While visiting this family the following circumstances occurred, which gave the Missionary influence with several licensed victuallers and their customers.
The potman at a very low public-house just by was taken seriously ill, and the landlord, upon hearing that a Christian man had visited another house, sent to inquire for him, and then wrote a note, asking him to call and see his man. The visit was paid, and was succeeded by others, until the young man recovered. The landlord and his wife were thankful for the attention paid, and upon each call asked him into their private room. This led to an intimacy so close that he was consulted both as to their religious and business difficulties: these can be best explained in their own words, as the visitor was seated with them one afternoon. "You see, sir," said the landlord, "that I can tell you anything, as you are not like the religious and teetotal sort of people who talk and write against us, but never call upon us, that they may understand our position. Now I don't want, and thousands in the trade don't want, to make or to serve drunkards. In our last house we lost nearly all the money my wife and I saved in a long service; but if I had pandered to vice, we might have been there now. While trying to make the house respectable, we lost 'takings' from the depraved and drunken, and, as the result, were not able to meet demands, and were obliged to leave and take this still lower class of business. The truth is, that publicans, as a respectable body of tradesmen, need sympathy and Christian influence, instead of abuse, which only worries and makes us, in self-defence, resist rather than assist in the necessary reforms; and then, as our trade is a temptation, we need religious influences in our families: but no clergyman has ever entered my house. I have gone wrongly, as I have taken to 'sipping,' but it's hard to bear up against the trials I have had to pass through." "When we married," added the wife, "we had £200, and felt that we should do well in this business; the Sunday trade has however made me wretched. During the fourteen years I was lady's maid I went to Church twice every Sunday; and from that happy life to serving behind a bar is a dreadful change. This is not needful except for two hours at meals, when the necessary article of consumption could be supplied; and then the rows in the tap are a constant misery to me, and I wish we were out of the business altogether."
"You have my deepest sympathy," said the Missionary, "and I will advise you as a true friend. Your constant drinking, landlord, must be stopped, or you will be brought to an early grave, with the curse pronounced against the drunkard resting heavily and for eternity upon you. As regards your wife, it is wrong to expose her to the misery which a woman of Christian feeling must endure in this class of house. My advice is, get out of it. You might save sufficient from the wreck to take a small general shop, and you could then get a connection as a waiter among your old acquaintances. The great matter in this difficulty, as in all our trials, is prayer: this you have both neglected. Inquire of the Lord, and He will direct you."
A fortnight after this conversation the landlord and Missionary met the agent of the firm to which the business belonged, and an equitable arrangement was made for giving up the house. Upon leaving the trade they took a small grocer's business, and became Church members, and prospered in their new calling.
Another publican, who was met with in this house, spoke strongly against the Sunday business.
"Grumbling is of little use in such matters," observed the visitor. "Act: get up a petition asking Parliament to close you entirely upon the Lord's-day, and request one of your Members to present it. A movement of this kind in the trade would be much to your own and to the public good."
"If sir," he replied, "you will write out the petition, I will sign it, and go round with you to other members of the trade, to obtain signatures."
The request was complied with, and forty licensed victuallers signed the petition for entire Sunday closing, and it was duly presented.
The arresting power of the Word of God was frequently witnessed in these gin bars. For instance: a woman one evening who entered the "Globe," and called for her first dram, was arrested by the reasoning of the missionary with some labourers. Approaching him, pewter measure in hand, she exclaimed, "You have no business here; go out, or I will throw this over you." The men pushed her away, but he said kindly, "Before you do so, let me say something to you out of this Book," and then, after a pause to find a suitable passage, he read distinctly, "Thus saith the Lord that made thee ... I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground. I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring." Only a few words of comment were uttered, when the woman placed the measure upon the bar, and raising her apron to her eyes, burst into tears, and left, exclaiming, "Oh that I was a little girl again!" She did not taste the gin, and was never after met in a bar. It was evident that an arrow of conviction had sped forth from the Word of God, but with her as with thousands of others, its ultimate effect was not known. Encouragement, this, for earnest labour and simple trust in the power and promised blessing upon the proclamation of God's mercy in Christ; yes, upon the utterance of every truth contained in His own inspired Word.
Opportunities frequently occurred for seeking the good of customers as well as landlords, and these led the Missionary to the conviction that the public-house is a very proper sphere for Missionary operations. The following is one instance. Upon passing a public-house in his district rather late one evening, the visitor noticed a woman near the door who had evidently been crying, and she had an infant in her arms. When he spoke to her she told him that her husband had just gone into the tap-room with all the money they had, and she was afraid to follow him, as he would knock her about if she did.