears. Alas ! too many in 
 this great city know what depths they have, 
 and too many who might do much toward 
 relieving such, through thoughtlessness or 
 selfishness, let them suffer. No doubt it's well 
 to be pinched, if it does not kill you. It's a 
 good thing in the way of experience to starve 
 a little if it does not continue too long, or if 
 you don't die under the operation. I know 
 how to feel for a hungry man, and fellow feeling 
 is the fire and force of the best states of chari- 
 table feelings and actions, without which a 
 shilling may be dispensed or a needy one 
 relieved, but no true act of charity performed, 
 or charitable emotions experienced. In my 
 case, at least, it was a fitting which I needed 
 for a career soon to open before me. Now, I 
 do not regret it. Yet it does not require much
 
 14 GOING TO AMERICA. 
 
 grace to be resigned to a past experience when 
 the pain is gone. I can feel very charitable 
 towards the toothache I had last year. It 
 might be met with a different feeling if it 
 should ache now. My friends at the boarding 
 house caught me in my room that night, and, 
 finding out my condition, took me down stairs 
 and filled me up, and it took some filling to do 
 it, for I was an empty man, they made me at home, 
 " money or no money," till I got work, which 
 I did shortly after, and so out of a very great 
 strait I was brought by one path and another 
 to the position I now hold, and I am free to 
 confess my gratification, at least, in being able 
 to say I have been on the lowest rung of the 
 ladder. If I have gained any success or 
 position, it has not come from birth, from 
 being pushed by powerful friends, from 
 happening to strike in when the tide was 
 up, and running at its swiftest, but from 
 low places, from the verge of distress and 
 friendlessness. I have been brought through 
 every step of the upward journey, and gained 
 a rich experience, that brings me very close to 
 the side of every man. And it may be that I 
 have some of the experience of that other man,
 
 GOING TO AMERICA. 1 5 
 
 the man, among men, "The Lordly Man," 
 when I say brother to those who need a word 
 of cheer, a helping hand, or a friend to stay 
 by them till they are out of the drag. No one 
 can hope to gain much success without some 
 risk, and risk that involves pain and suffering. 
 But the manhood one gets pays for the 
 experience endured to get it. If a man is 
 down, I would say don't give up and stay 
 down, watch your opportunity and get up. 
 And if you keep your heart true and put the 
 trust of the soul in a better power, the getting 
 up will be quicker, and you will stay icp, which 
 is better.
 
 II. 
 
 low J became a "Singing Drearier." 
 
 jFOHERE is a reason for everything under 
 (J2s the sun ; or, at least, there should be, 
 and a good one, too. And there is a reason 
 for my connecting vocal music with my 
 spoken discourses ; and, as it is often asked 
 how and why I sing so much, perhaps I 
 had better " rise to explain." 
 
 There is a prejudice in some directions 
 against the practice as an auxiliary to 
 Christian work, strangely enough, too, as 
 the following incident will show. 
 
 While in conversation with a friend one 
 day, he mentioned a critique a clergyman 
 once uttered in his hearing concerning what 
 he styled " the impropriety of my singing 
 the Gospel ;" taking sides especially against 
 " solo singing," and citing Christ as his 
 authority, giving this rather original reason
 
 HOW I BECAME A "SINGING PREACHER. IJ 
 
 on which his objections were founded, "that 
 Christ told His disciples to preach, and not 
 sing the Gospel." 
 
 Now, whether he meant that these were the 
 literal words of the Saviour's commission, or 
 that the simple command to preach embodied 
 as an emphatic limitation a prohibition from 
 every other mode of presenting the Gospel to 
 men than that of direct oral teaching. 
 " deponent saith not." 
 
 One thing we do know, that we could com- 
 mend to this literalist the doing of many other 
 things which were more literally enjoined by 
 the Saviour, which we are sure he neglects, 
 and so form as strong an argument for the 
 duty of washing one another's feet — an argu- 
 ment and practice more useful and important 
 than the one insisted upon ; and as well for the 
 observing of other duties ; and we have thought 
 that if it should ever occur to him that there 
 is a duty he should perform, and he is at 
 a loss where to begin, we offer our own to 
 start him in business. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to inform our readers 
 that the objector could not sing. Whether 
 
 that throws any light on the subject or not we 
 
 B
 
 l8 HOW I BECAME 
 
 leave you to conclude ; but to the duty in hand. 
 I was born a singer, perhaps singing. Of that, 
 however, I have no personal recollection. 
 
 I could sing about as soon as I could talk, 
 and that you may guess was very early. 
 
 When but a boy I could sing most of 
 the popular songs of the day, and singing 
 seemed to grow upon me, though I never took 
 a single lesson in singing in my life ; all that I 
 can say, it was in me, and I opened my mouth 
 wide and let it out. 
 
 I was full of music ; the winds sang to 
 me, and I sang back ; the birds made 
 music to me, and I responded, while every 
 accordant note made melody to my ears and 
 harmony to my spirits. 
 
 And when a better power led me to give up 
 my "wicked life," and changed everything 
 within and without me, there came no change 
 upon my musical taste, only such elevating 
 and purifying influences as religion always 
 exerts. 
 
 Though my sins and bad nature were gone, 
 my love for music and song remained, and I 
 concluded it was left for a purpose which would 
 be known in good time.
 
 A "singing preacher." 19 
 
 I soon found that there were scores of 
 beautiful songs I could sing, and that I was 
 not less fond of singing now than before. I 
 hope that I shall not be misunderstood when 
 I say I always like praise better than prayer. 
 I do not mean "self-praise" but " God praise," 
 that form of worship known as singing hymns 
 of devotion, adoration, thanksgiving and peti- 
 tion to the worship of God ; I like it best 
 because it is the better form of prayer, and one 
 almost everybody can use, and one that should 
 be more freely used than it is. 
 
 It is a balm and a benediction ; it often 
 sends a gleam of comfort athwart a dark, dark 
 hour, like the flash of a sunbeam painting its 
 bright, golden track, on the dark breast of the 
 storm-cloud, and for a good many other 
 reasons which you know as well as I do. 
 
 One day I visited a " sailors' boarding- 
 house," with the view of inviting some of the 
 sons of ocean to the meeting at night, and as 
 I entered I heard some one singing " a bonnie 
 song," and when he came to the chorus they 
 all joined in with a will, and strangely enough 
 it was a familiar comic song I used to sing in 
 years gone by, and which was now brought 
 
 fresh to my memory. 
 
 b2
 
 20 HOW I BECAME 
 
 There were several sailors in the room. I 
 entered, sat down as if interested, and as I 
 glanced around I saw they had nearly all been 
 drinking freely. 
 
 When the song ended, the singer walked 
 over to me and addressed me : 
 
 " Look here, shipmate, you've got a singing 
 face. Won't you sing us a song?" 
 
 I said I would on one condition. 
 
 "Name it, my lad, name it," chimed in 
 several voices. 
 
 "It is this : You must keep perfectly quiet, 
 and I'll sing." 
 
 The man who gave the invitation was 
 evidently the master of the place and leader, 
 for, drawing himself to his full height and 
 lifting his clenched hand in an impressive 
 manner, he said in a suggestive and emphatic 
 tone : 
 
 "All right, sail right in, my lad," and turning 
 upon the crowd he added, "I'll swell the man's 
 head who attempts to interfere with the young 
 fellar." 
 
 It may not have been as refined a mode of 
 obtaining order and attention as the leader of 
 an orchestra would have adopted, but it was
 
 A "SINGING PREACHER." 21 
 
 remarkably effectual. It meant something 
 not easily misunderstood by those men, and 
 with great show of respect they arranged 
 themselves on their benches, and with sobriety 
 of countenance they sat erect, and hardly 
 winked as I proceeded to sing that beautiful 
 ballad entitled "Scatter Seeds of Kindness." 
 
 A prima donna never had a more attentive 
 audience, and as the song went on — a strange 
 song for such a scene — rough hearts were 
 touched, and you could see the tears trickling 
 down brown cheeks, and their deep chests 
 heaving with suppressed emotions that had not 
 stirred them since childhood, perchance. 
 
 When the song was ended they gave me 
 uproarious applause and shouted encore, and 
 the leader rising and placing his broad 
 shoulders against the door, said : 
 
 "Young man, you can't leave this place till 
 you sing again. Now, plant yourself, and let 
 her whistle." 
 
 I saw determined admiration in his face, 
 and tasted some of the embarrassments of 
 popularity, but saw that there was nothing to 
 do but to oblige them. I sang again, 
 choosing this time a Sunday-school hymn with
 
 22 HOW I BECAME 
 
 the title : "I am so glad that Jesus loves me." 
 When I finished they crowded around me, 
 asking if I was one of them "ere preachers?" 
 I replied by remarking that it was my 
 endeavor to make drunkards sober, bad men 
 good, and good men better. " Where do you 
 do that ?" cried a half dozen rough voices. I 
 gave them a card, and they promised to come 
 and see for themselves ; they did, and three 
 of them found a better life, became good and 
 consistent Christians. Rather a profitable 
 afternoon's work ; and it occurred to me that 
 here was a "new power" by which I might 
 reach human hearts, a key by which I might 
 throw open the rusty hinges of many a 
 hardened and otherwise hopelessly closed life, 
 a lever which I might put under many a 
 smirched soul, and pry it from the mud, I 
 resolved never to preach again without sing- 
 ing, and I never have, and often and often 
 where words would have failed utterly, where 
 men would have gone away from the pro- 
 foundest sermon cursing, they have remained 
 to weep and pray, swayed under the power of 
 song that has gone sweeping, and sobbing 
 through their souls. It is marvellous to witness
 
 a "singing preacher." 23 
 
 the effect it has on the human heart, a vast 
 audience being oftentimes played upon at will 
 like an organ under the skilled hand of its 
 master. I do wish people knew the power of 
 song and would use it more. Home w. uld be 
 happier if it were more songful. Life would 
 be brighter, sorrow would have less drag to it, 
 care less weight, hope more promise, and the 
 heart more gleams. Sing ! 
 
 The church would be more united and less 
 contentious ; the devil can't stand singing. 
 Scandal would not have so glib a tongue, nor 
 so many tongues to set a wagging. There 
 wouldn't be so many backsliders, and there 
 would be many more conversions ; religion 
 would look brighter, and have sweeter message 
 for men, if good people were better singers. 
 If you can't pray in meeting, sing, both in 
 meeting and out of meeting. If you can't talk 
 religion, sing it. If you can't sing, make a 
 joyful noise, and though awkward and discord- 
 ant to human ears the angels will put the 
 chord and symphony into it ere it strikes 
 against the throne, and the refluent wave will 
 bring blessing and gladness and joy to your 
 own life and to many a one beside. Sing, fcr
 
 24 HOW I BECAME A " SINGING PREACHER." 
 
 song is the natural expression of happy feelings, 
 and happiness increases by expression ; and 
 while we cannot but say that if there were 
 more happiness there would be more singing, 
 we will say that if there is more singing there 
 will be more happiness. Sunshine may be a 
 matter of outside origin, but open the windows 
 and it will come in. And all hearty generous 
 natures do sing. The brawny Scotchman in 
 his plaid makes the glens and moor and 
 forest resound with his happy songs. The 
 Swiss mountaineer shouts his greeting to the 
 sun from mountain peak and stormy crest. 
 The rugged fisherman has his song to which 
 his rocking boat beats time. So let us sing, 
 sing till the breast grows big with love and 
 strong with the far-away better hope. Sing 
 through affliction and disappointment as well 
 as joy. Sing in trouble and sing out of it. 
 Sing in high and low note, sweet and sad note. 
 Sing through life, and through the dark valley, 
 and so shall we be ready to join in the "grand 
 and final chorus," where the singing is as "the 
 sound of many waters." Then Sing !
 
 III. 
 
 11 fofo to reatJj % JBtoaMS." 
 
 MONGST philanthropists, social reform- 
 ^pjL ers, and all good people, who have had 
 their attention directed towards this subject, 
 the great vexed question, unsolved as yet, and 
 by some held to be an unsolvable one, is, 
 " How can we effectively and successfully 
 reach the degraded classes of our large cities 
 and towns ?" For these classes congregate and 
 settle to the bottom of society by their own 
 gravity, and make our cities the sore places of 
 our modern civilization, extending the bloody 
 ichor of shame and sin continually, and now 
 and again breaking out in "an epidemic of 
 crime," said to be a " social phenomenon " of 
 this century. I believe unhesitatingly in the 
 infallible power of the Gospel to reach and 
 save the most abandoned ; but I believe as 
 well that common sense in its way of presentation 
 is also desirable. We must approach men
 
 26 " HOW TO REACH THE MASSES. 
 
 > J 
 
 from their standpoint and on their level as the 
 Master did, if we would work with that 
 thorough effectiveness which the sinner's 
 problem demands. In other words, we must 
 study personal condition. 
 
 In the special classes before us, poverty, 
 with all its privations, is the bane ; the depraved 
 classes live depraved lives ; they live low down, 
 and are but a few removes from the brute ; 
 they are best approached on that side of their 
 nature which is quick and alive — the animal 
 side. They are hungry. Feed them ; then 
 the way to their head and heart is clear. The 
 surest way to their hearts is down their throats. 
 There's a bread-and-butter way of salvation, 
 in fact, there's a deal of religion in a cup of 
 coffee smoking hot, a bowl of soup, or an old 
 coat. 
 
 At least my own observation has taught me 
 that in considering this social problem we 
 should not leave this gastronomic treatment 
 out of the question. 
 
 There's wonderful power in a full stomach 
 both as a preparation and a stimulant. 
 Reference to our own experience will prove 
 how absolutely at peace we are with all the
 
 " HOW TO REACH THE MASSES." 2/ 
 
 world, how genial and benevolent we feel when 
 there is no vacuum in the stomachic region 
 for " nature to abhor." 
 
 I have seen a sermon with but one head 
 and a very solid text, with no point but 
 satisfaction, do more than the most ornate 
 and brilliant discourse that the master mind 
 of the age could produce. That sermon was. 
 a loaf of bread. Those five loaves and two- 
 fishes under the Saviour's hand accomplished 
 more for men than the whole love and glory 
 of the Jewish Church and priesthood. It is. 
 safe to imitate Him, I think, and as well from 
 the nature of the case, it seems to me to be 
 sacrilegious to talk religion to a man — a theme 
 profitable, the contemplation of which requires 
 a clear head and the best outward conditions — 
 at whose vitals hunger is gnawing, and whose 
 brain is crazed with want. What these people 
 need is fewer sermons of the kind the cast-iron 
 reform would cram down their throats, and 
 more bread-and-meat preaching. I think I 
 know whereof I speak. I have demonstrated 
 its efficacy, and, as a success, it beats mere 
 doctrinal theology. In December of '72 I put 
 this plan in operation, commencing midnight
 
 28 " HOW TO REACH THE MASSES." 
 
 suppers for the hungry and abandoned, and 
 to give it a fair trial I got the hardest cases I 
 could find. This was in New York. 
 
 The way I reached them was the following : 
 
 I got some cards announcing the strange 
 fact that there was something good to eat, 
 and free to everybody, in the following way : — 
 
 "Come to the supper, for 'yet there is 
 room,' at Kit Burns' Rat Pit, Water Street." 
 
 Taking these with me I would start on my 
 rounds about eleven o'clock at night ; and 
 diving down into the lowest dens I could find, 
 I would distribute these invitations, telling 
 them to go right away and get a good place 
 before the crowd got there, and I would be 
 along soon. 
 
 It was the work of but a short time to 
 gather a crowd of one or two hundred around 
 the supper-table, whereon was a plentiful 
 supply of coffee, soup, meat and bread of the 
 best quality, and they were invited to go right 
 in and eat all they wanted. 
 
 It was with a bewildered air and many a 
 strange glance at the attending ladies, myself, 
 and one another that they would fall to work 
 and eat, wondering what it all meant, and
 
 "how to reach the masses." 29 
 
 how it would end ; and they would eat and 
 eat until they had what they called a " square 
 meal," and some required an enormous amount 
 of " filling in " to reach that result. 
 
 What a medley we would have ! Most of 
 the men came intoxicated, and were absolutely 
 the worst men that New York could produce. 
 
 What hard hearts were there ; what great 
 brutal passions they carried ; what sullen 
 countenances and shifting downcast eyes, 
 never looking straight at you, yet always on 
 you, seeing everything you did, and oftentimes 
 in their strange quick mode of communication 
 telegraphing to each other their thoughts and 
 observations without ever speaking a word or 
 making a gesture you could read, so alert had 
 crime made them, so quick and silent, so 
 watchful and communicative. Men whose 
 consciences were dead, but ears were as quick 
 as a greyhound's ; whose inner eye was all 
 darkness, but whose visual organ was piercing 
 
 as an eagle's. 
 
 They seemed to think and act less as human 
 beings do, and more as the beasts of the forest 
 do. Their human faculties seemed numb and 
 dormant, and their animal instincts were 
 trained, alert, and vigorous.
 
 30 "how to reach the masses." 
 
 The police would stand and watch the 
 dark troop glide into the mission, and as they 
 •saw the many really dangerous characters 
 congregating, they often became concerned 
 for my safety, and the captain of the precinct 
 would send me a note warning me that my life 
 was in danger, and begging me to accept the 
 services of two or three officers, which I 
 respectfully declined. It was safer to trust 
 them. There is always something in a human 
 being that responds to trust, that, once stirred, 
 the latent honour, stabbed by many a sore 
 thrust and wounded unto death, scabbed and 
 seamed by many a crime, it may be, but a 
 central and sound point exists, which, if 
 touched, kindly rouses and responds, and can 
 be trusted. It is fatal to doubt it. At least 
 I felt that perfect faith would do wonders with 
 these who were always doubted, and always 
 dogged, and often touched by the harsh hand 
 of the law. It was a new experience to them 
 to be trusted — to feel that they were not under 
 a suspicious surveillance, and the nature God 
 made nobly responded. It was wonderful to 
 see how they would throw off their cat-like 
 caution, and open out under friendly glances.
 
 " HOW TO REACH THE MASSES. 31 
 
 I never had any trouble, and never felt any 
 fear. I made them feel that I came among 
 them as a friend, not as a religious policeman, 
 but as a sympathetic man, who could and 
 would make large allowance for their faults 
 and sins in spite of what men might say, 
 they met me firmly in return, and I was never 
 in much danger. I never had much trouble, 
 no outbreaking demonstration but once, and 
 that was not against myself. Once two men 
 were disposed to fight, because of what one 
 of them thought to be an unequal distribution 
 of the rations, one having a larger bowl than 
 the other ; and the one having the smaller 
 was disposed to forcibly right the injustice. 
 Being a large man, he thought there should be 
 mathematical equality in the apportionment 
 of food ; the large man, getting the lesser 
 quantity, and being a stranger to our ways, 
 thought it was all he was to have, so he would 
 make the most of it, and so, when the little 
 man's attention was turned away, by a well- 
 timed diversion, he exchanged bowls, to which 
 the little man objected on principle, " Honour 
 among thieves," you know, and the result was 
 — the favourite one, of course — arbitration by
 
 32 " HOW TO REACH THE MASSES 
 
 H 
 
 force, or the adjustment of rights by the logic 
 of blows. 
 
 I had always reasoned that there was more 
 safety in a crowd of this kind than in a select 
 number, and so I used every effort to get one 
 on each occasion, and then pack them closely. 
 I now saw the advantage of the system, a man 
 must have room to fight in ; they had not 
 room to use their arms, and it's dull work to 
 fight by the process of squeeze, and very tire- 
 some besides; there was great alarm occa- 
 sioned by the altercation, though they 'did 
 not injure each other much before I got 
 between them, and asked them, with a forcible 
 shake and a stern voice : "if this was the way 
 they were trying to show their gratitude to me, 
 and if they wanted to injure their best friend ?" 
 I could see by the indignant glances about me 
 that even their depraved companions were 
 disgusted with such actions. 
 
 They hung their heads and seemed 
 thoroughly ashamed of themselves ; and the 
 big man sobbed out : "I was hungry, sir, and 
 seeing that this little man had the most soup, 
 I went for it." It was an honest confession, 
 and showed how, by education in wrong, the
 
 "how to reach the masses." 33 
 
 first impulse of these men is, that somebody 
 else having better than they, is somehow an 
 injury done to them, and will right it by force; 
 I readily saw that it is on this principle 
 they lift their hands against society, in an effort 
 to gain possession of some share of their neigh- 
 bour's property, which, they imagine, ought to 
 have been theirs, but out of which they have 
 been defrauded by some defective social dis- 
 tribution which they will right. In a few 
 words I explained the wrong he had done ; 
 that there was no need for violence, that being 
 both unnecessary and cowardly. He expressed 
 great sorrow for his offence ; and I had no 
 more trouble after that ; and I cannot but 
 think that it is the correction of kind, plain 
 words that these men need, more than the 
 more forcible and oftentimes cruel agents of 
 club, cell, and labour. Somebody must find 
 the way to their hearts, and through that to 
 their heads and consciences. We did in this 
 and many instances by going via the throat. 
 
 I had no other instance of unruly action 
 during the two winters in which we gave mid- 
 night suppers ; but we did not stop here, the 
 
 supper was but preliminary to something else. 
 
 c
 
 34 " HOW TO REACH THE MASSES." 
 
 After supper the tables would be cleared ; then 
 we would invite them to remain and hear a 
 song, and we would sing to them in the very 
 best way we knew ; and, when they would 
 give tokens of being moved, then we would tell 
 them of a strange way to live — every ear 
 would be opened, the neck stretched. Then 
 we asked them if they would like to know how 
 to live for two worlds at once ; all who would 
 might remain, and the doorkeeper would let 
 the others go out ; but they never left, the 
 supper satisfied them, the song fastened them, 
 and the truth enlightened and often saved 
 them. 
 
 They would put their heads together, and 
 whisper: "Jack, we needn't stay if we don't 
 like ; let's hear what he be driving at ; they 
 didn't want to get us here to drink a drop 
 of soup, and slush us with a hogshead of 
 preechin', for we can go if we want to. A 
 feller what can make such good slush must 
 have something to say worth hearin' ; " and 
 so they would stay, and we never kept them 
 long. 
 
 We could always reach them then ; ^ and 
 scores have been brought to a better life by
 
 " HOW TO REACH THE MASSES." 35 
 
 what they called our "long feedin' and short 
 preechin'." And if I were asked what would 
 help the army of the good and faithful, the 
 large-hearted hosts who are striving to reach 
 the low down, I should say : 
 
 Pay better attention, to the ' Commissary 
 Department ; ' go with practical kindness and 
 large sympathy ; go looking for something 
 good beneath the festering debris of crime 
 and sin that has accumulated through years 
 of unblighted sympathy, and that separation 
 which vice and crime always enforce, until 
 they are cut off, and become the refuse of 
 society. You must go to them, and get at 
 them, if you would reach them ; and it is most 
 certainly our intention, as soon as practicable, 
 to test this plan in the slums and neglected 
 corners of Nottingham during the coming 
 winter. If in, imitation of the Spirit of the 
 Master, we looked oftener upon men with 
 the large eye of love that He opened upon 
 them, and say, as He said, ' High society 
 condemns, and all men condemn thee ; I do 
 not condemn thee,' we should take more 
 jewels from the mud than I fear we are now 
 doing, and the Redeemer would have a 
 brighter crown. c2
 
 IV. 
 
 "% ©lb Siorjj foitj iwmtas." 
 
 ♦JSjjKfl^ANT is a great persuader, and bestows 
 ^fj^l/fi. the gift of eloquence with a pathos 
 there is no resisting. Want is usually the 
 child of dissoluteness and improvidence. The 
 laws of social thrift and prudence are so well 
 formulated, so surrounded with safeguards, so 
 energetic and unerring, that usually it falls 
 out to be true that if they are observed, they 
 bestow comfort, plenty, and satisfaction. 
 
 It is only in violation of all the laws of 
 industry and provision ; it is only by the 
 sheerest neglect and indolence, or by the wild- 
 est prodigality, in which the opportunities and 
 substance of life are wasted in lethargic indo- 
 lence, or riotous living, that the certain and 
 abundant supplies are not gathered or wasted 
 in gathering, that the provision of life fails and 
 want comes. 
 
 There is plenty of light, but you must open 
 the shutters to have it burst upon you and
 
 THE OLD STORY WITH VARIATIONS. yj 
 
 illumine your darkness with day. There are 
 plenty of flowers ; they blossom on every road- 
 side, and spangle every meadow — sweet stars 
 of the green under firmament ; but you must 
 go where they are, where they bloom, observe 
 their times and localities, if you would inhale 
 their fragrance and be charmed by their 
 beauty, and the same is true in regard to life's 
 want. There is plenty ; the Being who studs 
 the heavens with the grand constellations, and 
 floods the mighty vault above with the burn- 
 ished sunbeams that are brighter than the 
 diamonds of the coronet, or the blaze of earth's 
 brightest human splendour, is not less provi- 
 dent and beneficent in the lowest realms where 
 life and sensation are. His benefactions 
 
 abound, and they are free, but we must go where 
 they are. If we neglect or waste, we suffer. 
 
 A few years ago a man came to the ' Mission' 
 door; his words were few and eloquent; gaunt 
 hollow want stared from his eyes and echoed 
 in his tones, pinched, bony want couched on 
 his face, and peered from his attenuated and 
 shrunken frame. 
 
 His first words were : " For God's sake, 
 give me bread !" I knew this man was hungry,
 
 38 THE OLD STORY 
 
 for his words were brief and sharp. When a 
 man is hungry he says so straight out, and 
 when you show him bread he bolts it straight 
 down, not waiting to ask if it is fresh or 
 buttered, home-made or baker's, light or heavy, 
 he's empty and anything he can get he fills in. 
 Our new-comer was hungry ; the thermo- 
 meter was at zero, the man's teeth chattered 
 as he spoke. He was tall and gaunt, being 
 nearly six feet in height, beard and hair 
 tangled and matted, dishevelled garments, 
 face bloated, eyes blood-shot and fierce-look- 
 ing. His coat was pinned up close to his chin, 
 a very suggestive sign ; a token that he does 
 not trouble the laundress — he has nothing to 
 trouble her with. It was easy to see that this 
 victim had seen better days. Underneath all 
 this ruin there were tokens abounding of better 
 days and happier circumstances. I asked him 
 to be seated by the stove, his thin alpaca coat 
 but poorly shielding him from the cold ; he did 
 so, while I went to see what the cook had got 
 to give to a hungry man. We brought back 
 meat, bread, potatoes, and scalding hot coffee. 
 I told him to fall to and get a square meal ; 
 he needed no urging. He began to tell me
 
 WITH VARIATIONS. 39 
 
 his story as voraciously as he was eating. I 
 stopped him. He looked at me strangely. I 
 told him I wanted him to eat now and talk 
 after, and he would do both better ; he took 
 the hint and went into the food I brought, or 
 rather it went into him. It rattled down his 
 throat like a ton of coal into a coal shute. I 
 have forgotten whether whisky widens the 
 throat or hardens it. 
 
 At any rate it seemed to have copper-coated 
 this one, for he took the boiling coffee from 
 my hand, and without once taking it from his 
 lips, drank it down, and a second, and a third, 
 until five bowls disappeared into those capa- 
 cious depths, and he ate in proportion. He 
 ate enough for six men, and seemed to grow 
 on my hands. I noticed when he first sat 
 down, he looked and acted like a frozen man, 
 pinched and drawn together in frame and 
 feature ; he huddled down by the stove, bent 
 and drawn together, with hands on knees, and 
 chin in his breast ; he looked freezingly cold. 
 It made me feel chilly to look at him. 
 
 But after these piping hot bowls of coffee 
 had been engulfed, and his stomach trans- 
 formed into one of those immense Fulton
 
 4-0 THE OLD STORY 
 
 Market coffee tureens, and the warming 
 influence outside struck through the thin walls 
 of flesh and met the warming influence inside, 
 he began to thaw and spread out — throwing 
 himself back in the chair and sprawling his 
 feet out on the floor, until his limbs were 
 straight, he looked as comfortable as one of the 
 old Knickerbocker governors after an old-time 
 dinner at Astor House. The colour of his life 
 began to come back, and he appeared fourteen 
 pounds heavier. Then I asked him for his 
 history. It was a sad tale. 
 
 Once he was respectable, honoured and 
 influential. He had been tenderly reared, 
 finely educated, set out in life with glowing 
 prospects. He had been a captain of police 
 in one of our largest cities, which is equal in 
 this country to a superintendent of police, but 
 fast living, dissolute associations, the increas- 
 ing appetite for stimulants and love for rum, 
 became the great bane of his life, and into 
 that whirling vortex he was drawn, and his 
 manhood went down, down, into the terrible 
 depths of degradation and despair. 
 
 The old story with variations — variations 
 that have a desperate and mournful sameness
 
 WITH VARIATIONS. 
 
 41 
 
 about them after all. From that day this 
 man led a new life. Gastric treatment saved 
 him. Do something practical if you want to 
 succeed.
 
 V. 
 
 "Sod; ibat §00r." 
 
 .1FOHE following thrilling incident came 
 (Kb under my own notice, and was attended 
 with so much real peril as to impress it on my 
 memory for ever. 
 
 During my work as missionary of the fourth 
 Ward, New York, I heard of a dangerous 
 character, who kept a low drinking place, 
 familiarly known by the dissolute classes as a 
 " Bucket Shop." A few words will explain 
 what that term means. It takes its name 
 from the character of the vile stuff dealt out 
 to its customers for drink, ten cents purchasing 
 a larger quantity than a glass would hold, so 
 the customers must take a pail or vessel called 
 a bucket ; as well as from the additional fact, 
 that it is the favourite resort of thieves, 
 murderers, burglars, pugilists, drunkards, 
 gamblers, bummers, and women of the worst 
 repute. Thejproprietor of this place was a
 
 (( 
 
 >1 
 
 LOCK THAT DOOR. 43 
 
 most depraved and desperate man, bearing 
 the euphonious title of " Darby Kelly," and 
 he was a terror to all who knew him, even the 
 most hardened dreading the power of his 
 heavy hand and fierce temper. 
 
 Itwas said that he could never be approached 
 on the subject of religion by missionary or 
 minister without peril to their lives. 
 
 Darby had been the terror of many battles 
 in the " Prize Ring," and was always ready to 
 take a hand in a rough-and-tumble. 
 
