(sd) Benoni Johnson Sub Inspr. F.P.
" R.W. Sawyer Sergt
" S. Jenkins Coker Sergt
" Emanuel R. Palmer Sergt
A TEMPERANCE LEADER.
THE STORY OF JOSEPH LIVESEY.
The leader of the great temperance movement in England—Joseph
Livesey, of Preston—had a very bad start in life.
He was quite poor; he lost both father and mother from consumption when he reached his eighth year; he was frail and delicate; his brothers and sisters all died young; so that he seemed ill fitted to make any headway in the race of life.
His grandfather, who adopted him, failed in business; and Joseph Livesey commenced his career by doing the work of a domestic servant, as well as toiling at the loom.
"As we were too poor to keep a servant," he says, "and having no female help except to wash the clothes and occasionally clean up, I may be said to have been the housekeeper."
But, whilst he was weaving in the cellar where his grandfather and uncle also worked, he was at the same time gaining knowledge day by day.
When his pocket money of a penny a week was increased to threepence, he felt himself on the high road to wealth, and ere long he was the possessor of a Bible and a grammar, which he set himself to study whenever he could get a spare moment.
One can scarcely realise the difficulties that lay in the way of a studious boy in those days. A newspaper cost sevenpence; there were no national schools or Sunday schools, no penny publications, no penny postage, no railways, no gas, and no free libraries, and no free education! Yet so resolute was he in his desire for education that, though he was not even allowed a candle after the elders went to bed, he would sit up till late at night reading by the glow of the embers.