"Well then, if you have the mettle in you to stick to your book, which is hard work for a man of forty, I will spend an hour with you once or twice a week, and teach you."
The poor rough looked astonished, wriggled in a strange manner, and then gave expression to his feelings, by exclaiming, "If you does, master, when I gets into work I'll treat you to a day in the country."
His friend could but smile at this singular ebullition of grateful feeling, though he knew the force of its meaning. To men like him, pent up in the density of the mighty city, a day in the country is the greatest conceivable enjoyment, and to promise that showed that the man had a soul, and perhaps a latent taste for the beautiful.
As it was necessary that the teacher should know where the man lived, he went with him down one of those narrow, dirty streets, where the people live in comfort as regards thieves: as they have nothing to be robbed of, they allow their doors to remain open all night. The man entered one of these open doors, and ascended the stair-case, in thick darkness; his step was evidently known, as a woman came out of the back attic, holding in her hand a blacking bottle, in which was a piece of candle. All doubts as to her being his wife was set at rest, by the rough introducing his new acquaintance in the following elegant language, "'Ere Sarah, 'ere's a gent I've picked up in a beer shop." To the embarrassment of the dirty, ragged woman, the visitor entered the room; and a deplorable room it was,—a drunkard's home. The floor was dirty, without a piece of carpet, and several of the panes of glass were broken and pasted over with pieces of brown paper, greased to admit a little light. There was only one broken chair, and a sieve-basket, covered with a rusty tea-tray, formed another seat. The table was evidently the safest piece of goods, as the wife invited her visitor to take a seat upon it. There was no bedstead, but an accumulation of rags in one corner covered two dirty little children. The poor woman had that crushed and wretched expression of face so common among the wives of this class of men. A quarter of an hour's conversation set her at ease and secured her good-will. Before leaving, the visitor, who had taken his seat upon the table, opened his Bible and read, while the woman stood with her light in the blacking bottle on one side of him, and her brutal but now subdued husband upon the other.
A few evenings after, the Missionary, as arranged, entered the room with the spelling-book in his hand, to give the first lesson, and was glad to find the rough at home, and to return, with a pleasant smile, his gruff salutation of, "Thought as how you wasn't a-coming; but thank'ee, guv'nor, for doing on it." He then fairly seized the Primer, and repeated the alphabet so vigorously, that his intention of "being hedicated in no time" was evident, even if he had not said so. The book was left with him, and upon the next lesson-evening his wife told the teacher that "Bill had bin a A-ing, and B-ing, and B A-ing, ever since he com'd up there afore." Lesson succeeded lesson for many weeks, and though the task was distasteful to both parties, the rough got on exceedingly well, and at the end of three months he was able to read easy lesson books. From that time there was evidence of a change passing over the family. The understood rule of the London City Mission, that no visit be completed without the reading or repeating of some portion of Holy Scripture, had been observed, and as the result, much of that Word, the entering of which into the soul gives light, had been read to this poor man and his wife. There was a change in their home, for the teacher one evening noticed two new chairs and a piece of carpet; after this, several gaudy pictures and a fender were introduced, and then the rags were removed, and a punch and judy bedstead (a thing that turns up in the corner) set up in its place.
"You are getting on in the world," observed their friend one evening, as he glanced round the room.
The man looked unutterable things at his wife, and said, "Should think we are, sir; and I'll let the cat out of the bag, as they sayes: and this is that ere cat. Arter you had been a-readin' and a-'elpin' me one night I walks out, and as I passed the Tom and Jerry where I picked you up, some old pals says, 'Come in and have a little heavy wet!' and in I goes; and then we went into the tother corner, and I stood some gin, as with the tother got into my 'ed; and when I was turned out I seed a Peeler, and wolunteered to fight 'im. So he takes me by the choker and walks me along, and my old woman, as was looking for me, comes up and begged the Peeler not to trot me in, as makes a charge. So, bein' soft 'arted, he gived me to her; and when I got up 'ere I was sober like, and said I, I will be a Christian, like as the gent reads of, what eat pigs' wittles, and went back to his Father; and I'll be teetotal to-morrow. So in the morning I had a pen'orth of coffee at the total shop, and hopened my mind to the gal what brought it; and she told the guv'nor, and he brings a book, and I put a scratch in it, and I haven't had a drop of the public stuff never since; and we said we'd say nothin' to you till we had been teetotal a month, and it's more than that now."
The man was commended for his resolution, and when the lesson was over, the Book was opened and the parable of the Prodigal Son again read and more fully explained, and then the family altar was set up in that poor room, as the man with his wife and children knelt together in prayer.
Soon after this the man obtained employment in a timber yard, to empty sawdust from the pits, and his improvement, indeed his uprising in the social scale, became rapid. One evening his teacher took a very dear friend to see him,—the talented author of "Our Father's Care," and "Mother's Last Words." Reaching a Bible from the chest of drawers (for they had risen to that dignity), he said, "Do, mum, hear me read, as I does it well like. When I seed that gent in a beer bar I was a-goin' to smash at him, but he has learned me to read first rate." He then read the fifth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel; and as the lady afterwards remarked, "he read it well, as he seemed to feel the force of every word." After this he gave evidence of a renewed nature, and became a living proof that grace can change a rough into a quiet and peaceable man, and that it is possible to pluck bad men from among the ungodly, as brands from the everlasting burning.