 I thought, here is an interesting character, 
 and I further resolved that he should hear the 
 Gospel, and be brought to realize the awful- 
 ness of his condition. So I determined to 
 visit this notorious sinner. I spoke of my 
 intentions to several of my friends, and they 
 sought most earnestly to dissuade me from my 
 purpose to visit this place of death ; but there 
 was a spice of excitement in the risky en- 
 counter that fascinated me, and when the 
 opportunity came for executing my purpose 
 off I went. A few steps brought me to the 
 deadly place. I entered the dark den in a 
 careless way — I mean un ministerially — and 
 my eyes rested on the most motley crowd I
 
 44 "lock that door." 
 
 ever saw ; hair matted, eyes blood-shot, cheeks 
 bloated, lips leared, and hands already crim- 
 soned with human blood, men that you never 
 see by day, who skulk in the shadow of the 
 night, whose favorite arguments were slung- 
 shot, knife and pistol, and whose prayers were 
 horrid oaths, ready, like bloodhounds strug- 
 gling in the leashes of the day, to spring forth 
 and do any new deed of blood under cover of 
 darkness. After saluting them with a kindly 
 " How are you, boys," I gave to each a card 
 with my name attached, on which was printed 
 the meetings held at " Mission Home," better 
 known as " Kit Burns' Rat Pit." 
 
 Strangely enough, they nearly all read the 
 card, which consumed but little time, and 
 while this was being done I was looking about 
 me to discover which was Darby, wondering 
 what he was like, when a man arose whose air 
 plainly indicated that he was the lion there, 
 and with a hoarse voice growled out rather 
 than spoke these words : 
 
 " Look hyar, young feller, I'd like to see 
 this Fred Bell." 
 
 I replied :
 
 " LOCK THAT DOOR." 45 
 
 " Come to the meeting to-night and you 
 shall. I'll introduce him to you." He said 
 he wouldn't go to meeting. 
 
 " Fetch him down here, can't yer." 
 
 I said possibly I would, all the time 
 wondering who this man was, and then I 
 asked : 
 
 " Who shall I say desires to see him ? " 
 
 "Oh, oh it's no matter," said he, "It's 
 only old Darby Kelly what wants him." 
 
 Thinking it was time to make myself known 
 to him, I offered him my hand as a token of 
 friendliness and remarked : 
 
 " How do you do, Darby ? I am Fred 
 Bell." 
 
 He looked at me fiercely and with suspicion 
 when I announced my name. I shall never 
 forget that look, nor the fierce gleams that 
 shot from the staring eyes of that dark throng. 
 
 He grasped my extended hand in his own, 
 and pulled me roughly over to the further end 
 of the room, and said in a gruff, authoritative 
 T 'oice to one of his comrades : 
 
 "Billy, lock that door!" Then thrusting 
 his dirty hand into a side pocket and pulling 
 out a "six-shooter," and placing it on the
 
 46 " LOCK THAT DOOR. 
 
 ) ) 
 
 counter with the air of one who meant no 
 trifling, he said gruffly to me, sharply eyeing 
 me from under his shaggy brows : 
 
 " Sit down along side o' me, young feller," 
 and as I obeyed him, I confess that for the 
 first time I felt a considerable degree of 
 uneasiness. 
 
 I had no idea of what he meant to do, but 
 I was soon made aware of what these strange 
 proceedings signified, as he commenced to 
 question me in a very direct and close way 
 concerning certain sports, races, etc., which 
 he well knew that I was thoroughly informed 
 about if I were the person referred to. I had no 
 idea that he had ever heard of my past life, 
 but he had, and seemed determined that there 
 should be no mistake about the matter. He 
 speedily found from my prompt and accurate 
 responses that there could be no deception, 
 and he was soon perfectly satisfied that I was 
 the man I represented myself to be. Then 
 his countenance changed its fierce expression 
 for one of satisfaction, and he roared out : 
 
 " Billy, unlock that door !" Replacing his 
 pistol in his pocket, he shook hands with me 
 in a friendly and approving manner, drew off
 
 " LOCK THAT DOOR." 47 
 
 at a distance from me and surveying me from 
 head to foot with a patronizing and, what was 
 meant to be a genial expression on his hideous 
 face, he complimented me on my improved 
 appearance, and said : 
 
 " It's all right, fellers," and saluted me with 
 this rather unique and original speech : 
 
 " I declare, Fred, panning out on religion 
 must be a good thing, for you look like a little 
 gentleman." 
 
 I saw I had my man, and answered : 
 
 " Why, certainly it is, or else I wouldn't 
 have it." 
 
 Some more conversation ensued. I had 
 reached his heart by a frank and manly 
 approach, and then invited him to come to 
 my meetings, which he promised to do, and 
 responded by asking me to call and see him 
 just when I liked. He did not visit me, but I 
 soon found an opportunity to call and see him 
 again, and at length earnestly called his 
 attention to the life he was leading ; showed 
 him there was a better way, and got his 
 promise that he would abandon his vicious 
 career and reform, and try to become a 
 Christian.
 
 48 "lock that door." 
 
 He sold out his "gin mill," earnestly sought 
 a better life, but he was so far off, and meeting 
 with so much opposition and ridicule from his 
 companions, he soon abandoned all efforts to 
 regain his manhood, sank into a condition of 
 despondency, returned to his cup with greater 
 excess than before, and in a few weeks died 
 the most horrible death that any man can 
 experience, beating out his life in the wild 
 delirium of drunken frenzy in one of the cells 
 of the New York Tombs (Prison). 
 
 Alas ! a door is now locked upon him that 
 will never open more. Would that the fearful 
 risk I ran to pull a brother from the flames 
 had been more successful.
 
 VI. 
 
 "Iramp." 
 
 ^piHERE are distinctive features which are 
 glK special properties of the species they are 
 meant to distinguish, marked by definitely 
 prescribed lines of separation. 
 
 Plants belong to their own spheres, animals 
 to theirs, and men to theirs. Besides the 
 general differences which make them each to 
 be distinct of their kinds, there are special 
 differences which make separate orders in the 
 kinds. There are learned men and wise men, 
 and a wise man need not be necessarily a 
 learned man, well versed in technical know- 
 ledge, and so vice versa. There are as well, 
 distinct degrees of the same kind, which mark 
 a difference. 
 
 It is so all through the ranks of mankind. 
 There are men high and low in grade. There 
 are men more distinctly marked by distinct 
 differences of taste, association, habit, etc.,
 
 50 TRAMPS. 
 
 and one of the most marked of all classes is 
 a genuine tramp. 
 
 He is a more significant individual than 
 upon first sight he is^imagined to be. It has 
 been my lot to have been called into contact 
 with tramps, by the hundreds, and they are 
 the property of no exclusive class. They 
 belong to all orders, and strangely enough I 
 have found remnants of the most marked 
 ability and promise amongst them. Many 
 whose prospects for success in this life were 
 once good. Others who were well educated 
 and in possession of a fair amount of ambition, 
 and could have risen to eminence in some 
 useful calling, had they properly directed their 
 powers. 
 
 One great secret of many failures in life to 
 mount to anything useful and honourable ; one 
 chief reason for the prostitution of fine capa- 
 bilities to ignoble and degraded pursuits, lies 
 not in the essential wickedness of the diposi- 
 tion of those who so sin, but in that they were 
 badly started. They got a vicious bent, and 
 didn't get righted again until they were set in 
 the wrong ; then the chances for ever being 
 righted are very few to a great many.
 
 TRAMPS. 51 
 
 Tramps, as a rule, hate work, which senti- 
 ment is a common and marked repulsion with 
 the class. The deprivation of position, of 
 books, of association, of all that makes refined 
 and prosperous life a charm and a bounty, if 
 they do not work, has no influence with them. 
 They love these things, mourn their absence, 
 but yet will not work. 
 
 The prospect of starvation — about one of 
 the strongest inducements — for no man loves 
 to starve, or can long endure it, has no induce- 
 ment for them — they will not work. The 
 prospects of their ever becoming reformed, 
 are the remotest of any class — their self- 
 respect is dead. There is no standing ground 
 for appeal, influence, or stimulus of any kind. 
 They incline to be moderately honest — that 
 is, they would rather be fed as a charity, than 
 be compelled to forage on society for their 
 subsistence. But subsistence they must have 
 — they will have. So they will take what is 
 "another man's " every time they get a chance. 
 All they want is sufficient to eat. Their 
 wants are very simple — a little bread and 
 meat, some cheap beer, and some bad tobacco, 
 and their stock-in-trade is complete.
 
 52 TRAMPS. 
 
 Next to their constitutional aversion to work, 
 which is the most deep-seated of all their 
 aversions, they have a great horror of falling 
 into the hands of the police ; they will, in all 
 probability, be sent to the workhouse, and 
 made to work for what they eat. 
 
 They are the greatest cowards on earth ; 
 they rarely ever quarrel. It is too much like 
 work. 
 
 Let me give you an incident of their pluck : 
 
 A few winters ago, when the snow was upon 
 the ground, I sat at my window in Water 
 Street. I saw about a dozen of these 
 individuals amusing themselves by snowballing 
 single pedestrians, as they passed. They 
 were sure not to have more than one upon 
 their hands at a time ; presently a decrepit 
 and aged man came by. I thought surely 
 this man's grey hairs and advanced age would 
 protect him, and deferring to them with the 
 natural reverence felt in every human heart, 
 not totally depraved, for those whom care 
 silvers and time wears down, he would be 
 allowed to pass unmolested ; but no ! Just the 
 kind of game they like to hunt. It was 
 splendid prey for them — they would have no
 
 TRAMPS. 53 
 
 retaliation to meet with or check them. Pell- 
 mell went the snowballs, confusing and hurting 
 the old man sorely. Breathless and pale, he 
 begged to be let alone, but his prayers were 
 answered and ended by a snowball hitting 
 him in the mouth, and staggering him with its 
 force. I could stand it no longer ; so I put on 
 my coat and hat, and determined to pass 
 them, and see if they would serve me in the 
 same way they had the others. I knew most 
 of them by sight, and I suppose they all knew 
 me. When I got nearly opposite to them, I 
 noticed a new interest among them, and they 
 appeared to give the balls they were preparing 
 an extra squeeze. I pretended not to be 
 looking. 
 
 I saw them nudging one another, and one 
 would say — what I interpreted out of their 
 actions to be — " Now, now is the time," I 
 thought I had my eyes open, but in this was 
 mistaken ; for a snowball came and hit me 
 squarely in the ear. I felt somewhat enraged. 
 I rushed over to them and asked excitedly : 
 " Who threw that ball ? I'll give five dollars," 
 I said "to find out the man." They all grinned 
 at me, and one asked : " Mr. Bell, what would
 
 54 
 
 TRAMPS. 
 
 yer do ?" But they swaggered and baffled 
 me, and were like worthless curs who were too 
 cowardly to attack an enemy or their prey 
 alone, but in a drove are brave enough and 
 almost fierce. So they swaggered until they 
 saw I meant business, when they began to 
 sneak off. They were afraid of work. Don't 
 be a tramp. The preventative is — live a life 
 with work in it.
 
 VII. 
 
 "fou Can't Sing &gam." 
 
 f»N going my midnight rounds strange things 
 _j would fall under my observation. 
 
 The world by day is one world ; the same 
 world by night is another world. 
 
 The same people, scenes and actions are 
 not found. The scene altogether changes, 
 like some fairy transformation scene ; only 
 elfins, hobgobling — awful malicious, lustful 
 fiends — change the scenes and shift the pieces. 
 The light is not of heaven, but of hell, that 
 sets on fire the passions, that makes rage, 
 jealousy, hate, envy and murder flame in 
 human hearts ; making a seething cauldron 
 into which men and women fall bodily and are 
 consumed. 
 
 There are thousands of places in New York 
 that seem to beventholes to perdition, through 
 which the waves of woe and doom swell and 
 surge up, and catch men before their time ;
 
 56 " you can't sing again." 
 
 into which men pour the contributions of their 
 own wickedness, continually filling up per- 
 dition's channels with fresh acquisitions and 
 newer inventions of sin. 
 
 The most profitable recruiting stations for 
 the dark army of hell are the dance-houses — 
 the pauper bagnois of the slums — down to 
 which goes, eventually, the delicate, dainty, 
 pampered mistress of the rich libertine, to 
 become a coarse, bloated, diseased and common 
 thing ; and, as well, the roue and pimp, to 
 become a disgusting bloat, ripening for the 
 pine coffin and Potter's Field, usually before 
 forty years are reached. 
 
 Mine eyes have rested on all stages of the 
 awful decline. 
 
 There are almost infinite degrees in number 
 and distance between the first shrinking, 
 shamed step into sin and the last apathetic 
 stage of despair and the paralysis of sin, when 
 the core and soul seem eaten out of them, and 
 they are just waiting to be claimed and taken 
 possession of. 
 
 These sights used to quicken me to many 
 efforts towards the reform of such wretches 
 before it was too late.
 
 " you can't sing again. 57 
 
 So I used to go around at midnight, visiting 
 these dance-houses ; singing, talking — trying 
 to pull some out of ruin. 
 
 In my rounds, one night, I came to a den in 
 which' I had been singing about twice a week 
 for nearly a year. It had grown to be a 
 familiar place to me. Everything was in full 
 blaze as usual, the place was crowded, the 
 girls with their companions were having a 
 " regular old time Irish jig." 
 
 I walked up to the bar, spoke to the boss, 
 who always received me with more than 
 ordinary kindness. He welcomed me as usual ; 
 I had a friendly chat with him ; then turned 
 around and stood leaning against the bar, and 
 watched the dancers as though interested, 
 really waiting for them to get through, so I 
 could gain their attention and throw the white 
 cloud of a calm, chaste song over their fierce, 
 lewd orgies. 
 
 As I watched, a strange, motley scene 
 presented itself to my eye ; mature age was 
 there, scarred, streaked, seamed all over with 
 sin. Youth was "there, but already brazen 
 with shame and lust. Oh ! the horrible 
 exhibition ! Sex was forgotten in the mad
 
 58 " you can't sing again." 
 
 • 
 
 riot, jollity drove away care, glee quenched 
 pain, the brain was on fire with rum ; all 
 reserve was thrown off, they had no characters 
 to save, no one to fear, no restraint they 
 respected, shame was not known there, drapery 
 and concealment at a discount ; and so they 
 rioted on, till my cheeks burned and my heart 
 grew heavy and painful. 
 
 The time came when they must stop and 
 drink, pauses which are conveniently arranged 
 with an eye to business at the bar ; and so 
 they sat down and called for their favourite 
 potions, and while drinking and resting, I 
 remarked to the proprietor : 
 
 " It's my turn now, John," meaning, as had 
 been my custom, to sing one of my Gospel 
 Songs, which always sounded so strangely 
 down there in that mad, sad, bad spot. 
 
 Like the chirping of a cricket on the winter's 
 hearth, that told the sad tale of summer past 
 and harvest ended, and death soon to come 
 in some gray morning, with the fire out and 
 the frost victor. Or like the death-wail of the 
 unsuccoured, as the ship goes down in mid- 
 ocean, under the pitiless stars. 
 
 Just as I w r as clearing my throat to sing, 
 John said, with considerable embarrassment :
 
 "you can't sing again." 59 
 
 " Mr. Bell, excuse me, but you can't sing 
 here to-night." 
 
 I wondered what was the matter, though I 
 half suspected what it was. But I replied, 
 before giving him time to say more : 
 
 "Why, John, if you do not desire me to 
 sing, of course I shall not do so." 
 
 " But," said he, " allow me to explain." 
 
 " Oh, no matter," said I. 
 
 "Yes, sir, I must tell you why you can't 
 sing here again ; because I wouldn't treat yer 
 bad, and it's a matter of business, yer know." 
 
 I told him not to trouble, and yet I was 
 really desirous to know why it was I could not 
 sing ; but I did not wish to let him see that I 
 was at all concerned, so I allowed him to go 
 on and explain. 
 
 " Well," said he, " Mr. Bell, you have been 
 coming around here singing for about a year." 
 
 "That's so," said I, indifferently. 
 
 " Well, I like to hear you sing." 
 
 " Do you ? " I interjected. 
 
 " Yaas, and so do the gals." 
 
 " Indeed ? " I responded. 
 
 "And the customers," he went on, "but 
 somehow after you leave we don't do no
 
 60 "you can't sing again, 
 
 >) 
 
 business worth a cent ; the gals git the blues, 
 and are so down-hearted, and squats in the 
 corners and cries, and then the customers 
 goes home, and business is all broken up for 
 the night ; and I have such a peculiar feeling 
 as I don't know what ails me ; the place gets 
 so dark and gloomy, and the lights look so 
 queer, and this yer bar smells so like hell, 
 that I am all unfixed ; and I don't know what 
 it is but your singing. I don't know what else 
 it is, for since you've been coming business 
 has fell off half, and we always has these 
 queer things after you be gone, that I conclude 
 "'tis your singing what does it, and so yer can't 
 sing again ; but don't be offended, Mr. Bell, 
 it's business yer know. Come round and see 
 us, always glad for that. But no, sir ; yer 
 
 can't sing agin." 
 
 What was I to do but to accept the situa- 
 tion, bow as graceful an assent as possible and 
 retire, having his earnest tones ringing in my 
 ears : "It makes the place so dark and 
 gloomy that yer can't sing here again." 
 
 It was no use to remonstrate, he had decided. 
 It was this world against the other, and this 
 world won, and that ended it. For argument
 
 " you can't sing again." 6i 
 
 is void to these folks, it's at once or never with 
 them. If you don't instantly touch them so 
 that they are yours, you've failed and that 
 ends it. Leave instantly, for further efforts 
 only irritate and provoke assault. He had 
 resolved to shut me off; it was the pocket 
 against the heart, gain against the moral 
 sense, and money won, and that ended it. 
 That night, all of heaven and hope many of 
 those poor wretches had ever known, faded 
 out of sight to them, when against his better 
 promptings, this greedy devil-led sinner closed 
 the door against them in those now pathetic 
 and no doubt, tragic words, " You can't sing 
 here again."
 
 VIII. 
 
 " goto a tall Soiing gjan mistook fyft Miti#." 
 
 »T is surprising to see how many mistakes 
 are made concerning the kind of work 
 men are fitted or not fitted to do. 
 
 I suppose that every man has his place, and 
 if there were laws of infallible assignment, 
 much of the confusion and pain, and many of 
 the ludicrous mistakes of daily life, arising out 
 of the right ones getting into the wrong places, 
 would be avoided. 
 
 Adaptation is the most requisite and yet the 
 scarcest element of every day life, and as you 
 advance from matter to mind, the need and 
 the lack of this important element becomes 
 more apparent. This will be more clear if I 
 narrate a very dramatic and amusing incident 
 which occurred during my mission work in 
 New York. The work becoming so hard it was 
 proposed to secure me an assistant. A good 
 young man came, remained a few weeks, and
 
 MISTOOK HIS CALLING. 63 
 
 through over zeal got himself stabbed, and not 
 coveting a martyr's crown, prudently retired 
 from a calling for which he lacked adaptation. 
 Another applicant for the position presented 
 himself. Of him we write. He told me with 
 impressive phrase how desirous he was of 
 entering upon mission work, how his heart 
 burned to save the fallen, and restore the 
 marred image of the Creator, etc., etc. He 
 informed me that he had just completed 
 his theological course — as though that were a 
 commendation. I suppose he thought so, and 
 that confused theories of profound doctrinal 
 assault, accompanied now and then with a 
 cannonade of Greek roots and Latin phrases, 
 with a continuous fusilade of scriptural texts 
 on the "Fall of Adam," and the "Total 
 Depravity" argument, would prove an irresist- 
 ible and overwhelming mode of treatment for 
 the fallen and abandoned. He little knew, 
 but I did, that he might as well have crammed 
 hot porridge down their throats for their salva- 
 tion, and with as certain success, as he could 
 hope to reach and affect men and women by 
 such a remarkable course, to whom such 
 things were as strange and incomprehensible
 
 64 HOW A TALL YOUNG MAN 
 
 as a philological treatise on the Otahitie 
 language. 
 
 My first sight of the man created the 
 impression, " My friend, you won't do." The 
 young student was too ministerial in appearance, 
 get up, and bearing, by far. He was dressed 
 in the regulation black of the craft, and as one 
 just budding into ministerial bloom, in the 
 blackest of black ; a vest hooked up to the 
 throat — it ought to have gone above his ears 
 — a straight coat, that followed grimly in the 
 path of the vest, a stand-up collar encircled a 
 thin throat, giving the impression that the 
 head used it as a support, resting its ears on 
 its edges, and a white boiled rag resting 
 placidly on the top of his coat in front, com- 
 pleted the uniform of this theological aspirant. 
 He was all collar, coat, tie and gloom. He 
 would have made an impressive corpse for a 
 first-class funeral, and he was on the road to 
 fulfill the suggestion, for these things are very 
 objectionable in such work. They are too 
 professional ; they make one too conspicuous, 
 and that is just what should be avoided ; 
 hunting such game successfully demands skill.
 
 MISTOOK HIS CALLING. 65 
 
 If you go into the woods to shoot partridges, 
 it does not require that you go hallooing 
 " Here comes a gun." It won't facilitate 
 success ; though the game don't understand 
 you, yet the noise warns them, and they 
 find safe and distant covert. So, in treating 
 these abandoned ones, you must not go saying 
 in any way " Here comes a minister." They 
 would sooner see Lucifer himself. One other 
 peculiar disability about the man — one, indeed, 
 over which he had no control, still, no less 
 objectionable — was that he was very tall, 
 being over six feet. There is a physical con- 
 nection between virtue and loftiness in the 
 minds of these people. Virtue lives in high 
 places, too high for them to reach — and a tall 
 minister is virtue on stilts, and they despise 
 and hate what is above them. 
 
 I was troubled at the application, and 
 gravely asked him if he was sure that he was 
 adapted for the work. 
 
 He assured me that he was, and was burn- 
 ing to begin. 
 
 I engaged him. He was prompt, that 
 pleased me, and with some hopefulness we set 
 out together.
 
 66 HOW A TALL YOUNG MAN 
 
 He was dressed as I have described, only 
 more so. 
 
 A few steps brought us to a sailor's boarding 
 house. Descending — for if you visit the worst 
 you have always to go down — we entered a 
 basement filled with the hardest class of these 
 men. 
 
 I left my long friend in this room to begin 
 work, while I went through to an inner room 
 filled with sailors also. 
 
 I was engaged in giving them a general 
 invitation to our meeting, etc., when I was 
 startled by hearing a great uproar coming from 
 the room in which I had stood tip the young 
 student. 
 
 Fearing that my long friend was in trouble, 
 I rushed back, just in time to see him go up 
 the basement steps in two strides. It was 
 one of the finest gymnastic performances I 
 have ever witnessed, while just near the door 
 stood a little man, not more than five feet tall, 
 squaring and dancing around in a perfect blaze 
 of rage, and shouting out, in great excitement: 
 
 "Fetch him down here! fetch him down 
 here!" 
 
 After slapping him on the back several times
 
 MISTOOK HIS CALLING. 67 
 
 to get his attention, I asked him what the 
 trouble was. 
 
 He responded : 
 
 " That long ! Fetch him down here ; I'll 
 
 show him the way." 
 
 After a moment's pause through sheer 
 exhaustion, he said : 
 
 " Look here, Mr. Bell, you tell us if we 
 wants ter go ter hell, we can go." 
 
 " Certainly," I said. 
 
 " And if we wants ter go ter heaven, we can 
 
 go." 
 
 "That's so," I replied. 
 
 " But that long John told me if I didn't take 
 his tracts, I'd go to hell anyhow, and so I 
 went for him. That's what's the matter." 
 
 I soon calmed him down and explained 
 matters, and then left, considerably concerned 
 for my friend, for I did not know but that he 
 was injured. 
 
 I found him standing against a wall around 
 the corner, considerably whiter than his tie, 
 and with a discouraged and frightened expres- 
 sion on his face, indicative of much mental 
 agitation and alarm. 
 
 I told him that he would have to use more
 
 68 HOW A TALL YOUNG MAN 
 
 judgment, requested him to put his tracts in 
 his pocket and follow me, observe my mode of 
 approach and imitate it, and walked on, think- 
 ing that he was following. On looking back I 
 discerned that he was still standing against 
 the wall. 
 
 I went back and asked him why he did not 
 come on, reminding him of how he demonstra- 
 ted his love and fitness for this work, and 
 remarking that it was no time now to draw 
 back. 
 
 He made no reply for a while, and finally, 
 with a long drawn sigh, long even for such a 
 tall man, looking at me blankly and pitifully, 
 he said with an emphasis beyond the power of 
 language to express : 
 
 u I think Pllgo home." 
 
 The poetry was all taken out of him. He 
 was a disgusted man. He was willing to find 
 his work and glory in some other sphere, and 
 he left tracks of a different kind than those 
 which he had provided ; the heels were towards 
 this field. He was not fitted for so low a 
 place. It required a training and a knowledge 
 no books could give, a certain skill of approach 
 to the heart of these beings, to whom authority
 
 MISTOOK HIS CALLING. 69 
 
 and argument and sanctity are as abhorrent 
 and exasperating as a long life of vice and 
 shame can make them, and to whom men 
 must come with the tokens of sympathy and 
 genuine, honest kindness, if they will come 
 successfully or even safely. 
 
 There are a great many, like our tall friend, 
 who utterly mistake their calling. There's 
 many a man making sermons who had better 
 be making shoes, or writing books who had 
 better be hoeing corn ; many who have brains 
 and culture enough, but who lack judgment or 
 adaptation, and who, sooner or later, will 
 imitate our long friend's example and go out 
 of their ill-chosen calling in two strides — those 
 of defeat and chagrin. 
 
 How grand and beautiful it is to see men 
 high or humble, finding their appropriate 
 places and remaining in them, work therein 
 contentedly, bravely, faithfully till the end. 
 
 Certainly more would avoid the risk if not of 
 a broken head, at least of a broken heart, if 
 they would more wisely choose their station in 
 life.
 
 IX. 
 
 " % $m\ ionng JBhu." 
 
 OSf^TE often hear the phrase, "A short life 
 and a merry one." It sounds pretty. 
 There's dash in it, and hints of thrill and 
 excessive enjoyment, but it's a very expensive 
 one. I do not now mean merely in a 
 pecuniary point of view, although when you 
 come to count the cost, it is so in this way too. 
 
 It costs more, by all odds, to go to perdition 
 " second class," than the other way " first 
 class," and have all the luxuries thrown in. A 
 man will spend in a night's dissipation more 
 than would be necessary to insure him a year's 
 religious privileges in the average fine com- 
 fortable church in our large city or town. 
 
 But, in addition to all this, it is expensive 
 in bodily vigor wasted, brain-force blunted 
 and dissipated, manhood discounted at a 
 tremendous interest, the heart made sick, 
 sad and degraded, the life cursed, and the
 
 A FAST YOUNG MAN. JI 
 
 future blighted. The man of the " merry 
 life " don't live out half his days. He don't 
 have the best kind of mirth even during the 
 half-time allowance he is put on. Take out 
 the time spent in sleep, in aching awakings 
 after a carousal, in regrets, remorse, and self- 
 accusations, and how much of the life is left 
 to be merry, and what kind of mirth is it ? 
 Mirth with pangs in it, mirth with an undertone 
 of apprehension in it, mirth soon withered, 
 mirth casting long shadows before and behind 
 it. How exceedingly merry it must be. It is a 
 farce of two parts, opening like a comedy, 
 ending with a tragedy. 
 
 Often during my midnight visits in the 
 slums of New York I had seen a young man 
 who attracted my attention. He looked like 
 one who had seen better days. (You can 
 always trace the refined relics of a better life 
 in fallen men and women. Human character 
 is like soft clay in the beginning ; education is 
 the potter, giving it form, beautiful or rude ; 
 habit hardens it, and when clay or character 
 be once set, it retains shape.) This young 
 man had been well wrought. I saw it, though 
 we never exchanged a word. One night, when
 
 72 A FAST YOUNG MAN. 
 
 leaving a mission in one of the lower wards of 
 the city, I found him asleep on some whisky 
 barrels. While I paused a moment, wondering 
 whether I should not arouse him, speak to 
 him, take him with me if he would go, and 
 care for him and try to save him, and thinking 
 how it was best to approach him, in came the 
 proprietor of the place. 
 
 Of all men I have met, this man was one of 
 the greatest brutes — he was brutal in looks, 
 he was brutal in action — he had a brute's 
 voice and paw. 
 
 After going behind the bar and taking a 
 drink of his own vile liquor, he wiped his lips 
 on his coat sleeve, and turning around, saw 
 the young man asleep. 
 
 With a terrible expression of brutality upon 
 his face and the most horrid oaths upon his 
 lips, he half staggered, half ran to where he 
 lay, and taking him by the coat, he roughly 
 dragged him to his feet, and actually kicked 
 him out into the street. 
 
 What cared he ? He had got his money, 
 and he cared no more for the ruined, besotted 
 man, than a child for the orange peel after the 
 orange was gone. Oh, how this made my
 
 A FAST YOUNG MAN. 73 
 
 fingers tingle ! I wanted to yell out savagely : 
 "Wretch ! Brute ! Take that, and that, and 
 that!" until he was whipped, and pounded into 
 submission. It would have been a means of 
 grace to me, but it would have been impolitic. 
 My influence would have been ruined. 
 
 In about two minutes I followed, hoping to 
 find the poor fellow, and take care of him. I 
 searched thoroughly for him, but he was gone. 
 I did not find him. 
 
 I got to my room at 3 a.m., and went to 
 bed, but not to sleep. I was too much roused 
 for that. At seven o'clock in the morning, the 
 police sent for me to come to the station-house 
 and see a man they had taken in some time 
 during the night. I went and looked upon the 
 blanched corpse of this man. He was quiet 
 enough now, and was not refused shelter, and 
 he cared little whether it was the icy pavement 
 or the stone floor of the station-house. He 
 felt not and feared not — he was dead ! I 
 learned his history, which was, in substance, 
 as follows : 
 
 He was a young man, well reared, of a good 
 family in one of the country towns. He went 
 to New York city with a few thousand dollars
 
 74 
 
 A FAST YOUNG MAN. 
 
 in his pocket, to see life. He saw life in all 
 its grades downward, and brought up in this 
 vile den, from whence he was kicked to freeze 
 in the chill night. 
 
 It was A SHORT LIFE, but nOT A MERRY ONE. 
 
 It never is true that mirth is light-hearted 
 enjoyment ; the short life gives sobbed care. 
 It gilds pain up and calls that mirth. That 
 kind of mirth is a short life and a lost one.
 
 X. 
 
