All these reformers were virtually working men, though most of them rose to positions of respect and affluence. Still the humility of the origin of the movement was long a source of contempt, and its members, within my own recollection, had the stigma of vulgarity almost in right of their convictions.
But God takes hands with good men's efforts, and the cause prospered just where it was most needed—among the operatives and "the common people." One of these latter, a hawker of fish, called Richard Turner, stood, in a very amusing and unexpected way, sponsor for the society. Richard was fluent of speech, and, if his language was the broadest patois, it was, nevertheless, of the most convincing character. He always spoke well, and, if authorized words failed him, readily coined what he needed. One night while making a very fervent speech, he said: "No half-way measures here. Nothing but the te-te total will do."
Mr. Livesey at once seized the word, and, rising, proposed it as the name of the society. The proposition was received with enthusiastic cheering, and these "root and branch" temperance men were thenceforward known as teetotalers. Richard remained all his life a sturdy advocate of the cause, and when he died, in 1846, I made one of the hundreds and thousands that crowded the streets of the beautiful town of Preston and followed him to his grave. The stone above it chronicles shortly his name and death, and the fact that he was the author of a word known now wherever Christianity and civilization are known.
MARGARET SINCLAIR'S SILENT MONEY.
"It was ma luck, Sinclair, an' I couldna win by it."
"Ha'vers! It was David Vedder's whiskey that turned ma boat tapsalteerie, Geordie Twatt."
"Thou had better blame Hacon; he turned the boat Widdershins an' what fule doesna ken that it is evil luck to go contrarie to the sun?"
"It is waur luck to have a drunken, superstitious pilot. Twatt, that Norse blood i' thy veins is o'er full o' freets. Fear God, an' mind thy wark, an' thou needna speir o' the sun what gate to turn the boat."