Steve P. Holcombe, the Converted Gambler Part 17

I came to Louisville in 1871, and commenced working as a restaurant and hotel cook. I was very apt at the business, and was soon able to command the best situations to be had, having been _chef_ at the Galt House.

During all this time I had been a drunkard in different stages. I was what is called a "periodical drunkard." I often braced up and went without a drink for six months or a year--something like that length of time--and always had work when I was not drinking; but I became so unreliable, that I could get no employment when another man could be had. It was said of me everywhere, "Denny is a good man, but he drinks."

About 1873 I got married, and up to 1883 I had four children. Of course, my drinking, and everything of that kind, brought my family to want--in fact, to beggary. For a long time I always took my wages home on pay-day, and my wife, in her good-heartedness, always offered me money; would often ask me of a morning if I did not feel bad, and would give me fifteen cents or a quarter, not knowing that she was giving me money for my own d.a.m.nation, until the year of the first Exposition here--1882. I had a position there at twelve dollars a week. I stayed there ten weeks; and I do not believe I got home with five dollars in the whole ten weeks. The man with whom I worked had a bar attachment to his restaurant, and I could get what credit I wanted there; and on Sat.u.r.day night when I found my wages were short, I would get drunk, and conclude to try and win something at gambling, but I invariably lost.

At the close of the Exposition, it was on the verge of winter, and times were very dull. I was behind with my rent and in debt to everybody I could get in debt to, my family were without decent clothing, had no fire, and I was almost naked myself, with no prospects of a situation. A short time afterward I got a position on a steamboat, which paid me fairly well, and which I believe I kept two, maybe three, weeks, and got drunk as usual. I failed to take my money home, and, of course, told my wife some lie. I had to say something. Sometimes my wife believed me, and sometimes she did not. At that time it was winter, it must have been in December, and very cold. My children were barefooted, and I was just about to be set out on the street because I had not paid my rent. I woke up one very cold morning very early, and we had not a morsel of food in the house or coal to make a fire with. I walked down toward the river and met the same man I had been working with a few weeks before. He stopped and asked me if I did not want to go back on the boat. I told him I would be glad to go back. He asked me how long before I would get drunk; and I said, as I had said a thousand times before, "I will never drink again." I made one trip, which was three days, and got drunk. It was on the second day of January, 1883, that I shipped, and I came back on the fifth, which was the coldest day I ever saw in Louisville. The thermometer was twenty-six degrees below zero between New Albany and the mouth of Salt river. There were during these dark days a few charitable people that used to give my family some of the necessaries of life--and but for that I can not see how they would have kept from starvation. I appreciated my situation nearly all the time, knew how wrong I was doing, would admit it to myself but would not admit it to anybody else.

If a man had called me a drunkard, I would have called him a liar.

In the providence of G.o.d the Fifth and Walnut-street church established the Holcombe Mission near where I lived, and among other waifs picked up on the street and taken to the Sunday-school were my children. While I had always been pretty bad myself, I had always tried to teach my children better. I shuddered at the thought of my boys going on in the way that I was going. When they went to Sunday-school and learned the songs there and came home and sang them, it broke me all to pieces. I had nothing left to do but to go and get drunk in self-defense. The Sunday-school teacher (Mrs. J. R. Clarke), who taught my children, had been trying to find me for a long time. She must have thought from seeing my children at Sunday-school that there was some good in me; and after awhile she sent me a Bible with a great many pa.s.sages marked in it. She was looking for me and had sent for me to come and see her, and I had been trying to keep out of her way for a long time. Finally she found me at home one day, and would take no excuse, but insisted that I must come to Holcombe's Mission; and, of course, I promised to go, because I could not help myself. I could not get out of it; and if I had a redeeming trait in the world, it was that I would not break a positive promise.

