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Very truly yours,
James M. Hiatt.

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COPYRIGHT, 1878.
BY J. W. GOODSPEED.

MANUFACTURED BY
A. J. COX & CO.

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TO THE BOYS
WHO HAVE PUT THEIR HEELS ON THE HEAD OF THE SERPENT,
AND SOLEMNLY VOWED THAT,
BY THE GRACE OF GOD, THEY WILL BE
FREE MEN,
THIS WORK IS MOST AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED BY
THE AUTHOR.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS.

• PREFACE, 11
• INTRODUCTION, 13

LIFE OF LAFAYETTE HUGHES.

• CHAPTER I.—Preliminary Remarks—Birth and Parentage—The Victim of a Hereditary Appetite—Boyhood and its Surroundings—The Demon Bends the Twig—Early Education—Sent to Christian College, 17
• CHAPTER II.—College Career—Transmitted Habits Gain a Mastery Over Intellectual and Moral Appliances, 33
• CHAPTER III.—The Fearful Struggle—The War with Devils, 44
• CHAPTER IV.—Saved by Fire—The Heroic Conduct of a Hotel Clerk—A Ball Through the Heart Drives Satan Out and Makes it the Temple of the Holy Spirit—The Attempted Suicide Makes a Glorious Apostle of Temperance, 74

LIFE OF MILO P. WARD.

• CHAPTER I.—Nativity and Parentage—Disposition—Early Life and Education—Opportunities and How They Were Used, 105
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• CHAPTER II.—Sickness—Commencement Day—Its Triumphs—Farewell to Alma Mater—Opening Scenes in the Battle of Life—The Trip, With Hughes, to Philadelphia—What Was Seen and What Was Not Seen of the Great Exposition—Trials and Conflicts of 1876, 121
• CHAPTER III.—Mr. Ward's Reformation—His Character and Success as a Temperance Worker—His Partnership With Hughes—His Invariable Success, 138

WORK OF HUGHES AND WARD.

• Washington—Attica—Lafayette—Lebanon—Thorntown, etc., etc.—Victory All Along the Line, 144

LIFE OF M. ED. SHIEL.

• CHAPTER I.—Nationality—Rearing and Schooling—He Learns the Trade of a Tanner—Power of an Inborn Thirst—Indulgence of that Thirst in Early Life, 170
• CHAPTER II.—One of Ed's Jokes—The Story of a Demijohn—Trials of 1873—Life on the Road—Battles and Defeats—Expensive Fun in Holton—"M. E. Shiel, M.D."—Visit to an Illinois Aunt—A Village Grocery-Keeper—Social Party in Waukegan—Home Again—Discouraged—Results of the Use of Substitutes—Recipe for an Irish Whisky Punch, 182
• CHAPTER III.—The Afflicting Hand of Providence—A Trip to Buffalo—Sad Return—Delirium Tremens—Saved from Self-Destruction—Six Days' Debauch on the Road—Tempted Again to Kill Himself—The Pledge Signed and Broken—Final Reformation—Complete Triumph Over the Demon—Identification with the Red-Ribbon Work—The Temperance Monitor—Ed. Shiel a Mighty Power for Good—One of the Grandest Workers in the Field, 191

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LIFE OF JACK WARBURTON.

• CHAPTER I.—A Pure Englishman, but a True Cosmopolite—How he was Kept Almost Constantly Drunk in His Infancy—He Receives His Only Education in Sunday-School—He Learns the Hatter's Trade, 200
• CHAPTER II.—The European Crop of Wild Oats—The Mother's Painful Surprise—Jack Becomes a British Soldier—Deserts—Tramps Again—Comes to America—Marries—The New Leaf Blacker than the Old One—Life in Milwaukee—Reformation, 211
• CHAPTER III.—Coming Out of the Kinks—Fruitless Efforts to Save His Favorite Crony—Death of Bill Slater—Jack Becomes a Christian—He Enters the Temperance Field as a Public Worker—His Cheering Success—He Visits the Wisconsin State Prison—Touching Incidents of the Visit—Is Commissioned a Deputy Grand Worthy Templar—Becomes a Ribbon Chief and Does a Grand Work—Cheering Testimonials from the Redeemed and Their Friends, 221

LIFE OF LUTHER BENSON.

