The tidings of his death, long expected, gave a shock to the whole
world. Governments, rulers, eminent statesmen, and scholars from
all civilized nations gave sincere tokens of sympathy. For the hour
sympathy rolled as a wave over all our own land. It closed the last
furrow of war, it extinguished the last prejudice, it effaced the last
vestige of hatred, and cursed shall be the hand that shall bring them
back.
Johnson and Buckner on one side, Sherman and Sheridan upon the other,
of his bier, he went to the tomb, a silent symbol that liberty had
conquered slavery; patriotism, rebellion; and peace, war. He rests in
peace. No drum or cannon shall disturb his rest. Sleep, hero, until
another trumpet shall shake the heavens and the earth――then come forth
to glory and immortality!
* * * * *
FROM “THE SPARKS OF NATURE.”
PATRIOTISM, in our day, is made to be an argument for all public
wrong and all private meanness. For the sake of country a man is told
to yield everything that makes the land honorable. For the sake of
country a man must submit to every ignominy that will lead to the ruin
of the State through disgrace of the citizen. There never was a man so
unpatriotic as Christ was. Old Jerusalem ought to have been everything
to Him. The laws and institutions of His country ought to have been
more to Him than all the men in His country. They were not, and the
Jews hated Him; but the common people, like the ocean waters, moved
in tides towards His heavenly attraction wherever He went.
* * * * *
When men begin their prayers with, “O thou omnipotent, omnipresent,
all-seeing, ever-living, blessed Potentate, Lord God Jehovah!” I
should think they would take breath. Think of a man in his family,
hurried for his breakfast, praying in such a strain. He has a note
coming due, and it is going to be paid to-day, and he feels buoyant;
and he goes down on his knees like a cricket on the hearth, and piles
up these majestically moving phrases about God. Then he goes on to say
that he is a sinner; he is proud to say that he is a sinner. Then he
asks for his daily bread. He has it; and he can always ask for it when
he has it. Then he jumps up, and goes over to the city. He comes back
at night, and goes through a similar wordy form of “evening prayers;”
and he is called “a praying man!” A _♦praying man_? I might as well
call myself an ornithologist, because I eat chicken once in awhile for
my dinner.
♦ ‘prayiny’ replaced with ‘praying’
* * * * *
When I see how much has been written of those who have lived; how
the Greeks preserved every saying of Plato’s; how Boswell followed
Johnson, gathering up every leaf that fell from that rugged old oak,
and pasting it away,――I almost regret that one of the disciples had
not been a recording angel, to preserve the odor and richness of every
word of Christ. When John says, “And there are also many other things
which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I
suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that
would be written,” it affects me more profoundly than when I think
of the destruction of the Alexandrian Library, or the perishing of
Grecian art in Athens or Byzantium. The creations of Phidias were
cold stone, overlaid by warm thought; but Christ described His own
creations when He said, “The words that I speak unto you, they are
life.” The leaving out of these things from the New Testament, though
divinely wise, seems, to my yearning, not so much the unaccomplishment
of noble things as the destruction of great treasures, which had
already had oral life, but failed of incarnation in literature.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
JOHN B. GOUGH.
NO 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).
While lecturing at Frankford, Pennsylvania, February 18, 1886, he was
stricken down with cerebral apoplexy and lapsed into unconsciousness,
soon followed by death. He had just uttered the words “Young man, keep
your record clean.”
* * * * *
WATER AND RUM.
The following apostrophe on Water and execration on Rum, by Mr.
John B. Gough, was never published in full till after his death.
He furnished it to a young friend many years ago, who promised
not to publish it while he was on the lecture platform.
WATER! There is no poison in that cup; no fiendish spirit dwells
beneath those crystal drops to lure you and me and all of us to ruin;
no spectral shadows play upon its waveless surface; no widows’ groans
or orphans’ tears rise to God from those placid fountains; misery,
crime, wretchedness, woe, want, and rags come not within the hallowed
precincts where cold water reigns supreme. Pure now as when it left
its native heaven, giving vigor to our youth, strength to our manhood,
and solace to our old age. Cold water is beautiful and bright and pure
everywhere. In the moonlight fountains and the sunny rills; in the
warbling brook and the giant river; in the deep tangled wildwood
and the cataract’s spray; in the hand of beauty or on the lips of
manhood――cold water is beautiful everywhere.
Rum! There is a poison in that cup. There is a serpent in that cup
whose sting is madness and whose embrace is death. There dwells
beneath that smiling surface a fiendish spirit which for centuries
has been wandering over the earth, carrying on a war of desolation
and destruction against mankind, blighting and mildewing the noblest
affections of the heart, and corrupting with its foul breath the tide
of human life and changing the glad, green earth into a lazar house.
Gaze on it! But shudder as you gaze! Those sparkling drops are murder
in disguise; so quiet now, yet widows’ groans and orphans’ tears and
maniacs’ yells are in that cup. The worm that dieth not and the fire
that is not quenched are in that cup.
Peace and hope and love and truth dwell not within that fiery circle
where dwells that desolating monster which men call rum. Corrupt now
as when it left its native hell, giving fire to the eye, madness to
the brain, and ruin to the soul. Rum is vile and deadly and accursed
everywhere. The poet would liken it in its fiery glow to the flames
that flicker around the abode of the damned. The theologian would
point you to the drunkard’s doom, while the historian would unfold
the dark record of the past and point you to the fate of empires and
kingdoms lured to ruin by the siren song of the tempter, and sleeping
now in cold obscurity, the wrecks of what once were great, grand
and glorious. Yes, rum is corrupt and vile and deadly, and accursed
everywhere. Fit type and semblance of all earthly corruption!