I promised her to come, and that day I did go. They were holding noon-day meetings at the time. I do not remember just now that I was very deeply impressed. I was of a skeptical turn of mind and very critical. I well remember I criticised all the testimonies given there; but the thing was so strange to me, so different from anything that I was used to, that I was very considerably impressed in a strange kind of way, which is unaccountable to me even now. I had taken a seat near the door, so that I might get out very quick; but Brother Holcombe headed me off, and caught me before I got to the door. I did not know him personally at that time, but had known of him for a long time. Of course, I could not get out of the Mission without promising to come again. After having come two or three times, I was asked to say something, but did not feel like saying anything. Finally I stood up one day, perhaps the third or fourth day I was there. It was not a time when they were asking people if they wanted an interest in their prayers. I got up and said I wanted an interest in their prayers that I might be saved from myself. I had known for a long time that I was helpless, so far as delivering myself from drink was concerned. I knew nothing about Christianity, in fact, I did not care much about it, because I had not studied on the subject, and would not study on the subject. For many years I had not dared to stop and think seriously about such a subject, but when I heard that the Gospel of Christ was able to deliver such a man as I, I heard it gladly, because I had found there was no earthly power that could deliver such a man as I was. In the meantime, I had been reading my Bible, and had committed some of it to memory; and there was a good deal of mystery attached to the whole thing--things that I could not understand. When they asked me to speak, I quoted a pa.s.sage from the Bible. One day I quoted the pa.s.sage about a man having put his hand to the plow and looking back, not being worthy of the kingdom of G.o.d. Brother Messick, pastor of the church which I afterward joined, prayed directly afterward, and in his prayer he quoted this pa.s.sage of Scripture, and prayed in such an encouraging and helpful way, that I rose from my knees satisfied in my heart that I was changed.

Well, from that time until now I have never drunk anything. That was in January or February, 1883. I have never had a desire for liquor but once since. Last summer I went to Crab Orchard. I was _chef_ down there, and I had to handle very choice wines and liquors in my business, and I handled one brand of wine that I was particularly fond of in old times.

I was tempted that time to drink wine. It seemed the tempter said to me: "You are way down here where n.o.body knows anything about you. It is good, and you know it won't hurt you. It don't cost you anything and it is nothing but wine, and you need not take too much." At that time I could get all the liquor I wanted. If I wanted it, I could order a hogshead of it just by a scratch of the pen. With that single exception, I have never had a temptation to drink. I don't know that I had an appet.i.te to drink then. It was a clear cut temptation from without, and not from within.

I have had no trouble about getting positions since my conversion and deliverance from the appet.i.te for drink. My family are well housed, well clothed and well fed, and have everything they need, and have had since the time I became a Christian man. They themselves are the greatest evidences in the world of what Christianity can do for a man. A short time ago--six months ago--I established myself in business, and have been doing a thriving, prosperous business from that time until now.

I might say something about my going to the work-house: Two years ago, or a little over, I was asked to go to the work-house one Sunday evening. I was very much impressed with the necessity for working for the poor men there. I was at that time identified with the Mission work, and the services at the work-house were all under the auspices of the Y.

M. C. A. I continued going to the work-house for some length of time--three or four months. The Y. M. C. A. very kindly divided time with me and other Mission workers. After having gone to the work-house three or four months, I stopped going. The Chairman of the Devotional Committee of the Y. M. C. A. sent for me and gave me charge of the work-house and jail, which, of course, I accepted in the name of the Mission; and from that time until now both of them have been under Mission workers. I was very anxious to return to the work-house, but our head decided that I should take the jail, where I have continued to go for a year and a half--I suppose about that length of time--every Sunday when I was in the city, with possibly one or two exceptions.

NOTE.--Mr. Denny is at present the joint-proprietor, with Mr.

Ropke, of a thriving restaurant on Third street, between Jefferson and Green, Louisville.

[Ill.u.s.tration: B. F. DAVIDSON.]

B. F. DAVIDSON.

Twenty years ago I resided in the city of Cincinnati; was President of a Boatman's Insurance Company, proprietor of a ship chandlery, and interested largely in some twenty odd steamboats; and also interested largely in other insurance companies, and was rated as worth half a million of dollars. Through depreciation in property, bad debts, and indorsing for other parties largely, in four years I had lost all my money. To retrieve my fortune, I then started West, not being willing, of course, to accept a position where I had been a proprietor. While there, a.s.sociating with the miners and Western people generally, I contracted the habit of drinking. This grew upon me and was continued, with short intermissions of soberness, up to four years ago--about last January. I was brought very low as a consequence of my dissipation, and I have traveled as a tramp from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the lakes to the Gulf, spending my time in alternately fighting and yielding to the demon of drink. For five years previous to my coming to Louisville, I had given up all hope of ever being able to make anything of myself, as I had tried, in vain, every known remedy to cure me of the appet.i.te. My pride was effectually humbled, and I was in despair.