• CHAPTER I.—The Benson Family—Luther's Antecedents and Opportunities—A Fatal Inheritance—Dire Effects of the Social Customs of the Olden Time—Ignorance is not Always Bliss, 232
• CHAPTER II.—Luther Quits Law School—The Sad Things that Follow—Reformation—Ups and Downs—The Strong Should Support the Weak, 240

LIFE OF MASON LONG.

• CHAPTER I.—Thrilling Experience of One of the Most Renowned Gamblers and Saloon Keepers of the Wabash Valley, as Given by Himself, 256
• CHAPTER II.—Reflections on Mr. Long's Speech—Facts in Regard to His Birth and Boyhood—His Character as a Worker and a Speaker, 278

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LIFE OF MRS. EMMA MOLLOY.

• CHAPTER I.—Her Character as an Orator—Her Motive Power—What the Drink-Demon did for Her—The Inspiration Born of Sorrow, 283
• CHAPTER II.—Second Marriage—Becomes a Printer—Then a Lecturer and a Mighty Worker—Results of Her Work—She Captivates New England—Death of the Great Talbott—Our Emma Goes to Great Britain, 293

LIFE OF JAMES W. F. GERRISH, M.D.

• Birth-Place—Parentage—Early Associations—Medical Education—Its Moral Results—He Graduates with Distinguished Honors and Enters the Practice of Medicine—The Drinking Habit—How Acquired—Its Effects Upon His Character—Enters the Army as a Surgeon—Serves His Country with Ability and Fidelity—Returns to Civil Life and Locates in Seymour—Attains Marked Distinction in His Profession—The Crusaders Capture Him—He Reforms and Becomes an Efficient Red Ribbon Worker, 305

THE SEYMOUR REFORM CLUB.

• Its Organization—Its Trials—Its Glorious Triumphs—A Model Club, 314

LIFE OF CAPTAIN J. C. BONTECOU.

• CHAPTER I.—Nativity—Parentage—College Course—Army Career—The Evils of Drink—Reformation—Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Missouri Tell the Tale of a Grand Work for God and Humanity, 324
• CHAPTER II.—Captain Bontecou's White Ribbon Clubs—His Own Account of Their Origin—Their Efficiency—History of the Work of Both the Red and the White at Evansville, Indiana; Peoria, Illinois; St. Joseph, Missouri; Madison, Indiana; and Other Points, 330

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LIFE OF GEORGE W. CALDERWOOD.

• CHAPTER I.—He is a Native of Buckeyedom—Learns to Drink in a Harvest Field—The Sad History of a Jug—Military Career—Professional Failures in Civil Life—Rum and Ruin—The Dark Hour Before the Dawn, 345
• CHAPTER II.—Another Instance of the Power of a Child—Restoration to Manhood—Glorious Work for Our Common Humanity Throughout the Western States, 352

LIFE OF JOHN W. DREW.

• CHAPTER I.—Birth, Nativity, Boyhood—How Necessity Developed His Extraordinary Selfhood—No Flowery Beds of Ease were His in His Youth—Maturity—The Tempter Comes—A Splendid Business Career Nipped in the Bud by the Serpent that Lurks in the Social Glass, 361
• CHAPTER II.—Reformation—How Effected—Its Magnificent Fruitage—New Hampshire Fired—Iowa Turned Upside Down—Hundreds of Thousands Recruited to the Army of Total Abstinence, 367

LIFE OF HON. ROBERT E. FRAZER

• Birth—Parentage—School Days—Graduation—A Star of Ann Arbor—Professional Success—Good-bye Whisky—Splendid Career in the Ribbon Work, 374

LIFE OF HON. ALEXANDER B. CAMPBELL.

• Early Formation of Bad Habits—The Flight from Home—The Return—Remarkable Susceptibility of Temperament—School Days—Army Life—Professional Career—Ups and Downs—Final Reformation—Noble Work in Saving Men, 380

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LIFE OF GEN. GEO. F. POTTER.

