JOHN B. GOUGH.
O one who ever heard this great natural orator of the Temperance cause can forget the impression he made. It was not simply “a voice crying,” it was a whole man speaking, out of his very life, and every part of him contributed something to the effect. His face, his hands, his body, all joined together with his voice to give expression to his thoughts. Without education, with no elocutionary training, he was, nevertheless, an orator of the first rank, for he knew how to play on all the keys of human nature, and he moved all classes of listeners. He was born in England in 1817. Having lost his father at the age of twelve, he came to America to make his way. He was at first successful, but later troubles heaped up on him, and he drifted into a life of hopeless dissipation. He made a wretched living by going from one drinking house to another, singing songs and giving comic impersonations. He tried to get on the stage, for which he had a passion, but his dissolute life made such a career impossible. In 1839 he married, and tried to work, but his old habits were too strong for him, and a few years later he lost his wife and child and sank into a woeful condition. He used to describe how, in the delirium which came upon him at this period, the tools with which he tried to work became serpents and crawled in his hands. In 1842, when at the lowest point of dissipation, he received some kindness from a Quaker, who induced him to sign the pledge. Once he broke it through the influence of old companions, but he immediately recovered control and made a public confession.
Possessed henceforth with a great desire to devote himself to the cause of Temperance, he started out at once as a lecturer and tramped from place to place, holding meetings and stirring his listeners with his eloquence, which was of an unusual sort.
During the first year of his travels he spoke 386 times on the one subject which lay at his heart. He possessed a remarkable power of imitation, and he could move the audience to bursts of laughter, or go down to the depths of pathos and draw tears from the hardest hearts. His power on the platform steadily increased and he soon had a national reputation.
Ten years after his change of life, he was invited to visit England in the interests of Temperance Reform, and his first lecture in Exeter Hall produced a sensation. The call for lectures came from all the cities, and he spent two years in that country.
No event of his life showed his power more clearly than did his address at Oxford, where his voice was at first drowned by the hisses and cat-calls of the students. He, however, held his own and conquered his audience and came through triumphantly, so that at a subsequent visit at Oxford he was received with distinction. He addressed over 5,000 audiences during the first seventeen years of his lecture travels, and he always succeeded in carrying deep conviction. He was not a constructive reformer, but he used all his powers to reform individuals by reaching their consciences and wills. In this work he was eminently successful. Later in his life he also lectured on other subjects, and became one of the most popular attractions for lyceums. He always chose subjects which would give full scope for his powers of eloquence, and he was almost certain to touch upon his great life-theme. His most frequent lectures were on “Eloquence and Orators” and “Peculiar People,” and he never failed to give a fund of anecdotes, told with rare skill and imitation.
He lived for years at West Boylston, Massachusetts, and as he prospered through his lecture-work he gathered books about him and lived a joyous, happy life, writing and talking with his many friends.
His published works (some of which have been translated into French, Dutch, Scandinavian and Tamil) are “Autobiography” (1846); “Orations” (1854); “Temperance Addresses” (1870); “Temperance Lectures” (1879), and “Sunlight and Shadow; or, Gleanings from My Life-Work” (1880).
While lecturing at Frankford, Pennsylvania, February 18, 1886, he was stricken down with cerebral apoplexy and lapsed into unconsciousness, soon followed by death. He had just uttered the words “Young man, keep your record clean.”
WATER AND RUM.
The following apostrophe on Water and execration on Rum, by Mr. John B. Gough, was never published in full till after his death. He furnished it to a young friend many years ago, who promised not to publish it while he was on the lecture platform.
ATER! There is no poison in that cup; no fiendish spirit dwells beneath those crystal drops to lure you and me and all of us to ruin; no spectral shadows play upon its waveless surface; no widows’ groans or orphans’ tears rise to God from those placid fountains; misery, crime, wretchedness, woe, want, and rags come not within the hallowed precincts where cold water reigns supreme. Pure now as when it left its native heaven, giving vigor to our youth, strength to our manhood, and solace to our old age. Cold water is beautiful and bright and pure everywhere. In the moonlight fountains and the sunny rills; in the warbling brook and the giant river; in the deep tangled wildwood and the cataract’s spray; in the hand of beauty or on the lips of manhood—cold water is beautiful everywhere.
Rum! There is a poison in that cup. There is a serpent in that cup whose sting is madness and whose embrace is death. There dwells beneath that smiling surface a fiendish spirit which for centuries has been wandering over the earth, carrying on a war of desolation and destruction against mankind, blighting and mildewing the noblest affections of the heart, and corrupting with its foul breath the tide of human life and changing the glad, green earth into a lazar house. Gaze on it! But shudder as you gaze! Those sparkling drops are murder in disguise; so quiet now, yet widows’ groans and orphans’ tears and maniacs’ yells are in that cup. The worm that dieth not and the fire that is not quenched are in that cup.
Peace and hope and love and truth dwell not within that fiery circle where dwells that desolating monster which men call rum. Corrupt now as when it left its native hell, giving fire to the eye, madness to the brain, and ruin to the soul. Rum is vile and deadly and accursed everywhere. The poet would liken it in its fiery glow to the flames that flicker around the abode of the damned. The theologian would point you to the drunkard’s doom, while the historian would unfold the dark record of the past and point you to the fate of empires and kingdoms lured to ruin by the siren song of the tempter, and sleeping now in cold obscurity, the wrecks of what once were great, grand and glorious. Yes, rum is corrupt and vile and deadly, and accursed everywhere. Fit type and semblance of all earthly corruption!