From the time that I went West--which was in 1872--until my arrival in 1884, my children, a daughter and son, knew not whether I was dead or alive--knew nothing of me whatever. After I took to drink, I lost all interest in them and everything else.

As soon as I got off the ferry-boat in Louisville, in as sad a plight as any wretched man was ever in, I met an old friend, who had known me in years previous, and who handed me two dollars, requesting me to call at his office the next morning, when he would give me such a.s.sistance as I needed. The two dollars I spent that day for whisky. That night I begged a quarter to pay for my lodging. The next day, by begging, I filled up pretty well on whisky again. Toward evening I went into a Main-street house and asked a gentleman for a quarter to pay for a night's lodging, I had lost all pride, all self-respect, and could beg with a brazen face. The gentleman handed me a card of Holcombe's Mission. As I did not know or care anything about missions or churches, I merely stuck the card in my pocket and went on my way. After walking around for some time I heard the remark: "There goes that old man now." Upon looking up I recognized the gentleman whom I last asked for a quarter to pay for a night's lodging, and another man, engaged in conversation. The other gentleman, who proved to be the Rev. Steve Holcombe, of Holcombe's Mission, took me by the hand and invited me up to the Mission rooms, where I told him my story. He asked me if I ever had asked G.o.d through Jesus Christ to a.s.sist me in my endeavors to become a sober man. I told him I had not, as I had made up my mind years ago that G.o.d had no use for me. I felt as though I had sinned beyond redemption.

I had left home very early in life. My mother was the best Christian woman I had ever seen. She was a Methodist, but she never could preach Christianity to me--I fell back on my own righteousness. I did not drink, I did not smoke, I did not chew, I did not swear, I did not run after women, I did not loaf around saloons like other young men. When my mother was after me to join the church, I told her that would not make me any better: "Look at your church members; is that man any better than I am?" My sister, along toward the last, having joined the Episcopal church, I took two pews in that church; was a lay member, but I did not attend it. That was in Newport--St. Paul's Episcopal church, Newport.

When the minister insisted on my going to church, I told him that while he would be preaching sermons I would be building steamboats, so his sermons would not do me any good.

After I got to drinking, my poor daughter did not see me. I did not go to my children at all. I never got but one letter from them during that time, from 1872 to 1884, and that was a letter that went to Cincinnati, and they held it there, I believe, for two years. I was at Cincinnati a good many times; but they could never get me to stay there long enough to get my children down to see me. As soon as I had an idea that they were manoeuvring for anything of that kind, I would get out of town at once, and they would not know where I had gone.

During my life as a tramp, there is no kind of work that can be thought of that I did not work at more or less, and the money I earned--sometimes I earned as much as eight dollars a day--eventually went to the barkeepers; I could not even buy my clothes.

After a long talk with Brother Holcombe, I told him that, having tried everything else, I was perfectly willing to try G.o.d. That night I went to church, and went up to be prayed for. There was no regular meeting at the Mission then, from the fact that the church that was running the Mission had a revival. So, with Brother Holcombe, I went around to the revival meeting at the Fifth and Walnut-street church. When the invitation was given for those who wanted to be prayed for to come forward, I was among the first to accept it, and went up clothed in all my rags. After prayer I felt much better than I had for many years. That night I went back and lay on the floor in the Mission, having refused an invitation from Brother Holcombe to go to a boarding-house, telling him if G.o.d, in His mercy, would take from me the appet.i.te for strong drink, I had still strength and will enough left to make my own living. The next morning I asked Brother Holcombe to go with me to the paper-mill of Bremaker-Moore Company, where they were building a dam to prevent an overflow from stopping the engines in the paper-mill. I secured a position there, at a dollar and a quarter a day, to shovel mud. As soon as the river commenced to fall that occupation was gone; but the superintendent of the mill, becoming in the meantime somewhat acquainted with my history, offered me a situation inside, which I held for three weeks, when I was sent for to see the business manager of the _Post_. I accepted a position on the _Post_ as advertising solicitor at fifteen dollars a week, which was afterward increased to twenty-five. I was then made business manager, at thirty dollars, which position I now hold.