 "% llotlcn Grofofc" 
 <§J&T has been my lot to preach to all kinds 
 *fe of people, from the aristocrats of the 
 English village, with their venerable and proud 
 traditions, and love of caste, to the bloated, 
 ragged paupers of the slums, with plenty of 
 traditions and pride, too, of their kind, and 
 with as much love and admiration for them, 
 and as keen a jealousy of their infringement as 
 the proud patrician for his patent of nobility 
 or distinctions of pure blood and family res- 
 pectability. I have sometimes wondered 
 which were the most interesting as I have 
 looked over them, master and madam flouncing 
 in with flutter and superiority, or Jim and Judy 
 creeping in as the cat and tiger do after a full 
 meal off their prey. I have talked to the con- 
 victs of the prison, and to convicts out of 
 prison ; to Magdalenes and Lots ; to men and 
 women who could not read a word, and hardly
 
 76 A MOTLEY CROWD. 
 
 understand one, except the plainest slowly- 
 spoken and distinctly enunciated ; beings with 
 bodies of men and women, but with intellects 
 of children ; perception dulled, blurted ; 
 memory all gone, forgetting what you said a 
 minute before, though you specially asked them 
 to remember it ; looking at you through blood- 
 shot eyes and out of stolid faces, and some- 
 times with wonder and blankness, asking as 
 facial movements can, "What does it all 
 mean ?" 
 
 Ah, I have had the strangest audiences any 
 two human eyes ever looked on. Looming up 
 dark, hopeless, crazed in the perspective like 
 a grouping from perdition — living sepulchres, 
 in which lay buried festering conscience, clear- 
 eyed faith, honor, maiden innocence and manly 
 virtue, dead ! 
 
 Such a one, only darker and more desperate 
 than any words of mine can ever paint, rises in 
 the memory now while I write. It was at the 
 close of one of my services in the Fourth Ward, 
 New York, that a man stepped up to me, 
 and asked, as he extended his hand, if I 
 would have any objections to visit him. I 
 replied " Certainly not, where do you live ?"
 
 A MOTLEY CROWD. JJ 
 
 He gave me the number. It was in Baxter 
 Street. There may be a great many bad 
 Streets in New York, London, Paris, and 
 other cities, but there is only one Baxter 
 Street in the world — the original one, where 
 " total depravity " is a fact ; no one will dis- 
 pute it. If there is a door opening downward 
 into perdition, it is Baxter Street. 
 
 I was invited to Baxter Street. The next 
 day I went. I found the number, had to climb 
 a rickety pair of stairs, which at every step 
 creaked fearfully. When I reached the top 
 an open door ushured me into the dirtiest and 
 lowest drinking-saloon I ever had seen. My 
 friend of the day before was there. After a 
 few preliminary observations, he came to the 
 business in hand. He proposed to me a service 
 in his place, asked me what I thought of 
 coming down to preach to his customers. He 
 had heard of my singing in all sorts of dens, 
 and he remarked that he did not object to my 
 preaching there if I would sing. 
 
 I took the hint ; it is their way of inviting one. 
 
 They never come straight at you ; they 
 hint and allude, and propose an assent ; it is 
 yours to understand and accept.
 
 78 A MOTLEY CROWD. 
 
 So I did. 
 
 I fixed on a night, and I was on hand, and 
 I found the most remarkable combination I 
 ever witnessed together — men and women, 
 black and white, large and small ; I suspect 
 every nation in the world was represented 
 there ; a congress of crimes, a council of 
 villainy, a convention of shame, and woe, 
 and sin. How their eyes glistened, and their 
 faces lighted and moved with surprise ; they 
 had got a victim ; my suit of clothes would 
 furnish them drink for a whole night, and in 
 their debauch the crime would have been 
 forgotten ; and if I had happened to have 
 lost my way in there, by chance, my life 
 would not have been worth a moment's 
 purchase, and my clothes would be sold to 
 the pawnbroker ere my body had grown cold. 
 But the boss knew me, and I was safe, and 
 he said in a voice well understood : 
 
 "Come boys drink up, and not another 
 drop till the gentlemen gets through." 
 
 They obeyed without demurring. 
 
 He told them I was going to hold church 
 there, and he would act as usher ; and he did 
 effectively, too, bringing in broken chairs,
 
 A MOTLEY CROWD. 79 
 
 boxes and boards, improvising seats, arranging 
 the people, straightening one up with a cuff, 
 another with a jerk, another with a twist, 
 shaking a warning fist to a group, walking 
 the "ladies" up to the front, and soon 
 getting things to rights. 
 
 There was better order and quiet there 
 than ever before ; they were as still as though 
 dead — drunk. 
 
 I must say after they got seated, a more 
 orderly and attentive congregation I seldom 
 had. I sang to them, and you may be sure 
 I did my best, and I could see the latent 
 human nature, so barnacled and weed-covered, 
 mossed and gray in sin, begin to show many 
 signs of life. 
 
 Some listened as though carried on the 
 wings of the song away back over the devious 
 path they had come, to the cradle of their 
 childhood, and they acted as though they 
 heard once more the long-hushed lullaby of 
 childhood ; others looked dazed ; they had 
 never heard a hymn before, and knew not 
 what it meant. 
 
 The suppressed breathing, the heaving 
 breasts of the women, and the averted faces
 
 80 A MOTLEY CROWD. 
 
 of the men, told of better feelings, long dead, 
 stirred once more to life, and gave the hope 
 that they, even in their degredation, were not 
 yet finally and utterly lost. 
 
 I talked to them as I think my Master 
 would have done, and their friendly glances 
 showed interest and appreciation, and many 
 a dark spot was washed fainter with tears. 
 
 They listened eagerly to the end, seemed 
 loth to have me finish, asked for another song, 
 and made me promise to come again. 
 
 I repeated the services, and had no lack of 
 listeners. They filled the room, thronged the 
 entry and stairway, and I never had to 
 complain of inattention or annoyance. They 
 didn't get sleepy or restless ; they had not 
 been church-goers long enough for that ; and 
 many a kind word I got for my pains. 
 
 It resulted in the boss giving up the 
 business, and his leading a better life ; and 
 it may be, by-and-by, some sheaves, even 
 from that dark field, may be counted when 
 the rest are gathered.
 
 XL 
 
 % gtsjjcrate 6ait0. 
 
 ■ OpHERE are thousands of dangerous and 
 gjj< villainous places in New York, which 
 carry on their nefarious practices right under 
 the eye of the law and in the face of society, 
 many of which are known and winked at by 
 those who have the public welfare in keeping, 
 many of which are unknown, so skilfully do 
 they work. New York is rotted by certain 
 sorts of human vermin that infest its dark 
 places, who live by preying on human prosper- 
 ity, womanly virtue, and human souls. Oh, 
 the dark, shameful things that night frowns 
 sadly upon, and the dark places of the day 
 hide from human eyes. Oh, the sad muffled 
 groans smothered by rough hands, and dark 
 noisome dens under the sidewalks; in the back 
 cellars ; up the noisome stenchful alleyways. 
 Oh, the shameful injustice, the robbery, 
 violence and crime, perpetrated by brutal
 
 82 A DESPERATE GANG. 
 
 fiendish beings in the form of men ; the 
 number of which is lost to man, and which 
 makes one feel relieved when he knows there 
 is an " Eye" that sees, and a rectoral justice 
 that marks ; and, so exact is the record, that 
 groan for groan, .and shame for shame shall be 
 the tare. 
 
 Righteous justice is the grandest invention 
 ever discovered. 
 
 Perhaps my readers think I speak too 
 strongly. 
 
 Wait and you shall see. 
 
 In a well-known den in New York, which 
 was known to the professionals asa " Fence," 
 that is, a place where stolen goods are received, 
 was a gang of fourteen of the most desperate 
 criminals that ever stretched a rope or rode in 
 a prison van. 
 
 They were so depraved that they had a sort 
 of clan or confederacy, and the number was 
 never increased while I knew them ; whether 
 they could not find a fifteenth so bad as them- 
 selves that they could not promote him to 
 membership in their band, or whether they 
 had such fearful secrets that they dared not 
 share them with another is not known ; at any
 
 A DESPERATE GANG. 83 
 
 rate, the terrible bonds of fearful crime held 
 them firmly together, and seemed to keep out 
 all others, so that the number was never 
 increased. 
 
 They were the banditti of the ward ; noted 
 desperadoes every one of them, murderers, 
 burglars, and thieves of the baser sort. 
 
 Their mode of operation was peculiar, 
 interesting, and forcible, while it was often- 
 times attended with the most ferocious displays 
 and shocking brutalities. 
 
 They kept a drinking place level with the 
 walk. 
 
 The bar was furnished with the usual vile 
 stuff they call rum, the most savage sense- 
 stealing spirit they could find, that which 
 would the soonest craze or stupify their 
 victim. 
 
 It was a dark, forbidding hole, and no stranger 
 would think of entering unless solicited. 
 
 They had a dingy back room fitted up with 
 the usual equipments for gambling ; even the 
 club, pistol, knife, brass knuckles, and trap 
 door leading to the sewer, were not wanting. 
 
 Two or three of the wretches would always 
 be on the alert for customers, and would
 
 84 A DESPERATE GANG. 
 
 parade the sidewalk like the Jew on Catherine 
 Street, watching for their victims ; these 
 would usually be sailors, they were the safest 
 game they could hunt, they had usually no 
 friends to institute search for them, or make 
 disagreeable inquiries at the police station if 
 they were missing. 
 
 Along comes a sailor. " Say, Jack, how 
 are you ? Why, I've not seen you for an age." 
 Jack would be astonished, perhaps rather 
 pleased, at meeting some one who knew him. 
 " Come and take a drink," would be the next 
 salute ; if Jack assented all would be very 
 genial, he would soon be made recklessly 
 drunk, taken into the back room, and fleeced, 
 and turned out penniless, if he didn't remonstrate. 
 
 If Jack was cautious, or resisted, if rum 
 couldn't stupify him, he would be beaten 
 insensible, robbed, and thrown out after dark. 
 Luckily for him if it were no worse. I soon 
 came to know of their devilish practice, and 
 it made my whole soul mad. 
 
 I burned with indignation, and resolved 
 somehow to spoil their game. I cudgelled 
 my brains to discover how they might be 
 made to know that the avenger was on their
 
 A DESPERATE GANG. 85 
 
 track, and that it was dangerous to their 
 welfare, and perilous to their liberty to longer 
 continue, publicly, at least, their horrible 
 brutalities. It was an exceedingly dangerous 
 thing to interfere with those hardened wretches. 
 
 My life was of no more value in their eyes 
 than a rat's life in the sewer ; however, I ached 
 to shield poor, bruised and bleeding humanity, 
 and I resolved to do something soon. 
 
 Passing one day, I stopped, and looked into 
 their noisome lurking place. I saw on the 
 walls cheap prints of noted pugilists. The 
 picture of Tom Sayers hung nearest the door. 
 I looked as if interested, and remarked to the 
 one behind the bar : " Tom was a good man." 
 I meant, of course, in the ring. I went on, 
 and continued my criticisms on one and 
 another of the pugilists until I got him in- 
 terested. He dropped his habitual scowl and 
 rough look of intimidation, and replied sociably; 
 and I saw that I had won his attention, and 
 that my chance had come to say something, 
 and I meant to say it, so I remarked off- 
 handily. " Say, who's Boss here ?" A man 
 stepped forward, a most hideous, ferocious, 
 beastly-looking pirate, indeed ; they call him
 
 86 A DESPERATE GANG. 
 
 Butch. For any marks of mercy I had as 
 soon meet a lion of the jungle. He ivas a 
 wild beast, a panther in human form — a man 
 — no it would be a libel on manhood to speak 
 of that crime-bespotted murder-bloated brute 
 as a man, he was a semi-civilized gorilla. His 
 restless, ever shifting glaring eyes, his ner- 
 vously-working, clutching fingers giving the 
 impression one has when looking at the ever 
 moving panther in the cage, wildly, softly 
 vaulting, only waiting to get out, to find a 
 victim. Victims would be had, opportunity 
 was all that was wanting. 
 
 Oh, the disgusting brute ! I could have seen 
 him hanged with the same feelings that I could 
 see a mad dog shot. I was introduced to him 
 as the chief. I told him I had something to 
 say to him, he threw himself into a listening 
 attitude. I said I had been so shocked at 
 their cruelties, that I should stand it no longer, 
 that it opposed me in my work, and that I 
 hadn't come to tell him that I was going 
 to drive him out of this place, which I could 
 do, and which he knew I could ; but he would 
 go somewhere else. No, I called to tell him 
 of the horrible brutalities I had witnessed, and
 
 A DESPERATE GANG. 87 
 
 that they would have to stop. If he continued 
 them, it would have to be under cover, that I 
 would no longer stand the savage, cowardly 
 exhibitions, remarking, *' If I go for your gang, 
 Butch, it will go hard with you." He knew 
 me well enough to know that I wouldn't risk 
 my life foolishly ; he supposed I had proof 
 enough to damn his whole gang, and that to 
 murder me would be only to precipitate the 
 vengeance the sooner, and so he promised if I 
 only had what he supposed, they would have 
 received a different call, I know. 
 
 The terrible treatment never occurred again. 
 I knew I had gained my point. Their chief 
 reliance in business was their public solici- 
 tation, and I had struck a blow at the vitals 
 of their iniquitous trade. They saw they were 
 trapped, but dared not break faith with me, 
 and those whom they imagined they feared 
 stood with me. In less than two months 
 their business dried up like a stagnant pond 
 in a summer's drought, and they closed up ; 
 and that place was never opened again except 
 for honest, legitimate business purposes. 
 
 It was like the dying out of a volcano. It 
 was a volcano of hell. Its fiery lava ruined
 
 88 A DESPERATE GANG. 
 
 many a poor soul. But God helped me to 
 shut it up, and, though many more belch out 
 fire, ashes, and smoke, into which the unwary 
 go and are lost, I have the satisfaction of 
 knowing that there is, at least, one place less 
 for the luring and destruction of man's precious 
 manhood.
 
 XII. 
 
 pHE door bell of the "Mission" rang so 
 rjts violently one morning as to startle 
 everyone in the house, and gave token of the 
 presence of one seeking admission who was. 
 very determined to get in. 
 
 Knocking or ringing for admission is often- 
 times descriptive of occupation, and oftentimes, 
 I have fancied, is indicative of character. 
 
 There is the bold ring, the strong ring, the 
 quick, sharp ring, the timid ring, and the 
 desperate ring, exponents of as many shades 
 of character. 
 
 This was the desperate ring. 
 
 I answered the summons. The instant the 
 door was opened a woman rushed in who 
 both looked and acted as if she were fresh 
 from a lunatic asylum, had conquered all the 
 doctors, and was going for the ministers, for 
 she asked for the missionary.
 
 go A WRECKED LIFE RESTORED. 
 
 I scanned her closely ; she appeared to be 
 about thirty-five years old, tall, raven black 
 hair hanging down her back in disorder, and 
 with large piercing blue eyes. There was a 
 look of refinement about her, together with 
 traces of beauty, that told the sad tale of 
 better days, and hinted of a once bright and 
 happy life, for ever lost in the forfeits of sin. 
 
 She began to walk up and down the room, 
 frantically wringing her hands, her features 
 distorted with pain, and she was the picture 
 of despair. 
 
 She repeated her request for the missionary. 
 
 I told her that I was he. 
 
 "No! No!" said she, " I want to see Fred 
 Bell." 
 
 "I am the man," I replied.. 
 
 "You?" 
 
 "Yes I am." 
 
 "No! No! I want Fred Bell, the reformed 
 drunkard," she fairly screamed. 
 
 Feeling the blood rush to my face, I told 
 her, with feelings of shame, that I was that 
 man. Her piercing eyes searched me from 
 head to foot and scanned closely my face, and 
 she remarked that no trace of dissipation was
 
 A WRECKED LIFE RESTORED. gi 
 
 left in my appearance ; and, assured that I 
 was the one she sought, she sat down and 
 gave me a sketch of her life, full of pathos and 
 misery ; a tale of lost love and lost hope ; of 
 a ruined home and blasted life ; a story I shall 
 never forget. She went to America when but 
 a child of six, from France, with her parents, 
 who were wealthy ; she had been tenderly and 
 expensively reared ; all that love and wealth 
 could do had their will with her. When 
 she came to womanhood she had been well 
 educated, and was pronounced thoroughly 
 accomplished by competent masters. She 
 could speak five different languages ; and, to 
 demonstrate the fact, she began to speak them 
 for my benefit ; but I stopped her, as I could 
 not tell what she was talking about ; indeed, it 
 takes all my time to understand one language 
 well ; and, perhaps a masterly use of one, is 
 better than a weak and bungling use of a dozen; 
 for I have known the English to be so bar- 
 barously handled that it took a nimble one to 
 understand what was going on. When I hear 
 one of these " highfalutin " speakers, stalking 
 about on "stilts," trying to strike fire out of 
 the stars with their heads, I grow impatient,
 
 92 A WRECKED LIFE RESTORED. 
 
 and feel like stopping them with : " Say, tell 
 us that in English. 
 
 But, to resume. She went on to say that, 
 at eighteen years of age, she had ten thousand 
 pounds in her personal right and at her own 
 control ; and shortly after, married a wealthy 
 and intelligent gentleman. But the serpent 
 crawled into her home ; she loved wine, and 
 indulged her appetite ; indulgence led down 
 to dissipation, and dissipation culminated in 
 unbounded and shameful excess. 
 
 Her husband was not long in learning that 
 his wife was a drunkard. He tried to reform 
 her. Love appealed to her, and she tried. 
 Her womanhood appealed to her, her happy 
 position as the honoured wife of a noble and 
 loving man, in a home of splendour and 
 affluence, appealed to her. She struggled, 
 resolved, fell ; rose again, fought, tippled, and 
 fell ; until hope for her died, and love failed ; 
 and friends stood away from her ; and she 
 went down long relapses into sin, shame, 
 ruin, and despair. Her husband procured a 
 separation ; and, without anything to restrain 
 her, she went madly forward on the downward 
 road.
 
 A WRECKED LIFE RESTORED. 93 
 
 In two years she had spent her all ; trafficked 
 her womanhood away for drink ; went down 
 into the slums of New York, running the scale 
 of vice from the top to the bottom, with the 
 rapid madness of unbridled, careering appetite ; 
 and had since lived a life of shame and excess. 
 
 The human in us will stand an awful amount 
 of battering; and though jammed out of shape, 
 distorted and perverted into almost a fiend, it 
 holds on to its humanity with a tenacious 
 grip through it all. 
 
 While stating her pitiful story, she sought 
 to suppress her feelings, and spoke under 
 intense excitement, which occasionally would 
 break out into violence. But when she 
 reached this part of her history, she suddenly 
 leaped to her feet, and pulling at her hair, she 
 tore around the room like a maniac. 
 
 I tried to calm her, but in vain ; and I was 
 very much afraid that I was going to be 
 mastered by a woman. I have never been 
 much in dread of men. If a man was as tall 
 as an omnibus and weighed half as much (as 
 much more as you choose ; the more the 
 better), I don't think I should frighten at 
 him. But I always did feel timid about the
 
 94 A WRECK3D LIFE RESTORED. 
 
 other sex ; they make such a time about a 
 thing, they are so awkward to handle, they 
 are so uncertain in handling. 
 
 When a man is bettered, that is an end of 
 it ; but a woman is never settled till she is 
 dead, or pleases ; so that you never know what 
 to do, or how, or whether it is not best to 
 leave and do nothing. Besides, if you set 
 them straight, you get no credit for it ; it's a 
 woman, and a woman is a nonesuch. She is 
 like herself only, the only standard of com- 
 parison is herself— a woman is like a woman — 
 that exhausts the subject. And I am afraid 
 of her, unless I am acquainted with her, and 
 then I prefer to be civil. 
 
 So, as I was much exercised on this occasion, 
 I thought of helping her in her distress. So I 
 said : 
 
 "Why, my good woman, you've never killed 
 anybody, have you ? " 
 
 With a shriek, and more contortions, she 
 screamed : 
 
 " Yes, yes, I have — I have ! " 
 
 And so instead of helping matters I made 
 them worse, which made me feel more flurried 
 and awkward than ever.
 
 A WRECKED LIFE RESTORED. 95 
 
 I sought to divert her mind till she became 
 more calm, and then she added the following,. 
 to her already, painful tale : 
 
 " I had a baby boy, a sweet little fellow,, 
 and I loved him. He was a link to the past, 
 and perhaps my only hope of restoring it. 
 But I lost it, fool that I am — I flung it away. 
 He was only fourteen months old the morning 
 I arose and went down stairs to have my 
 morning drink. I could not lie still ; drink 
 hunger drove me out. So leaving the boy in 
 his miserable bed, I went down. 
 
 " I met an associate at the bar, and we 
 drank with each other, and caroused. Time 
 sped on, but I took no note of its flight. I 
 was satisfying my appetite, and could attend 
 to nothing else now. Eight, nine, ten hours 
 went by. I never thought of my baby — in 
 fact, I had forgotten it. No thought of 
 anything had entered my mind for hours but 
 the gratifying of that thirst for drink that 
 burned so fiercely in me, and was so grateful 
 when I gave it drink, and so quiet for a 
 season, and then would rise up again so 
 strongly and cry for more. 
 
 11 1 had never once thought of my boy.
 
 96 A WRECKED LIFE RESTORED. 
 
 There he had lain in neglect and hunger, and 
 his mother was carousing down stairs. All in 
 a moment I thought I heard a wailing cry, and 
 I rushed up stairs to my child. It was black 
 in the face — dead, sir, dead! It had cried itself 
 into eternity, and I am its murderer ! " 
 
 Oh, the suppressed horror, the fierce con- 
 demning look, that like dark thunderous 
 clouds on the face of the sky swept over her 
 face as she told the story. How wildly she 
 looked around, as though she were at the 
 judgment bar accusing herself and asking for 
 doom as an expiation for her sin ; and if to 
 have gone through perdition would have 
 brought back her boy, could she have found 
 the gate she would have plunged in. Oh, it 
 was awful. Decent grief may forget itself and 
 grow violent, but it has its bounds. But here 
 was one who long ago had torn down every 
 control. Womanhood had left her ; she had 
 no fear or shame ; pain had no threats for 
 her, authority no voice she cared for. She 
 was free, and the rioting of her grief unbridled 
 and excessive ; it partook of her whole life. 
 It was no use attempting to stay that storm ; 
 it must sweep over, and would, until it had
 
 A WRECKED LIFE RESTORED. 97 
 
 exhausted itself; then only would come a 
 calm. 
 
 Hers was a touching case. Like Eve, she 
 had lost her Paradise, and had got so far 
 from it now that she would never find her way 
 back again. Why is it that woman's sin finds 
 no charity ? Society never forgives a woman, 
 has no pity for a woman. It is pagan, it is 
 mean, and Christian Society is little better. 
 
 It would be well for society to watch the 
 Saviour as he stoops to write upon the ground 
 with Magdalene, and the leering crowd of 
 euphuists around him, and reading the writing 
 there. I think it would be "Man's regime is 
 to hate sin and never to forgive the sinner ; but I 
 say unto you, go in peace and sin no more." 
 
 I pitied this poor, torn thing from my heart, 
 and when she asked me anxiously if such a 
 wretch as she could become better, I gladly 
 told her the Way to a better life, and how she 
 could rebuild her future and make it pure and 
 bright once more. 
 
 She eagerly caught my words, and they 
 seemed like the opening of the jewelled gate 
 of hope to her. 
 
 A light came into her face as though an
 
 98 A WRECKED LIFE RESTORED. 
 
 angel in passing had heard and flung a gleam 
 of joy upon her, "returning from the wild." 
 
 And she did embrace a better life, and 
 sought earnestly to live again in purity. And 
 so she reached the shore. 
 
 It is strange voyaging some make of it, 
 across dark and restless seas, like vessels 
 wrecked in the tempest, torn in sails, and with 
 masts gone. Men by one way and another 
 drift into port. I suppose it's all right, but 
 it's very painful. Yet the thing, after all, is 
 to get into port.
 
 XIII. 
 
 g Sketch far tbcl>ons; err, "$ etenvumbto aca Sailor." 
 ^OJOUTH is the set time for day dreams, 
 t/Jr' poetic illusions, wild fancies, and bright 
 hopes without number. I suppose there never 
 was a youth who had any sort of a fancy at 
 all, but had periodic fits of the great voyages 
 of discovery he was going to make, the mar- 
 vellous things he was going to do, making 
 everybody gape with wonder, and then settle 
 down into a commonplace fellow enough when 
 he grows up, and chain his power to the 
 prosaic routine of a business calling, doing the 
 drudgery of his office in a commonplace con- 
 tented way. Alas, for the fancies, harmless 
 enough and very enjoyable, too, if the end is 
 in this way ; but they sometimes prove costly 
 enough in a dear-bought experience they bring, 
 very roughly dissipating the wild bright fancy 
 with the rough stroke of the fierce-handed 
 reality, as the incident I am about to narrate
 
 IOO A SKETCH FOR THE BOYS | OR, 
 
 will show. So, draw up, boys, and I will give 
 you a leaf from my history that may serve 
 you. 
 
 When fifteen years of age, I got tired of 
 parental restraint, and wanted to be free and 
 see a little of the great outside rolling world, 
 which my fancy invested with all sorts of bright 
 and entrancing delight, and without any just 
 cause left my father's house for a life of 
 adventure and discovery. I was going to 
 follow the sea, visit the tropics, fetch up in 
 the Indies, and after a great many thrilling 
 adventures and noble exploits, I was going to 
 find a diamond mine, or engage in vast and 
 successful mercantile venture, make a tre- 
 mendous fortune, come back rich as Croesus, 
 and put everybody I knew in a palace. 
 
 Of course, I ran away from home, I had to 
 do that in order to get away, as well as to 
 make the right start. 
 
 My entire wardrobe, besides the clothes I 
 had on was an extra shirt, pair of socks, and 
 a collar wrapped up in a coloured pocket 
 handkerchief; my whole capital in hard cash 
 amounted to six shillings, but I had besides 
 plenty of imagination, bright as golden sove-
 
 DETERMINED TO BE A SAILOR. IOI 
 
 reigns, and lots of roseate hope, and these 
 were the rich seeds for a golden future. 
 
 In due time I reached Hull, the famous 
 seaport, and all the way my delighted imag- 
 ination revelled in the pictures of the sunny 
 lands I was going to visit, and the marvellous 
 things I would do. I was fairly enchanted 
 with the prospects that lay before me, and in 
 my glee I would not have exchanged positions 
 with the Prince of Wales — not I. 
 
 I went down to the Wharfs. On my arrival 
 I sought for a vessel among the many mag- 
 nificent ships tied up to the docks. 
 
 I was very particular in my choice. 
 
 In fact, to have met the requisitions of my 
 fancy there should have been some vessel 
 equal to Cleopatra's barge, all decked out 
 with streamers and gorgeous banners, silk 
 and velvet couches, magnificent and opulent. 
 But there was not. 
 
 Very few of the vessels came anywhere near 
 to my standard, or seemed to be worthy to 
 have me on board for a sailor. I found one 
 at last which might do, and applied to the 
 captain for a position. 
 
 She was a fine large clipper, about to sail to
 
 102 A SKETCH FOR THE BOYS | OR, 
 
 India, and there of all other places I most 
 desired to go ; but to my amazement the 
 captain was so stupid as not to see the chance 
 he was losing by not adding me to his crew, 
 and I left the cabin muttering, ' 'you'll be sorry 
 for this, old fellow, yet, see if you won't." 
 
 I applied to many others, going down the 
 scale considerably as I went on, and to my 
 mortification I learned that the captains of 
 merchant vessels would not take boys without 
 the consent of their parents. This I could 
 not get, and did not want ; it would have 
 broken the charm. Besides, if my father had 
 wanted me to go to sea, I should have wanted 
 to remain on shore with all my might. 
 
 A great deal discouragjd, but not a bit 
 changed in my purpose to be a sailor, I con- 
 tinued my search, and at last found a vessel 
 and engaged for a voyage. 
 
 True it was not just what I wanted, but it 
 was all I could get, so I had to be satisfied. 
 
 The noble craft was a fishing smack. The 
 odour from her decks was not spice from 
 Ceylon, nor aroma from India, but decidedly 
 fishy. Her destination was not the sunny 
 East, the noble and historic Orient, but
 
 DETERMINED TO BE A SAILOR. IO3 
 
 Holland — the Dutch coast. 
 
 Lucifer ! what a fall. But I was in for it, 
 and determined to put it through. 
 
 Soon we were out at sea. I soon found the 
 water was very wet and horribly salt ; there 
 was a great difference between walking on the 
 solid, steady street which was there every time 
 you put your foot down, and the fantastic 
 promenade and mixed jig my efforts to loco- 
 mote on the reeling deck made me go through. 
 It was very uncertain where you were going 
 to fetch up when you started to go aft or 
 larboard. When you put your foot down you 
 were not sure whether the deck would not 
 fly up and hit your nose, or you would plant 
 your head in the cook's stomach, or against 
 the bulwarks. And pretty soon there arose 
 a great disturbance in my stomach, and I 
 passed through all the horrors of that dreadful 
 malady, sea sickness. I was of no use to 
 anybody, and decidedly in my own way. 
 
 The crew enjoyed it immensely — more than 
 I did. They suggested all sorts of nauseating 
 remedies ; tantalizing me about my weak 
 stomach, played all sorts of jokes on me, till I 
 didn't know which was the worst, to be sick
 
 104 A SKETCH FOR THE BOYS | OR, 
 
 unto death at the stomach, or tormented to 
 death by fellows who seemed to have no 
 stomachs. 
 
 Then I was handled very roughly, the men 
 cuffed me about and swore at me. If I was 
 awkward in my duties, whack would come a 
 rope's end, or a brawny hand ; they knocked 
 me down with a big fish, and made it very 
 hard for me. 
 
 It soon took all the poetry out of me ; and 
 a great radical change came over my mind 
 about the glories of the sea. It was not so 
 very jolly to be a sailor boy after all, and I 
 began to long for the end of the voyage and 
 home. 
 
 One day when down in the hold, and feeling 
 a little like myself, I ventured to sing a short 
 ditty ; I was heard by the skipper, who called 
 me up and said — " Boy, can you sing ?" 
 