• He Comes of Noble Stock—An Interesting Pedigree—Is Started to School with a View to a Preparation for the Pulpit—He Defeats the Parental Purpose and Goes to West Point, 388

LIFE OF MICHAEL J. FANNING.

• Born in the Green Isle—Brought to America When a Baby—One of the Most Remarkable Histories Ever Made by an Irish Boy—A Real Life that Eclipses Most of the Romances, 393

LIFE OF TONY DELIGHT.

• A Spanish Father—A Portuguese Mother—Born, and Principally Raised on the Island of Maderia—Peculiar Disposition—Extraordinary Character—An Electric Engine in Human Form—Effects of Bringing a Boy up on Native Wine—"The Pure Juice of the Grape" Proves Itself a First Class Manufacturer of Drunkards, 398

ANN ARBOR REFORM CLUB.

• Its Origin—Its Growth—Its Good Works, 401

SUNDRY WORKERS.

• P. R. Bailey—Fred. Getchell—"Silver Top"—C. W. Phillips—F. D. Dalton—John H. Monroe—John Wood—Mrs. J. Ellen Foster—Mrs. S. M. I. Henry—"Kate Harrington"—Mrs. Maria B. Holyoke—Dr. C. N. Whitney—Hon. John Seboski—Rev. W. W. Satterlee—Judge Safety Layton—Hon. Warner. H. Curtiss—Stephe R. Smith—Percy Smith—Addington D. Welch, 407

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PREFACE.

THE motto on the title-page has a history. When the great Morse completed the laying of the Atlantic cable, he requested the Queen of England to send over the line the opening dispatch. She did so; and the majestic Saxon expression, "What hath God wrought!" was the first that ever pierced the ocean which separated us from our mother country. This grand sentence is equally worthy of that noblest and best of all the sovereigns of Europe, and of that incomparable enterprise by which the hemispheres were lashed side by side, and by which the diversified earth was transformed into one neighborhood.

It occurs to me that a faithful presentation of the lives and work of the reformed men who, without the advantages of book-culture or of any special training for the platform, are now "turning the world upside down" on the subject of temperance, is the best history that can be written of the great ribbon movements of the day, and can not fail to interest all classes of readers. These men I regard as so many engines driven by the Spirit of God throughout the land, drawing trains heavily freighted with the seed of Christian charity. This seed, deposited at numerous stations, is sown broadcast over the country, and in very many places finds a lodgment in good, page: 12[View Page 12]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 12 honest hearts, and is producing a glorious fruitage of peace, industry, and happiness. As the agents of the Almighty, these proclaimers of glad tidings of great joy can be rewarded only by Him; yet it is the duty of all good people to appreciate and support them heartily in their zealous, untiring efforts for good, and also to study the secret of their wonderful power and the philosophy of their methods.

When the Rev. Robert Mackinzie, of Lafayette, frankly confessed to his congregation that Lafayette Hughes, an uncultivated Murphy evangelist, had done for him what the learned and venerable faculty of his theological alma mater had never done, in showing him how to reach and move the human heart, he told simply the truth—startling and very unpleasant it may be to some folks, but the truth nevertheless. "When the Rev. Dr. Gobin, of the same city, placed Mr. Hughes right alongside his educational father, Dr. Bowman, he, also, told only the truth.

It is to be hoped that these significant facts will find their way to the minds of all the educators of the Church ministry of the United States and of the whole civilized world. They mean that whatever may be a man's brain-power, whatever the fullness of his information and the thoroughness of his discipline, he is, without that love which embraces all mankind, a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.

I send this book forth, earnestly praying that it may be the means of showing thousands of laborers how to reap the abundant harvest which is ripe for the sickle.

Let us not be too proud to learn of a worm how to crawl, or of a spider how to persevere; much less let us be ashamed to learn of our humble, unlettered fellows how to do Jehovah's work.

THE AUTHOR.

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INTRODUCTION.