I can say this: That while I had an abundance of means to find happiness, pleasure and contentment, and had sought it in every possible way that a man could, I failed to find it until I accepted Christ as my Saviour, and gave myself into His hands. Since then I have had a happiness I never knew before. My life has been one of constant peace and uninterrupted prosperity. My children are both happily married, and I have married myself.

Though I was before so proud that I could not accept my mother's teaching, I was at a point where I would have accepted anything. They would tell me that doctor so-and-so would cure me; which was no kindness to me, because it kept me from asking G.o.d's help. But nothing would do me any good. So I said, "G.o.d, here I am; accept me. If there is any good in me, bring it out. I am down, down, down; I can not help myself."

Brother Holcombe had told me what G.o.d had done for him. I had confidence in him from the start, from the fact of his having told me he was a gambler so long; and when he told me G.o.d had redeemed him from the desire for gambling, I thought he might take away the appet.i.te for drink from me; and He has done so, I am very thankful to say. I expect I was the worst-looking sight you ever saw, but I do not take a back seat now for any one--I look as well as anybody. As I told a man last week: "With the Lord on my side, I do not fear anything!" I had had charge of men, and had succeeded in managing them. I did not accept religion because I was a weak-minded man. As evidence of that, I have proved it since as I had proved it before. I proved that when I was trying to be a good man in my own way. I have proved since that I was not a weak-minded man from the responsible positions I have held and do hold.

But, as I was going to say, I had not shaved for two years, and had not had my hair cut, I am satisfied, for one year. My hair was hanging down on my shoulders; my face, of course, not very clean; my clothes were rags. My shoes were simply tops, and the gentleman who gave me these two dollars, told me: "Captain, you are the hardest-looking man I ever saw in my life. I do not know how I recognized you." I said: "This is the condition I am in, and drinking has brought me to it."

I have been asked by several prominent men how it is I get up night after night and tell people how bad I have been. I told them it was like this; if they had been sick nigh unto death and were going to die, and a physician came and gave them some medicine and made whole men out of them, would they not be going around the streets telling people about that physician? I said that is the reason I get up every night and tell people about it. Christ was the physician that healed me. That is the remedy I have for all evil now--the blood of Jesus Christ. It was utterly impossible for a man to exist and be in a worse condition than I was. I was physically and mentally a wreck; and now by accepting Christ--becoming a Christian--I am physically, morally, mentally and spiritually restored and well. That is the reason why I do not hesitate to tell anybody--even people coming into my office. An editor of a paper said to me: "Is it possible you were a tramp?" I told him it was; and he was talking something about attacking me through his paper, about what I had been. I said, "Blaze away; it won't hurt me. I do not deny having been a tramp and a drunkard--everything that was mean. But what am I now?" I do not care what they bring back of my past record; they can not hurt me, for I do not deny it. It is what I am now. I think now that I was as bad and mean as a man could possibly be. But I am no longer what I was, by the grace of Him who called me out of the former darkness into His light.

[Ill.u.s.tration: H. C. PRICE.]

H. CLAY PRICE.

I used to know Brother Holcombe in those days; knew him to be a gambler.

He was considered one of the best of gamblers, but I always looked upon him as being an honorable gambler, so far as I have heard. I knew him even before he was a gambler.