 I told him that I could ; he said — 
 
 " Sit down here and try," and I sang my 
 best, and he was delighted, and so was I, for 
 while I was singing I was not working ; not 
 that I wanted to shirk, but the vessel pitched 
 so I couldn't do anything but be knocked 
 about and thump myself hard. So I could
 
 DETERMINED TO BE A SAILOR. IO5 
 
 hold on and sing, and I was all right ; he took 
 me in the cabin, treated me kindly, and the 
 rest of the voyage I had it a little pleasanter ; 
 but I shall never forget that voyage. I was 
 never in bed, never undressed, never washed, 
 nor combed my hair, never saw my face, and 
 so changed in feature, complexion and voice, 
 so grimed and blackened that when I reached 
 home my own mother hardly knew me. 
 
 • After a short voyage I came home thoroughly 
 disgusted with the sea, and the cure has never 
 worn out. 
 
 Boys, stay at home ; father knows what is 
 best for you ; he's the kindest captain you'll 
 ever find. Dream as much as you please, but 
 don't try to make a reality of it ; it is like 
 chasing the sky and trying to touch the 
 rainbow ; they seem to rest on yonder hill ; 
 when you get there, they are farther off than 
 ever. Fancy and fact are vastly different 
 things ; fancy draws pretty pictures, fact shows 
 the hard reality ; fancy says follow me, fact 
 thumps your head and makes you wiser. 
 
 It won't hurt you to get a knock or two, but 
 don't get yourself into such a fix that hard 
 fact has it all his own way, and can most
 
 io6 
 
 A SKETCH FOR THE BOYS. 
 
 unmercifully pommel you at leasure, but take 
 warning from the experience of one who was 
 determined to be a sailor.
 
 XIV. 
 
 "getrnnintb to be a Soloicr." 
 TOLD my readers in the preceding 
 M£ sketch of my determination to be a 
 sailor, and you remember how I fared. 
 
 One would think that that experience would 
 have been enough — that it would last ; and so 
 it did last for a long time. 
 
 A broken bone will re-knit, if you give it 
 time enough, and the memory of the pain 
 endured will gradually fade out of recollection ; 
 and it is so with almost everything else— and 
 so it was with me. After a while I began to 
 want to be stirring again — only I didn't want 
 to stir seaward. I was content to remain 
 ashore. 
 
 •But to what field should I turn my ambition ? 
 I didn't like shopkeeping — that would be too 
 monotonous. 
 
 Ha ! I have it. I will be a soldier ; and 
 visions of blood and glory streamed through
 
 108 DETERMINED TO BE A SOLDIER. 
 
 my mind. I was all up again. Fleeting 
 fancies of bravery and renown came in flocks, 
 as swallows do, and went again when summer 
 was gone. 
 
 I am so made that when an idea takes 
 possession of me it has got to be worked out 
 forthwith ; and, so, on the fifth of December, 
 1864, I left what was then my home, for 
 Sheffield, the place of my birth, to enlist for 
 a soldier. I should have liked to have been a 
 colonel, or captain, or even a non-commissioned 
 officer at the start. It would have been a deal 
 pleasanter to have jumped up over the ranks 
 into a commission, as being so much nearer 
 to the accomplishment of the brilliant position 
 I was going to attain in a few years. Somehow 
 I liked to command rather than obey ; and I 
 felt a leader in me, as big as Wellington, from 
 the start — and a lead horse is almost useless 
 as a wheeler. 
 
 But alas ! I had to commence in the ranks. 
 I was already fascinated with the life of a 
 soldier, or rather with his clothes, and with 
 his style of life — jolly, rollicking, full of fun 
 and pleasure — viewed from the outside. " Yes, 
 that's my destiny." I would go for a soldier.
 
 DETERMINED TO BE A SOLDIER. IOg 
 
 The moment I arrived at Sheffield I pro- 
 ceeded to execute my purpose. I wended my 
 way to the barracks, and found quartered 
 there the " Fifth Dragoon Guards," and two 
 infantry regiments ; but I spurned the idea of 
 being a foot soldier. We called them "Gravel 
 Smashers," and "Toe Pads," and lots of like 
 complimentary names, and I didn't aspire 
 to the honors of lugging about such titles, 
 together with knapsack, blankets, and other 
 accoutrements, and the idea of doing the 
 glory on foot tired me to contemplate. No 
 infantry for me, if you please. 
 
 I wanted a horse to ride ; riding was all I 
 then thought of ; but I soon had other things 
 to think of too. 
 
 I found my way to the quarters of the 
 sergeant-major, and there I learned that the 
 regiment was not recruiting, and that he 
 would not enlist me. I was disappointed, 
 but that only whetted up my purpose. 
 
 Now I would be a soldier. 
 
 I asked him if he could tell me where any 
 cavalry regiments lay that were recruiting. 
 He told me that in York the " Eighth King's 
 Royal Irish Hussars " were, and so I
 
 IIO DETERMINED TO BE A SOLDIER. 
 
 resolved to go next morning. I stayed in 
 Sheffield all night, and set the town to rights, 
 and took the train next morning to York ; 
 went to the barracks, and offered myself to 
 the Queen's service, and to — glory. I found 
 no trouble in enlisting; the doctors pronounced 
 me perfect in health and body, and I was 
 metamorphosed into a soldier. 
 
 In a few days I had my clothes, got my 
 bounty money, and with what money I already 
 had, I was in possession of means enough for 
 a regular good time in town. 
 
 I soon found friends among my comrades 
 who were very kind for a while. They gave 
 me the necessary military points, showed me 
 how to clean sabre, saddle, and horse, yea, 
 even cleaned them for me. I was charmed ; 
 yes, I had made a hit now, surely. 
 
 They even helped me spend my money. 
 
 We did the town up thoroughly, seeing all 
 that was to be seen, driving through fun of 
 one sort and another as furiously as though 
 war was going on, and we were on a furlough, 
 and must.go back to fight. In a very little 
 time my money was done, and so were they. 
 It was astonishing how busy they soon were ;
 
 DETERMINED TO BE A SOLDIER. Ill 
 
 and I had my own horse to groom and 
 equipments to keep bright, and drills to 
 attend, and I soon ^ began to see the other 
 side of military glory. 
 
 It was very little glory, and a great deal of 
 tiresome work, and I was in the "service" 
 and couldn't shirk, and I began to think I 
 had been a little rash, and had not bettered 
 myself much. It was getting to be irksome, 
 and I looked about for diversion. Soon I 
 found it in attending the "free-and-easys" 
 which abound where soldiers are stationed. 
 I began to sing some of my comic songs, 
 which pleased the boys, and made me a 
 desirable acquisition to the proprietors, and 
 I was soon a courted guest at these popular 
 resorts, and quite a lion in the regiment ; and 
 so the flow commenced again, and I had 
 plenty of companions and fun. And for a 
 time the life of a British soldier suited me, 
 as long as there was outside novelty and 
 excitement enough to keep my active mind 
 busy. I could get along with my drill and 
 barrack duties well enough, for work was 
 never hard to me. But I began to tire of it 
 after awhile, and long for home and friends,
 
 112 DETERMINED TO BE A SOLDIER. 
 
 and a different sort of life. 
 
 Nearly two years went by. I had enlisted 
 for twelve years, the usual term, and I had 
 ten more to serve ; but I had had enough of 
 soldiering and glory, and I wanted to get out. 
 In times of peace a discharge can be procured 
 if you have friends and means ; and so, through 
 the kind entreaties of a loving mother, my 
 father purchased my discharge, which I re- 
 ceived the last of March, 1866 ; and I turned 
 my back upon this field of fame, the visions 
 all faded, the garlands unwoven, and the bells 
 silent ; no applauding hosts welcoming the 
 victor, and another name crossed off that 
 scroll where heroes find a record and a sort 
 of paroxysmal praise in return for gaping 
 wounds, the pained bivouacs of the cold and 
 weary night-time, and the long, forced marches 
 to early death and late-come fame. 
 
 I was content. Heroes can walk in other 
 paths. Gold lace and epaulettes are not 
 necessary to abiding honors, and elsewhere 
 than on the ensanguined field can a good 
 soldier fight a good fight, and gain a bright 
 and enduring remembrance. Learn this lesson 
 well — there are always two sides to every
 
 DETERMINED TO BE A SOLDIER. II3 
 
 calling, as there is to a chestnut ; but that, 
 unlike the chestnut, the truer side is not 
 always outside ; and perhaps it is wise to 
 conclude that if the smooth side is outside, 
 you are apt to find the rough, prickly, bare 
 side inside ; and, like the chestnut, the degree 
 in which the rough side scratches and hurts, 
 is in the exact measure to the way you take it.
 
 XV. 
 
 if air Iplag is a Jcfod. 
 
 iHIS is a sentiment held by all and 
 KfcC practiced by most, except when occasion 
 or exigency demand something else. 
 
 The lawyer says : "Fair play is a jewel,'* 
 except when foul play will win a client's unjust 
 cause. The minister says, " Fair play is a 
 jewel," and straightway preaches a stolen 
 sermon. The politician says it, and straight- 
 way flings the greasiest mud of the gutter on 
 his opponent, and counts as many fraudulent 
 votes against him as the poll-list can be made 
 to bear. It is a splendid sentiment, held by 
 all, and practiced by all when intimately 
 convenient, and yet very important as an 
 adjunct to common life, as the following 
 incident will show. 
 
 Shortly after I had switched off the devil's 
 track, nearing one of those drinking-places 
 where I had spent many a bright sovereign
 
 FAIR PLAY IS A JEWEL. 115 
 
 for poor whisky, and got many a bad headache 
 and sad hour thrown in to make up the 
 measure ; and when I came to a few yards of 
 the place a man came reeling out and leaned 
 against the wall for support in that peculiar 
 unstrung condition which indicated that he 
 was very tired. His manner attracted my 
 attention, and I stopped for an instant to 
 regard him, and while doing so, another man 
 rushed out in the most excited manner, but 
 was evidently not so tired as the first, for 
 one was almost helplessly drunk, while the 
 second was brutally, ferociously so. 
 
 He was evidently in search of the first man. 
 
 The moment he saw him, his eyes glared 
 like a tiger's in search of his prey, and his 
 face worked convulsively with passion, and 
 dragging off his coat and with a low growl like 
 the cry of a beast, he went for his man right 
 and left. 
 
 The man that was attacked was too help- 
 lessly drunk to defend himself, the other 
 breaking through his guard without any effort 
 and punishing him in the most fearful manner, 
 to which he was compelled to submit until he 
 was cut in the most sickening way, and fell
 
 Il6 FAIR PLAY IS A JEWEL. 
 
 unconsciously to the ground. 
 
 This was the work of less time than it has 
 taken me to write it. 
 
 And while I was an eye-witness to this most 
 unfair and brutal encounter, my fingers tingled 
 and my blood boiled ; and to cap the climax, 
 the brute kicked his helpless victim on the 
 head and face, and I could endure this no 
 longer. 
 
 Forgetting my changed condition and boiling 
 over with indignation, I stepped up to the 
 fellow and said as calmly as possible : 
 
 " Look here, my man, ' Fair play is a jewel,' 
 you know." 
 
 He asked me what I had to do with it. I 
 told him nothing much, only it was not just 
 fair to beat a man down and then beat him to 
 death ; and eyeing me from head to feet, he 
 asked : 
 
 " Who are you, anyhow ?" 
 
 I replied nobody^in particular, and added : 
 
 " Don't strike that man again," and notified 
 him if he did I would return the compliment. 
 
 He seemed anxious to receive the favour, 
 and bestowed another savage kick upon the 
 face of the unconscious man.
 
 FAIR PLAY IS A JEWEL. II7 
 
 By this time several persons had gathered 
 around the scene. Taking off my coat I 
 requested some one to hold it, never thinking 
 that I was in the least degree committing an 
 impropriety, only meaning to teach the burly 
 brute before me a lesson of fair play he would 
 not be likely very soon to forget. 
 
 Several persons who knew me remonstrated 
 with me, reminding me that I had given up 
 that kind of business now ; but there was the 
 wretch just drawing his foot to once again 
 bruise his unfairly treated opponent, and I 
 yelled to him to look out for himself. 
 
 He merely smiled as I sprang upon him, for 
 he was a large man, being what is called a 
 navvy on one of the railroads — a man to do 
 the heavy, labouring work, therefore size and 
 strength was required ; but he was slow in his 
 movements, and that made up for the difference 
 between his thirteen stones and my eleven. 
 
 I was on fire with indignation and had the 
 helpless to defend from further maltreatment, 
 and the right weighed just a thousand tons in 
 my favour ; he soon acted as though a 
 hurricane had caught him up in its ragged 
 teeth, and flung, and twisted, and torn him,
 
 Il8 FAIR PLAY IS A JEWEL. 
 
 until he was pretty well thrashed, for in about 
 five minutes he was almost as badly situated 
 as the man he had so unfairly beaten. 
 
 The crowd had by this time notified the 
 police. They came up just as I had got the 
 job well done, and I had the fellow arrested, 
 more to keep him from running across his 
 victim again than for further punishment, for 
 he had honestly got his pay. 
 
 The poor fellow on the ground was taken 
 charge of by his friends who kindly cared for 
 him, and when resuscitated he was informed of 
 his defence by the quiet stranger, who had made 
 his case so effectually his own, together with 
 the particulars of the combat. 
 
 It touched his heart ; feeling thankful for so 
 signal an escape, and feeling that the hand of 
 God was in it, he determined to reform, and 
 he did, for which I was exceedingly grateful, 
 feeling fully paid for the extremely unpleasant 
 job I did for him as well as for the questionable 
 position it had placed me in. 
 
 For my enemies immediately reported that 
 I had fallen and gone back to my old pastimes 
 again, stating that I had got in a drunken 
 brawl, which ended in a disgraceful fight and
 
 FAIR PLAY IS A JEWEL. Iig 
 
 my arrest, for breaking the peace. 
 
 I did break the peace in the interest of 
 peace and of my fellow-man. Must a man 
 lose all sense of justice, nod quietly at all 
 wrong and, " passing by on the other side," 
 with priests and Levite, allow horrible injustice 
 and steel-handed cruelty to go unrebuked, 
 because, forsooth, he is trying the manly life ? 
 
 Is it the style of character that meets the 
 commendation of the many ? Say, is it not 
 rather the unmanly part to let bullying wrong 
 go on to mar the Creator's image without 
 hindrance, simply because a false or an effemi- 
 nate sentimentality is afraid that some religious 
 Mrs. Grundy will put up her hawk nose in the 
 air and lifting her white hands to an orthodox 
 altitude, lisp out like some modern Hazael, 
 " Is thy servant a dog that he should do this 
 thing ?" I should have been less than a dog 
 if I hadn't. A good big Newfoundland dog 
 will see " fair play," and certainly manhood 
 should be a little above doghood. 
 
 Now, I am not contending for the fisticuff 
 argument, but for the principle that underlies 
 it ; that sends every master mind in the 
 world over on the side of the weak, to espouse
 
 120 FAIR PLAY IS A JEWEL. 
 
 their cause ; that inspires every splendid 
 movement ; that makes history flame with 
 courage and prowess ; that makes every 
 man who has the crudest elements of man- 
 hood in him to seize the strong truncheon and 
 strike for the right, and that selects the coward 
 from the true man. For any man who will 
 cower before wrong of any kind, because it 
 has might on its side, is a coward, and there 
 is too much of that temper abroad to-day. 
 
 Right has backbone, a quick eye and a 
 stern purpose to take its stand and keep it,, 
 gaining more ground as it fights. 
 
 It's unpleasant ; of course it is. It was to 
 me. I shudder even now to think of it. Crude 
 brute force is always shocking to the finer 
 sentiments of our nature, and none feel it 
 more than I ; but what are we to do ? Has 
 brute cruelty to have no restraint but 
 moral force and virtue, or weakness, no 
 defence but the ten commandments ? If men 
 say no, then say I write them all stones, and 
 let them be small enough to handle easily, 
 and there are men enough to be found who 
 will put them so they will prove effectual. But 
 it cannot be that weakness, cowardice, senti-
 
 FAIR PLAY IS A JEWEL. 121 
 
 mentality and a namby-pamby philosophy is 
 the manhood of the better sort. So read I 
 not the creed of manhood. Give me a man 
 who can put the swaggering bully and the 
 brutal ruffian where he belongs, in the gutter, 
 and then knows how with tender hand to guide 
 the trembling feet of childhood, or the tottering 
 ones of age over the rough places, and away 
 from the danger which has met its strong 
 repulse. Of course, the truth came out about 
 this matter at last, and all confessed that 
 while it was not the most discreet thing to do, 
 it was a very impressive way of teaching that 
 coward that fair play is a jewel. What think 
 you, reader ?
 
 XVI. 
 
 " Ms 4R«t iW 
 
 JM^yERY few men are found who come to 
 «wl any notice whatever, who have not 
 been very much misjudged or misrepresented, 
 and about whom the people one way and 
 another have not had some very false and 
 mistaken ideas of their personal presence, 
 character, possession or style of life. 
 
 If moderately rich, they are reported to 
 be enormously wealthy ; if once famed for 
 mischief, they are reported to have been 
 eminently wicked, etc. The "wickedest man 
 in New York," was, probably, immensely 
 overrated. There are a thousand men in 
 jail who are very bad, no doubt, but there 
 are ten thousand out of jail who ought to be 
 in — who are a great deal worse in every 
 particular. Much of a man's notoriety, 
 especially if it be of the bad sort, is created 
 out of the morbid sentiment of a community.
 
 MY FIRST FIGHT. 123 
 
 It comes from the fact that thousands of eyes 
 are focused upon him, and he is put under 
 the microscope, and magnified many times 
 larger than he really is, until a fly becomes 
 an elephant, and a dwarf a monster, and a 
 very moderate man intellectually, a giant for 
 genius and power. 
 
 Take the average professional man, 
 catch up and photograph every word he says, 
 give him the stimulus of applause, put 
 him on his mettle, and it would be indeed 
 wonderful if he did not say some good things. 
 Take up his sayings and put them in favour- 
 able lights, sing praises to them through the 
 land, chime upon chime, put him upon the 
 pedestal, gaze on him, and blaze on him, 
 make much of his every uttered thought 
 and more of his every act, and you have the 
 patented plan for the making of the average 
 great man. Of course I am not speaking 
 cynically, nor in a sweeping manner ; there 
 are great men who have achieved greatness. 
 Shakespeare's definition of great men is as 
 comprehensive as can be found, when he says: 
 11 Some men are born great, some achieve 
 greatness, and some have greatness thrust
 
 124 MY FIRST FIGHT. 
 
 upon them." The patented plan, modern 
 and American, is of the last order — there are 
 lots of second-rate men who have " greatness 
 thrust upon them." 
 
 I desire not to be patented. Hence I wish 
 to set some things straight that have been 
 put crooked. The idea is prevalent that I am 
 a converted "pugilist." Now, a converted 
 pugilist is, I suppose, a better man than an 
 unconverted one — but good as he may be, and 
 much as the glory is that some people may 
 attach to such a reputation, I decline this 
 laurel wreath ; permit me to say emphatically 
 that this is a mistake — I am not. I never 
 was. I never expect to be a pugilist. 
 My tastes may be vitiated, or not of an 
 appreciative kind ; but, I think that if I 
 had ever been one of the illustrious order, 
 I should never refer to it. It seems to me so 
 beastial and degraded a thing to do, to train 
 as a profession for the express purpose of 
 battering and defacing the image God has 
 made, that I blush when I remember that I 
 ever took a hand in fighting at all, under any 
 circumstances, or any kind of provocation. 
 
 But the life of dissipation which I led until
 
 MY FIRST FIGHT. 1 25 
 
 I was twenty-three years of age often got me 
 into trouble and in many a scrape. I had to 
 fight in self-defence or stand for some com- 
 panion imposed upon and bullied by some 
 strong brute. I am ready to admit that boxing 
 had a charm for me ; and, being lithe, 
 strong, and very quick, I was considered a 
 fair boxer, one that under ordinary circum- 
 stances could hold my own against respectable 
 odds. But fighting as a profession and 
 pastime I never cared for ; experience taught 
 me that it was bad for the eyes, and that 
 .sometimes after a fight you cannot see to read 
 the newspapers very well. But, like all other 
 things of any moment, one thing can be said 
 in its favour — it is a very honest business ; for, 
 you get paid as you go along. Like all boys I 
 had lots of little scrambles, not worthy of a 
 record, and helping to develop me somewhat 
 in directions where repression would have 
 been better. But at sixteen years of age, I 
 had a regular fight with a lad, brought about 
 by a little mutual misunderstanding. 
 
 My opponent was much older, larger, and 
 heavier than myself, and physically nearly every- 
 way my superior. This was my first fight.
 
 126 MY FIRST FIGHT. 
 
 We agreed to settle it by the arbitration of 
 the fists, so we sought a field on the outskirts 
 of the town ; several hundred companions 
 went along to see the fun. They declared 
 they were not disappointed, though I confess 
 that I was never able to discover where the 
 fun came in, for I got considerably the worst 
 of the battle, though I won it ; but, like some 
 victories, the glory didn't atone for the cost. 
 
 I was the most sensitive of the two, and 
 though my opponent got lots more of the 
 drubbing than I, he didn't mind it half so 
 much. He stood up and took it without 
 wincing, or got up and went at it again, fresh 
 and smiling. That was very discouraging to 
 me ; while, on the other hand, I felt most 
 keenly every blow I got. A little of that 
 treatment went a great way with me, and I 
 felt like a man fighting against a mule who 
 was not seriously incommoded with my atten- 
 tions, while his return compliments were very 
 much disconcerting me. And though I had 
 already whipped him, and thoroughly, too, the 
 stupid fellow didn't seem to know it, and kept 
 coming up for more. It was wearing me out, 
 so I felt like giving up, and had I done so, it
 
 MY FIRST FIGHT. 
 
 127 
 
 might have saved me from much I afterwards 
 suffered. 
 
 Just at this point two gentlemen were 
 passing, and seeing my delemma, called me 
 to them between the rounds, put money 
 in my hands and told me to keep up heart 
 and go and win, which I could do ; the fellow 
 was already whipped and only needed finish- 
 ing. This put heart into me. It had a 
 wonderful effect on my spirits. My blows 
 were better aimed and more skilful. I went 
 in on him, crowned the fight, did quick, 
 hard work, and beat my man. That 
 victory was the germ of a long series of 
 defeats, and the first of bad starts.
 
 it J ^s^ ,,*g> 
 
 XVII. 
 
 "Into 3 fast a lace." 
 
 ^y^-.THLETIC sports are of very ancient 
 afoL origin. They were Grecian by birth, 
 and were introduced into Rome by M. Tulirus 
 at the close of the yEtolian war, 186 b. c. 
 
 They speedily became highly popular ; and 
 under the emperors their contests were admired 
 by the nation to a degree bordering upon 
 passion. They formed a distinct corporation 
 by themselves ; they are not to be confounded 
 with the gladiatorial sports, which were often 
 excessively cruel and inhuman. 
 
 It was a harmless and honorable pastime in 
 which many of high birth and culture were 
 engaged. Those engaging in them were called 
 athletes (from Greek athleo, to contend), and 
 it held the rank of an art. Even men of 
 genius contended for the palm, not as a 
 profession, but for the sake of exercise, just 
 as at the present day we have gentlemen
 
 HOW I LOST A RACE. 129 
 
 cricketers, amateur oarsmen, etc. The 
 profound and eloquent Plato appeared 
 among the wrestlers in the Isthmian games at 
 Corinth, and also in the Pythian games at 
 Sicyon. 
 
 The meditative Pythagoras is said to have 
 gained a prize at Elis, and instructed and 
 trained others who did the same. 
 
 So great was the honor of an Olympian 
 
 victor that his native city was regarded as 
 
 ennobled by his success, and he himself 
 considered sacred. 
 
 When he returned from the contests he 
 entered the city through a special breach 
 made in the walls, and with great civic 
 honors, and was henceforth considered a 
 public benefactor, sustained in magnificence 
 while living, and buried with great public 
 honors when dead. 
 
 So we see that physical vigor and physical 
 feats have been in good company from the 
 first, and have been patronized by the noble 
 and wise and virtuous. In England they are 
 made more of than in America. Some of the 
 best gymnasts, cricketers, runners, and oars-
 
 I30 HOW I LOST A RACE. 
 
 men the world has produced have been men 
 of English birth. We inherit the Briton's 
 vigor and the Saxon's temper ; we inhabit 
 a land peculiarly fitted for the encouragement 
 of such sports. While many of the upper 
 classes have the leisure for it, the poorer 
 classes find their training for it in their daily 
 occupation. So we, as a people, are pecu- 
 liarly situated for favourable attention to 
 robust, manly, vigorous pastimes ; and though 
 Americans have not given as much attention 
 to these manly sports, and as they could not, 
 .as no young nation can, she is turning her 
 attention to them more fully now than ever. 
 Americans had a wild country to conquer ; 
 they had to wrestle with the Indians, the 
 bear, the panther, and the wolf, and they 
 have nobly conquered, giving evidence that 
 when they shall turn their prowess to this 
 field they will make their mark, as they have 
 with the rifle at Dollymount and Creedmoor. 
 
 Being an Englishman, I inherited, together 
 with a robust constitution and a wiry 
 frame, a passion for " athletic sports," and I 
 haven't contracted ministerial stiffness of back
 
 HOW I LOST A RACE. I3I 
 
 and joints, or clerical starch enough to prevent 
 my loving them still ; and have won many- 
 prizes in running, jumping, cricketing, and 
 swimming. 
 
 I desire to relate how I once lost a race. 
 It has taught me a lesson that I shall never 
 forget — one that is full of interest and instruc- 
 tion ; and, as I think the reader will be 
 affected in the same manner, I will narrate 
 the circumstances. 
 
 It was in Chesterfield, noted for that 
 celebrated church steeple, called the cork- 
 screw spire, which is so ingeniously on the 
 wind that on every side you look at it, 
 you fancy it is going to fall on you. It is so 
 old that it is not known whether it was built 
 so or warped out of perpendicular after it was 
 built, by the action of the weather on it. 
 
 It is a curious affair, built of wood and 
 covered with lead, put on it in a special 
 manner over fluting or volutes, that run up 
 also in a twisted direction. 
 
 Whether warped by sun, struck by lightning, 
 or preached out of true by the queer old 
 sermons that used to be heard within, no one 
 knows. A witty poet speaks of it thus :
 
 132 HOW I LOST A RACE. 
 
 " Whichever way you turn your eye, 
 It always seems to be awry ; 
 Pray can you tell the reason why ? — 
 The only reason known of right, 
 Is that the thing was never straight." 
 Well, it was in this historic old place that 
 a race was to be run, for which I entered. 
 
 The distance was three hundred yards, 
 over hurdles three feet four inches high, 
 and two water jumps twelve feet wide, with a 
 three-feet hedge on the near side of the water. 
 An exceedingly difficult race, the obstructions 
 making it so of themselves, but also extremely 
 difficult from the shortness of the distance to 
 be run. One of a mile would be easier, giving 
 you time for moderate increase, which regulates 
 the breathing, and gives you a chance to 
 gradually bring all your powers into play at 
 the best advantage ; but this one must be a 
 quick, violent start, and the forth-putting of 
 tremendous exertion, allowing of no gradual 
 play or steady and easy increase ; it must be 
 a tremendous spurt, which but few can stand. 
 When the time came for a start, about thirty 
 competitors toed the mark, and fine, clean- 
 limbed, active-looking fellows they were, too.
 
 HOW I LOST A RACE. 1 33 
 
 A pistol-shot was to be the signal to start. 
 Crack went the pistol, and off shot thirty men 
 like arrows hurled from as many bows. We 
 darted abreast, but didn't keep so long. 
 
 In the first hundred yards several came to 
 grief, some, tripping over the hurdles, sprawled, 
 out of wind and time, and went limping and 
 chopfallen back, others jumped well, but didn't 
 come down so well, or perhaps they imagined 
 they came down into a well. At any rate they 
 came down too soon, and, like young ducks, 
 fell into the water, and went blowing and 
 dripping to shore, taking an involuntary bath 
 instead of the prize. 
 
 When 150 yards had been run over, to my 
 suprise I found myself first, and I began to 
 hope that I might win the race ; straining 
 every muscle, I urged on the course, but 
 being out of condition for easy running it 
 began to tell on me fearfully, for I was going 
 at a tremendous pace, and I became very 
 anxious to know if I should be able to hold 
 out to reach the goal, and if it was not 
 prudent for me to slacken and spare myself 
 a little for the last spurt that might come, if 
 I might safely do it.
 
 134 HOW I LOST A RACE. 
 
 And so I must know somehow how far I 
 was ahead. 
 
 There was no use running faster than was 
 necessary. I did not know how far the next 
 best man was behind, for we were on 
 turf and there was no sound ; and the only 
 way of judging was when one was near enough 
 we could hear the heavy breathing induced by 
 the tremendous exertions the runners were 
 making. I knew there was no one very near 
 me, for I should have heard them breathe,, 
 and so the temptation came to look behind 
 and see. 
 
 It may not be known to all our readers that 
 for a man to be running at the top of his 
 speed that any motion that disturbs the nice 
 equilibrium of the body, is invariably fatal to 
 his chances of running, and especially dis- 
 turbing is the motion and position necessary 
 for the turning of the head ; the head is the 
 rudder, or like the front wheel of a velocipede,, 
 which, if suddenly turned, over you go. 
 
 I was now about fifty yards from the 
 winning-post, and nearly exhausted. But had 
 I kept on, looking straight ahead, I should 
 have won easily ; but I turned round, and
 
 HOW I LOST A RACE. 1 35 
 
 found, to my surprise, the nearest man to me 
 was fully twenty yards away. 
 
 But the fatal moment was on me ; the 
 turning of the head caused me to sway and 
 reel and stagger like a drunken man. I went 
 down heavily to sod, utterly exhausted, only 
 
 THREE FEET FROM THE WINNING-POST, and 
 
 my opponent rushed on me a winner before I 
 could gather myself for a start ; and that is 
 how I lost a race. 
 
 If you're doing anything worth doing, keep at 
 it, put on all speed, and don't look back. No 
 matter what the inducements or temptations, 
 don't look back. 
 
 Let the multitude thunder, and all com- 
 petitors be distanced, but don't look back to 
 see what is the matter. 
 
 Keep on, straight on. Look ahead, straight 
 ahead. Strain every nerve, put on all steam, 
 and win. The last step is as important as 
 the first. A single misstep within a yard of 
 the goal may lose the whole enterprise for you. 
 
 Anything which has been done that has 
 made the world gleam or ring has been 
 accomplished because the right man didn't 
 look back, but carried the noble or masterly
 
 136 
 
 HOW I LOST A RACE. 
 
 effort, right up to the home mark, with a dash, 
 and a nerve, and a will that meant it. 
 
 When the race is won, and the thing is done, 
 then you'll have plenty of time to look back. 
 