JESUS once said to the self-righteous Jews, "I came, not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." In thus boldly and distinctly announcing that the special object of his mission was to save bad people, he avowed a thing that was as new as it was startling and revolutionary to the religious leaders of the chosen race. And if new to them, what was it to the Gentile nations? Hitherto, the notion had been that the sinner was to be shunned, hated, contemned; that as he was the subject of Divine condemnation so he should be the mark of human scorn and vituperation. The most devoted sons of Abraham, the most reputable members of the synagogue, the most devout worshipers at the temple, were those who could not endure the idea of associating with the uncircumcised. With what bitter contempt did they point the shaft—"Your master eateth with publicans and sinners!" With what indignant force did they hurl this shaft at the humble, truth-loving disciples! That any one claiming to come from God should openly declare that he had descended from heaven to gather up and restore to the Divine image the scraps—the very offal of human kind, page: 14[View Page 14]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 14 was utterly, radically at war with all prevailing sentiment—shocking and disgusting to all recognized patterns of piety. Hence, from the very outstart, the great opposition which the Savior had to meet was sanctified selfishness—that spirit which prides itself in saying, "I am better than thou;" "I thank God that I am not as other men." And the meekness, the promptness, the true bravery with which he met it, was the example for the Church for all coming ages.

Unfortunately, that example has in too many instances been ignored; and the cynical prudes and religious bigots of to-day are, in downright meanness and moral unfitness for the work of God, not one whit behind their pharisaical predecessors of the Augustan period. Their ecclesiastical harness fits their little souls so tightly that there is no possible chance for that growth in grace and knowledge of the truth which the great Apostle of the Gentiles enjoins. Between them and the straying multitudes there is no sympathy. They are separated from those whom God would save by a wide gulf of pious hauteur.

So, it comes to pass that our Heavenly Father, when He sets His hand to the salvation of the masses, raises up from among the common people, and often from the very lowest and the least cultured of them, the instruments with which He proposes to accomplish this salvation. Thus from century to century and from age to age does He repeat the lesson taught and exemplified by the Elder Brother, that He hath chosen the foolish to confound the wise—the weak to put the strong to shame.

The Knapps, the Moodys, the Sankeys, the Munhalls, the Reynoldses, the Murphys, the Hugheses, the Warburtons, the Longs, are cases in point.

Some may think it strange that I should class the church revivalists and the temperance evangelists together. The page: 15[View Page 15]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 15 explanation is at hand. The temperance movement of to-day is simply the Church at work. I do not mean the sect, of which even devils incarnate may be members—in good standing at that. I mean that scattered, diversified congregation of the redeemed whose model is the Lord and whose teacher is the Spirit. I refer to the Church which God recognizes—composed of men and women whose creed is Christ and who realize that true faith is the imitation of the Divine Exemplar. There are people in the world who worship God by serving humanity; who understand that the sacrifice on the cross will be of no avail to any man who is unwilling to be sacrificed for the good of his kind; that the children of men can be restored to the deific likeness only by the continuance on the earth of the manifestation in the flesh of that love which wins by its losses, conquers by its defeats, is perfected through sufferings.

When such men as Francis Murphy and Dr. Reynolds are turned from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God, it matters not with what body of worshipers they may be identified, or whether they are formally united with any body at all, they belong to the General Assembly and Church of the First Born, whose names are written in heaven. Their love of God is demonstrated in their all-absorbing love of man—in their willingness to sacrifice self for the good of their fellows—to go down, as Jesus did, so far in the scale of humanity that there shall be no one below them.

Men of this class, who have, themselves, tasted the bitter cup of the sorrow that ever follows sin, have always been, in the hands of God, the most powerful evangelists, the most efficient missionaries. Paul was talented and learned; but it was neither his talent nor his learning, nor both, that page: 16[View Page 16]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 16 made him the invincible Apostle of the Gentiles—that carried him all over Syria and Europe declaring salvation by Jesus Christ. It was that intense desire to rescue men from the danger to which he had been exposed, to persuade them to flee the wrath by which he had been threatened, that constituted the secret of his power. He knew what it was to despise the Redeemer and persecute His followers. He knew what it was to be exceedingly wicked—to be a relentless enemy of the Man of Nazareth, and thus to be an enemy of the race. In a word, Paul's superiority over all other apostles was due to the simple fact that his experience in the service of the devil was so much greater than theirs.