Well, my father and mother were very pious, my mother especially. She was a praying woman, and everybody knew her by the name of "Aunt Kittie," and my father as "Uncle Billy." My father did not think it was any harm to play cards in the parlor every night. When I was young he loved to play whist. I had a sister older than I, sixteen or seventeen years old, and she used to invite young men, and father used to invite them, to come there and play cards; and the moment they commenced to fix the table, my father beckoned his head to me, and I knew what that meant--to get out. We had a young negro that used to wait on the ladies in the parlor, and he told me one time, "You steal a deck of cards and I will show you how to play cards." And I stole a deck of cards from the house and we went back in the stable; and that is the way I came to learn how to play cards. I was twelve or fifteen years old at that time--not any older than that--and I commenced playing cards for money, and I kept on playing cards for money with the boys; for money or for anything. I was sent off to school--to St. Mary's College, and we got to playing cards there for money, and we were caught, and the oldest one was expelled from school, and I promised never to do it any more, and the other boys promised not to do it any more, and they did not. But I kept on and I was caught playing cards, and I was expelled from school.

After that my father sent me to St. Joseph's College in Ohio. I ran off from that school and came home, and I was appointed a Deputy Marshal by my brother-in-law, W. S. D. McGowen; and I got to gambling then sure enough and running after women; and about that time the war came on, and I went off with my brother-in-law into the army, and I gambled all through the army--everywhere I could get five cents to play with. All I had I gambled away. I came back home and I gambled here; played in the faro banks all the time. And a proprietor of a gambling house by the name of Jo. Croxton came to me and said, "You are too good a man to be gambling around. I will give you an interest, and you can take charge of my house." I did not know much about gambling, but I knew how to take care of his house. He gave me the bank roll; and I went on down and down.

I was married then and had a faithful, gentle and devoted wife, but I thought I was smarter than anybody about gambling, and I thought I could make big money, and so I would leave my wife, devoted and dependent as she was, and I kept traveling on around the country, going to different towns. I went to Nashville; from there I went to New Orleans. I came back to Nashville. I left Nashville and went to Huntsville, Ala.; came back here and went to St. Louis; then to Chicago and Lexington. After that I went back to Nashville again. I made a good deal of money if I could have kept it; but the Lord would not let me have it. I averaged here for years and years $500 a month. Sometimes I made more--made as much as $1,700 a month, and once I went up as high as $2,100 a month--made big winnings. As fast as I got this money I could not keep it--threw it away on women all the time and gambling against the bank and poker; would spit at a mark for money. I have lost hundreds and hundreds of dollars without getting off of my seat, with men I knew were robbing me all the time. It was a pa.s.sion I had to gamble and I'd not stop. In one game of poker that I was in I bet and lost $900 on one hand, and I have never played at poker since that time.

When the gambling-houses were broken up here in Louisville, I concluded I would go off to Chicago. I had some money and I went to Chicago; and as soon as I got there, I got broke, lost all the money I had. I was among strangers and I was dead broke. Finally I got another situation, and worked there for some time. I then got hold of some money again, and I came home and remained some time. My wife was begging me all the time not to go away--did not think I ought to go away; she said that I could stay here and get some work to do, and make an honest living. But I thought I had better go back to Chicago and make some money; and I made some money as soon as I got there by playing faro bank; and I did very well at that time, made a good deal of money; and you know how a man feels when he has five hundred dollars in his pocket; and yet all that time I did not send my wife anything. I thought I would get about one thousand dollars and open some kind of a bar-room or cigar shop, or something of the kind. But the day before Christmas I got to playing against the faro bank, and got broke; and I was the most miserable man in the world, to think that I had lost the last chance I had. The day before Christmas my wife wrote me, "Why don't you come home? I had rather see you home than there again making money," I said, "Yesterday I got broke--I played to win. I had nothing to eat all day." But accidentally I found a twenty-five cent piece in my pocket; and I got up and went and bought a ten-cent dinner, and paid fifteen cents for a cigar. I have done that many times, I suppose, bought a quarter dinner and given the other quarter for a cigar. I just got to studying about it, studying about what I was to do. I said, "If I come back to Louisville, I will starve. I am not competent to keep a set of books, or clerk anywhere; but," I said, "I will go back if I do starve." So I wrote to my patient wife: "I have lost every cent I had in the world, I have got to work one week longer to make enough money to come home on, and I am coming. You may look for me the first of next week." As soon as they paid me off that evening I jumped on the cars and came home, having just the money to pay my fare.