 But first do it, or you may lose the race.
 
 A Sketch for the Discouraged. 
 
 I. 
 
 "J/Ii be a San jet." 
 
 i^E come to some strange awakenings in 
 
 OT^ this life. Times when the drift of 
 our life is suddenly arrested, and when we 
 begin to realize the circumstances of dis- 
 comfort, disgrace, and degradation into which 
 our recklessness, or foolhardiness has plunged 
 us. The retrospect strangely stirs us, and we 
 are ready to call ourselves all sorts of hard 
 names, and vow all sorts of hard vows, alas ! 
 too often never performed, if kept. Very few 
 of those who get down ever get up again. 
 Very rarely do they who have made a com- 
 plete shipwreck of reputation, health, and life 
 itself, ever rise out of the ruins, and rebuild. 
 The ruin is so complete that there is nothing 
 left to rebuild with — nothing to build on. And 
 in character, as well as in architecture, there 
 has got to be foundations on which to plant
 
 138 i'll be a man yet. 
 
 ourselves, and materials with which to recon- 
 struct ; and dissipation is not merely a letting 
 down, not simply demolition, but it is destruction; 
 a consumption, a burning up of the very 
 substance of the character itself; a ruin, out 
 of which no reconstruction usually comes ; so 
 that when one does right himself out of the 
 depths it is like a resurrection ; a new creation. 
 Like one rising from the dead, it seemed to 
 me when something stirred within and bade 
 me live anew my life differently. I never shall 
 forget the awakening, and the start, and the 
 struggle, and the contending hope and despair 
 that alternately strove and triumphed within.. 
 The light and darkness, striving for the 
 mastery. It was in February, 1869, that the 
 awakening came. I was on my way from 
 Derby to Chesterfield. My money was gone, 
 so I was riding on foot. I was a complete 
 wreck, physically and morally, actually and 
 prospectively, individually and relatively. My 
 body was inflamed, degenerated and deformed; 
 as far as bloat, want and exposure could 
 disfigure it, it was disfigured. As far as 
 appetite could enslave and besot, my whole 
 manhood was in the toils. As far as the
 
 I LL BE A MAN YET. 139. 
 
 present was concerned I was better dead than 
 living, and hopelessly incapacitated for use- 
 fulness in the future ; I was of no possible 
 value to myself, or of use to others. Nobody 
 cared anything for me, and I cared nothing 
 for myself. Years of dissipation and sin 
 had done their work on me and in me. 
 I was living only for the pleasures of 
 the debauch. I ceased to reckon time 
 or estimate resources as other men did, 
 and reckoned according to my own almanack, 
 from one debauch to another, while life's sole 
 aim was to secure the means of bringing them 
 so near together that day and night, and 
 change of seasons should come in quick 
 succession, and by short and rapid changes. 
 After a hard day's walking I reached Claycross, 
 a village just outside of Chesterfield. In 
 passing through its principle street I sat 
 down on the curbstone to rest. I was strangely 
 depressed, a feeling of mingled hopelessness- 
 and despair like a black cloud settled upon 
 me. I buried my face in my hands and began 
 to think ; a realization of my condition began 
 to force itself upon me. I began to see what 
 I had brought myself to be ; what a really
 
 140 i'll be a man yet. 
 
 miserable, broken-down, and delapidated 
 creature I had become. I began to^soliloquize 
 thus : " Well, here I am, Fred Bell, not a 
 penny in my pocket, my once neat clothes 
 worn out, shabby, ragged, and soiled. Not a 
 friend in the world, not even friendly to my- 
 self, myself despising myself." I began to 
 speculate on my probable appearance. " I 
 must look like a superannuated beggar. I 
 wonder if my friends would know me ?" I 
 looked down at my feet, and I could see them 
 — high living and low, reveal the extremities. 
 Shoes open at the joints and slit across the 
 toes, both for the plethora of gout and the 
 depletions of poverty. Swollen feet shrink 
 the shoes, and so do weather, wear and time. 
 I was wide awake at the vision. Then came 
 crowding upon my crazed brain thoughts of 
 home, out of which I had flung myself in my 
 mad career ; of my happy boyhood, from 
 which I had got far enough now ; of my affec- 
 tionate parents, whom I had strangely and 
 sadly tried ; of a kind mother and loving 
 sisters, of whom I had grown to be unworthy ; 
 of all the golden opportunities for culture, 
 prosperity and usefulness I had allowed to
 
 i'll be a man yet. 141 
 
 pass — nay, had flung scornfully away unim- 
 proved ; I was well nigh distracted. I was 
 like Adam in the wilderness, only, unlike my 
 first father, I had gone out of my Eden of my 
 own choice ; I was like the prodigal son in the 
 far country — only I had not even husks to feed 
 me — bankrupt. And yet, instead of my hope- 
 less degraded condition crushing me to the 
 earth in prone and nerveless despair, it 
 maddened me ; I felt fury loose in me, and 
 springing from my hard seat and grinding my 
 teeth, and stamping my foot upon the ground, 
 and clenching my hand, I fairly yelled: " I'll 
 be a man yet !" 
 
 I started, refreshed with the strength of the 
 new determination, on my journey. I had 
 gone but a few rods when I saw a confectionery. 
 It struck me that work was the first step' 
 backward to my lost manhood. I resolved 
 to seek it. I walked in and asked to see the 
 master. He came, looked at me in surprise. 
 I asked him for a situation. 
 
 II What can you do ? " he queried. 
 "Anything," I responded. 
 
 " What is you name ? " he asked. 
 " Fred Bell," I replied.
 
 142 i'll be a man yet. 
 
 " What ! Is your father's name James ? ' 
 
 "It is." 
 
 It appears that he had known my father in 
 former years — was acquainted with his position 
 and the circumstances of his family, and must 
 have been greatly shocked to see a son of his 
 in such a condition. He became instantly 
 interested in me, and after a long talk and 
 much good advice from him, and many fervent 
 promises on my part, an engagement was 
 effected. He took me in and gave me a good 
 dinner, which was a surprise to my stomach, 
 gave me money to go home with and get my 
 clothes mended, and otherwise put myself in 
 a presentable condition, and return to him as 
 soon as possible, that I might enter his employ 
 and begin the working out of that future which 
 lay unfulfilled as yet in that vow — " I'll be a 
 
 MAN YET."
 
 T c\ 
 
 II. 
 
 |HIS apparent interest taken in my welfare 
 
 ZJ& by the tradesman who had employed 
 me, gave me strong reason to hope that the 
 •clouds were already clearing ; that my skies 
 would yet grow bright, and the fair promise 
 come to flower and fruit, and I shall be able 
 to cleanse away reproach from my name, and 
 ■drive sorrow and dismay out of the hearts of 
 those who had so ardently loved me, prayed, 
 •cared and hoped for me with such untiring 
 assuiduity and faithfulness all through these 
 wild and wanton years of mine. 
 
 I think, in view of what I am about to 
 narrate, that it is due, both to my readers and 
 myself, to prevent misunderstanding or harsh 
 judgment, if I explain what my ideal of a man 
 at that time was. It may seem crude and 
 very imperfect to you, as it undoubtedly does 
 to myself now ; but it was the best I had then. 
 It was something like the following :
 
 144 X ' LL BE a man yet - 
 
 I had no thought, nor hint of a thought, of 
 moral or spiritual reform ; the condition of my 
 soul never once entered into my head. Indeed 
 it did not occur to me that I had one. Hence 
 I did not know that to meet the purpose 
 I must become sober, steady, temperate 
 of speech, and correct of life. I had no. 
 conception of God, eternity, the Ten Com- 
 mandments, nor the " eleventh." Indeed, 
 commandments of any kind had no force with 
 me except a repelling one. If I ever came to 
 one, it was to go over it and smash it, and I 
 suppose the chief reason why I did a great 
 many things which, in all probability, I should 
 never have done, was solely because 
 somebody or something said I must not. 
 That was an excellent reason why I must, 
 and would, and did. 
 
 The only thing that troubled me was my 
 worldly estate ; my degraded name ; dilap- 
 idated clothing ; my broken and prostrated 
 health. I was proud, and to be shunned 
 stung me. I was tasteful, and to be out of 
 repair irritated and galled me. I was affec- 
 tionate, though if I had been told I was, I 
 should have scorned the imputation, and
 
 i'll be a man yet. 145 
 
 cursed it as a baby's weakness — though now 
 I know that love is woman's best charm, and 
 the strong man's better thought, and so I 
 missed the sympathy of wife and parents, 
 relatives and friends. 
 
 It was my worldly standing and prospects, 
 solely and only, that affected me so strongly. 
 
 It was a worldly reformation that I intended. 
 I never felt, nor dreamed I felt, how deplorable 
 a thing it was to be under the curse of God. 
 I didn't imagine that God cared any more for 
 me — what I was or did — than I did for him. 
 
 I felt bitterly about my being an outcast 
 from society ; about being shunned and spoken 
 lightly of as a miserable wretch, and kept 
 trace of, only because I might be found dead 
 under some hedge in the morning after a mad 
 night's debauch, or in the gutter with a hole 
 in my head, with my features battered beyond 
 all recognition in a brutal row. And nobody 
 knows the desolate feeling one has who learns 
 that he is an object of solicitation mainly for 
 burial. 
 
 I cared much about my bodily appearance 
 and worldly reputation — absolutely nothing 
 about my soul, the state of my conscience,
 
 146 i'll be a man yet. 
 
 and my standing before God. I hungered and 
 thirsted for nourishing food, and the quiet and 
 rest of home, and a regular life once more. I 
 was tired and sick of the debauch and riot. 
 
 I would have jeered and laughed the offer 
 to scorn if anyone had advised me to become 
 religious. What a delusion ! what a fatal 
 spell ! how far I was from the true conception ! 
 how far I would have to travel, how much I 
 should have to suffer, and how often fail, 
 before I would learn that the true manhood 
 is of higher origin and of nobler aim than is 
 found in mere secular prosperity and esteem. 
 
 Now you will better understand that I was 
 honest in my purposes of reform, and was 
 neither so fickle nor hypocritical as my subse- 
 quent actions, without this explanation, would 
 give occasion for my readers to conceive. 
 
 When I got the money and started for 
 home, what must I do but drink to the 
 success of the new venture. So I called in 
 at the first public-house I came to, and drank 
 the health of my prospective employer, and to 
 the success of the new departure. 
 
 It may not be known to all my readers that 
 the drinking customs in America are vastly
 
 i'll be a man yet. 147 
 
 different from those in England. There 
 people drink as they do everything else, in 
 a tremendous hurry, as if the whisky was 
 scalding hot, and they wanted to get it down 
 without burning ; or intensely cold, and they 
 feared to freeze the throat. The only advan- 
 tage in favour of the American mode is that 
 it kills off its victims quicker, and makes 
 business better all round. 
 
 My English readers well know the custom 
 here is to sit down and drink leisurely what 
 you call for, hob-nob with your neighbour, if 
 there be one at your table, and be happy over 
 
 it. 
 
 The only persons in the house beside myself 
 
 were two men playing dominoes for the drinks. 
 
 I invited them to join me in a drink, which 
 
 they did. 
 
 While so engaged, one of them, eyeing me 
 sharply, ventured to suggest : 
 
 " A stranger here, sir ? " 
 
 I replied : 
 
 " Yes," but continued : " I expect to be 
 around here, as I have obtained employment 
 at Mr.- -s, the baker." 
 
 Whereupon they both laughed heartily, and 
 exclaimed :
 
 I40 I LL BE A MAN YET. 
 
 11 Why, you'll be a shouting Methodist, 
 soon, my boy." 
 
 I was excessively annoyed at this, but 
 turned it off by saying abruptly, and in a 
 bantering tone : 
 
 " I would play any one a game of dominoes 
 for glasses round." 
 
 For, several others had come into the room 
 by this time. My challenge was accepted 
 and we sat down ; it was one of my favourite 
 games, and I soon won what money they had 
 and drinks which were put up behind the door. 
 Not literally, as some know — better for every 
 one if they did go up in a cascade and come 
 •down in the sand. It is the technical phrase 
 which explains that as I had their money, 
 they had to run a score for the drinks, which 
 they called, " putting up behind the door," 
 and this went on until the landlord said they 
 had had enough, and it was time to shut up, 
 when I left with considerable satisfaction, and, 
 crazed with drink, to walk five miles that 
 parted Chesterfield from Claycross, still feeling 
 in every part of me the thrill of the new resolve, 
 * l I'll be a man yet." I had begun well. Alas! 
 that I did not know then how strong the bands
 
 I LL BE A MAN YET. 
 
 149 
 
 of habits were, how easy it was to make strong 
 resolves, nor yet how easy to go straightway 
 from the new beginnings back again and again 
 to the old ways, even feeling that to rise and 
 fall, and face, and rise again is a necessary 
 part of that mysterious and arduous style by 
 which a man seeks relief and restoration, but 
 I was determined to " be a man yet."
 
 III. 
 
 ...-pOW hard a matter it is to restore 
 •jL 'A confidence when once wholly destroyed. 
 
 A man may dissipate a fortune by luckless 
 and extravagant ventures, or by wild and 
 prodigal extravagance ; and if the will is in 
 him, and the opportunity is embraced, he may 
 rebuild into a more generous affluence his 
 prostrate and scattered means. 
 
 A man may enervate his system, and shatter 
 and destroy his health, but so long as the core 
 of his vital energies remains, he may, by care 
 and due attention to the laws of health, 
 restore to his body the old glow and vigour of 
 a strong and healthy life. A man may even 
 retrieve disastrous mistakes, and regain the 
 lost confidence of his constituents, and fill 
 worthily and ably the place of responsible 
 trust from which he was once hissed and 
 hurled. But how difficult to retrieve a lost 
 esteem, to come back into loving confidence 
 and favour with those whose every hope, and
 
 i'll be a man yet. 151 
 
 thought, and trust, has been dashed and 
 trampled till they lie like prairie flowers in the 
 bison's track, torn and beaten into the ground 
 by the ten thousand hoofs of passion, appetite, 
 and mad indulgence, to abuse implicit con- 
 fidence and prayer-eyed hope until, weary 
 with watching, and blistered with tears, prayer 
 grows dumb upon numbed lips, and blinded 
 and deaf confidence lies like Lazarus wrapped 
 for the sepulchre, swathed in bandages of grief 
 and despair. It is like restoring the dead to 
 life ; or putting joy, full orbed and laughing, 
 into sad and aching hearts. I once learned all 
 this, and while I live it will endure sharp and 
 clear in the memory. Perhaps it is one of 
 those memories that has eternity for its destiny. 
 
 But to continue. I reached Chesterfield 
 about six o'clock in the evening. 
 
 I was greatly tempted to call on some of my 
 associates, and tell them of my intentions, 
 which, of course, would have been fatal to 
 my resolves. They would have been plucked 
 from my heart, and torn into a thousand 
 shreds, and whirled on the tempest of a new 
 debauch, all the fiercer for its brief restraint, 
 like thistle down on an autumnal gale.
 
 152 i'll be a man yet. 
 
 Fortunately my circumstances conspired in 
 my favour ; my appearance was such that I 
 was ashamed of being seen, and I resolved to 
 wait until I had been put in better condition,, 
 and so I avoided public streets, and threaded 
 my way by by-streets towards home. And 
 then a strange desire seized me to see my 
 parents and wife. I was burning with anxiety, 
 too, to tell them of my future intentions. I 
 imagined their joy and excitement, how happy 
 and stirred they would be when they learned 
 that Fred had righted himself, and was going 
 to be something after all, and so I began to be 
 in a great hurry. I must go faster than foot- 
 travelling would carry me, and, having a little 
 money, I took the train and reached home — • 
 or the town which contained my home — about 
 eight o'clock in the evening. 
 
 I called first on my parents, as I had to pass 
 their shop on my way ; but, oh ! how my 
 heart sank at the reception. I was on fire 
 with my new purpose and the grateful feelings 
 of giving joy to those I loved. They were 
 chilled with discouragement, and frozen with 
 despair towards me, and I didn't have experi- 
 ence enough to know that it would take time
 
 i'll be a man yet. 153, 
 
 to infuse my hope and purpose into them. I 
 learned that my mother was seriously ill, but 
 I was not permitted to see her. I thought at 
 the time that this was very hard, but I can see 
 now that it was best, for my presence might 
 have so seriously shocked her as to have 
 resulted in her death. But I was hurt and 
 angered at my reception, and was not in a 
 mood to beg or parley, so I abruptly left the 
 shop enraged, and went to the home of my 
 wife. 
 
 As I came to the door, my heart misgave 
 me. 
 
 Would she repel me, too ? Had she lost 
 heart and hope like the rest, and feel annoyed 
 at my coming, and relieved at my going. 
 
 My heart failed me, and I had no courage 
 to go in, so I had to resort to a rum shop and 
 take several drinks before I could meet her 
 face to face whom I had promised to love and 
 cherish till death. 
 
 I had strangely kept that vow ! 
 
 While I was drinking, some one ran and 
 told her I was coming, so that prepared her 
 somewhat for the meeting. 
 
 Having at last got my courage up to the
 
 154 ! LL BE A MAN YET - 
 
 required point by the inflammation of the rum 
 bottle, I started for home. I went round by 
 the back door, avoiding the shop. I saw my 
 wife through the window as I passed. I walked 
 right into the house and sat down. 
 
 Presently my wife came in. She was 
 evidently prepared for me, for when I made 
 some commonplace remark, she rebuked me 
 in a manner that completely staggered me. 
 
 Here was another repulse. I was startled, 
 shamed, angered, surprised. I had never 
 been met so before ; but I had the good sense 
 to know that I well deserved this treatment 
 from both wife and parents. 
 
 Why should they treat me better ? Had I 
 not shamefully treated them ? Had I cared 
 for their feelings or wishes ? 
 
 For several minutes neither of us spoke a 
 word. I was nervous and uneasy. 
 
 I at last broke the silence by telling her I 
 had got work, and was going to reform and be 
 a man yet. I was sick of debauchery and 
 idleness, I thoroughly loathed and despised 
 myself for my dissipation, the sorrow and dis- 
 grace I had brought upon my dearest friends, 
 and that I meant to restore my manhood and 
 name, and afflict them no more.
 
 i'll be a man yet. 155 
 
 ' And while I went on speaking of my inten- 
 tions to work, to get an honest living, make a 
 better provision for my family, and cease 
 afflicting and shaming them by my wicked 
 course, I could see a look of incredulity upon 
 her face. I saw she did not believe me, and 
 she told me so. It was no wonder; I could 
 not blame her, she had so often been deceived. 
 I had been starting so many times, and always 
 to go deeper into wickedness. She' had had 
 hope blossom and die so often in her soul for 
 me, that no wonder there was no room for 
 more flowers ; her heart was full of dead 
 blossoms. I could not get mad at her. She 
 was so patient even in her hopelessness, that 
 I could but pity her. I pity her! I was her 
 bane. I was permitted to remain, however. 
 
 I soon returned to ask that she would mend 
 my clothes and get me ready for my new 
 place, which I desired to enter as soon as 
 possible. 
 
 But she declared that this was only a ruse 
 to more cruelly deceive and disappoint her, 
 and she refused to entertain any new hope 
 that I was going to do any better than I had 
 been doing. I could only go on and kill my-
 
 156 i'll be a man yet. 
 
 self by my wicked ways, while a few more- 
 disappointments would kill her. I assured 
 her solemnly and earnestly of the genuineness, 
 of my representations and intentions, and that 
 their truthfulness would be established, as my 
 employer had promised to write me before I 
 came to work ; yet she would not believe me. 
 Little did I know what was in store for me in 
 my crude and honourable efforts to be a maa 
 yet.
 
 IV. 
 
 ONG waiting is painful work, and any- 
 waiting is when your heart is 
 pained with distrust, no matter how well 
 deserved, and you are waiting for time to 
 vindicate the suspected purpose. 
 
 It was very hard work for me, as I was at 
 home waiting anxiously the promised letter 
 from my employer. By desperate efforts I 
 managed to keep sober, and remained in the 
 house, striving as best I could by kindness 
 and attention and whatever services I could 
 perform, to repay my wife's kindness on so 
 many thousand occasions, and atone, so far 
 as I could, for the great suffering I had cost 
 her. No one can understand my condition, 
 nor even approximate to an understanding of 
 it, except those who have themselves passed 
 through the same experience. 
 
 Of course I took occasional drinks — it would 
 have been lunacy or perhaps death to have
 
 ^158 i'll be a man yet. 
 
 instantly stopped the use of all stimulants. 
 I had lived on it ! It had been food and 
 drink to me ! I had become so used to it 
 that the system would have broken down 
 without it, until by care, nourishing food, and 
 vigorous exercise, together with regular living, 
 the natural stimulus had been provided to 
 take its place. 
 
 Time passed on, and my anxiety grew 
 apace ; the waiting became oppressive ; the 
 mail was to be my vindicator — the silent but 
 convincing proof that my representations were 
 true. 
 
 Would it never come ? Must I be compelled 
 long to walk under the cloud of doubt and 
 distrust ? 
 
 It is a gloomy pilgrimage, like walking 
 through broken spaces of gloom from one 
 midnight to another. 
 
 Since my new life began, so differently 
 centred, so noble in perspective, and so 
 generous in range, so different in impulse 
 and effort, causing the past to appear full 
 of growing horror and repugnance to me, and 
 making me more willing, aye, anxious to die 
 in its glad sunshine, rather than go back to
 
 i'll be a man yet. 159 
 
 live with no death in the horror of the old life, 
 I have learned that truth will always conquer, 
 bearing its own way, blazing a wide path 
 through the thick wilderness, cutting a broad 
 road over inaccessible mountains, casting up 
 a highway across the dead level and the 
 yawning chasm, needing nothing to confirm 
 its utterances, requiring only time, that rights 
 all things, for it to vindicate its words. I have 
 learned, too, the other side of the lesson, that 
 a lie is always weak and decrepit. It is born 
 old and heavy with curses, and breaks down 
 in full career, and wicked men so often lie 
 that when they speak the truth no one will 
 or can believe them. This lack of confidence 
 is very rasping ; it always enrages a wicked 
 man. 
 
 The story about my reform and purpose to 
 work, and my engagement already for the 
 carrying out of my better purpose, no one 
 would believe on my own unsupported repre- 
 sentations ; they all wanted proof. I had 
 spoken of a letter ; they were waiting for it, 
 hence my burning anxiety. 
 
 The coming of the postman would be like 
 the coming of morning. I was in the night
 
 160 i'll be a man yet. 
 
 time, a weary, pained, watcher, waiting for 
 the herald of the new day. 
 
 At last he came. 
 
 He put in my trembling hand a letter. 
 
 With beating heart I eagerly scanned the 
 postmark. It bore the Claycross stamp. 
 My face lighted. Eagerly I tore open the 
 envelope, glancing at my wife as 1 did it. I 
 thought she looked a trifle happier. I said 
 exultingly : 
 
 "Now we shall come to the truthfulness of 
 what I have said." 
 
 I could see the sun already rising. Day 
 would soon be here, and I would walk abroad, 
 ere6t and happy in its shine and song. 
 
 I opened the folded sheet and began reading: 
 
 "Sir: — According to promise, I write you. 
 I have taken occasion, since engaging you, 
 to make enquiries concerning you, and, on 
 ascertaining your real character, I am con- 
 strained to inform you that it is so desperate 
 and wicked, that, notwithstanding our previous 
 engagement, I cannot think of taking you 
 into my service. Therefore, consider the 
 engagement cancelled, and yourself at liberty. 
 — Yours, etc."
 
 i'll be a man yet. 161 
 
 I was dazed, stunned, and terribly shocked. 
 My head began to whirl round. I reeled and 
 groped like a blind man. I read it over slowly 
 again. The letters danced before my eyes. 
 
 Then, for the first time in years, long years, 
 the big tears coursed down my cheeks thick 
 and last. The letter fell through my fingers 
 to the floor, my heart sank within me, cold 
 and dead, and all seemed dark about me, and 
 the future for ever blighted. The day that I 
 thought was to break so joyously, came up a 
 thicker, blacker night. 
 
 My very soul was crushed within me. I was 
 bad, it was true. I knew that, but I was 
 seeking to be better. I was down in the very 
 morass of ruin and shame, but I wanted to get 
 out. I thought that I felt solid ground 
 beneath me, but the path sank under my feet, 
 and I was struggling again in the mire. 
 
 Would no one throw me a rope, a plank, 
 speak a word of cheer to me ? Say, " I believe 
 in you ; struggle on, your release is at hand." 
 
 Without a word I lifted the letter, handed 
 it to my wife, and motioned her to read. It 
 might have been my death sentence. I really 
 feared, at the time, that it was. She read it
 
 162 i'll be a man yet. 
 
 with pained face, and then joined her tears 
 with mine, weeping bitterly. Those tears 
 maddened me. I snatched the letter from her 
 hand and dashed it into the fire, and in utter 
 despair I raved around the room, exclaiming: 
 
 11 1 am utterly undone ! I am ruined ! I 
 care not what becomes of me now !" 
 
 My wife strove to calm me, reasoning with 
 me as only a woman who loves knows how to 
 do, telling me how sorry she was that she had 
 doubted my word. She put her arms around 
 my neck and pleaded with me to be calm, to 
 retain my hope, to stand by my resolve, telling 
 me, with a true woman's faith, " that all would 
 yet be well ; there were other places besides 
 Claycross ; the wide field of a better endeavour 
 lay broadly before me. ; I could be a man yet." - 
 
 But I was inconsolable. I had received a 
 cruel blow, and life looked dashed and bereft 
 to me. The words of despair I had uttered, 
 11 1 am undone," rang in my ears; they seemed 
 to epitomise my despair, my blighted future 
 and ruined present in one brief sentence, and 
 I grew desperate and reckless. I tore myself 
 away saying : 
 
 " I know where they will be glad to have 
 me !"
 
 ILL BE A MAN YET. 
 
 163 
 
 I knew where I was always welcomed, where 
 the smile and the opening circle greeted and 
 warmed me. 
 
 I would seek it ! Leave the disappointment 
 early, and forget care and trouble. / would go. 
 
 And so it became a grave question whether 
 after all, " I would be a man yet."
 
 V. 
 
 ,Og|HERE are times and happenings when 
 cKk the last door of hope is shut and locked, 
 and there seems as if there were nothing to be 
 •done but to go back in the old way and strive 
 no more. 
 
 This letter crushed out every hope in my 
 heart ; it closed every door against me, and it 
 began to look as though I had undertaken too 
 great a task, and everything conspired to 
 thwart and mock me. 
 
 What should I do now ? Where go ? No- 
 body cared for me, would help me, or had any 
 hope for me. One wise judicious friend just 
 at this point would have saved me a great deal 
 of subsequent sorrow, and guided my unwise 
 feet the sooner and more surely in the true 
 path. As it was, however, the only thing that 
 appeared to be left for me to do, was to go and 
 join the army again. That was a sort of 
 refuge ; so, away I went with maddened brain, 
 not stopping nor thinking of anyone or any-
 
 i'll be a man yet. 165 
 
 thing, until I arrived at Sheffield Barracks, 
 the headquarters of the " Fifth Dragoons, ' r 
 intending to enlist again for a soldier. Upon 
 inquiry, I found the regiment was not recruit- 
 ing, but the sergeant-major told me there was 
 a vacancy or two, but the colonel was out 
 hunting and could not be seen till morning. 
 
 He then invited me to the " canteen," which 
 is an institution for the furnishing of general 
 stores, clothing, provisions, and knick-knacks 
 of all kinds to the soldiers, on sale or for money, 
 including liquors. So we repaired to the can- 
 teen together, where we had several drinks, 
 and where he tried hard to detain me for a few 
 hours or until the next morning, the reason of 
 which was, of course selfish, there being a 
 commission paid to the one who could secure 
 the enlistment of any man for a soldier ; a 
 commission, anyhow, for the enlistment ; so 
 he would get something, and a very good sum 
 if the man passed the doctor and became a 
 soldier. He therefore strove very hard to 
 detain me, but a new whim possessed me, and 
 I would not be detained. There seemed an 
 irresistible drawing homewards, I could not 
 rest. So I left, promising the sergeant-major
 
 1 66 i'll be a man yet. 
 
 faithfully that I would return the next day, 
 and enlist again for a soldier. 
 
 I reached home in the afternoon. When I 
 walked into the house, my wife seemed a good 
 deal surprised. It was something unusual for 
 me to do under the circumstances. I would 
 shoot off in a longer parabola, usually fetching 
 some distance, and taking more time to return 
 to the centre again. It was not like me, and 
 she did not understand my quick return. She 
 was still weeping and very sad, but spoke 
 kindly to me. But I was feeling fearfully 
 blue, my courage was all gone, my heart of 
 hope was literally broken. I was down at 
 zero ; even the mercury would freeze soon ; 
 but yet, having taken several drinks, it gave 
 me a kind of artificial boldness, so I com- 
 menced to sing a song ; and, while thus 
 engaged, a gentleman came to the back door. 
 
 I noticed him as he passed the window, and 
 discovered that he had on a white tie, which 
 I thought a sure sign that the wearer was 
 a minister of the Gospel. I confess to a 
 natural feeling of repugnance rising in my 
 mind against the whole class. I hated to 
 meet them, dreaded to be entangled in con-
 
 l'-LL BE A MAN YET. 1 67 
 
 versation with them. They had such a plain 
 and forcible way of putting things to you, they 
 would so quietly and unavoidably put you in 
 a corner, and then say right out to your face, 
 strange truths about your life and actions that 
 you could not deny honestly, and that you 
 dared not lie about with their calm, earnest 
 eyes on you, seeming to read you through and 
 through, and I didn't care to be so forcibly 
 reminded of my wickedness. I knew that I 
 was wicked, and I tried to bury the thought 
 out of sight and out of mind, and it was an 
 uneasy ghost to lay at the best. It needed 
 no stirring to make it lively, and so I dreaded 
 a minister, though I secretly revered and 
 respected them. And yet, whenever I was 
 spoken to by a minister in the way of reproof, 
 admonition, or counsel, I would always listen 
 respectfully and silently, and feel relieved 
 when they had done. 
 
 I am here reminded of an illustration of this 
 in an incident which occured about a year 
 previous to the time of which I am writing. 
 
