John Habberton

“ Esther looked at him, first furtively, then tenderly; then she sprang to his side and leaned upon his shoulder, saying,
“Dear Fred, I know you could never be that way; but then all these women were sure they knew just the same about their lovers, before they were married.”
“Well, Ettie,” said Fred, passing an arm about the young lady, “I really don’t know what’s to be done about it, if drinking moderately is the cause of all these dreadful things; I’m bound to be somebody; I’m in the set of men that make money; they like me, and I understand them. ”

“ The faculty which the busiest of young men have for finding time in which to present themselves, well clothed and unbusiness-like, to at least one young woman, is as remarkable and admirable as it is inexplicable. The evenings which did not find Fred in Parson Wedgewell’s parlor were few indeed, and if, when he was with Esther, he did not talk quite as sentimentally as he had done in the earlier days of his engagement, and if he talked business very frequently, the change did not seem distasteful to the lady herself. ”

“ I’ve made up my mind, that hurrahing and singing for temperance will make a hypocrite out of a saint, if he don’t use money and effort at the same time. I like a good song and a good time as much as anybody, but I can’t learn of a single drinking man that they have reformed. At our last meeting there was some good work started, by the use of songs and speeches, and you have learned, from the report just presented, how much lasting good they did. Money and work have done the business, my friends; talk has helped, but alone by itself it’s done precious little. ”

“ What is a fellow to do?”
“Go into some other set, I suppose,” said Esther very soberly.
“You don’t know what you’re saying, my dear girl,” said Fred. “What else is there for a man to do in a dead-and-alive place like Barton? you don’t want to be the wife of a four-hundred-dollar clerk, and live in part of a common little house, do you?”
“Yes,” said Esther, showing her lover a rapturous face whose attractiveness was not marred by a suspicion of shyness. “I do, if Fred Macdonald is to be my husband.” ”

“ The Excellence had just put her nose against the bank, and the clerk at the warehouse was tired of wondering why Fred Macdonald, on the opposite bank, was shouting so impatiently to the ferryman, and why an old man in a canoe should be coming down the river at the rate of fifty-paddle strokes per minute, when he saw Parson Wedgewell, coatless, hatless, with open shirt, disordered hair, and face covered with dirt deposited just after an unlucky stumble, come flying along the road, closely followed by Tom Adams, who was lashing his horses furiously. ”

“ But when Lawyer Bottom, who had invested in mill stock only with the hope of profit, approached the deacon, and asked, with more curiosity than malice, “How about temperance now, deacon?” the facial contortions which the deacon offered in reply sent the lawyer away in an ecstasy of unholy glee, which almost eradicated his own sense of loss, and which dispelled for a time such little belief as he had in the transforming power of religion. But what is one man’s poison is another’s food. ”

“ Mrs. Crayme was having such a pleasant time at Nellie Wainright’s party the other night, when her husband, who she seldom enough has a chance to take into society with her, said such silly things and stared around with such an odd look in his eye that she made some excuse to take him home. And Nellie Wainright—she was my particular friend before she was married, you know—was here a few days ago, and I was telling her how happy I was, when suddenly she threw both arms around my neck and burst out crying, and told me that she hoped that my husband would never drink after I was married. ”

“ Now that he had reformed, his success in reforming boys was simply remarkable—so much so that Parson Wedgewell began to tremble over the thought that Bunley, by the present results of the experience of his sinful days, might demonstrate, beyond the hope of refutation, the dreadful proposition that it was better that a man should be a sinner in his youth, so as to know how to be a saint when he became old. ”

“ BUSINESS vs. PHILANTHROPY.
On the morning after the meeting the happiest man in all Barton was the Reverend Jonas Wedgewell. He had been one of the first to agitate the subject of a grand temperance demonstration; in fact, he had, while preaching the funeral sermon of a young man who had been drowned while drunk, prophesied that the sad event which had on that occasion drawn his hearers together would give a mighty impetus to the temperance movement; then like a sensible, matter-of-fact prophet, he exerted himself to the uttermost that his prophecy might be fulfilled. ”

“ Tom Adams, driver of the brick-yard wagon, and signer of one of the pledges circulated at the great temperance meeting, was certainly a man worth saving. He had a wife and was rich in children. His wife was faithful, good-natured, and industrious, and his children were of that bright, irrepressible nature which is about the most valuable of inheritances in this land where other inheritances do not average largely in money value. For the good of such a group it was very desirable that the head of the family should be in the constant possession of strong arms and all his wits. ”

“ The four pastors shook hands enthusiastically with each other; while, in response to deafening cheers, the heroic Crupp himself was thrust upon the platform, where, with a trembling voice and a pale though determined face, he reaffirmed his decision. Old Parson Fish hobbled to the front of the pulpit, straightened his bent back until his mien had at once some of the lamb and the lion about it, and, raising his right hand authoritatively, started the doxology, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow,” in which he was devoutly and uproariously joined by the whole assemblage. ”

“ It takes all kinds of men to make a world, parson, or to make men act like men to their neighbors. Perhaps if you preachers come down on rich men who hoard their money, and poor men that are about as stingy with how-d’ye-do’s, and if business men show the public that it’s as cheap to reform a pauper as it is to support him, and that it isn’t the thing to stand by, while a man’s killing himself, without sayin’ a word or spendin’ a cent to prevent him—perhaps we can be of some use in the world. ”

“ Reformers want to be older men, better men, men like your father, for instance, if people are to listen to them.”
“Father says they need to be men who understand [136] the nature of those they are talking to,” replied Esther; “and you once told me that you understood Moshier and Crayme perfectly.”
“But just think of what they are, Ettie,” pleaded Fred. “Moshier is a contractor, and Crayme’s a steamboat captain; such men never reform, though they always are good fellows. Why, if I were to speak to either of them on the subject, they’d laugh in my face, or curse me. ”