Before this Brother Holcombe had met me time and again after he had been converted. He used to come after me; and every time he would see me, may be I would be looking at something in the street--he would hit me on the shoulder and say, "How do you do, old boy?" and then he would talk to me about my salvation, and about Jesus Christ. I used to hide from him; but it looked like every time he came around he would nail me, and talk to me about Jesus. That was when I was gambling here and prosperous. He told me about my mother and told me I ought to quit gambling. I said, "Brother Holcombe, what shall I do if I quit gambling? I have no way to make a living." He said, "Look to G.o.d, and He will help you." I went away about that time; and as soon as I came back, every time he would see me he would nail me again. After awhile I got interested in him. I would look for him and when I would catch him, I would say, "You can not get away from me now." That was after I came from Chicago. I had nowhere to go except to visit bar-rooms. So I began to go down around the old Mission every night. I heard the singing and praying down there. One night I said, "I am going to see Brother Holcombe." The clock struck eight, and I said "I am not going in to-night, it is too late. I will go to-morrow;" and to-morrow night came and I went down there and went in very early, before they commenced singing; and they sang and prayed and Brother Holcombe preached, and the next night I went, and the next night I went, and I went every night. And then they moved up here on Jefferson street and after they moved up here, I stayed away a week, and then I commenced coming again; and here I am now, thank G.o.d. I think G.o.d has been my friend all the way through. To think He has let me go as far as He could, and at last brought me home. I tell you it is a great thing for a man that has been living the life I have, to get up and say that he is now a child of G.o.d.

It came gradually, a little bit of it at a time, but when I was down in the Mission that night, G.o.d came to me in full power, I felt that I did not care what happened to me. I was willing to go if G.o.d called on me.

Whatever He said I was willing to do. After my conversion I got a place where I was making a dollar a day, at Robinson's, on Ninth, between Broadway and York streets, and I worked there until I went up on a new railroad. They promised to give me forty-five dollars a month. I thought at the time, and so did Brother Holcombe, I would get forty-five dollars a month. He said, "You will get forty-five dollars a month, and it is so much easier than the work you are doing." I thought they would pay all my expenses and I worked up there at forty-five dollars and I had to pay all my own expenses; and all I received was not a cent more or less than thirteen dollars a month. But I was happier a thousand times--I will say a hundred thousand times--than I was with six or seven hundred dollars a month.

You may think gamblers are happy, and it looks like it; but they are not--they are miserable. Just to look back in our lives and think what we have done with all the money! It is nothing to be compared with the life of a Christian. If I could go back to-morrow and make a million dollars gambling, I would not do it. I would say, "Take your million of dollars. I will stay where I am." My wife is the best woman in the world. I leave her at home and she is reading the Bible. You can not go in there any time, when she is not at work, that she is not either singing or reading the Bible. She was raised a Catholic. She is now trying to help me along. She has joined the Methodist church; she is with me. I do not think she was a Christian before we came in contact with Brother Holcombe. It was just her interest in me, and her patient, long-suffering love. She never went to church nor prayed nor knelt down.

She prayed after she went to bed like I did, for I said prayers every day even then. I always said, "If I forget, G.o.d will forget me." Every day of my life I prayed; and if I forgot it, I asked the Lord to forgive me; but I never would kneel down. I prayed after I went to bed; but now I get down on my knees and pray. Do you know how we do at night? We get down on our knees and say the Lord's prayer; and after we get through, I pray; and after I get through, the old lady prays. You see the old lady was raising our little girl up to be a Catholic; and I said to her, after we were converted--maybe a month afterward--"I don't know whether I am right or wrong--I want you to say--do you not think it is right to teach Kittie to do the way we do in our prayers? I think it would be a sin to try to teach her any other way. Now, let us set her an example, and she will come over gradually and gradually until she will be one of us." She has asked her mother about Jesus. She said to her mother one day, "I can't pray like you all can." The old lady said to her, "You will learn after awhile." Last night I was out late, and when I came home she said, "We will all kneel down and pray." We started off, "Our Father, who art in heaven," and Kittie went along with us, repeating it.