Part II.
Base art thou yet, oh, Rum, as when the wise man warned us of thy power and bade us flee thy enchantment. Vile art thou yet as when thou first went forth on thy unholy mission—filling earth with desolation and madness, woe and anguish. Deadly art thou yet as when thy envenomed tooth first took fast hold on human hearts, and thy serpent tongue first drank up the warm life-blood of immortal souls. Accursed art thou yet as when the bones of thy first victim rotted in a damp grave, and its shriek echoed along the gloomy caverns of hell. Yes, thou infernal spirit of rum, through all past time hast thou been, as through all coming time thou shalt be, accursed everywhere.
In the fiery fountains of the still; in the seething bubbles of the caldron; in the kingly palace and the drunkard’s hovel; in the rich man’s cellar and the poor man’s closet; in the pestilential vapors of foul dens and in the blaze of gilded saloons; in the hand of beauty and on the lip of manhood, rum is vile and deadly and accursed everywhere.
Rum, we yield not to thy unhallowed influence, and together we have met to plan thy destruction. And by what new name shall we call thee, and to what shall we liken thee when we speak of thy attributes? Others may call thee child of perdition, the base-born progeny of sin and Satan, the murderer of mankind and the destroyer of immortal souls; but I will give thee a new name among men and crown thee with a new horror, and that new name shall be the sacramental cup of the Rum-Power, and I will say to all the sons and daughters of earth—Dash it down! And thou, Rum, shalt be my text in my pilgrimage among men, and not alone shalt my tongue utter it, but the groans of orphans in their agony and the cries of widows in their desolation shall proclaim it the enemy of home, the traducer of childhood, and the destroyer of manhood, and whose only antidote is the sacramental cup of temperance, cold water!
THE POWER OF HABIT.
(DESCRIPTIVE, SPIRITED AND DRAMATIC.)
REMEMBER once riding from Buffalo to the Niagara Falls. I said to a gentleman, “What river is that, sir?”
“That,” said he, “is Niagara river.”
“Well, it is a beautiful stream,” said I; “bright, and fair and glassy. How far off are the rapids?”
“Only a mile or two,” was the reply.
“Is it possible that only a mile from us we shall find the water in the turbulence which it must show near the Falls?”
“You will find it so, sir.” And so I found it; and the first sight of Niagara I shall never forget.
Now, launch your bark on that Niagara river; it is bright, smooth, beautiful, and glassy. There is a ripple at the bow; the silver wake you leave behind adds to your enjoyment. Down the stream you glide, oars, sails, and helm in proper trim, and you set out on your pleasure excursion.
Suddenly some one cries out from the bank, “Young men, ahoy!”
“What is it?”
“The rapids are below you!”
“Ha! ha! we have heard of the rapids; but we are not such fools as to get there. If we go too fast, then we shall up with the helm, and steer to the shore; we will set the mast in the socket, hoist the sail, and speed to the land. Then on, boys, don’t be alarmed, there is no danger.”
“Young men, ahoy there!”
“What is it?”
“The rapids are below you!”
“Ha! ha! we will laugh and quaff; all things delight us. What care we for the future! No man ever saw it. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. We will enjoy life while we may, we will catch pleasure as it flies. This is enjoyment; time enough to steer out of danger when we are sailing swiftly with the current.”
“Young men, ahoy!”
“What is it?”
“Beware! beware! The rapids are below you!”
“Now you see the water foaming all around. See how fast you pass that point! Up with the helm! Now turn! Pull hard! Quick! quick! quick! pull for your lives! pull till the blood starts from your nostrils, and the veins stand like whip-cords upon your brow! Set the mast in the socket! hoist the sail! Ah! ah! it is too late! Shrieking, howling, blaspheming, over they go.”
Thousands go over the rapids of intemperance every year, through the power of habit, crying all the while, “When I find out that it is injuring me, I will give it up!”
WHAT IS A MINORITY?
HAT is a minority? The chosen heroes of this earth have been in a minority. There is not a social, political, or religious privilege that you enjoy to-day that was not bought for you by the blood and tears and patient suffering of the minority. It is the minority that have vindicated humanity in every struggle. It is a minority that have stood in the van of every moral conflict, and achieved all that is noble in the history of the world. You will find that each generation has been always busy in gathering up the scattered ashes of the martyred heroes of the past, to deposit them in the golden urn of a nation’s history. Look at Scotland, where they are erecting monuments—to whom?—to the Covenanters. Ah, they were in a minority. Read their history, if you can, without the blood tingling to the tips of your fingers. These were in the minority, that, through blood, and tears, and bootings and scourgings—dying the waters with their blood, and staining the heather with their gore—fought the glorious battle of religious freedom. Minority! if a man stand up for the right, though the right be on the scaffold, while the wrong sits in the seat of government; if he stand for the right, though he eat, with the right and truth, a wretched crust; if he walk with obloquy and scorn in the by-lanes and streets, while the falsehood and wrong ruffle it in silken attire, let him remember that wherever the right and truth are there are always
“Troops of beautiful, tall angels”
gathered round him, and God Himself stands within the dim future, and keeps watch over His own! If a man stands for the right and the truth, though every man’s finger be pointed at him, though every woman’s lip be curled at him in scorn, he stands in a majority; for God and good angels are with him, and greater are they that are for him, than all they that be against him.