 It was on one bright Sunday morning, while 
 the church bells were calling worshippers to 
 the house of prayer, and all nature seemed
 
 1 68 i'll be a man yet. 
 
 vocal with hymns of praise and melody. I 
 was celebrating the Sabbath by having a 
 jumping match just on the outskirts of the 
 town where I lived, in the public highway. 
 About a hundred low, wicked men were 
 present, and I was in the full excitement of 
 competition. Just as I was about to take a 
 leap, I espied a minister with dignified mien, 
 walking towards us, and I remarked : " Boys, 
 here comes a 'tub thumper,' (a favourite name 
 among the dissolute classes for a minister). 
 I shall have to pull up till he passes. It won't 
 be long." 
 
 As he came on, they began to indulge in 
 slang expressions and rude remarks, intended, 
 no doubt, to accelerate his ministerial pace, 
 and get us the sooner rid of his rebuking 
 presence, that we might return to our sport. 
 The minister stopped, and, as usual, I was 
 near to him, and seemed the marked one 
 for his reproof. Looking into my face, he 
 spoke very kindly to me, when some one 
 shouted : " Look out, Fred, or you'll get 
 converted," and there was a general round of 
 laughter at this sally of intended wit. Putting 
 up my hands deprecatingly, I said : " Hold
 
 i'll be a man yet. 169- 
 
 on, chums, let him say what he has to say, 
 and then sling his hook." He finished his 
 remarks on the impropriety and sin of dese- 
 crating God's day, asked God to bless us all, 
 and passed on, and we continued to jump. 
 
 I merely cite this to show that through no 
 permission or act of mine did a minister ever 
 receive contemptuous or disrespectful treat- 
 ment. 
 
 So I was annoyed as I saw the minister 
 pass the window to my door. 
 
 I answered his knock for admission holding 
 the door half open. He looked steadily in my 
 face, and said : 
 
 " Sir, do you go to any place of worship ?" 
 
 I shrugged my shoulders, and looked as. 
 disinterested as I could, I responded, laconi- 
 cally : 
 
 " Sometimes, sir." 
 
 He looked me straight in the face. I felt 
 he was seeking for an entrance into my 
 resolutely-shut heart, and speaking kindly 
 and firmly, he remarked : 
 
 " Look here ! There's a man in you." How 
 that thrilled me ! " Yes, there is," he con- 
 tinued, "and I want you to be a soldier," and
 
 170 
 
 I LL BE A MAN YET. 
 
 after a pause, he added : " a soldier of the 
 
 •cross. 
 
 And the thought flashed through me "Could 
 I be a man yet."
 
 VI. 
 
 E may be the creatures of fate, 
 stumbling on this chance and that 
 mischance ; but, surely not everything that 
 occurs, not all the wondrous events of every- 
 day life are mere happenings. There's such 
 a nicety of adaptation in some of the events of 
 life to the times of the life, there is so much 
 congruity in their occurrence that they 
 look like part of a grand plan which we 
 may not see all of now, but yet a plan that 
 covers all the life, and that goes on to work 
 ■out its several parts, taking up here and there 
 the laid-down ends of kindred schemes widely 
 separated by time and prompting, and reknits 
 them into a symmetrical and perfect whole. 
 It seems so now to me, at least, as I look 
 back upon the way in which I have come. 
 My unwise feet must have been directed ! 
 After the singular coincidence of my desiring 
 to enlist for a soldier and the missionary
 
 172 I LL BE A MAN YET. 
 
 asking me to become a soldier occurred, he 
 left me without speaking another word. It 
 was wise. He said just enough to rouse me. 
 The strangest feelings were stirred in me. I 
 had never experienced the like before. Look 
 at the situation ! Put yourselves in my place f 
 I had just returned from trying to enlist for a 
 soldier, and found some trouble in reaching 
 this end ; aye, had returned disappointed, and 
 lo ! this comes and asks me to become the 
 very thing I desired ; for I had not the slight- 
 est idea that this address or allusion was a 
 religious one ; I didn't know exactly what it 
 meant, so ignorant was I and careless of 
 religious things, and so he left me, amazed 
 that he should have said so strange a thing to 
 me. 
 
 " I want you to become a soldier ; a soldier 
 of the cross." 
 
 What did he mean, anyhow ? What kind of 
 soldiers were they ? Did they have good 
 times ? Was the pay good ? Were they 
 engaged in a fight going on now ? What 
 strange, weird kind of a conflict was this I 
 was solicited to recruit for ? What had a 
 minister to do with this fighting business ? I
 
 i'll be a man yet. 173 
 
 began to feel more strangely still. I thought 
 I should fall to the ground. I wondered more 
 and more what ailed me. I staggered back to 
 the chair I had left to show him out, and I 
 became really alarmed. I had strange fore- 
 bodings take possession of me. My mind 
 was in a whirl of excitement, and while, 
 puzzled and bewildered, I was trying to solve 
 this mystery, the shop-bell rang, and, to my 
 surprise, my wife asked me to attend the call. 
 I responded cheerfully, hoping it was a good 
 customer, for I needed some money. Times 
 were getting dry again, and I must put in 
 some inspiration. But, imagine my surprise 
 on going out, I saw the same man in the shop 
 who had just left my back door. 
 
 It angered me — in my heart I swore at him 
 — I dared not speak an oath ; for, my reverence 
 and esteem for ministers would not allow that. 
 What did he want hanging about me ? Had 
 he not startled and annoyed me sufficiently 
 already ? If he only knew me he would not 
 come preaching around me. When I reached 
 the counter and passed behind it, he raised 
 his umbrella, and, striking the counter with it 
 with great force, said emphatically :
 
 174 J ' LL BE A MAN YET. 
 
 "Young man, I cannot leave you!" I 
 thought if he knew who I was he would be 
 glad to leave me. I was not considered to be 
 very desirable company for ministers. I 
 wondered what there was in me that attracted 
 him. I was not careful in my efforts to make 
 myself fascinating, but said he, abruptly : 
 " Let me have two ounces of your best 
 peppermint lozenges." 
 
 I supplied him, of course, and straightway 
 put the money into my pocket for drinks, 
 mentally blessing him for his good sense in 
 furnishing me, in such a quiet way, with the 
 necessary funds for gratifying my appetite. 
 Permit me to say that this man was one of 
 the few who understood his business. There 
 is an open door into every one's heart ; if not 
 actually open, it is accessible if we know how 
 to reach it, and it makes worlds of difference 
 whether you go in at the door, or attempt to 
 climb over the brick walls of prejudices, habits 
 and all sorts of obstacles that make a high, 
 inaccessible barrier around the human soul. 
 One way is like taking a fort ; by storming it 
 you may take it, and you may fail. If you 
 succeed, it is by hard fighting; the other is
 
 i'll be a man yet. 175 
 
 like entering an honoured guest into a friend's 
 house ; you pass in quietly and easily by the 
 open way behind bristling prejudices and 
 suspicions asleep, who let us, you — pass 
 unhindered — aye, even welcomed, because a 
 friend ; you win by a wise kindness. That 
 man, by making this trifling purchase, made a 
 grand point ; first, I was obliged to be courteous 
 to him as a customer ; second, he had pro- 
 pitiated my favour by furnishing me money, 
 and so the way was prepared. 
 
 After I had supplied him, he sat down and 
 began to talk kindly to me about my condition, 
 prospects, duty, etc., and I allowed him to do 
 so. I was carried off my feet just by amaze- 
 ment ; I was surprised that he should have 
 any interest in a wretch like me, so unlike 
 himself in every particular. Why should he 
 be so in earnest for my welfare? He got me to 
 think ; perhaps the first really wise, sober 
 season of reflection for years, began to steal 
 upon me. Nobody ever took such an interest 
 in me before ; all the interest other people 
 had manifested was for selfish reasons, and 
 unwisely exhibited so as to gall and annoy me, 
 and defeat the end it designed, even when it
 
 176 i'll be a man yet. 
 
 was really disinterested, and meant only my 
 welfare. But, here is a perfect stranger con- 
 descending to speak with me as an equal, to 
 address loving words to me, kindly telling me 
 there was some good in me yet, not all bad, 
 and he yearned over that glimmering possi- 
 bility ; could not leave me, was drawn to me ; 
 and, even at the risk of abuse, would strive to 
 rescue the jewel from the mud, trampled by 
 the cloven feet of the swine-herd passion, lust 
 and sin, yet it is worth rescue, and he longed 
 to do it. I began to think ; and reflection was 
 transmuted into feeling, and a strange mixture 
 of tenderness and gratitude came upon me. I 
 began to break down ; I could have borne 
 imprisonment, harsh words, or the lash ; I 
 could fight back when assaulted, but this 
 kindness melted me. He got into my heart 
 by the open way, behind the outer crust of 
 hardness and sin, and he moved me inwardly 
 as I had not been stirred for years. 
 
 I at once invited him to step into the house, 
 much to the surprise of my wife, who, with a 
 half-startled and half-gladdened look, rose 
 instantly to hand us chairs. It was with 
 strange feelings I sat down ; for the first time
 
 I LL BE A MAN YET. 
 
 177 
 
 willingly — aye, desiring to hear this minister 
 speak to me concerning things that began to 
 glimmer in my soul, much as the first dawn of 
 day in the orient sky. After we were seated, 
 he started off by inferring that : 
 " I should be a man yet."
 
 VII. 
 
 ^VvESPERATE cases need prompt and 
 'Jj§S wise management ; the least error in 
 handling or treatment, and an irreparable 
 injury is done. No physician will allow the 
 least tampering or experimenting with his 
 medicines in a serious case, by the employ- 
 ment of ignorant or incompetent persons to 
 care for his patient ; but trained, expert 
 skilful nurses, who know the value of precision, 
 and whose sleepless vigilance may be relied on 
 .are required ; for, there are minutes on which 
 .a whole life turns ; nay, a second then is 
 more than an hour at another time, in import- 
 ance ; the least deviation, and a life slips 
 through the unwise fingers and is gone. So 
 nicely has science and experience drawn the 
 lines of conflict between the curative and the 
 mortal. There are critical points in his 
 client's case the counsel must guard well ; 
 little improbabilities or discrepancies that 
 must be verified, or reconciled, or the sharp
 
 i'll be a man yet. 179 
 
 tooth of his opponent will tear his case to 
 ribbons. That neglected, no after eloquence 
 or skill can atone for the neglect. So have 
 men reduced the principles of law and treat- 
 ment of cases to a science that, often now, it 
 is not the hearing of a case and a decision 
 upon its merits, but a great legal combat of 
 mental gladiators, who are wrestling for the 
 palm, and every case is only a new meeting 
 by which they are to arrive at the settlement 
 of the underlying question ; not of the cause 
 •of Jones against Thompson, but, who shall 
 be master before the bar. And, so, there are 
 some ministers who have brains enough, or 
 tact, or such a comprehension of the impor- 
 tant interests dependent on the possession 
 and use of judgment, forethought, and all the 
 rest of those wise elements which go to make 
 the truly successful ambassador, that they 
 neglect nothing, they make their approaches 
 to human hearts with that nice adaptation 
 and skill, that they rarely ever fail of bringing 
 in a fresh trophy for the King. 
 
 The man who came to me was such an one. 
 The rev. george gregg, for I had by this 
 time learned that this was the grand, good
 
 180 i'll be a man yet. 
 
 man's name, and that he was the " Town 
 Missionary" of Rotherham (now of Sheffield). 
 
 When he had seated himself near me, with 
 those encouraging words upon his lips, I 
 eagerly asked him to go on. He did so, and 
 told me the story of the cross in such a simple 
 and beautiful way, that I never have heard 
 anything like it since. 
 
 Liberty to the prisoner may be glorious, but 
 not so precious and thrilling as that first 
 moment after the prison door has been opened 
 and the chain fallen off, and the man stands 
 forth free and takes in one long, full, fresh 
 breath of freedom ; that moment never has a 
 duplicate, it is the one towering instant that 
 like a mountain in a vast plain, lifts itself 
 straight up from the dead level around it. So 
 this story to me has never had an equal, and 
 it never will ; it never can ; its sweetness 
 will last longer than the mountains and stars. 
 There are eternal hills somewhere, and on 
 one of their white faces I expect to find written 
 this beautiful story, deeply and as lasting 
 as it has been engraved on the tablets of my 
 heart. And when he told me of the sufferings 
 of the "World's Redeemer," that there was a
 
 i'll be a man yet. 181 
 
 personal phase to them, that they were all for 
 me, I broke right down. My side of the story 
 then had to come. I told him what a great 
 sinner I was, how dark my life and polluted ; 
 but, he put the offset of a great Saviour before 
 me. Then I told him I thought he must be 
 mistaken in my case. I had been so wicked 
 there could be no day of grace for me. I had 
 sinned away all my relatives' love, I had 
 sinned away my manhood, I had sinned away 
 everybody's confidence and everybody's help, 
 surely there was no one else to care for me. 
 
 He assured me that, in spite of all, there 
 was salvation for me, and strange to say, I did 
 not know any better than to believe it. 
 
 I was so thoroughly wretched, so entirely in 
 earnest, so religiously ignorant, I had no 
 sceptical doubts. I was not so wise and con- 
 ceited that I could not be saved because I 
 would not. I had such a confidence in the 
 solemn words the good man spoke in my hear- 
 ing, that I never once questioned their cer- 
 tainty, but just accepted and trusted them 
 as pure, simple truth. Most people know too 
 much to believe.
 
 182 i'll be a man yet. 
 
 He left me for a short time, and after he 
 had gone I was more wretched than ever ; my 
 anguish was keen and intense ; I felt like one 
 lost in a cave whom the guide had left, and 
 whose candle had gone out. I now knew that 
 I was lost. I was terribly certain of that, and 
 was fearfully exercised about it, and it seemed 
 to me that the only one who could do me any 
 service was the man who had just left me. 
 And something, — the devil, I suppose, — said 
 to me : 
 
 " Now you see what religion is going to do 
 for you. This is only the commencement. A 
 fine time you will have'of it now, Fred ; better 
 back out, old fellow, and go and take a drink 
 or two ; that's the only way to set this delusion 
 
 right." 
 
 I was fearfully harrassed between the cra- 
 vings of a bad nature, and the goadings of an 
 awakened conscience, and I longed for the 
 missionary's return — his presence would calm, 
 
 and his words reassure me. 
 
 I 
 
 At last he came. What relief it afforded 
 me to see him enter the door ; how inspiring 
 his words were as, with kindling eye and smi- 
 ling face he took my hand and said : 
 
 "God bless you, my boy; how is it with 
 you, now?"
 
 i'll be a man yet. 183 
 
 I felt, here was a man I could confide in. 
 I needed to unburden my heart ; I could dis- 
 close all my feelings to him. So I gave him 
 my past history, and told him my present 
 sorrow. He listened to the end in silence. 
 He then begged me that I would make him 
 two promises. One, that I would not go to 
 Sheffield and enlist for a soldier ; the other, that 
 I would not touch intoxicating liquors again. 
 I solemnly promised, meaning, this time, to 
 keep that promise, if I died for it. Little did 
 I know what was before me ; the strange and 
 awful conflict I must go through. The first 
 that I would not join f the army, I had no 
 trouble in keeping. Through a past exper- 
 ience, soldiering was not likely to become a 
 passion with me. 
 
 But oh! another passion was woven up 
 amidst the strong cords of my life, which to dis- 
 entangle would strain them, if not snap them 
 in twain. I kept my second faithfully and 
 
 t'was like suffering a perpetual neuralgia. I 
 
 * . f 
 
 would have times of insatiable burning desire 
 
 for drink seize upon me. A craving so terrible 
 
 that it would start the sweat from every pore, 
 
 and set my head reeling and tossing like a ship
 
 184 i'll be a man yet. 
 
 in a storm. Now my heart would seem on 
 fire ; again I would appear to be freezing eter- 
 nally ; red fiery objects danced before my 
 disordered vision ; I would start back with 
 a severe nervous shock, as from some terrible 
 foe about to spring upon me ; a great horror 
 of darkness would come over me and envelope 
 me like a pall ; strange, hideous voices would 
 screech in my ears and echo and re-echo 
 through my soul ; when I sat down to eat the 
 food would turn to wriggling worms ; toads 
 and lizards sat grinning on my plate and from 
 under the edge of every dish ; my knife and 
 fork changed to snakes, that hissed at me ; the 
 pictures on the walls would change to demons 
 or dragons and leap after me ; I would spring 
 from the table in alarm and run shrieking to 
 the farthest corner of the room ; my dear wife 
 would fix all manner of soothing draughts and 
 stimulating foods, and had she not stood close 
 to me then I might never have fought through. 
 When these spells came on I would beg her 
 to lock me in a room, and not to let me, out 
 until they had passed over. I could feel my 
 will power come and go like the tide, and I 
 was afraid I should fall and die a drunkard's
 
 I LL BE A MAN YET. 
 
 185 
 
 death if I was not restrained, as I undoubtedly 
 should. Oh! it was terrible. 
 
 But I was determined "to be a man yet."
 
 VIII. 
 
 i£pgFO human spirit can long stand an intense- 
 jtrsSff strain upon it. As "the bow kept 
 strung up to the highest pitch soon loses its 
 tone," so it is with the human mind, and there 
 must come a change. If it come not, then 
 the mind is warped, or the brain gives way, 
 and a crazed life henceforth to the end. 
 
 It would have been so with me had there 
 been no change. A change from one pain to 
 another, so long as a new set of nerves strive, 
 and rest be given to those now over-strung, 
 that were a mercy. I could not long stand 
 such pain. My will was strong, but even steel 
 must snap if overtried ; and if my resolution 
 once failed, there was no more hope for me, I 
 never would have heart to come to the struggle 
 any more. It went on more fiercely, the 
 darkness deepened, the horror increased ; 
 taking away all stimulus so suddenly from one 
 actually dependent on it for impulse and 
 energy as I, was almost fatal. I think that a
 
 i'll be a man yet. 187 
 
 glass or two, cautiously administered at 
 
 appropriate intervals, would have lulled the 
 
 raging demon in me, and allowed me time to 
 
 rally my natural strength, and very greatly 
 
 blunted the keen, awful force of the struggle, 
 
 the scars of which will never be entirely 
 
 effaced by time. I am not pleading for a false 
 
 system of reform. Tapering off, as a rule, is 
 
 never very eminently successful in practice, 
 
 however beautiful the theory may appear. It 
 
 is like cutting a man's leg off by pieces, it 
 
 only protracts the agony, while it endangers 
 
 the patient's life. But in my case, and 
 
 doubtless in other cases which are exceptions, 
 
 a judicious and well-timed loosening of the 
 
 appetite would be better, perhaps safer, than 
 
 a sudden, painful dislocation. But I had no 
 
 such treatment. If I wanted to be a man I 
 
 must not touch liquor. I wanted to be a man, 
 
 so I didn't touch it. Nor would I if I had 
 
 had to march through the very citadel of 
 
 Inferno, and it was like going through the 
 
 gulf of flame to get into the clear life beyond. 
 
 I would not for worlds change the direction of 
 
 the journey, but I suggest an improvement 
 
 might be made in the mode of reaching the 
 end.
 
 1 88 i'll be a man yet. 
 
 Well, Sunday came to me, and it was an 
 •oasis in the desert journey, and one that 
 joined the green land on the side where the 
 desert ended. With it came the missionary, 
 whom I was glad to see. We had arranged to 
 go to chapel ; that would be a change. I had 
 not been before for many a day ; Sabbath bells 
 had no voice for me ; the gathering of the 
 quiet-faced people had no charm for me ; 
 whatever poetic sentiment concerning the day 
 and its associations that had been in my mind 
 had been beaten to shreds years ago and 
 trampled in the mud. Yet I had a strange 
 sort of a feeling possess me, it was a yearning, 
 an expectation that T should hear something 
 that would help my case, and an almost fierce 
 hope that I would. 
 
 We went and heard a young man preach. 
 I suppose it was a good preach enough, but 
 nothing was said that had any special adapta- 
 tion to me or that specially interested me. I 
 reckon that is the trouble with a good deal of 
 the stuff that is got off from very high stilts by 
 very ministerial preachers — it is so high it goes 
 right up into the clouds, and describing a 
 splendid arch, falls straightway down the steep 
 place into the sea.
 
 i'll be a man yet. 189 
 
 There's enough said every Sunday to convert 
 a brigade of sinners, but somehow it fails of its 
 end, and may as well not be said. I spent 
 the afternoon in the company of the missionary 
 at his house ; there I met with some young 
 friends who were there by appointment to 
 entertain me. They were good sensible fellows 
 and did'nt know enough to preach, so I had a 
 good time. 
 
 In the evening I went to chapel again. 
 The same young man preached from these 
 words: "Awake thou that sleepest — arise 
 from the dead, and Christ shall give thee 
 light." I looked around in surprise. I 
 thought the preacher saw some asleep, and 
 wanted them to rouse up, yet I saw none, for 
 the sermon had not commenced yet. " Arise 
 from the dead ! " I looked nervously around, 
 and would not have been surprised to have 
 seen some dead person getting up and 
 walking. He went on preaching, and as 
 nothing strange happened I soon settled 
 down — lost my interest; stock preaching 
 would never reach me ; he said nothing that 
 suited my case. I was settling down in 
 despair. I was again making up my mind
 
 igo i'll be a man yet. 
 
 that there was no way out of my misery to 
 a better and a nobler life, when the preacher 
 closed the book and said " I have a stray shot 
 to fire." These few words attracted me more 
 than anything else. He had as yet added 
 nothing to them, but he began to talk and 
 look like an ordinary man, and I expected to 
 hear him say something. And he did — he went 
 on to describe a sinner of the worst type — 
 that means me— and as he went on to picture 
 phase after phase of his life it kept meaning 
 me more and more until I thought " he knows 
 all about me, and is talking directly to me," 
 and I began to be interested. I was in just 
 the case of guilt, degredation, and despair he 
 was describing, and then he began to talk of 
 a remedy, when he announced that even such 
 could become "new men." Ha! that was 
 what I was seeking, that's what I wanted to 
 know. There's a sympathising Saviour that 
 takes men out of the passion, shame, sin, and 
 degradation of the old bad state, and sets 
 them on their feet in a restored manhood ; by 
 his love to them, trustfulness and hopefulness, 
 he wakens and kindles in them trustworthiness, 
 and helps them up the steep hill of difficult
 
 i'll be a man yet. igi 
 
 performance, waiting as long as they will, and 
 never growing impatient of their tardiness or 
 wretched efforts at reform. Ah ! that's the 
 news I wanted. 
 
 I stopped to the prayer-meeting " and got 
 religion," as they phrase it. Got hope and 
 trust in Christ, learning that trust and 
 obedience are the substance of the new life. 
 Learning his words and will and doing them, 
 that is the new life. Ceasing to do evil, 
 learning to do well, getting waked up in the 
 soul a sense of sympathy and trust, a concep- 
 tion of better living and a purpose to conform 
 to it — conforming to it as best you can — that 
 is it. They told me Christ loved me, and 
 gave me the best evidence of His love by 
 dying for me ; left me words of assurance, 
 direction, and counsel, and that I must believe 
 in Him and obey His teachings. I did, so got 
 an impulse to the nobler life. I acquainted 
 myself with His words, and so got an ideal of 
 the new life after which to direct my new 
 impulse, and that is the whole of it. 
 
 A man was waked up in me — a full-grown 
 man, so far as the better conception of truth. 
 A keener sense of honour, kindliness, purity,
 
 ig2 ILL BE A MAN YET. 
 
 benevolence, sympathy, and so on, than ever 
 I can express, and an impulse to realise them 
 in me with an increasing knowledge of dissatis- 
 faction at my accomplishments. All this to be 
 in some sense more worthy of Him who blazes 
 before my mind as the one ultimate being of 
 royal loveliness and royal affedtion, who loved 
 me and gave Himself for me. And so, I came 
 out of gloom, despair, and great depths, by a 
 long and tangled way. And yet before me, 
 only in a nobler sense, and with a range and 
 quality of perfection and glory that no thought 
 of mine can paint, there blazes a most glorious 
 destiny, still expressed by the words : "I'll be 
 a man yet." 
 
 te^i
 
 A Descriptive Sketch. 
 
 gfH $ctara t0 €n0lanb. 
 " .|pj3|HE best of friends must part," says the 
 
 G?2< old song, and therefore I had to say 
 "good-bye," when I concluded to go journey- 
 ing. So I am really off. Not there yet. 
 Americans are a fast people, I know, but 
 not fast enough for me to say "I'll go to 
 Europe," and, presto, I am there. But I am 
 in the midst of preparations for the journey. 
 
 A man begins his trip from the moment he 
 decides to go, for there are plans to be per- 
 fected, arrangements to be made, a thousand 
 and one things to be done, even though you 
 take no women folk, baby folk, or band- 
 boxes. 
 
 I have taken the journey often enough to 
 know that one's comfort very greatly depends 
 upon due attention to sundry details before- 
 hand ; and I believe in comfort with all my 
 heart.
 
 194 MY RETURN TO ENGLAND. 
 
 And one begins to go, too, in his memory 
 and imagination as soon as ever he decides to 
 take the trip. An excursion nearly four thou- 
 sand miles long across the great waters is no 
 mean adventure, and there are a host of little 
 seers inside of a man that utter conflicting 
 prophecies. There is the grim old magician 
 Fear, with his dark and doleful troop that 
 speak of perils dire — storms, shipwreck, death! 
 
 Those fellows paint fearful things in the 
 picture gallery of the imagination ; they speak 
 a dark oration in the chancel of the soul ; and 
 the soul is the sentimental part of us, too, and 
 helps the old curmudgeon along by intoning 
 some such quotation as this in the memory : 
 " It may be for years, and it may be 
 forever ;" 
 and that long, long word forever, makes the 
 strongest soul shiver, and a tragic scene comes 
 wheeling slowly in. Scene : storm-clouds and 
 foamy waters, lightning-rent and wind-torn ; 
 screaming gales and moaning waves ; a yawn- 
 gulf and a broken ship, that, like a • wild 
 monster in its last dying throes, sucks down 
 its shivering sputtering victims into the vora- 
 cious jaws of the insatiate sea ; a yellow, sea-
 
 MY RETURN TO ENGLAND. I95 
 
 weed winding-sheet, a coral coffin, and a long 
 and quiet resting-place on the shell-strewed 
 mausoleum of the deep, with some one in the 
 far distance hoping, praying, looking with 
 strained vision and stony cheek for those 
 never to come — never. 
 
 But there are other prophets in the soul, 
 offspring of the undeveloped forces of youth ; 
 the unused hopefulness and courage, that out 
 of dark places in the past have brought us to 
 great triumphs ; they utter a very different 
 message ; they speak triumphantly of safe 
 guidance ; a fortuitous voyage ; a happy 
 landing ; friends-speed on ; they bring the soul 
 out of the shadow-stained valleys, up on the 
 day-crowned mountains, they bend over it 
 arches of beauty, grand rainbows of hope, at 
 the base of which — between the bright columns 
 thereof, they put down a brilliant mosaic of 
 promises for the tired feet to walk on ; a bright 
 ending for so dark a beginning. 
 
 This may seem all a fancy to the reader ; it 
 is fancy supplemented by fact. 
 
 Human discovery and experience, a certain 
 sort of human providence, have made the sea 
 only a very ordinary sort of ferry ; and who
 
 ig6 MY RETURN TO ENGLAND. 
 
 knows but that some day we shall be able to 
 breakfast at home in New York, and take tea 
 in London ? Already wonders have been 
 done in the direction of speed and safety, and 
 when we have better learned the undeveloped 
 powers that are latent in nature — we shall 
 make the tides and the winds now swayed by 
 the stars a faster and a safer team than they 
 now are, making better time under the whip 
 and spur of human progress. 
 
 But we must hurry up and say good-bye, 
 or we shall never get off; the rush and 
 bustle of preparation mingled with the calls 
 and charges of friends " to write and tell them 
 all about it," and so on, prevent gloomy 
 reveries. Meanwhile good-bye has a number 
 of sides to it. There are familiar faces to take 
 care of, the familiar streets of the dear old 
 city through which we have gone joyous or 
 sad, on missions of comfort or pleasure, will 
 soon be left far behind us, the city itself will 
 soon dip in the waves, and her domes and 
 spires will look like receding specks on the 
 background of the blue skies. 
 
 Then one's occupation will have to be 
 suspended for a time ; the inspiration of the
 
 MY RETURN TO ENGLAND. 197 
 
 surging masses ; the contact with this strong 
 and young western life, that has so much of 
 the wine of strength in it, will have to be 
 forborne ; the old mode of life entirely inter- 
 rupted ; a complete and total change, like as 
 though one were taken up bodily and dropped 
 down in an entirely new world, which, indeed, 
 is almost literally a fact — all this makes 
 saying good-bye pretty serious work. It is 
 most all over, and now the morning for my 
 departure has come. A host of kind friends 
 are on the wharf, waiting for the steamboat 
 that is to take us round to the good ship 
 Germanic, in which I am to sail, and in which 
 they mean to accompany me down the bay, 
 and give me a jolly send off. 
 
 There were clouds in the early morning sky 
 behind us, but it was bright sky our way ; we 
 accept it as a token. I hope that I have caught 
 enough of this early sunshine and securely 
 bottled it with which to make many pages 
 gleam with brightness for my readers in the 
 future. I imagine that there is a studied 
 effort to be jolly ; pretty well acted, but rather 
 transparent. 
 
 But all resolve to be brave, intuitively and 
 mutually; I, for the sake of those who
 
 ig8 MY RETURN TO ENGLAND. 
 
 remain ; they, for the sake of the one who 
 goes. Very well managed. The steamboat 
 has arrived. Step aboard. Good-bye, old 
 home ; as we speak, the city is just getting 
 up from its long nap and is rubbing its eyes 
 for another sharp day's work. We swing out 
 into the stream which looks cool and self- 
 possessed, reminding me in its eternal flood, 
 of the song of the brook — 
 
 " Men may come, and men may go, 
 But I flow on for ever — for ever." 
 The ship is reached, a good, long, strong, 
 capacious vessel of iron, built to wrestle with 
 storm and billow. Good friends visit our 
 state-room where we propose to keep house 
 for the next ten days, and we are amused with 
 their remarks. " What a cozy little place." 
 Yes, especially when it's rough, and you're 
 sick, and the ship is playing Jack-straws with 
 the waves ; one end down and then the other, 
 as if determined to see what was on the 
 bottom of the sea, and then one end up and 
 then the other, as if bent on stirring up the 
 stars ; and you must keep the side light 
 screwed up tight, while you are stifled for 
 fresh air ; almost too cozy. And the berth,
 
 MY RETURN TO ENGLAND. 199 
 
 4 'how nice, etc., etc." Yes, very fine to be 
 packed upon a shelf like dried cod fish while 
 the ship is trying all its might to roll over, and 
 you've got to hold on with all your might or — 
 out you go. Very fine when you are so sleepy 
 you can't wink, and you are as effectually 
 shaken up as a fly in a bottle, or a turtle in a 
 rolling barrel. 
 