She knows all that, you know. After we were done saying that, I prayed; and after I got through the old lady prayed; and after we had prayed I said, "Kittie, you must say your prayer." She said, "I can not pray like you do." But she did the best she could.

If you ask me how I came to change my life, it was this way: I knew that Brother Holcombe was a good man, and knew that he was reformed and I had so much faith in him, and I studied about that so much that I just thought if he could be such a good man, why could not I be a good man; and that is the way it came. I tell you, backwardness is a fault with a good many preachers. If I was a preacher and I saw a man on the street that I saw was going wrong, I would go right up to him and touch him on the shoulder. I do it now--I never let him get away; I never let a friend of mine get away, I do not care who he is. I go to him and tell him what G.o.d has done for me. I say, "Why don't you come up to the Mission? Don't you know Brother Holcombe?" If he says "No; I don't live here," I say, "If you come up there, we will be pleased to see you. You don't know what good it might do your soul."

I do wish I had an education. I reckon there has been more money spent on me than on all the rest of my family. I went to three colleges; was expelled from one and ran away from the other two. I was the worst boy on earth; there is no use talking. I would rather fight that eat; but no more fighting for me; I am done. You know that I have been trying to get work to do, and at last I have found a place. I am earnestly praying every day more and more--I _can_ pray now. A man asked me the other day--I don't know whether I answered him right or not--he asked me, "Do you ever expect to go back to gambling?" I said, "I would starve to death before I would gamble any more." He said, "What about your wife--if you knew your wife was going to starve, would you gamble?" I said, "Before I would let my wife and child starve, I would gamble--I would gamble to get them something to eat; but," I said, "there is no danger of their starving. But you put that question to me so strong." I said, "I know that G.o.d would not censure me for that, but there is no danger of it."

I wish I could say more. I know I mean what I have said, G.o.d knows I do, and it is all true as near as I can remember.

NOTE.--Mr. Price is a brother of the late Hon. J. Hop Price, for many years a well-known lawyer and judge in Louisville. He is now engaged as night watchman on Main street.

MILES TURPIN.

I had the example of Christian parents, and, of course, I had the benefit of a Christian education; but, like all young men, I was rather inclined to be wild; and after I had served four years in the Confederate army, my habits were formed rather for the worse. After I had returned home, being without avocation, I naturally resorted to what all idle men do; that was the beginning. I contracted the habit of frolicing, gambling and drinking, in that early period of my life, which has followed me through all these years, up to March 14, 1886, when, after considerable journeying through North America and portions of Mexico, I happened in Cincinnati, and heard a great many times about Steve Holcombe's conversion. Having known Steve in his gambling days, it occurred to me, like all persons in pursuit of happiness, going from place to place and not finding it, that if there was such a change and improvement in Steve as the newspapers described, I would come to Louisville and see for myself concluding that if religion had done so much for him, it might do something for me. I was a dissipated man--dissipated in the extreme. I had contracted this habit of drinking, and was rarely ever sober. I have some capacity, as a business man, and I have had a great many positions, but I had to give them up from this habit of drinking. While a man would express his deep friendship for me, he would say his business would not tolerate my drinking; consequently, I have been frequently but politely dismissed.

I had lived in I don't know how many places in the United States, I had lived in New Orleans, Savannah, Ga., Charleston, S. C., Birmingham, Montgomery, Selma, Vidalia, La., Cincinnati, Louisville, Ky., Macon, Ga., Pensacola, Fla., Fernandina, Fla., throughout the length and breadth of Western Mexico, Lower California and the Pacific coast, and through the State of Texas, end to end. In all these tortuous windings I was searching for happiness; but a man who is more or less full of whisky and without the religion of Jesus Christ is of necessity unhappy, in himself, and, in consequence, shunned by his fellowmen. No man can wander around the world in that condition without feeling a void which human wisdom can not fill; and I was forced to this conclusion by a careful survey of my past career. The desperation of the case was such, that I resolved if I could not find employment, and if I could not find happiness, which I then knew nothing about, I would destroy myself. I have contemplated suicide many times with the utmost seriousness; and I certainly in my sinful life was not afraid of death. But then it was because I was in despair.

