“Well, I don’t know,” began Jim, starting up, and plunging headlong into his address; “I don’t feel at all fit to stand up in such a company as this, and yet I’ve got summat to say, and it’s a good deal to the point too, I think. At our last public temperance meeting, the first I’d the pleasure of speaking at, we had a noisy set of fellows trying to put me down, and now we’re all as quiet as lambs.
“Well, William Foster’s just been giving you his experience about the Bible, and I can say amen to all he’s been a-saying; I mean this, that the good book’s been doing for him and me just what he says. It’s been and made a changed man of him, there’s no doubt about that. He’s been a kind friend to me, and he’s been a kind friend to many as has often had nothing but hard words for him. I like to see a man live up to what he professes.
“Perhaps you’ll say, ‘Jim, why don’t you set us an example?’ Well, I’m trying, and I hopes to do better by-and-by. But there’s no mistake about William. He aren’t like a chap I heard talk of the other day. A friend of mine were very much taken up with him.—‘Eh! You should hear him talk,’ he says. ‘You never heard a man talk like him; he’d talk a parrot dumb, he would.’—‘Very likely,’ says I; ‘but does he practise what he preaches?’—‘Why, they reckon not,’ says my friend. Now that sort don’t suit me; and it oughtn’t to suit any of us, I’m sure. We temperance people aren’t like that.
“Ah! It’s a fine thing is this temperance, if you only get hold of it by the Bible end. See what it’s been and done for me and mine. Look at my wife Polly there, sitting on that big stone—(Nay, Polly, ’tain’t no use your shaking your head and winking; I must have it out)—just look at her: you wouldn’t believe as she’s the same woman if you’d only seen her at our old house a year ago. I can scarce believe myself as she’s the same sometimes. I has to make her stand at the other end of the room now and then to get a long view of her, to be sure she’s the same. She’s like a new pin now, bright and clean, with the head fixed on in the right place.
“Ah! You may laugh, friends, but it’s nothing but the plain truth. There’s a deal of difference in pins. You just take up a new one, as shines all over like silver, and it’ll stand hard work, and it’s just as if it were all of a piece—that’s like my wife now. But you get hold of an old yaller crooked pin, with point bent down to scratch you, and when you try to make use of it, the head’s in the wrong place, it’s got slipped down, and the thick end of the pin runs into your finger, and makes you holler out—that’s like what my wife was. But she’s not a bit like that now; she’s like the new pin, bless her; and it’s been Tommy Tracks—I begs his pardon—it’s been Mr Thomas Bradly, and the Bible, and the temperance pledge as has been and gone and done it all.
“And then there’s the children. Why, they used to have scarce a whole suit of clothes between ’em, and that were made of nearly as many odd pieces and patches as there’s days in the year. And as for boots, why, when they’d got to go anywheres, one on ’em, on an errand, and wanted to look a bit respectable, he were forced to put on the only pair of boots as had got any soles to ’em, and that pair belonged to the middlemost, but they fitted the eldest middlin’ well, as they let in plenty of air at the toes. And what’s the case now? Why, on a Saturday night you can see a whole row of boots standing two and two by the cupboard door, and they shines so bright with blacking, the cat’s fit to wear herself out by setting up her back and spitting at her own likeness in ’em. It’s the gospel and temperance as has done this.
“But that ain’t all. I’ve knowed two of our lads fight over a dirty crust as they’d picked out of the gutter, for their mother hadn’t got nothing for them to eat,—how could she, poor thing, when the money had all gone down my throat? It’s very different now. We’ve good bread and butter too on our table every day, with an onion or two, or a red herring to give it a relish, and now and then a rasher of bacon, or a bit of fresh meat; and before so very long I’ve good hopes as we shall have a pig of our own. Eh! Won’t that be jolly for the children? I told ’em I thought of getting one soon. Says our little Tom, ‘Daddy, how do they make the pig into bacon?’ ‘They rub it with salt,’ says I. Next day, at dinner-time, I watched him put by a little salt into a small bag, and next day too, and so on for a week. So at last I says, ‘What’s that for, Tommy?’ ‘Daddy,’ says he, ‘I’m keeping it for the new pig. Eh! Won’t I rub it into him, and make bacon of him, as soon as he comes?’
“But I ax your pardon, friends, for telling you all this.—‘Go on,’ do you say? Well, I’ll go on just for a bit. So you see what a blessing the giving up the drink has been to me and my family. And, what’s better still, it’s left room for the gospel to enter. It couldn’t get in when the strong drink blocked up the road. I’m not going to boast; I should get a tumble, I know, if I did that. It ain’t no goodness of mine, I’m well aware of that. It’s the Lord’s doing, and his blessing on Thomas Bradly’s kindness and care for a poor, wretched, ruined sinner like me. But here’s the fact: we has the Bible out now every night in our house, and I reads some of the blessed book out loud, and then we all kneels us down and has a prayer; and we goes to church on Sundays, and it’s like a little heaven below. Rather different that from what it used to be on the Sabbath-day, when I were singing and drinking with a lot of fellows, and it were all good fellowship one minute, and perhaps a kick into the street or a black eye the next. Ay, and there’s many of the old lot as knows the change, and what the Lord’s done for me, and they’re very mad, some on ’em; but that don’t matter, so long as they don’t make a madman of me.
“But just a word or two for you boys and girls of the Band of Hope afore I sit down.—Now, I’ve brought with me, by Mr Bradly’s leave, something to show you.” So saying, he beckoned to a young man, who handed him a small basket. He opened it, and produced a small jar with a brush in it. A half-suppressed murmur of merriment ran through the crowd. “Ah! You know what this is, I see,” continued James Barnes. “’Tain’t the first time as this has made its appearance in Cricketty Hall. Now, I’m not going to say anything ill-natured about it. As William Foster has said, ‘let by-gones be by-gones.’ It’s very good of him to say so, and I only mean to give you a word or two on the subject. This little jar has got tar in it, and tar’s a very wholesome and useful thing in its proper place. Now, a few months ago them as shall be nameless meant to daub William all over with this, and feather him afterwards, because he wouldn’t break his pledge. A cowardly lot they was to deal so with one man against a dozen of ’em; but that’s neither here nor there. I only want you, boys and girls, to take example by William, and stick to your pledge through thick and thin. See how the Lord protected him, and how his worst enemy were caught in his own trap. He were just winding a cord round his own legs when he thought he’d got William’s feet fast in the snare. Now, boys and girls, when you’re tempted to break the pledge, just think of this jar of tar, and offer up a prayer to be kept firm. ’Twouldn’t be a bad thing—specially if you’re much in the way of temptation—just to get a jar like this of your own, and hang it up in the wash-house, and put some good fresh tar in it, and, just before you go to your work of a morning, take a good long sniff at the tar—it’s a fine healthy smell is tar—and maybe it’ll be a help to you the whole day. There, I’ve done.”
And he sat down as abruptly as he had risen, amid the hearty cheers and laughter of his hearers.