CHAPTER V.

PHASES OF EXPERIENCE.

THE genial voice was hushed, but its spell rested on the crowd. No boisterous, clamorous hurrahs; but a murmur, as from subdued and thoughtful minds, and the cheers of approbation were just late enough and loud enough to drown the first few sentences of the report which the amiable Secretary read in a flurry. It was mainly financial; and as it seemed to be very satisfactory to the chairman, who hob-a-nobbed to keep time with the bowing reader, we may judge that it was all that we could have wished if we had been privileged to hear its details. More distinctly, however, the voice was heard announcing with a great degree of feeling, that Abraham Tinker, a reformed drunkard, would now address the meeting. There was a short interval, and those who did not know Abraham were framing to themselves miniatures of fancy, in which greatly predominated a pair of red sore eyes, a couple of wan, wasted cheeks, relieved by a pendulous purple nose, and shaded now and then by another couple of thin, shaky, crooked hands. But attention was painfully arrested by the ghost-like appearance of a man, cadaverous indeed, and, judging from his cough that sounded like "earth to earth" and "dust to dust," very far gone in decline; but placid and sweet, and full of that life which no consumption wastes, and the grave cannot hold. He was dressed in black, and yet he was known as a common mechanic. His eye was all intelligence and fire; it might be because he was drawing nearer to the Fountain Head of all intelligence and all life; for it was known that he was poor, and ignorant, and could hardly spell the truth he so much loved, from the page of Holy Writ. His speech was brief, and to the point.

"The doctor said I must not come. I came; I could not stay away, for I knew it would be the last time for me. The doctor said I munna speak. I have opened my mouth, and I will speak one word or two, for I canna hould my tongue. You look at me, you great fat men down there, and think, 'Well, if that's teetotal, give me beer.' But all that's

wrong. I will not say that beer made me waste and die; but I know right well it gave me many a shove down to death. I was born a wastril, so they tell me; but they need na tell me, for I know it all now, that I might have lived and been strongish for years if I had not drunk at all. If I had not come here three years ago, and the doctor told me then I mustn't, I should have heen in hell twelve months ago, and now, if I do die, it's all as one when,-I am ready, are you? No thanks to me; but to my faithful curate, who has cured my soul. Thanks to the good, good God that taught him how to do it. I have been a drunkard, and when I say this to a lot of moderates, I don't feel in a mind to blush; for, says I to myself, We are all going one road, all on the down line. I go express; they are cosy old fogies, and go parliamentary; but if I get to the end to-night, they may stop at every station if they like, but they'll not be a long way behind tomorrow. I am a reformed drunkard, blessed be God! Oh, my God, who would live a drunkard's sad bad life! Ob, my God, who would die a drunkard's death!"

But here the feeble candidate for heaven was made to feel that God had saved him from so horrible a fate, for he knew that he was dying now; and, faint and trembling, he gave place, and leaning on the arm that should have leaned on his, he went slowly home.

Another speaker was introduced to illustrate, as the Secretary said, another view of the one grand important principle. He was burly and muscular; but he squinted, and never combed his hair except with his nails, and was altogether too ruddy and full of animal health to do anything but eat, and plough, and sleep-but he was a show, a sort of great over-grown prize baby, who could not speak, but could display his parts in such a way as to constitute a very powerful argument to the mind of the weazel-shaped shortwinded weaver, who wondered how much a week the man had to keep all that flesh on his bones. He duly said, "Fayther used to have the gout, and he did so sweer and cuss and groan like, that one day he says, says he, 'Bill, never drink, lad, or thou'lt have gout as sure as th' art born-it runs i'th' blood.' And Oi never hev drunk, nor never mean to. Your humble servant, Bill Timmins:" and making a national-school bow in his best style, he went whence he came through a trap-door in the platform. Then the chairman rose- -like the sun, straight up-and with equal

cordiality and ceremony announced the esteemed curate of the ever-absent rector of the parish. The Rev. Henry Wilton was, in appearance, dress, and manner, just a gentleman. Not a pennyworth of starch either in his 'character or in his stock more than was comely and needful, and very little of what is now a days supposed to constitute an able clergyman-we mean waistcoat. From his joyous, candid face, you would hardly have guessed the profound piety of his enlightened mind, and the deep tenderness of heart which no unkindness, or folly, or even vice and infidelity could exhaust. His rector didn't live in those parts, so that Henry Wilton had very much of his own way,-except with the money he earned for his master-and a very good way most people thought it. One drawback he had-though he did not feel quite sure whether to regard it so or not -he could not make a platform speech. His reading of the Church offices was pathetic and sublime, and his neat little sermons were as eloquent and fluent as they were full of feeling and truth; again, in his unwearied ministry to the sick, the bereaved, the dying, he found the words of solace and of guidance readily and without effort; but, as he truly said, he could not make speeches. He said, after a few excuses and apologies :

"I am a tried upholder of the principles you profess, and I pray God I may never be induced to lay them aside; for, if I do, I know I may as well lay down the shepherd's crook which I love to bear. I would, however, respectfully and kindly urge you not to rest in the advantages which temperance gives for this world, but go on to possess the whole land-I ask you with great plainness, come to church: if you say, We go to chapel, good: but if you have not that excuse, I insist upon it, for your souls' sake, come to church. It won't save you, I know, neither will coming here to-night make a drunkard a teetotaller; but, both in the one case and in the other, it is the likeliest thing to do. I will do my best for you-it is not much, I know-but I am wholly yours; I go from this place to tend two dying beds, for I feel assured that one has gone out from us who will lie down to rise no more, and though he needs me not, he loves me as I him, for a common Saviour's sake; and I am summoned to another scene, not unlike, but yet more interesting, and, to me, more painful. The hours of your beloved founder are already numbered, and he is going fast to give account of you-you all-to God. I shall, if God prolongs my life, stand by the bed of many here when death comes.