So when a man who has long suffered the evils of intemperance is extricated from the mire and filth of the service of a fiendish appetite, his earnestness in the redemption of others from the same horrible bog will generally be found to bear an exact proportion to his former miseries.

Man's greatest strength lies in a realization of his weakness, and never does he fully realize the latter till sin has severely punished him.

The men whose lives are presented in this volume are among the Pauls of the great temperance wave which is now sweeping over the American continent, bearing every thing before it. Their success lies in that mighty power of appeal which is born of an experimental knowledge of the devouring monster against which they are battling. They have been burned in the fires of hell from which, under the great Father, they are so efficient in drawing other victims.

If any one who prides himself on never having been in the power of the demon, should be disposed to say that it seems remarkable that reformed drunkards should be the page: 17[View Page 17]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 17 most brilliant stars in the galaxy of the cause of sobriety, he is referred to the man of Tarsus, in whose effulgent and undying fame he may readily learn that the glorious ribbon movements in the United States have developed no new principle. We have the same old story of the zeal for right which displaces the zeal for wrong—of the Church at work under the guidance of the Spirit which has ever found the largest capacity for good where there is the largest capacity for evil.

Let no one presume from these remarks that I would teach that before one can be good he must become very bad. The point with me is to show what the moral and religious history of the world clearly proves—that the most efficient agents in the reformation of the dissolute are those who have themselves been dissolute. I have also aimed to show another matter in which the same history is equally clear—that being good for one's own sake and mistaking a hatred of sinners for a hatred of sin is not goodness in any Christian sense of that term. Christ did do what the Jews accused him of doing when they sneeringly told his disciples, "Your master eateth with publicans and sinners." Aye, more, he turned his back upon the self-exalted pharisee and, not only recognized, but pardoned and blessed a poor, degraded woman of the town, demonstrating to his contemptuous host the superiority of a tender heart and an humble spirit over a spotless reputation without these God-like qualities. He did not do these things for nothing. He meant that we should go and do likewise. He meant that no amount of wealth, no degree of respectability should bar from our affections the wayward transgressor, however low he may be.

The man who refuses to go among outcasts to seek and to save that which is lost, because he is afraid of soiling page: 18[View Page 18]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 18 his robes, may be a very nice person—an ornament to what is called the best society—but he does not belong to Christ, and will never unite his voice with that of the grand choir of the one hundred and forty and four thousand. He will have his reward in this world, to whose selfish pride he is, with all his respectability and high polish, a cowardly, truckling bond-servant.

It takes true bravery to face the world's notions of propriety in a fearless discharge of our duty to our fellow man. It takes a stout nerve to walk past the whole, who need not a physician, to the sick whose souls are perishing for want of aid. But great is the reward, both in this life and in the one to come. Earth knows no ecstacy which will compare with that arising from the consciousness of having been the means of saving a human being; and the more complete the wreck the greater the salvation.

The ribbon workers of America have, while rescuing thousands of drunkards, taught preachers and religious organizations a great lesson. They have shown them the short road to the human heart, and in so doing have reaffirmed the truth of one of the grandest statements in the New Testament—"Love is the fulfilling of the law." "Malice toward none and charity for all," is the whole of Christianity in a nut-shell. Deep learning, splendid rhetoric, faultless elocution, unanswerable arguments, all fail in reclaiming the lost, while the ungrammatical, unmethodic utterances of a great heart, touched and warmed by a profound sympathy with the miserable, quicken and arouse to a purifying activity the dead spirits of millions. The lights of the most renowned pulpiteers are paled into insignificance by the blazing earnestness of untaught, illiterate youths; and the churches are, under the stimulating power of the love of God as exhibited by the unlicensed, uncertificated page: 19[View Page 19]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 19 proclaimers of peace, rapidly returning to the old path trodden by Jesus and the apostles. The hitherto impassible chasm which has lain between the pulpit and the unsaved world is being bridged by young, unscholarly hands; and the crowds which but a few short months ago loitered away the Lord's day in the saloon and on the street corners are now seeking the houses of worship and manifesting a hunger for the true bread that cometh down from heaven.

May the glorious work go on till all shall know the Lord, from the least to the greatest.

THE AUTHOR.

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FRANCIS MURPHY.