MR. KLINE'S TESTIMONY
On the evening of September 16, 1913, Mr. Kline, our Superintendent of the Gospel Mission, gave, in substance, the following:
“It is ten years ago to-night since God, for Christ's sake, forgave my sins. It was a day like this has been, a perfect day in September. I had become a confirmed drunkard, so that every waking moment I kept myself under the influence of whisky. I was a good workman, but I was conscious that my strength had gone. Three days before I had been attacked with a trembling which seemed like palsy. As I looked in the glass I saw the face of a dying man. The barkeeper saw it. He said, 'Kline, take a drink; you will shake to pieces.' It took four or five drinks to make my hand steady enough to work. Then the barkeeper said, 'Now you need work to bring you to strength. You may paper and fix up this bar-room.' I went to a paper house, selected my paper, and had the man make a bill four times what it should have been. The bill was paid and I went back to the paper store and got my rake-off. You see, I had become dishonest as well as a drunkard. I had been brought up in a Lutheran household in Harrisburg by a Christian aunt, who was a member of old Zion Lutheran Church.
“My mother had died in my infancy. I never saw her to remember her appearance; I never saw a likeness of her, a lock of hair or a garment which she had worn; but when dying she left a message with my aunt, a message which never left me, even when I was farthest from God. It was these words, 'Bring up my boy to meet me in heaven.' It was those words which really brought me back to my mother's God.
“When I quit work in that saloon that 16th day of September, 1903, I was all in. I saw my face in the mirror over the bar, and when I am dead I shall not be more colorless. The barkeeper filled my bottle, and instead of going, as usual, to my home in the southwest, I made my way up Four-and-a-half Street. I was simply impelled by an unseen force. Behind every tree I took a nip from the bottle, till I came to Pennsylvania Avenue. Then I knew I dared not drink where a policeman would see me; so, hardly knowing where I was or what I was doing, I staggered to the old bank corner at Seventh Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. They tell me I disturbed the meeting, but when they adjourned to the Mission Hall I followed weeping and crying, 'I shall not go out of this hall till I am dead or saved.'
“I have been told by Brothers Gordon and Wheeler that no drunkard we have ever seen disgrace himself in this mission ever behaved worse than I did. God gave them that night the grace of patience.
BOY SCOUTS
CAMP FIRE GIRLS