What shall I have to say to you? I do not know; but this I tell you as a warning, that after all my experience, and notwithstanding the glorious fulness of the gospel for all who have sinned, I do not know, I have not yet found out, in what possible way I can bring any solid peace or comfort to the death of a drunken man. I pray God to teach me such words of comfort, if there be such, before some of you die : for, by all I see and hear, you will many of you greatly need them. But I must pause here, duty calls me away; I go to learn rather than to teach, to rejoice more than to weep. I wish you all good night, and the 'Friends of Home' God speed."

On the retirement of the worthy clergyman, the chairman rose as if to speak, and, with the permission of the audience, he offered a few supplementary remarks of a practical

nature:

"I omitted in my opening address a matter which I think of considerable, though not of paramount importance,-I refer to the habit and comfort of saving money which temperance induces. I would not for the world awaken in your bosoms the spirit of covetousness, which is idolatry, and of avarice, which is only less to be shunned than riotous living; but, at the same time, I hold it to be at best a piece of cant to run down the value of money, and absolute wickedness to discourage men from saving and increasing their worldly substance. Money will not unlock heaven's gate, neither will it necessarily secure for its possessors reputation, and respectability, and happiness; but most assuredly that money, be it much or little, which is accumulated by habitual self-denial, will go far to secure exemption from the ills of mortality, and to promote rational self-respect, as well as the good opinion of others for the man who is known to possess it. It is but a drunkard's dream that fills you with envy and hatred of the rich; awake from that dream, replace envy by ambition, and let resolve and perseverance dislodge sick fancies from your mind. It is not given to all men to amass great riches; but it is in the power of nearly all to say, 'What though my wages be scanty, when bread is reasonable, I can live and save, not much, but something; and I have property just as truly as the squire; as to how much, it's no business of his, and comparisons are odious.'—I feel sure that many amongst you must have wondered, and, I suspect, envied old Judson, the well-fed, hard-working, and meanly-clad pedlar, when you heard that he had died worth £6000; but what is the use of gossiping and wondering, or of envying either? Would it not be wiser to bethink yourselves, that this man was a workhouse boy, that he was taught no trade, which to you is almost as good as a large capital; that he was exposed to far severer privations than you have known; that he had no friends to bid him be of good heart, and to help him in his early way; that he cherished as a talisman of good fortune, to the last day of his death, the first sixpence he ever possessed, and on his bed of death, gave it, with his

blessing and his counsel and £6000 to his only remaining son? Try to recall the time when you met him in a public-house, unless it was just inside the door? Try, with less effort and better success, to remember him as he trudged by your side in the green hilly lanes of your county, sweating with his burden, but still chaffering and offering to trade, or winning his way to your heart, and thus to your purse, by sage counsels on his favourite theme, 'How to make Money', or gay stories of his own narrow but varied life; or the faltering voice which recited for your warning tales of poverty and shame that touched and wrung your heart. Had he indeed the long-sought secret? Could he change the flints to gold? Had he any secret which must be hid from you? Did he dream of all those bags of gold, and dig them at his leisure from their hiding-place? No, my friends, he began far lower down than any of you; but he placed the ladder firmly-when he put that sixpence safely by, and fasted till he got another; and he climbed with weariness, and yet with inward pleasure, round by round, until at last his strength and wisdom helped him up two steps at once. He knew no theories of total abstinence, but he felt its value, and many a time, when coaxed by beaming landlady to step in and take a little, 'just to warm him,' has he said, 'And wha'd be the fuil then, cannie body; bawbees is not blackberries, and I maun win on to the toon, for that deil Bauldry is sax mile a-head.'-He has gone. I know no more of him, I do not ask how far his money was a blessing to him; but I know it will be a blessing to the town in which you live, for his blessing has indeed fallen with his money to an active and generous man; and remember, not for your discouragement, but to moderate your expectations and teach you patience, that he laboured fifty years for his £6000. Supposing any of you, at the age of 21, is earning and spending £1 a week; that out of that, 4d. a day goes for beer, and

an

extra half-crown on Saturday night; then suppose you signed the pledge to-night-in the first place, you may take my word for it, that in a very few weeks you would earn more money, say 2s. 6d. a week advance; in the second place, make no change in your mode of life except such as will promote your health and love of home, -and, apart from accident or sickness (which of course would be a much lighter thing to you than if you had continued drinking), when you die in hale old age, such as Scripture almost promises to the sober man, your account, your money account, of life will stand thus (I will not reckon the most probable increase in your wages-I will not suppose any unusually profitable investment): you would leave behind you considerably above £2000. Or, if you are ambitious of owning a few cottages, you might, at the age of 50, possess half-a-dozen freehold houses, which would bring you in 50 guineas a year; or, in other words, enable you to leave off work and be a gentlemen without any diminution of the comforts previously supplied by hard work."