“May I ask how you obtained an education to enable you to write your book, seeing you left your home at an early age?”
“Did you go directly to the Sailors’ Haven from the sea?”
“Do you think it just the thing to place pool and billiards in a seaman’s mission, and allow the sailors to fill God’s house with tobacco smoke?”
I did intend to write to this good soul and answer her questions, but before I could find time to settle down to such a task other letters reached me. Some asked similar questions about myself, others wanted to know about my work, two requested me to tell them the whereabouts of their sons—prodigals who were among the swine. And another letter in the form of a circular desired me to ascertain if I could give some light on the baptism of William Kinge, who embarked at Weymouth in Dorsetshire, for America in 1635-6.
I will now take up the first three questions of my first letter. The answer to the fourth question regarding the use of pool and billiard tables in a seaman’s mission and allowing the men to smoke, to do justice to it, should be an article by itself.
I will say it was not the words of the hymn which appealed to me and convicted me of sin. One of my father’s favorite songs was “Annie Laurie.” If on that Sunday afternoon those young temperance workers had sung that old Scotch melody it would have stirred me as much and perhaps more than did the gospel hymn.
Seated in front of the singers that Sabbath day it was not the words, but the associations that hymn had with my boyhood days which made me desirous of changing my course of living. As I heard these young women my mind was filled with thoughts of home and loved ones; a longing to be the man my mother would have wanted me to be took possession of me; it entered my soul and permeated my whole being. During my travels I had heard many hymns sung, I had met religious men, but they made no impression on me. They may have done so in time. These young women singing this particular hymn brought to my mind recollections of a Christian home and fond parents. I will frankly say that on that afternoon no thoughts of a hereafter or of God entered my mind.
Among that gathering of women there was one who was so situated that it did not embarrass her homelife to have me visit her. When on liberty I was made welcome in her home. My birthday was on May first. She wanted to have me read the scriptures and so took advantage of the day to give me a handsome morocco-bound Bible, asking me to accept it as a birthday gift from her, remarking that she would like to have me mark with a pencil all the verses that interested me.
During this time, I was trying my best to overcome the ridicule of my shipmates. Some of them said in one month I would be as wild as ever; others, more generous, gave me six months to return to my old haunts; all were astonished and surprised to see that I had tacked ship. With my birthday gift in my hands, I seated myself on my ditty box on the port side of the gun deck, forward of the nine-inch gun, and opened the book. It was impossible for me then to receive any benefit from the reading. I had my pencil in hand to mark the verses, when some of the recruits leaned over the gun and began to quote, or rather misquote, scripture, asking me to find certain unheard of passages which I knew were not in the book. One man wanted me to find the story of the birth of Tom Bowline, declaring it was given in Holy Writ. Although exasperated, I held my peace, but locked my Bible in my ditty box and walked aft to the captain’s galley.
I knew in this small corner I would find help. Lewis, the captain’s cook, was there. Although colored, his intelligence and manliness were far ahead of many white men, and he had a kind heart. So on reaching his galley door I told him how some of the recruits had bothered me and how I longed to sail in and receive a thrashing or give one. “Look here, King,” he said, “don’t mind them, boy; they are jealous of you. They won’t do what’s right themselves and won’t let you. If you’d stand up there at the canteen and shout beer for the crowd, they would say you’re a fine fellow. They don’t want you to get ahead. Just don’t mind them, but keep right on as you’re going. Come to me any time and I will help you.”