No irksome restraints were put upon the boys, and there were no visitors who came to give them temperance lectures or unwelcome advice; no boy was asked to read book or paper, and no one was told how much better for him was coffee than beer. This, each one found out for himself, in the best way—by experience.
Every evening, before it was time for the boys to begin to come, Alice would run down to see that everything was right, that the fire was bright, the coffee ready, and Mrs. Hart in her place. Then she would open the bookcase, select three or four of the most interesting looking books, and lay them around on the tables, in a careless way, as if they were accidentally left there.
Nor did she let people forget about it. As often as once a week, she went to the houses of those most interested, and received from one the weekly papers that had been read, from another a fresh book or magazine, and from a third some new game or a pretty print to put on the wall.
Coffee and the things to put in it, Alice had no need to ask for. The two cents a cup proved to be more than enough to pay for it.
Promptly at half-past nine Mrs. Hart gathered up the things and washed the cups and saucers, and as the clock struck ten she put out the lights and locked the door.
Books and papers did their silent work, and before spring the young men grew ashamed of owing their comforts to charity, so they agreed among themselves to pay a small sum weekly toward expenses. It was not binding on any one, but nearly every one was glad to do it, and by this means, before another winter, the coffee-room was an independent establishment.
The power it was among those boys could not be told, till years afterwards, when it was found that nearly every one who had spent his evenings there had become a sober, honest citizen, while those who preferred the saloon, filled drunkards’ graves, or lived criminals, and a pest upon society.
On Jack himself, the effect was perhaps the most striking. As Alice had started the thing, he could not help feeling it his business to see that the boys had a good time, and also, to keep order among them. Mrs. Hart soon found that he was a sort of special policeman, always ready to settle difficulties, and make the boys behave themselves if necessary—which it seldom was.
Feeling the responsibility of his position and influence, brought out in him a manliness of character he had never before shown, and when he became a man in years, no one could have the slightest fear that Jack Rawson would ever follow in the downward steps of his father. And all this he owed to the fact that Alice tried what one girl could do.
It is Shakespeare who says,—