“ Great was the excitement in Barton and the tributary country when it was announced that the mill needed no more money, and that, consequently, no more stock would be issued. In that mysterious [87] way in which such things always happen, the secret escaped, and encountered every one, that his new position would prevent Fred Macdonald from drinking; non-stockholders had then the additional grievance that they had been deprived of taking any part in an enterprise for the good of a fellow-man, and all because the rich men of the village saw money in it. ”

“ As Tappelmine could say nothing to controvert this proposition, he continued to look sullen, and Father Baguss, finding the silence insupportably annoying, said rather more than he had intended to say. There are natures which, while containing [127] noble qualities, are most awkward expositors of themselves, and that of Baguss was one of this sort. Such people are given to action which is open to criticism on every side; yet, in spite of their awkwardnesses, they find in their weakness the source of whatever strength they discover themselves to be possessed of. ”

“ The Squire did not enjoy the tone in which Crupp’s remark was delivered; but before he could reason with the new reformer, the Reverend Timotheus Brown dashed into the fray in defense of a beloved idea, which the rival pastor had seemed covertly to assail.
“The reason such natures aren’t divinely guided,” said he, in a voice which suggested nutmeg-graters to the acute sensibilities of Parson Wedgewell, “is that they don’t implicitly submit themselves to the Divine will.”
“A man can do nothing unless the Spirit draw him,” said Parson Wedgewell valiantly. ”

“ Such men sometimes help themselves out of their trouble, and stick to cold water; but the man that does it is more of a hero, and he’s got better stuff in him, than any other sort of sinner that ever repents. He’s got to be helped just like drowning men have to be, and you’ve got to take hold of him just as you do of a drowning man, by whatever part you can get the tightest grip on. Bunley’s pride’s the only handle you can find on him, and you can’t get at that except by showing that you think enough of him to sink money in him. ”

“ As Sam Crayme strode toward the body of the town, his business instincts took strong hold of his sentiments, in the manner natural alike to saints and sinners, and he laid a plan of operations against whiskey which was characterized by the apparent recklessness but actual prudence which makes for glory in steamboat captains, as it does in army commanders. ”

“ These they found among “the boys,” and harder work no reformer ever laid out for himself. The ingenuity, the persistence, the determined brutality of some of the boys, the logical acuteness displayed in varied fits of deception, only stimulated the old man to greater industry, and slowly, after hard work, often after work that seemed more like hard fighting, but yet surely, Parson Brown reformed one after another of several hard cases. ”

“ The late sympathizers of Father Baguss saw the joke, and laughed with unkind energy, upon which the good old man straightened himself and exclaimed,
“The children of the kingdom have to earn their daily bread, I reckon; manna don’t fall nowadays like it used to do for the chosen people.”
“Exactly,” said Crupp, “and them that ain’t chosen people don’t pick up their dinners without working for them either, without getting into jail for it. ”

“ Honestly, Fred, I’ve kept a sharp eye on you for two or three months, and I am right glad you can let whiskey alone. I’ve seen times when I wished I were in your boots; but steamboats can’t be run without liquor, however it may be with woolen mills.”
“That’s all nonsense,” said Fred. “You get trade because you run your boat on time, charge fair prices, and deliver your freight in good order. Who gives you business because you drink and treat?” ”

“ Jonas Wedgewell. The pastor was discovered through an open window at his matutinal repast, and the eager Crupp thrust his head in the window and shouted,
“First blood, parson! Old Jones has hired Tom for a year, and he’s only got ten hours a day to work.”
The holy man raised his hands, despite the incumbrances of half a biscuit and a coffee cup, and exclaimed,
“Bless the Lord for the first fruits of the seed so newly sown. Who would have thought so undemonstrative a man would have been the first to heed the word of exhortation?” ”

“ Tom’s a good, square, honest fellow, and he loves his family, but I don’t see how he’s going to stop drinking. He can’t work without it; leastways, he can’t work along the way he’s working now. Deacon Jones ought to give him easier work to do until he can bring himself around; but Deacon Jones won’t waste his money in that way, if he is a member of your church. Then there’s old Bunley: there isn’t anything to him. He’s been drinking and drinking and drinking this forty year, he says, and yet he was well brought up, and he can’t keep himself from going to church every Sunday. ”

“ A few men in our midst have recognized their duty and have done it, or are doing it; most of them, among them him who addresses you, have learned that the beginning is the hardest part of the work, and that the laborer receives his hire, though never in the way in which he expects it. Much remains to be done, not only in raising the fallen, but in reforming the upright; and, to get a full and fair view of the latter, there is no way so successful as to go to work for others.”
Squire Tomple announced that the meeting was still open for remarks ”

“ The mail-stage did not make its appearance at the usual hour on the day following Crupp’s conversation with Father Baguss, and during a lull in the desultory conversation which prevailed among those who were waiting for the mail, the postmaster displayed at his window his large, round face, devoid of its habitual jolly smile, and remarked,
“Too bad about Wainright, isn’t it?”
“What’s that?” asked half a dozen at once.
The postmaster looked infinitely more important all in a second. It is but seldom in this world that a man can tell a bit of news to an assembled crowd ”

“ To the parson’s surprise, Crupp who—though he had during the winter surprised every one by joining Parson Wedgewell’s church, in spite of a very severe course of questioning by the Examining Committee—was still a man of action and a contemner of mere words—Crupp not only failed to oppose such a meeting, but volunteered himself to write for Major Ben Bailey, the gifted orator who had addressed the earlier meeting, and to pay the orator’s expenses. ”