“Ladies and gentlemen,” said he, “it’s the style in this town, and everywhere else, I suppose, to kick a man when he’s down, and then to trample on him. I know one man that’s been there, and knows all about it. ’Twas his own fault he got there, and there were plenty who told him he ought to get up; but how kicking and trampling were to help him do it he could never see, and he made up his mind, that folks did as they did because it suited them, not because it was going to do him any good. So he’s been hating the whole townful for years, and doing all the harm he could, not because he liked doing harm, but because he never got a chance to do anything else. Suddenly, a couple of gentlemen—I won’t mention names—came along, and gave the poor fellow a hand, and gave him the first chance he’s had in years to believe in human nature at all. And, all this time, everybody else around him was acting in the way that this same poor fellow would have acted himself, if he had wanted to play devil. The same couple of gentlemen went for a good many other people, and acted in a way that you read about in novels and the Bible (but mighty seldom see in town); and those fellows believe in these two gentlemen, now, but they hate all the rest of you like poison. I don’t suppose you like it, but truth is truth; you might as well know what it is.”
Several people got up and went out, carrying very red faces with them; but Fred Macdonald stood up and clapped his hands, and the Adams family and Wainright helped him, while the broad boots of Father Baguss raised a cloud of dust, which formed quite an aureole about Baguss himself as he got up and remarked:
“Brethren and sisters: Squire Tomple hit the nail exactly on the head when he said that hollerin’ an’ singin’ makes a hypocrite of a man if he don’t open his pocket-book. If you don’t believe it, remember me. If anybody ever liked his own more’n I did, he’s a curiosity. I don’t hate money a bit now, an’ I’m not goin’ to try to; but the hardest case I ever got acquainted with was me, Zedekiah Baguss, when I couldn’t dodge it any longer that I ought to spend money for a feller-critter. I won’t name no names, brethren an’ sisters; but if you’re huntin’ for any such game, don’t go to lookin’ up drunkards until you smell around near home fust.”
“Reputation be blowed higher than a kite!” exclaimed Captain Crayme, springing to his feet; “but I’ve got to say just a word here. Gentlemen, I’m off my whiskey, and I’m going to stay off; but I might be drinking yet, and have kept on forever, for all that any of you that’s so pious and temperate ever cared. But one man thought enough of me to come and talk to me—talk like a man, and not preach a sermon; more than that, he not only talked—which the biggest idiot here might have done just as well—but he stuck by me, and he brought me through. Any of you might have done it, but none of you cared enough for me, and yet I’m a business man, and I’ve got some property. How any poor fellow down in the mud is ever to get up again, in such a place, I don’t see; and yet Barton’s as good a town as I ever touch at.”
The interest of the meeting was departing, so were the attendants; but the Reverend Timotheus Brown limped forward and exclaimed:
“Hear, then, the conclusion of the whole matter: ‘Not every one that sayeth Lord, Lord, shall inherit the kingdom of heaven, but him that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.’ There has been a blessed change wrought in this town within a year, and work has done it all. He who taught us to say ‘Our Father,’ made of every man his brother’s keeper, and no amount of talk can undo what He did. 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; but, no one else availing themselves of the privilege offered, the evening closed with a spirited medley from the brass band. Not every one was silent and dismal, however; as the church emptied, Tomple, Bunley, Crupp, Wedgewell, Brown, and the other pastors came down from the platform, and were met at the foot of the steps by Baguss and Deacon Jones, and there was a general hand-shaking. Tom Adams stood afar off, looking curiously and wistfully at the party, noticing which, Parson Wedgewell danced excitedly up to him, and dragged him into the circle; there Tom received a greeting which somehow educated him, in two or three minutes, to a point far beyond any that his head or heart had previously reached. Then Fred Macdonald, who had intended to avoid any action which might seem to make him one of the “old fellows” of the village, suddenly lost his head in some manner which he could not explain, and hurried off, caught Sam Crayme’s arm, and destroyed such reputation as remained to the captain along the river, by bringing the enterprising navigator into such a circle as he had never entered before, but in which he soon found himself as much at home as if he had been born there. Others, too—not many in number, to be sure—but representing most of the soul Of the village, straggled timidly up to the group, and were informally admitted to what was not conventionally a love-feast, but approached nearer to one than any formal gathering could have done.
Barton has never since known a monster temperance meeting; but the few righteous men who dwell therein have proved to their own satisfaction, and that of certain one-time wretches, that, in a successful temperance movement, the reform must begin among those who never drink.