 But the bell is ringing good-bye, the last 
 hand grasp, long and clinging; the lashings 
 are cut, the hawsers cast off, and the great 
 snorting and smoking ship, the home of seven 
 hundred people, forges out into the stream, 
 and heads down the river for the Narrows. 
 Good-bye — good-bye, there is something 
 comes in the throat, the morning mist makes 
 the eyes moist. If you want to find out 
 whether you have a heart or not, just buy a 
 ticket for America, and getting on board a 
 great ship, see a gap of water widening 
 between you and familiar faces that look 
 good-bye when the voice is no longer heard ; 
 you will find out, I think. 
 
 The steamer which accompanied us down 
 the bay, and ourselves, separated with mutual 
 salutes from bell and whistle, and a multitude
 
 200 MY RETURN TO ENGLAND. 
 
 of farewells and hand and kerchief waving, 
 and soon we were alone ploughing our way out 
 towards the vast space where sky and sea 
 seemed to meet, and shut even distance in. 
 
 And yet not alone, for we were many — one 
 does not get much opportunity for being 
 lonesome on board an ocean steamer. You 
 are called to meals four times a day. You 
 can promenade the deck, or take your easy 
 chair from group to group, and chat as 
 familiarly with the saloon passengers as 
 though you were an acquaintance of years' 
 standing ; it is wonderful how such life brings 
 people widely separated, together, and breaks 
 down the mere formal barriers of fashionable 
 usage, and makes intercourse facile and 
 agreeable. We have so much in common ; 
 we eat, drink, sleep and live in one house, 
 and that house is so shut off from every other 
 house, is, in fact, our whole world for ten days 
 or more, that we cannot afford to be strangers 
 or unsocial. 
 
 And then, too, the very pleasant dependence 
 one class of passengers has upon another 
 helps an acquaintance. This is the first 
 voyage for some, and everything is new to
 
 MY RETURN TO ENGLAND. 201 
 
 them, and they have imaginary fears, and 
 curious questions to ask, etc. There are 
 others to whom this is as familiar as crossing 
 the ferry, and the two classes are drawn 
 together, one to ask questions, the other to 
 satisfy solicitude — banish fear and inspire 
 confidence ; and this begets mutual sympathy 
 and good-will, and greatly conduces to the 
 comfort of our party, and soon all stiffness 
 disappears, and the decks and saloons are 
 covered with friendly, chatting groups, who 
 are on as easy terms of acquaintance, though 
 but a few days ago they were strangers, as 
 though they had lived in the same street from 
 childhood. And then, too, the necessity of 
 devising something to break up the monotony 
 of the long evenings gives rise to evening 
 entertainments of various kinds, concerts, 
 amateur theatricals, etc., gives rise to good 
 feelings ; and these, too, are often very fine 
 entertainments, real talent being employed — 
 oftentimes leading stars, professionals, elocu- 
 tionists, first-class jurists, eminent literary 
 and professional men and women, lending 
 their great talent, and personal power to the 
 entertainments.
 
 202 MY RETURN TO ENGLAND. 
 
 Of one of these ocean affairs I am about to 
 write, more strictly on this occasion, an 
 anniversary celebration, than a mere effort at 
 entertainment. One of those events that 
 serve to keep up our connection with and 
 interest in the great world from which we are 
 for a season isolated and exiled. Everything 
 passed off pleasantly on our voyage, and 
 without matters of any particular moment for 
 days — nothing but the ceaseless throbbing of 
 the engine below us, swinging us steadily and 
 rapidly further out into the great rolling deep ; 
 and the usual routine of ocean life. 
 
 The days passed rapidly until the morning 
 of the 4th of July dawned upon us. The 
 evening before it was quietly arranged that 
 we have a real, live, American time of it on the 
 morrow ; happily we were far away from 
 nervous people who don't like a noise, and 
 from police or civil authorities, officious 
 officials who might interfere with a significant 
 and time-honored custom. So we had it all 
 our own way — the captain and officers aiding 
 and abetting our lawless patriotism. The 
 101st anniversary of America's independence 
 should be properly celebrated.
 
 MY RETURN TO ENGLAND. 203 
 
 The grand saloon was beautifully decorated 
 with American and British flags, their inter- 
 twining folds emblematic of the many inter- 
 lacing interests which bind the two great 
 English-speaking nations of the world together, 
 which every true patriot, statesman, and 
 citizen of either land fervently hopes may be 
 increased and strengthened in number and 
 power, until no possible cause can ever again 
 separate or antagonize nations so thoroughly 
 one in all that pertains to a common origin, 
 interests, hopes, and destiny — two people 
 sprung of a common stock, speaking a common 
 language, breathing a common faith, and 
 working for a common end — -the civilization, 
 the education, and the unification of the 
 nations and tribes of mankind. 
 
 A sumptuous dinner was served at six 
 o'clock at which about one hundred and fifty 
 persons sat down. 
 
 It is just impossible for me to describe this 
 feast, to have appreciated it you should have 
 been there, tasted as we tasted, feasted as we 
 feasted, and then you would have grown patri- 
 otic too. We were patriotic before dinner, 
 but the gastronomic element was added to
 
 204 MY RETURN TO ENGLAND. 
 
 intensify our zeal, and if our sturdy old con- 
 tinental forefathers have any idea of what is. 
 going on in this world now they have left it 
 with the grand heritage of liberty and equality, 
 industry and discovery which they animated 
 or made possible, I am sure they were made 
 glad. If they could have seen us eat as we 
 ate, and if you could have seen us too, I am 
 sure both you and they alike would say people 
 who can do so well in the commissary depart- 
 ment can be trusted to guard interests so^ 
 sacred in a like heroic manner, in other 
 departments calling for denial, burden bearings, 
 and exertion. 
 
 It is, perhaps, interesting for you to know 
 that we got through with that dinner ; patriots, 
 who were so brave as we could not be con- 
 quered by difficulties so delicious. We braced 
 ourselves for the contest, charged and charged 
 again, until the enemy was ours. Then we 
 were prepared to lie back and enjoy the cele- 
 bration which was to come after in the way of 
 toasts and speeches after dinner, and an enter- 
 tainment in the evening. 
 
 After the numerous courses were disposed 
 of, Mr. Thomas Barbout, of Paterson, N. J. s .
 
 MY RETURN TO ENGLAND. 205 
 
 was called to the chair, and he made an 
 excellent chairman ; he was made on purpose, 
 I presume, for this occasion. After a 
 few appropriate remarks he called upon all to 
 fill their glasses, and drink the first toast, 
 which was, "The Day we Celebrate;" the 
 toast was cheerfully drunk by all standing, and 
 three strong and resonant cheers sounded 
 through the magnificent saloons and far out 
 over the broad blue bosom of the sea. Mr. 
 George W. Miller, a lawyer, of Albany, made 
 the responsive speech — it was a model one, 
 short, terse, magnetic, and brimming with 
 patriotism. Then was sung " The Star 
 Spangled Banner," music under the direction 
 of Mr. Maurice Strakosch, Mr. Warren and 
 Mr. Geo. Rignold furnishing the vocal music, 
 singing in good style, and with capital effect, 
 assisted by your humble servant. 
 
 The second regular toast was "The Queen," 
 responded to by the Rev. Robert Bert, of 
 England. Mr, Rignold, the talented actor, 
 singing: " God save the Queen." The third 
 was "The President of the United States," 
 responded to by Thomas G. Shearman, of 
 Brooklyn; then we sang "Hail Columbia,"
 
 206 MY RETURN TO ENGLAND. 
 
 and as there was plenty of room, we tried to 
 make a noise. Then came " Our Voyage," 
 calling out a great speech from the Rev. 
 Stephen H. Tyng, Jr., of N. Y., after which 
 we had, of course, "A Life on the Ocean 
 Wave." Then followed, as you would expect, 
 " Success and Prosperity to the White Star 
 Line, the steam ship Germanic, and her 
 gallant commander, Captain Kennedy," and 
 he is all that ; if you don't believe me, take a 
 voyage with him ; this called out the chairman, 
 who spread himself in a very effective and 
 telling speech. 
 
 "I am glad," he said, "to see this sight; 
 the American and British flags entwined 
 together in this spacious saloon, emblematic 
 of the good feeling now existing between the 
 two strong, grand nations they represent, 
 which we hope will strengthen with the years. 
 The kindly reception- to General Grant in 
 England, the hospitality so generously exten- 
 ded to him, had done much to produce the 
 most cordial feelings between the two nations. 
 
 " This great steamship, this noble triumph 
 of engineering skill, the iron village combining 
 safety with the greatest speed, driven through
 
 MY RETURN TO ENGLAND. 207 
 
 the waves by a force of nearly six thousand 
 horse power, and yet so steady and so free 
 from vibration, that those present might fancy 
 themselves in the parlor of the Grand Union 
 Hotel, at Saratoga. 
 
 "Messrs. Harland & Wolff, of Belfast, the 
 builders, had accomplished more than to make 
 the ocean trip a mere pleasure excursion ; they 
 had brought New York and Liverpool so near 
 that only the thin wedge of one week separates 
 them ; they had annihilated that dread, sea- 
 sickness, and greatly added to the comfort of 
 those on board. 
 
 " In regard to my old friend, Captain 
 Kennedy, I would say, many think the duties 
 of the commander light — the place one easy to 
 fill. No doubt it seems so in a voyage like 
 the present, when the sea is smooth, and the 
 weather so calm and delightful, but storms 
 will succeed this and times of danger and peril 
 would surely come, some unforeseen accident 
 might arise, then they would see the value of 
 skill, experience, long-trained and often tested 
 powers of reliance, and ready wisdom, to 
 devise expedients and do promptly just the 
 right thing ; then you will find your brave
 
 208 MY RETURN TO ENGLAND. 
 
 commander at his post of duty, and should 
 our vessel become untenable, and we be com- 
 pelled to take to the boats, the captain would 
 be the last man to leave the ship. 
 
 " I have made many trips with Captain 
 Kennedy, and I have ever found him unremit- 
 ing in his duties, tireless in his efforts to serve, 
 genial and manly in his deportment, and 
 always seeking the comfort and welfare of his 
 passengers. 
 
 Then came the sixth toast : 
 
 " England and America, Mother and 
 Daughter," responded to by Rev. W. A. 
 Bartlett. " The Ladies," by Dr. O. Laughlin, 
 a very appropriate selection. " The Learned 
 Professors," responded to by Judge Hoadly, 
 of Cincinnati, and this ended the speech- 
 making. The speeches were all good, so was 
 the dinner. 
 
 The chairman then called our attention to 
 some business of importance — announcing 
 some telegrams from the cable underneath, 
 from Ismay, Imrie & Co., Liverpool, to R. J. 
 Cortiss, N. Y., agent: 
 
 No. i. " Did the Irish race horse Germanic 
 start on time ?"
 
 MY RETURN TO ENGLAND. 200, 
 
 Answer : 
 
 " Yes, have the tender leave Queenstown to 
 meet her at noon sharp." 
 
 No. 2. From a lady in Paris whose husband 
 is on the Germanic : 
 
 " Hurry up, dear. Worth won't leave dress 
 without the money ; wire sight draft, and you 
 need not be in haste yourself." 
 No. 3. Nahant, July 4, noon. 
 
 Sea Serpent just left to overtake Germanic, 
 will have to hurry up to catch her. 
 
 Western Union Operator. 
 
 So we celebrated the Fourth far from home, 
 on the rocking sea, thinking of home, and yet 
 going further away from home with every turn 
 of the engine ; yet we had a good time, and 
 we hope you have, reader, as you go on the 
 voyage with us. We are getting nearer land 
 all the time, and we shall see some strange 
 and stirring things before we get through our 
 tour. But it is getting late, the entertainment 
 is over, the loungers and smokers are the only 
 ones left, and they are few ; we find it easy 
 work to keep our eyes shut and mouth open. 
 Good night.
 
 Mlmt 3 Bate in (fotglanb. 
 
 <|lgl)EFORE leaving America I was commis- 
 VM% sioned by the proprietors of a New York 
 paper to write a series of Sketches upon 
 "What I saw in England," and having the 
 connection of time with what is previously- 
 recorded, and the relationship of place with 
 my readers, I venture to re-publish one or two 
 of the most interesting in connection with this 
 work. 
 
 I arrived in Liverpool on the gth of July, 
 1877, and was greeted at the landing-stage by 
 my mother, sister, and the Rev. Thomas 
 Greenbury. 
 
 The city may in one sense be aptly termed 
 the " Chicago of England," for, to a passing 
 observer, the outward appearance of Liverpool 
 is, without doubt, essentially modern, and its 
 rise and progress is something wonderful. 
 
 Notwithstanding, however, that without 
 much effort you might imagine that an 
 American city had been floated over the waves 
 and planted on the banks of the Mersey, the
 
 WHAT I SAW IN ENGLAND. 211 
 
 city has a history of great age, and one which 
 is neither uninteresting nor meagre. 
 
 We will briefly indicate it to you after we 
 have introduced the city in the gross. 
 
 Liverpool stands on the north bank of the 
 Mersey, and, after London, is the largest city 
 in the United Kingdom, and taken with Birk- 
 enhead on the other side of the river, and 
 which naturally belongs to it, it ranks in 
 maritime importance before the metropolis 
 itself, a circumstance due to its situation on 
 the west coast of England, not only as a port 
 for the adjacent manufacturing districts, but 
 for the traffic with America. 
 
 It is one hour from Manchester by rail, six 
 hours from London and Edinburgh, and eight 
 hours by steam from Dublin. It has a popu- 
 lation of over half a million souls, thirty 
 thousand of which are seamen. 
 
 From physical facts which exist, it appears 
 that the present mouth of the Mersey is not 
 its original outlet; there is evidence that once 
 a small stream ran into the sea in place of the 
 noble and expansive mouth that now ejects 
 the vast mass of the river's water into the 
 ocean, for all across it trunks of great trees 
 are visible at low water.
 
 212 WHAT I SAW IN ENGLAND. 
 
 It appears from these traces that remain, 
 
 that in very early times the whole coast of 
 
 Lancashire was one dense forest, inhabited 
 
 only by wild beasts, and that this forest 
 
 extended about twelve miles out into the present 
 
 sea. 
 
 The sand banks about the Mersey, the Dee, 
 
 and the Ribble being the remains of the land 
 
 so encroached upon. 
 
 Not only has the sea swept away all these 
 forests, but the villages which in later times 
 had been erected on the coast, have perished 
 also, but leaving behind them sufficient evid- 
 ence that they were once there. In fact, the 
 names of a few remain. 
 
 Between Leasowe and Holylake there 
 appears to have been a Roman watering-place 
 — a kind of Scarborough, for the residents of 
 Dera (chester), and their ornaments and uten- 
 sils are found to this day. 
 
 Nearer Leasowe the remains of a cemetery 
 are to be seen at low water. 
 
 The trunks of the old forest trees, are, 
 during violent storms, uprooted by the sea, 
 and washed upon the coast, and^many of them 
 can be seen at Southport in the gardens of the 
 inhabitants.
 
 WHAT I SAW IN ENGLAND. 213 
 
 Liverpool, as a town, is very ancient. Its 
 castle was much older than Conway — but 
 commercially, and as a seaport, it is not a 
 hundred years old. The rapidity of its growth 
 is evidenced by the fact that there is scarcely 
 a public building in the town over sixty years 
 old — not even its oldest churches. 
 
 For the last fifty years the town has been 
 literally turning itself inside out, and this process 
 of reconstruction is still going on. For where 
 the ancient families used to live next their 
 warehouses and stores, they now live at a 
 distance that would at one time have been 
 considered a serious day's journey, but which 
 now, with the facilities for rapid travelling, is 
 but a convenient trip to and from business. 
 So that Liverpool is less a city of homes than 
 any other town in England, the city being 
 almost wholly given up to business ! In the 
 thirteenth century it contained only 840 
 inhabitants, and 168 cottages. When the iron 
 will and steel sword of William the Conqueror 
 had subdued the Saxon, and he found it 
 necessary to delegate his authority to agents 
 to rule over his distant and recently-acquired 
 territory, he appointed Roger, Earl of Arun-
 
 214 WHAT I SAW IN ENGLAND. 
 
 dale, to rule over the land lying between the 
 Ribble and the Mersey. Roger found it 
 necessary for purposes of defence to build a 
 castle in Liverpool in 1076 on the present site 
 of the St. George's church, and where West 
 Derby Chapel now stands the Saxons had 
 built a castle. 
 
 Such a stronghold in the old times speedily 
 became the nucleus of a population, hence a 
 colony of fishermen soon established them- 
 selves as early as 1050. 
 
 Tradition says that Henry I. gave Liverpool 
 its first charter, in 11 20 ; of this there is no 
 historical proof. The first one now extant 
 was given by King John, in 1207. It is a 
 curious piece of literature, and I will copy it 
 for you. 
 
 " John, by the Grace of God, King of 
 England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Normandy 
 and Aguitain, and Earl of Anjou, to all our 
 faithful subjects, who may have been willing 
 to hold burgage houses at the town of Liver- 
 pool, greeting. Know ye that we have granted 
 to all our faithful subjects who may have 
 taken burgage houses in Liverpool, that they 
 may have all the liberties and free customs in
 
 WHAT I SAW IN ENGLAND. 215 
 
 the town of Liverpool, which any other free 
 borough has upon the sea in our territories. 
 And, therefore, we command you that securely 
 and in our peace, you may come to receive 
 and dwell in our burgage houses ; in witness 
 whereof, we transmit to you these our letters 
 patent." 
 
 ' 'Witness — Simon de Patishill — Winchester, 
 28th Aug., gth year of our reign." 
 
 Soon after a religious tower or monastery 
 was built, and in 1400 Henry IV. fortified it, 
 for the people lived in miserable, indefensible 
 houses. The monks of Birkenhead Abbey 
 established a ferry between this place and 
 Liverpool, and so it began to grow ; for a 
 tower of refuge and defence, a sanctuary in 
 which to worship, and a river stocked with 
 fish, were elements of no mean attraction in 
 those dim and troubled periods of the past. 
 
 A fair idea of the style of houses existing in 
 those days may be had from the fact that 
 during the inclement weather the people would 
 have to crowd into the castles and monasteries, 
 for, from the condition of the roads, the in- 
 sweeping of the tides, and the fact that it 
 rained harder in doors than it did out, they
 
 2l6 WHAT I SAW IN ENGLAND. 
 
 were uninhabitable about half the year, and 
 rented for four shillings per annum. 
 
 Soon Liverpool began to have some mari- 
 time importance. She first owned a vessel in 
 1500, and by 1546 she possessed twelve vessels 
 of an aggregate tonnage of 177 tons, and 
 employed 75 hands to man them, and the 
 girls and wives of Liverpool began to hold up 
 their heads, and keep their shoe strings tied 
 up tidy, when they wore shoes. 
 
 The civil war first brought her into prom- 
 inence ; her position as a seaport, and in 
 reference to Ireland, having a tower and a 
 castle, drew the eyes of the contestants 
 towards her. 
 
 Charles I. had made her a body corporate, 
 and in gratitude for the favour, she could not 
 become disloyal. In the summer of 1643, 
 Colonel Ashton, commander of the Parlia- 
 mentarian troops, seized the castle and town. 
 Soon prince Rupert, nephew of the king, 
 marched on the place, attacked the fortifi- 
 cations with contempt, but from the heroic 
 defence was compelled to respect the bravery 
 of its troops ; after twenty-four days' siege he 
 captured the place. A very interesting relic
 
 WHAT I SAW IN ENGLAND. 2iy 
 
 •of this seige of the fiery prince was discovered 
 in 1865, being a portion of the trenches cast 
 up at the bottom of London Road, opposite 
 Comendation Row, and was visited by many 
 thousand people. Eventually it fell again 
 into the hands of the soldiers of Parliament, 
 and two years after, to conciliate its people, 
 it was made a free and independent port. 
 
 Until properly drained it was very unhealthy 
 and was twice visited by the plague. It 
 recovered from these drawbacks, and began to 
 increase its maritime navy, until at the present 
 •day, it stands at the head of the commercial 
 world as a port having no successful rival 
 except the port of New York. An idea of its 
 immense trade can be obtained from the 
 following figures : 
 
 Ships entering in '75, 6,058, with tonnage 
 of 4,000,000 tons. Ships clearing outwards, 
 5,778 and 405,000 tons. British exports, 
 .j£9i>794>57 8 - The imports of cotton in 1869 
 were 3,000,000 bales, the customs in 1866 
 were £2,867,000. 
 
 Compare the end with the beginning, and 
 you will be impressed with the proverb : 
 " Despise not the day of small things."
 
 Hjtorc about Jiifrrryool, 
 ^/^jNE hardly ever tires in a strange place,. 
 iM§B and you can do an almost incessant,, 
 and certainly a prodigious amount of sight- 
 seeing without ever once feeling tired. 
 
 Even invalids will undergo abroad what 
 would almost kill them at home, and does 
 sometimes kill them abroad sober earnest. 
 
 Liverpool is quite a progressive place, and 
 one of more continuous activity and change 
 than almost any other English city. 
 
 In 1800 the Earl of Derby instigated the 
 founding of a free public library at the corner 
 of Duke and Slater Streets, at a cost of nearly 
 .£12,000. On his death, his son, the young 
 earl, presented it to the corporation. In 
 passing years it grew to be totally inadequate 
 to the wants of the city, and with the usual 
 commendable inactivity of fussy city corpora- 
 tions, nothing was done to satisfy the demands-, 
 for better accommodation. 
 
 At this juncture a Mr. Brown stepped 
 forward and offered £6,000 for the purpose of
 
 MORE ABOUT LIVERPOOL. 2IO, 
 
 establishing a free library for the city. The 
 corporation promised to complete the enter- 
 prise, but as is usual with wealthy corporations, 
 shrank from the awful responsibility of the 
 undertaking. 
 
 Mr. Brown, incensed at their cupidity and 
 narrowness, doubled his gift ; the press rang 
 with his praises, the corporation cheered his. 
 munificence, sat down, resolved, talked, 
 doubted, sneered, and did nothing. 
 
 At this, that gentleman came forward, took 
 the whole expense upon himself, secured the 
 grant of a site on Slater Street, removed the 
 whole collection of the old museum to the new 
 building, which was largely added to, and 
 thrown open for public use in i860. In ten 
 years, from its own reports, over 5,000,000 
 people have visited the place. 
 
 The extent of its library facilities may be 
 judged from the circulation thereof: 2,215 
 volumes per day, or a yearly circulation of 
 620,124 volumes, and the largest per cent, is 
 in general literature. All Liverpool reads 
 solid and instructive matter ; the library con- 
 tains 60,000 volumes, increasing yearly at a 
 rate of from seven to ten thousand volumes.
 
 220 MORE ABOUT LIVERPOOL. 
 
 It is open every week day, except Saturday, 
 from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., and is usually thronged- 
 It cost nearly ^40,000 as a whole, and is a free 
 gift from the founder to the public — princely 
 in point of intrinsic value, more princely in 
 point of educational value to the people, and 
 absolutely priceless. 
 
 The library has a reading-room which will 
 accommodate 600 persons, there is also a 
 student's room, ladies' reading room, and a 
 room for references to larger and more 
 valuable works. In connection with the 
 library, there is a lecture room in which is 
 held a school of science, and also free courses 
 of lecture on art and literature. The school 
 has just entered on its fifteenth term. 
 
 There is also, in connection with these, a 
 museum department, entered by the great 
 hall of statuary. Here are to be seen some 
 very fine specimens of the art — statutes of 
 Aeschius, the Greek orator, and Minerva, &c. 
 
 It is a splendid hall, of magnificent dimen- 
 sions and elaborate decorations. Here is 
 Jennie Deans, and yonder Venus, Cupid, 
 Spring, Aberon and Titania, Eve at the 
 Fountain, the Fighting Gladiator, Apollo
 
 MORE ABOUT LIVERPOOL. 221 
 
 Bevedere, Venus De Medici, etc., to the end 
 of a very long list. 
 
 Bewildering in their multiplicity and beauty,, 
 as you turn to leave for the museum, the 
 Graces Flora and Ceres smile at you, while 
 Venus and Hercules, by Canova, bid you stay. 
 Rare company these if they could only speak 
 to you, and tell you some of the thrilling tales 
 of their old classic life and times, tales that 
 would make your blood run cold with horror 
 and thrill again with the warm flush of life. 
 
 On the stairway you will see two very fine 
 pictures — the Crucifixion, by Hilton, and the 
 Death of Nelson, by Drummond, both cele- 
 brated paintings, and justly so, for they are 
 meritorious. 
 
 Now we are in the museum, shall we take 
 the galleries first ? Well, here is the bird 
 room, and here are representatives, possibly, 
 of the whole earth — birds of prey, with bill 
 and claw for tearing and striking, wings for 
 swooping and carrying, from the eagle to the 
 insect hawk, how plainly they carry the 
 insignia of their trade and nature ; you would 
 know them at a glance.
 
 222 MORE ABOUT LIVERPOOL. 
 
 They resemble their human prototypes. 
 You wouldn't expect this crew to ape the dove, 
 any more than you would look for rabbits to 
 catch cats, or doves to hunt kids. 
 
 The footpad don't usually pray before he 
 puts the pistol to your head. Who will not 
 say that that is more agreeable than the 
 action of the sanctimonious hypocrite who 
 does pray while he is appropriating your 
 securities or making away with your wallet. 
 
 It makes us wish that there were either less 
 praying, or more of a separating of the trades, 
 and oraying for saints, and stealing for foot- 
 pads exclusively. 
 
 Here is the heron for fishing, the condor 
 from South America for land grabbing — of 
 deer, goat or pig. Here is the hawk of hooked 
 beak and piercing eyes, that takes us back to 
 the days of bluff King Hall and good Queen 
 Bess, when hawking was a hunting science 
 and a sport. 
 
 Here is the eagle, that by associatian makes 
 us home-sick, the fish-hawk, and the owls ; 
 wise old birds are they, blinking at the day- 
 light, and thinking it devised only for their 
 annoyance. With eyes and ears as large as a 
 cat, to see in the dark, and see in a storm.
 
 MORE ABOUT LIVERPOOL. 223 
 
 Here are the thrush, hoopoes, honey-eaters, 
 warblers, fly catchers, creepers — after insects. 
 Mocking bird, butcher bird, the umbrella bird 
 •of Brazil, birds of paradise, starlings, finches, 
 nightingale, lark, whip-poor-will, etc., etc. 
 Here they are, you can spend a week in the 
 six bird rooms. 
 
 Then here are the snakes which always 
 make the ladies say, oh ! large, small, beau- 
 tiful, fascinating, horrid, every one bearing 
 the look of the tradition of Eden in their 
 basilisk eyes and wriggling forms, and provoking 
 the old feeling of aversion and enmity "between 
 thy seed and the seed of the woman." 
 
 Here are the fishes, too, from the sea-louse 
 no larger than your, finger, to the sturgeon and 
 porpoise, and the whale big as a ship. 
 
 Here are electric eels who can discharge 
 their shocks so as to kill fishes, and often even 
 to disable horses and men. Gen. Garibaldi 
 nearly fell a victim to these creatures while 
 crossing a stream. 
 
 And the sword-fish, known to pierce the 
 timber of vessels with their bony sword to the 
 thickness of a foot. Woe to the enemy that 
 dare attack it in its element and provoke its
 
 224 MORE ABOUT LIVERPOOL. 
 
 ire — man is nowhere, and the shark, and even 
 the whale, dread and fear it. 
 
 Here are tigers, hyenas, zebras, opossoms, 
 wolves, foxes, and animals of almost every 
 species. 
 
 But here we are to the end, and not half 
 through with our description. 
 
 Leaving the Museum, we take a bus, and 
 ride down to Great Charlotte Street, and stop 
 at St. John's Market, an immense structure 
 over six hundred feet long, and nearly two 
 hundred feet wide, and perhaps forty feet high; 
 it is a vast open space inside, the roof being 
 supported by a forest of iron pillars. 
 
 The whole interior circuit of its walls is 
 occupied as shops, and the balance of interior 
 is cut up into plots, in which are placed stands, 
 tables, etc. Here all the good things of life 
 are to be found in the edible line. 
 
 It is singular to note how immense is the 
 consumption of a city population. What 
 enormous stores of provisions come and go, 
 always on the move, brought in at one end, 
 carried out at the other to return no more. 
 
 It is also interesting to note the laws of caste. 
 Its selections obtain attention as powerfully
 
 MORE ABOUT LIVERPOOL. 225 
 
 here in the prosaic matters of pork and bacon, 
 as in the nobler classes of animal and vegetable 
 existence. The laternal avenues are occupied 
 by pork dealers, butchers, and dealers in game, 
 butter, bacon, cheese, rabbits, poultry, then 
 come flowers, always in this association. 
 
 The central avenues present glorious dis- 
 plays of the various English and foreign fruits, 
 then come greens, vegetables, provisions, &c. 
 The north end has shell-fish, oysters, mussels, 
 cockles, &c. Then comes the fish market 
 proper, the shops fitted up with marble slabs, 
 with lowest edge to customer, and fresh sprays 
 of water playing on the fish, the water being 
 conducted to the sewer by iron pipes ; the 
 building is handsomely lighted, by day by 
 over two hundred windows, and at night by 
 acres of gas jets, and flaring oil lamps on the 
 stands ; the whole floor is paved with stone. 
 
 It is a very interesting sight to stand here 
 and watch the continuous bustle of business. 
 Acres and acres of edibles. Liverpool is justly 
 proud of her market, with its cleanliness, the 
 neat stands, the pretty faces of the market 
 girls, or the ruddy ones of the matron sales- 
 women and the rugged ones of the marketmen.
 
 226 MORE ABOUT LIVERPOOL. 
 
 Here is character in richest profusion. The 
 glum old housekeeper, the rheumatic old gent 
 in spectacles, the bustling tradesman, the 
 young housekeeper, the pretty-faced serving 
 maid, all come to buy the best piece at the 
 lowest price, all are in a hurry, and you can 
 imagine the bustle. The most independent 
 people in the world are these market people. 
 
 " If you don't buy somebody else will ; take 
 it or leave it at 3d. and 6d. or go further and 
 fare worse," are irresistible arguments. 
 
 On our way let us run in to Reynolds' State 
 Room, and see the kings and queens and 
 nobles that at this moment are congregated 
 there. 
 
