JOHN B. GOUGH.
O one who ever heard this great natural orator of the Temperance cause can forget the impression he made. It was not simply “a voice crying,” it was a whole man speaking, out of his very life, and every part of him contributed something to the effect. His face, his hands, his body, all joined together with his voice to give expression to his thoughts. Without education, with no elocutionary training, he was, nevertheless, an orator of the first rank, for he knew how to play on all the keys of human nature, and he moved all classes of listeners. He was born in England in 1817. Having lost his father at the age of twelve, he came to America to make his way. He was at first successful, but later troubles heaped up on him, and he drifted into a life of hopeless dissipation. He made a wretched living by going from one drinking house to another, singing songs and giving comic impersonations. He tried to get on the stage, for which he had a passion, but his dissolute life made such a career impossible. In 1839 he married, and tried to work, but his old habits were too strong for him, and a few years later he lost his wife and child and sank into a woeful condition. He used to describe how, in the delirium which came upon him at this period, the tools with which he tried to work became serpents and crawled in his hands. In 1842, when at the lowest point of dissipation, he received some kindness from a Quaker, who induced him to sign the pledge. Once he broke it through the influence of old companions, but he immediately recovered control and made a public confession.
Possessed henceforth with a great desire to devote himself to the cause of Temperance, he started out at once as a lecturer and tramped from place to place, holding meetings and stirring his listeners with his eloquence, which was of an unusual sort.
During the first year of his travels he spoke 386 times on the one subject which lay at his heart. He possessed a remarkable power of imitation, and he could move the audience to bursts of laughter, or go down to the depths of pathos and draw tears from the hardest hearts. His power on the platform steadily increased and he soon had a national reputation.
Ten years after his change of life, he was invited to visit England in the interests of Temperance Reform, and his first lecture in Exeter Hall produced a sensation. The call for lectures came from all the cities, and he spent two years in that country.
No event of his life showed his power more clearly than did his address at Oxford, where his voice was at first drowned by the hisses and cat-calls of the students. He, however, held his own and conquered his audience and came through triumphantly, so that at a subsequent visit at Oxford he was received with distinction. He addressed over 5,000 audiences during the first seventeen years of his lecture travels, and he always succeeded in carrying deep conviction. He was not a constructive reformer, but he used all his powers to reform individuals by reaching their consciences and wills. In this work he was eminently successful. Later in his life he also lectured on other subjects, and became one of the most popular attractions for lyceums. He always chose subjects which would give full scope for his powers of eloquence, and he was almost certain to touch upon his great life-theme. His most frequent lectures were on “Eloquence and Orators” and “Peculiar People,” and he never failed to give a fund of anecdotes, told with rare skill and imitation.
He lived for years at West Boylston, Massachusetts, and as he prospered through his lecture-work he gathered books about him and lived a joyous, happy life, writing and talking with his many friends.
His published works (some of which have been translated into French, Dutch, Scandinavian and Tamil) are “Autobiography” (1846); “Orations” (1854); “Temperance Addresses” (1870); “Temperance Lectures” (1879), and “Sunlight and Shadow; or, Gleanings from My Life-Work” (1880).