I was in Cincinnati; had previously held a political position there, which paid me quite a handsome sum; but in the change of politics my pecuniary condition changed, and I found myself alone, poor and full of rum and corruption; as vile a sinner as ever lived. It was at that time that I heard of Steve. I was in a deplorable condition; I knew not where to turn for comfort, and it occurred to me that if I could go to Louisville and have these a.s.sertions verified about Steve's regeneration and if I could see and satisfy myself. I would do so, as vile as I was, and ask G.o.d to have mercy upon me. Of course, I was an infidel (at least, I imagined myself an infidel), an atheist, if you please, and my chief delight was deriding all Christian work, and ridiculing the Bible; and to more thoroughly uphold my atheistical notions I went so far as to defame the Saviour of mankind, not in vulgar language or profane, but by a mode of expression that was plain and unmistakable. _Now_, I do not see how a man can be an infidel. When a man says he is an atheist, I believe he is a liar. A man must be insane who does not recognize a Supreme Power and the Master-hand that made the world, and who does not rely upon and give obedience to that Higher Power. I do not believe that any atheist is honest in the announcement that he does not believe in G.o.d or a Creator. I believe now, since my conversion, that no man is in his right mind unless he has the habit of prayer.

All nature points to the existence of a Creator--every action of life, every hair of the head shows an unseen hand. If it is a mistake, it is a mistake man can never fathom; but if not and if, as we are told by the word of faith, you believe, you shall be saved. If you cast your burden upon Him, and there is a possibility of a hereafter, you lose nothing in this world. A man is wiser, purer, more companionable, more affectionate and more charitable. There must be immortality of the soul; there must be a future reward. Reflection upon these great facts induced me to become a Christian man. As I had served the devil so long as one of his allies, and had been treated so badly by him. I deserted him and put my faith in G.o.d, where I intend to remain the remainder of my life.

I got to Louisville a little over a year ago, the 15th of March, and went immediately to find Mr. Holcombe. He was sitting by the fire. He knew me at once. I shook hands with him and sat down by the fire, and had a conversation with him. He immediately entered upon the subject of religion, and I told him my condition. I told him what I wanted to do--I wanted to see for myself if it was possible for a man like him to become regenerated--if it was possible for such a great scoundrel as I knew him to be to become a Christian man. I wanted to see for myself if it were possible to make, out of so vile a creature, such a good man as he was said to be. As I said last night, I came, like the conqueror of old, and saw, but, unlike the conqueror of old, I was conquered. I made up my mind that I was done with the old life. Steve's appearance convinced me that he was cured, and I confessed then and there that I was convinced.

That was the starting point. There was only one thing I have never been thoroughly satisfied about; I find that the Christian influence grows gradually on me, and becomes stronger and stronger the longer I live. I confess myself, when I first became a Christian man, with the exception of drinking whisky, I was like I was before; but, encouraged by my experiences in the beginning, I gradually began to see that it was a better life. A man was purer, and there was some hope a man could be changed through and through, and take his place among men; and from that time forward I was continually growing in grace. From the very moment I resolved to quit, I did not drink any more. After I saw Steve, I did not take a drop, though I had tried before to quit it many a time. I had oftentimes joined temperance societies, and made resolutions, which were of no avail. A man in that case was bound by no tie except his a.s.sertion--by his word: and might break it just as a man allows a note to be protested in bank. The moment I determined to change my life, this appet.i.te for whisky left me. It was because my ideas were changed.

I used to think that no drunken man could become a Christian; but now I hope, by the grace of G.o.d, I am a Christian, I could not explain it; I do not believe any man can explain it. He may attempt it, but he can not do it. A man who lives a Christian life can hardly calculate the advantages; it is a matter of impossibility. In the first place, his a.s.sociates put an entirely different estimate on him. His ambitions are entirely changed, and certainly his hope is. It makes him a more charitable man, a more forbearing man with the faults of his neighbors, makes him a more tolerant man, makes him a better citizen; and if he were a politician--though it is scarcely within the bounds of possibility--it would make him an honest politician.