 You pass into a noble building through a 
 long vestibule handsomely lighted by a double 
 row of noble-looking men holding lights. If 
 you are young and a lady, look out that you 
 do not lose your heart as you go by these 
 manly-looking young fellows who light you in. 
 By the number of people going in and out, 
 there must be a levee going on to-day — now 
 put on your best ; you are going to stand 
 before kings.
 
 MORE ABOUT LIVERPOOL. 227 
 
 You are ushered into a grand hall. Here 
 in all their royal apparel, and of noble port, 
 are kings, queens, emperors, nobles, and ones 
 of every grade in life. About 3,000 of them. 
 
 Why, they are all wax. You laugh — yes, 
 those young fellows you looked so shyly at in 
 the vestibule are all wax ; provoking, yes ; 
 but now that you are here go down in the magic 
 caves on the lower floor, and see mermaids, 
 witches, giants, wizards, fairies, and all sorts 
 of wonders, splendors, and curiosities ; next to 
 Madame Tussaud's famous exhibition in 
 London, this is the finest in the kingdom — 
 hundreds of thousands of pounds are here 
 invested. 
 
 Let us go over to the school and church for 
 the blind, St. Mary's, where there are from 
 300 to 500 children educated. 
 
 The pupils are taught reading by raised 
 letters, and can read as deftly and rapidly as 
 my readers can ; music is an especially 
 favourite pastime with them, and many 
 attain to great efficiency on the piano, flute, 
 etc.; and all other useful branches of educa- 
 tion are taught. They are also taught 
 the various branches of handicraft, and the
 
 228 MORE ABOUT LIVERPOOL. 
 
 result of their skill is seen in the goods 
 exhibited for sale of both a useful and 
 ornamental character, and from which a 
 revenue is secured to the church and school. 
 
 The church adjoining, and connected with 
 it, is a splendid specimen of pure Grecian 
 architecture, said to be a faithful copy of the 
 Temple of Jupiter, in the island of yEgina, a 
 very early Grecian style. The church is very 
 large and usually full ; the musical parts of 
 the services are furnished by the blind pupils, 
 and are very pathetic. 
 
 There is a beautiful and appropriate painting 
 in the south end of the church, by Hilton, of 
 " Christ giving sight to the blind." 
 
 There is in this church a handsome cenotaph 
 to the memory of Pudsey Danson, who lost 
 his knighthood through absence of mind or 
 nervous excitement, for when kneeling in the 
 presence of his Majesty, George IV., he was 
 asked his name, and replied ; Mr. Danson ;" 
 the king said, " rise, Mr. Danson," but he 
 retained his manhood, so his loss was 
 endurable. 
 
 Let us go over to the orphan asylum ; in 
 Myrtle Street you will find this noble institu-
 
 MORE ABOUT LIVERPOOL. 229 
 
 tion, built through the munificence and 
 perseverance mainly of Harwood Banner, and 
 receives all Protestant children within a radius 
 of seven miles from Liverpool. 
 
 There are fine dormitories, splendid dining 
 rooms, and drawing rooms, a magnificent play 
 ground, and a handsome church between the 
 boys' and girls' homes. There is accommo- 
 dation for 150 infants between the ages of two 
 and eight, and the same in the boys' home. 
 They are kindly treated, well educated, and 
 when of proper age the boys are apprenticed, 
 and the girls articled. It is a noble and 
 splendid offering to humanity. 
 
 The school of the deaf and dumb is near. 
 It is both a pay and charity institution. The 
 poor are admitted as day pupils, and given 
 their dinner. 
 
 It is both curious and instructive to note 
 how fingers and signs are made to take the 
 places of ears and tongue, and what wonderful 
 facilities nature has for turning its unused 
 forces into other organs. Some of these 
 pupils will commit and recite by signs Homer's 
 Iliad almost within the time it would take you 
 to slowly read it.
 
 23O MORE ABOUT LIVERPOOL. 
 
 Let us go down on the docks, just below 
 Wellington Road. We come across the 
 bridge, and reach the Herculaneum Graving 
 Dock. Here is a basin and Hydraulic tower, 
 and it will receive six ships at once. It would 
 take a week to do the docks. From this, for 
 five miles to the north, stretch one complete 
 procession of docks, piers, and quays. 
 
 Then there are the New Brighton Docks, 
 the Eastham Docks, and Brunswick Docks. 
 The Herculaneum Dock employs a thousand 
 men. The Queen's docks are for cotton, corn, 
 and dyewoods. 
 
 Here are Wapping Warehouses for the 
 tobacco trade, and the trade is almost restricted 
 to this place. Their annual rental to govern- 
 ment is .£4,000. Then there is Salthouse Dock 
 for the salt trade, and the Albert Dock and 
 warehouses, costing half a million pounds. 
 Custom House Dock, holding the massive, 
 majestic buildings of the government, beneath 
 it are vast vaults for goods in bond. Next to 
 it is George's Dock, and passing it we come 
 to Prince's Dock and export shed. Here is a 
 long vista of vessels alongside the quay, lashed 
 together with planks, reaching far ahead.
 
 MORE ABOUT LIVERPOOL. 23I 
 
 There multitudes of goods are shipped — all 
 kinds of hardware, railway supplies, iron in all 
 shapes, of all kinds and sizes, sheet, bar, wire, 
 springs, etc.; bales, boxes, casks, goods, wines, 
 spirits, ales, for India, Madagascar, Asia, 
 Persia, the continent, and America. 
 
 Thousands of men are here measuring 
 packages, invoicing goods, shipping merchan- 
 dise ; the tramp of horses, song of stevedores, 
 and shouts of sailors, make a very Babel of 
 industry. At the south end the same busy 
 scene of discharging cargoes is enacted. 
 Wheat rice, hides, Indian corn, cotton, dye- 
 woods, raw sugars, etc., until you are amazed 
 at the wealth and resources of a single city. 
 
 When you come to add city to city, and 
 nation to nation, where all the time something 
 similar is going on, the intellect is confounded. 
 
 We have reached our hotel once more, and 
 our wanderings in Liverpool must terminate. 

 
 
 % gassing §lmpt at Jonimnt. 
 
 ijjKgFOW, reader, put on your seven league 
 ( lp|f books and take a look at the city of 
 cities lying there in its pride and shame — in 
 its joys and sorrows. 
 
 We will start down by the Bank of England, 
 a magnificent structure ; opposite is the Royal 
 Exchange, and on the outer side of the square 
 formed by the junction of Cornhill, Lombard, 
 and Threadneedle Streets, stands the Mansion 
 House ; down Cornhill we go to King William 
 Street, and so over to Gracechurch Street. 
 On, still on, passing St. Paul's through West 
 End and across the Holborn Viaduct. What 
 queer little buildings for stores, shops, and 
 lodgings. What massive and noble ones just 
 beside. We then come to Fleet Street, the 
 main street from St. Paul's to West End. 
 This is the literary street, and has been for 
 years as full of literary associations, as it is 
 of newspaper and printing offices.
 
 A PASSING GLIMPSE AT LONDON. 233 
 
 It is very much to London what Printing 
 House Square is to New York, with its old 
 traditions of Greeley, Bennett, Raymond, and 
 others ; editors, writers, poets, novelists, etc., 
 gather round here, and have for generations. 
 I will try and fish out some of these. 
 
 Over there by Temple Bar, one of the gates 
 of the old walled London of the past, used to 
 stand " The Devil " — not his Satanic majesty, 
 but a tavern by that name — and it was a 
 favourite hostelry of Ben Jonson. Just above, 
 at the "Mitre Court," Dr. Johnson, Goldsmith, 
 and Boswell held frequent rendezvous. Here 
 at the "Cock" Browning and Keats used to 
 sit, and sometimes Shelley and Wordsworth 
 with them ; Johnson lived, fought, wrought, 
 struggled, suffered, triumphed, and died right 
 here. 
 
 In these courts that run out either side, 
 William Cobbett and Ferguson, the astrono- 
 mers lived. Dryden and Richardson both 
 lived in Salisbury Court ; Steel and Ashmole 
 in Shire Lane ; Izaak Walton a little way up 
 Chancery Lane. In the confectionery shop 
 nearly opposite, Pope and Warburton first 
 met.
 
 234 A PASSING GLIMPSE AT LONDON. 
 
 D'Ewes, Cromwell, Drayton, and Conley,. 
 the poet, all lived in this street. Here St. 
 Bride's Church stands, that up to within a 
 few years had two wooden giants in front of" 
 its bells, that struck the hours with clubs, a 
 duty they still perform in the gardens of the 
 Marquis of Hertford, in the Regent's Park. 
 
 North of Fleet Street are the Inns of Court, 
 where the lawyers swarm. Temple Bar — 
 recently removed to Hyde Park — bound the 
 city limits on the west end of Fleet Street, 
 and was built by Wren in 1672, and consisted 
 of one large gate and two smaller ones on 
 either side. 
 
 Here the old custom was to place the heads 
 of decapitated criminals, after being boiled in 
 pitch, exposed on iron pikes on the top of the 
 Bar ; and Walpole tells of a speculator on 
 Fleet Street who used to let out spy-glasses 
 at a penny a peep to passers by, when the 
 heads of the hapless Jacobites were exposed. 
 That's the way they used to treat loyalty and 
 called it treason. 
 
 Treason is no particular thing — it is simply 
 opposing the " powers that be," or in despotic 
 countries continuing to have friendship for the
 
 A PASSING GLIMPSE AT LONDON. 235 
 
 powers which have been ; if you did that, off 
 went your head, and they stuck it on a pike- 
 staff, and set it up on Temple Bar. 
 
 But we could keep you all day gossiping; 
 let us skip on, or we shall not see as much as 
 we wish. Let us go up the Strand — called 
 so because it is a street lying along the banks 
 of the river ; the continuation of what should 
 be Fleet Street after you pass Temple Bar. 
 Right outside the Bar stood the old Strand 
 Maypole. When that stood this was a country 
 road, and fields lay on either side. The good 
 old days are gone for ever, when the mansions 
 of the nobles used to stand and mark the 
 spot now known as Essex, Norfolk, Surrey, 
 Salisbury, Buckingham, and Northumberland 
 streets. 
 
 Here to the left is Somerset House, a vast 
 
 range of government offices, King's College, 
 
 and to the East Waterloo Bridge ; the east 
 
 side is bounded by the theatres — everything 
 
 goes in groups in London ; here are Drury 
 
 Lane, Covent Garden, Olympic, Charing 
 
 Cross, Queen, Globe, and Strand Theatres ; 
 
 Exeter Hall is close by ; over the way St. 
 
 Martin's Church, and Waterman's Grave 
 Yard.
 
 236 A PASSING GLIMPSE AT LONDON. 
 
 Jack Sheppard, that celebrated cracksman, 
 was hanged and buried here in 1724. Here is 
 where Charing Cross once stood, put up by 
 Edward I. to the memory of his Queen 
 Eleanor ; that extravagant monarch put up a 
 •cross wherever her bier rested. South of us 
 in sight are Whitehall, Palace of Westminster, 
 and to the north, Whitehall, where they used 
 to play an old French game like our croquet, 
 call Paille Maille, and from which the place 
 takes its name. 
 
 Further on to the north we come out in 
 Trafalgar Square, that holds Nelson's lofty 
 statue with Landseer's four noble lions 
 couchant around it. Also the statues of 
 George IV., Sir Chas. Napier and Sir Henry 
 Havelock, and an equestrian statue of George 
 III. Two deep wells supply the fountains with 
 water, one of which is 400 feet deep. Going 
 south we come to the houses of Parliament 
 — Westminster Abbey, Duke of Buccleuch 
 Palace and Westminster Bridge. Going on 
 a mile further we come to Piccadilly Street, 
 and go into Upper Regent Street where are 
 whole blocks of splendid shops, the most 
 noble of all London.
 
 A PASSING GLIMPSE AT LONDON. 237 
 
 In busy times of the day the sight here is 
 magnificent, and stirring in the extreme. 
 Brilliant equipages and vast masses of the 
 more stylish and aristocratic people of London 
 throng the streets. 
 
 Going west we get into London's most 
 fashionable quarters. Here are St. James, 
 Hanover, Berkley, Grosvenor, Cavendish, 
 Manchester and Portman Squares, all taking 
 names from the owners of the magnificent 
 mansions that line every side of these squares. 
 North-east is the older fashionable quarter. 
 Park Lane, May Fair and Tyburnia, built on 
 old Tyburn, the place of public executions. 
 Beyond are extensive rows of suburban villas, 
 the favourite place of residence for city mer- 
 chants and wealthy persons. 
 
 In going back north we come to Paddington, 
 and pass the once famous old burial ground at 
 Bunhill fields, where is Bunyan's tomb, the 
 Chapel of City Road where John Wesley 
 preached. 
 
 Further on we pass St. James Palace, used 
 principally for court displays and the Queen's 
 levees. Buckingham Palace standsat west end 
 of the Mall, and is said to have cost £y, 000,000.
 
 238 A PASSING GLIMPSE AT LONDON. 
 
 Next is Marlborough House, the residence of 
 the Prince and Princess of Wales. Then 
 Kensington Palace, and Lambert Palace and 
 the Tower. 
 
 We pass on to the British Museum, said to 
 have cost ^1,000,000. The library and read- 
 ing-room is a stupendous place, under a 
 magnificent dome of an incredible span ; it 
 has 800,000 volumes, and increasing enor- 
 mously every year. You can spend days, aye, 
 weeks here ; every famous antique and unique 
 object abounds, every part is filled to over- 
 flowing, and still the stream pours in. It is 
 one of the many |great white elephants 
 England has got on her hands. 
 
 In Trafalgar Square are the National and 
 Royal Academies of Art, and in each you 
 could spend another week. But, like the 
 Wandering Jew, we must still go on. 
 
 We come next to the colleges — London 
 University in Piccadilly, University College 
 in Tower Street, free, and frequented by Jews, 
 Parsees, and Hindoos, King's College, 
 Hasking, Wesleyan, Gresham, and a host of 
 others are grouped around. Here, close by, 
 are the Mint, Custom House, and Post Office,
 
 A PASSING GLIMPSE AT LONDON. 239 
 
 banks, insurance offices, and courts without 
 end, and all magnificent structures. 
 
 London bewilders, tires, inspires, disgusts, 
 pleases and exhausts you. If you had the 
 wings of a bird and the mind of a Bacon you 
 might, in a hundred years, be able to under- 
 stand and know London pretty well. 
 
 Her zoological and horticultural gardens 
 are places of interest. Deer, lions, tigers, 
 animals from all the old world. Birds, 
 serpents, and monkeys throng its cages and 
 stalls. Everybody goes to the zoological 
 gardens who come to London. Here you 
 find London, upper London, lower London, 
 and all London between, from the prince to 
 the beggar ; all extremes meet at the zoo. 
 
 It is very funny to take notes, and compare 
 human nature with animals. Here you will 
 see a man with a face like one of those lions, 
 and another like those apes. Here you will 
 see a woman with a feline purring that strongly 
 suggests her kinship with some of those wild 
 cat-like beasts in yonder cages ; soft, graceful, 
 and springy, yet cruel, treacherous, and blood- 
 thirsty as they.
 
 24O A PASSING GLIMPSE AT LONDON. 
 
 Go to Madame Tussaud's and Jarley's wax 
 work performances when you can. If you are 
 not deceived, then I will be ; you will sit 
 down on a bench to rest along side of a pretty, 
 modest looking lady, wipe away the perspira- 
 tion, and in a friendly way talk on, hoping to 
 dissipate her bashfulness. When suddenly 
 you will start up, feel queer — get mad at the 
 people who stand laughing at you, and dis- 
 cover you have been talking for half-an-hour 
 to a lump of wax. Exeunt Omnes.
 
 St. paul's, &k Wenrark, aub jsjjuirjcorr. 
 
 J^ATHER a queer combination, one would 
 *J1\; say, after reading the heading of this 
 sketch. For nothing could be more diamet- 
 rically opposed — fire and water could not. 
 Night and day could not. You cannot 
 imagine anything so different — so distinct 
 from each other than the two antipodes of 
 London evangelical life as St. Paul's and the 
 Tabernacle — for they do indeed mark those 
 imaginary places called poles — on the north 
 and south side of dogmatism. 
 
 If you go down Newgate Street to the West 
 End, a turning to the right gives you access 
 to the once celebrated Smithfield and St. 
 John's Gate. South-west of Cheapside, near 
 Paternoster Row, stands St. Paul's Cathedral, 
 the first and greatest of all landmarks of 
 London. In the immediate vicinity of St. 
 Paul's the names of many streets and lanes 
 give token that its influence is felt in a large 
 radius.
 
 242 st. paul's, the tabernacle, 
 
 Paternoster Row, Amen Corner, Ave Maria 
 Lane, Creed Lane, Godliman Street, &c. St. 
 Paul's is the most prominent object in the 
 metropolis. Its lofty dome is seen for miles 
 around, and the church stands in the centre 
 of an enclosed churchyard at the head of 
 Ludgate Hill. A church is said to have 
 existed here four hundred years before the 
 Norman conquest, and under various shapes 
 and extensions it remained till destroyed by 
 the great fire of London in 1666. An entirely 
 new edifice was erected then in its stead, 
 under the direction of the fertile genius of 
 Christopher Wren. It is said by Macaulay to 
 be one of the noblest of Protestant temples. 
 It was first opened in 1697, for divine service, 
 on an occasion of wide-spread joy over the end 
 of the long war between England and France 
 and Ireland, when the French king assisting 
 James II., who had landed there waged war 
 with William and Mary of England. 
 
 The king, William III., publicly entered 
 London, and proclaimed the 2nd of December 
 as a day of thanksgiving for peace. 
 
 The chapter of St. Paul's resolved that on 
 that day their new cathedral, which had been
 
 AND SPURGEON. 243 
 
 long slowly arising on the ruins of a succession 
 of pagan and christian temples, should be 
 opened for public worship. The king 
 announced his intention of being present. On 
 it being represented to him that three hundred 
 thousand people would assemble to see him 
 pass, and all the parish churches of London 
 would be left empty, he changed his mind, 
 and attended his own chapel at Whitehall, 
 and heard Burnett preach. 
 
 At St. Paul's there was all the splendour 
 and magnificence of state. The magistrates 
 of the city appeared in state. The bishop 
 preached, speaking of the debt of gratitude 
 they owed heaven for permitting the erection 
 of such a splendid building, and thus effacing 
 the last traces of the great fire, and assembling 
 once more for prayer and praise after so many 
 years on a spot, consecrated by the devo- 
 tions of thirty generations. It was not finished, 
 however, until 1710, one architect and one 
 master mason having been engaged on it for 
 35 years. It is built in the form of a cross, 
 514 feet long, 286 feet in breadth, and 360 
 feet high. Two hundred tons of iron railing 
 were used, and it cost £1,511,202.
 
 244 ST - PAULS, THE TABERNACLE, 
 
 Outwardly it is weather-beaten and dark ; 
 there are three porticos at as many entrances 
 on three sides of the church. The front is a 
 magnificently pillared temple, with two hand- 
 some bell towers, besides the domes, higher 
 than other church steeples. On entering you 
 are impressed with the vastness of the internal 
 space. The inner dome is covered with 
 paintings from the life of St. Paul, by Sir 
 James Thornhill. 
 
 In various parts of the cathedral are statues 
 and monuments of John Howard, Dr. Johnson, 
 Bishop Heber, Nelson, Cornwallis, Aber- 
 crombie, Sir John Moore, and others. Here 
 is the tomb of Nelson, in the crypt, also 
 Wellington, Wren, Collingwood, and many 
 other eminent men. 
 
 Service is held twice a day on the Sabbath, 
 and three times on week-days. Several times 
 in the year service is performed under the 
 dome on Sunday evenings by gaslight, where 
 an additional organ has been put up. 
 
 The appearance of the dome at these times, 
 with the soft light shed around it, is extremely 
 beautiful, and the congregation then assembled 
 fairly enormous. __ From its balcony you can
 
 AND SPURGEON. 245 
 
 see the whole of London with the country 
 beyond, and the Thames winding in and out 
 between dense masses of houses. There are 
 the Whispering Gallery at the bottom of the 
 dome, where the slightest whisper can be heard 
 from side to side ; the two Golden Galleries ; 
 the Ball and Cross reached by 600 steps ; the 
 clock-work, and Great Bell. The pendulum 
 of the clock measures fourteen feet, and the 
 pendulum itself weighs one hundred pounds. 
 The great bell, which is only tolled when a 
 member of the royal family dies, is on the 
 southern turret ; it weighs 9,000 pounds. 
 
 Its magnificent tones, mighty, deep, fine, 
 on which the hours are struck, sweep solemnly 
 in a quiet evening across the Metropolis, and 
 are heard distinctly by families at their fire- 
 sides far out in the suburbs. It is a magnifi- 
 cent structure, grand, imposing, and massive. 
 
 Let us now skip over to the Tabernacle — 
 for everybody who comes to London goes to 
 hear Mr. Spurgeon, at least once. His pulpit 
 performances are something so very wonderful, 
 his congregations are so immense, that bare 
 curiosity would be sufficient to take one to the 
 Surrey side of the Thames. It is quite a step
 
 246 st. Paul's, the tabernacle, 
 
 from London city— the usual stopping-place 
 of travellers, and especially Americans — to 
 the mammoth building in which Mr. Spurgeon 
 preaches. It stands in that part of the city 
 known as Newington Butts, near the 
 " Elephant and Castle," and it will be well for 
 you to take a cab, and if you want to stand 
 well with " cabby," you must give him some- 
 thing more than the usual fare of sixpence for 
 all trips under a mile. 
 
 You will be put down at the door of the 
 church, and a stranger will accost you with a 
 ticket for a good seat, and ask you to remember 
 the "orphanage," a neat way of purchasing 
 a reserved seat. You enter a spacious building, 
 oblong in shape, with galleries running entirely 
 around it. It is built of Kentish rag, a stone 
 much used in England. It is 208 feet long, 
 and 106 feet wide; the height of ceiling 89 
 feet, and cost about £30,000. The main floor 
 and two galleries will accommodate 7,000 
 people, and are always filled. The singing is 
 led by a precentor, and the people sing. In 
 most churches the choir sings and the people 
 hang on. Here the choir numbers near about 
 7,000. While the people sing some simple,
 
 AND SPURGEON. 247 
 
 earnest song, Mr. Spurgeon enters. He moves 
 deliberately, and as you can see him and the 
 pulpit from any part of the building, you have 
 plenty of time to scan him. 
 
 He is a thick-set and noticeably ungainly 
 man, now more clumsy and awkward in his 
 movements as he is afflicted with the gout, 
 and if you are near enough you can see a 
 pallor in his face indicative of suffering, and 
 that his days of robust health are over. But 
 his face wins you ; there is an expression of 
 refinement, genius, and simple unaffected 
 tender earnestness, which seizes upon you at 
 once, and when he speaks you forget to criticise; 
 ashamed of the spirit, and begin to worship ; 
 his voice thrills, melts, and rouses you ; now 
 it rings like a trumpet — now it weeps like a 
 harp, then it sweeps like a tempest — his 
 pleading pathos is resistless ; there is an 
 eager, wistful expression of those great, large, 
 loving eyes that search you through, and make 
 him one of the most effective of speakers. 
 
 You can't resist him ; there is no attempt 
 at oratory — yet it is the sublimest mastery of 
 speech you ever heard, plain, homely, direct, 
 earnest, really talking not at you but to you
 
 248 st. paul's, the tabernacle, 
 
 - — you feel that you are meant, and you don't 
 resist — with a tenderness and reverence which 
 are inimitable, and by his quick and earnest 
 turns he puts common or familiar incidents in 
 new and flashing lights that completely sur- 
 prise and master you. 
 
 Tt is plainly seen what are his two favorite 
 books — the Bible and the book of human 
 nature. Now he turns a glowing, triumphant 
 page, and now a tragic, tear-blurred leaf of 
 human life ; tenderly seamed, gently and 
 faithfully spelled out and learned by heart. 
 
 Mr. Spurgeon speaks — he don't preach, he 
 talks. Some one asked him where he got his 
 sermons from. 
 
 " Everywhere," said the great preacher ; in 
 the fields and shops. I shall get one out of 
 you before I leave you." 
 
 He abominates this mouthing, mincing 
 oratory, and here is how he hits it off. In a 
 lecture to his students he was castigating this 
 "dawdling Dundrearyish method," and he 
 tells this story : 
 
 " A reverend fop was once mincing out his 
 sermon in the little genteel chip — chip — chip 
 of a chaffinch, when two sailors who sat in the
 
 AND SPURGEON. 249 
 
 church exchanged significant smiles, and one 
 said 'he thought the feller had swallowed a 
 dumpling,' but the other whispered : ' No, 
 Jack, he ain't swallowed un ; he's got un in 
 his mouth a wobblin,' and so he goes for 'chip,' 
 'lisp,' 'wobbling," 'pomposity,' etc." 
 
 He speaks out " like a man" who aches to 
 speak some comforting, helpful, saving words 
 to the vast throngs before him. 
 
 If you ever hear Mr. Spurgeon, contrast 
 the stately sepulchral grandeur of St. Paul's 
 with the simple richness and sweetness of 
 humanity. 
 
 Go and see one of the greatest temples of 
 human creation, and then go and hear the 
 greatest living preacher of the world, and you 
 will vote with me, that before all and above all 
 stands this helpful, loving, earnest man, full 
 of good works, accomplishing grander results 
 in the span of a single generation than St. 
 Paul's, the massive and gloomy, though it 
 stands for a thousand years.
 
 % Wmi to gerlro. 
 
 AM off again. This time to the town of 
 g|> Derby, the capital of Derbyshire, situ- 
 ated in the southern part of the county, in the 
 wide and fertile valley of the Derwent. It is 
 a large manufacturing town of great activity 
 and wealth, and is well situated for manufacture 
 and trade, being at the south end of a vast 
 coal field, and connected by canals and rail- 
 ways with the greater part of England. 
 
 It has many historical connections with 
 different periods of time, and different spheres 
 of actions. Military, literary, mechanical, 
 scientific, and religious. 
 
 The scene around is everywhere varied and 
 full of beauty. Rich boquets of woods dotting 
 the spaces, swelling fields and rolling plains, 
 green sward, and black heather, interspersed 
 with bilberry, and other shrubs, are richly 
 sprinkled with rare tones of coloring from the 
 rising or setting sun. 
 
 Derby is also the place where the last 
 martyr was burned — poor, helpless Jane Waste.
 
 A VISIT TO DERBY. 25I 
 
 Young — but twenty-two — and blind ! Thank 
 God, her blood quenched the lapping flames 
 of persecution and religious hate ; and increas- 
 ing toleration soon made useless and vacant, 
 scaffold, axe and cell, torch and stake. 
 
 Here is also the old Free English Grammar 
 School, one of the oldest English institutions, 
 reaching back to 1162. Here Blackwell, 
 author of the " Sacred Classics," was a 
 master, and Flamsteed was a pupil. Here 
 the first astronomer royal of England studied 
 the stars, calculated eclipses, and first devoted 
 himself to astronomical pursuits. Here, also, 
 Dr. Darwin founded his philosophical society, 
 and wrote most of his works ; and perhaps 
 here the modern theory of development lay in 
 the germ, that was reserved for his grandson, 
 Charles — that living naturalist of the highest 
 eminence — to develop, and that has wrought 
 such changes in biology, and kindred sciences. 
 
 Derby has manufactories of cotton, lace, 
 hosiery, lead, iron, paints, porcelain, jewelry, 
 black marble vases, and other articles of vertu, 
 and, last of all, silk. The first silk factory 
 was started here. The first mill for throwing 
 silk was introduced into Derby, from Italy,
 
 252 A VISIT TO DERBY. 
 
 early in the eighteenth century, being the first 
 and largest of the kind in England. 
 
 It is also connected, in a very ancient way, 
 with antiquity. Derby seems to have been 
 the Roman station Derventio, which stood on 
 the opposite bank of the river from the present 
 town. Gold, silver, and brass Roman coins 
 have been found here, as well as Roman 
 pavement, and the foundations of a Roman 
 bridge over the river Derwent. 
 
 Derby was called Northworthige by the 
 Saxons, and Deoraby by the Danes. It was 
 given by the Conqueror to William Peverell, 
 who obtained the privilege of dyeing cloth, 
 from Edward the Third. 
 
 Here the Quaker was born — where Justice 
 Brent first called George Fox a Quaker, and 
 where Jedediah Strutt invented the ribbed 
 stocking frame. Reasons enough, these, I 
 think, for calling your attention to Derby. 
 
 There is to me still another reason for 
 remembering this place with emotions of 
 shame, surprise, gratitude, and joy. About 
 fifteen years ago, I passed through Derby 
 under vastly different auspices. Then I was 
 a broken, penniless, homeless stranger, a poor,
 
 A VISIT TO DERBY. 253 
 
 drunken wanderer, nobody caring for me, only 
 to avoid me ; not a passer-by turning his head 
 to look at the shiftless, dissipated, poorly clad, 
 and early ruined youth, that with shaking 
 nerves and unsteady step threaded its streets, 
 and offended the sight of heaven with his 
 degredation. Oh, the change that has suc- 
 ceeded to the shame of by-gone years ! Now 
 restored— with manhood rehabilitated, with 
 nerves steady and heart all right. I have 
 visited Derby once more, to be received and 
 honoured by its officers, trustees, and citizens. 
 Sunday, September 23rd, 1877, I preached 
 in Derby, in the largest church, which was 
 thronged long and long before the hour for 
 service to commence, hundreds going away ; 
 the whole town seemed stirred to hear the 
 once unknown, degraded man. We were duly 
 humbled ; it seemed to us like a dream, and 
 expected a rude waking. It was a fitting 
 thing to do where I had sinned so shamefully, 
 and perhaps pulled others after me into the 
 mire, to stand and confess my reformation 
 and redemption, and tell the thronging multi- 
 tude that it was not I that did it, but that " I 
 met" another "in the way," who drew me
 
 254 A VISIT TO DERBY. 
 
 after him, and that I could not help but speak, 
 and sing his praise. 
 
 Derby is one of those places where a life 
 has had its history gauged ; where a soul has 
 touched its lowest descent and reached its 
 highest point ; where, swinging down and out 
 about the circuit of a few brief years, it comes 
 in by the guiding of a hand unseen once more, 
 this time making an ascending course, which I 
 hope, and you hope, will never — never once 
 deflect again, or ever cease. 
 
 HOWITT AND SON, STEAM PRINTERS, NOTTINGHAM.
 
 '1 
 
 \\
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 380 302 o