Beneath the Banner | Page 9

dilapidated; but he got help from a few good people, who saw the hero beneath his rags.
He was three weeks accomplishing the journey; and when he arrived in London spent the first day in search of work, which he failed to obtain.
In the evening, seeing that a temperance meeting was to be held in a hall off the Westminster Road, he went to it; and asked to be allowed to speak. Some of those on the platform viewed with distrust the gaunt, shabby, travel-stained applicant. But he would take no denial, and soon won cheers from the audience. When he stopped short, after a brief address, someone shouted "Go on". "How can a chap go on when he has nothing to say?" came the ready reply. That night he had no money in his pocket to pay for a bed; so he walked the streets of London through the weary hours till dawn of day.
Other temperance meetings he addressed; for his heart and mind were full of that subject. After one of the meetings a gentleman questioned him as to his means; and, finding the straits he was in, asked if he were not disheartened.
"No," replied John; "it is true I carry all my wealth in my little wallet, and have only a few pence in my pocket; but I have faith in God I shall yet succeed."
Struck by his manifest sincerity, the gentleman introduced him next day to a friend who took a warm interest in the temperance cause.
"Which wouldst thou prefer, carpentering or trying to persuade thy fellow-men to give up drinking, and to become teetotalers?" he asked.
Without hesitation John Cassell replied:--
"The work of teetotalism."
"Then thou shalt have an opportunity, and I will stand thy friend."
John Cassell now went forth as a disciple of the temperance cause. Remembering his experiences on the way to London he furnished himself with a watchman's rattle, with which he used to call together the people of the villages he visited.
A temperance paper thus speaks of him in 1837:--
"John Cassell, the Manchester carpenter, has been labouring, amidst many privations, with great success in the county of Norfolk. He is passing through Essex--(where he addressed the people, among other places, from the steps leading up to the pulpit of the Baptist chapel, with his carpenter's apron twisted round his waist)--on his way to London. He carries his watchman's rattle--an excellent accompaniment of temperance labour."
Cassell had a great regard for Thomas Whittaker. It was an address given by this gentleman which had first made him wish to become a public man.
When he called on Mr. Whittaker in Nottingham, as already related, after some conversation had taken place, he remarked:--
"I should like to hear thee again, Tom".
"Well," remarked Whittaker as a joke, "you can if you go with me to Derby."
John accepted the invitation forthwith, much to his friend's chagrin, who was bothered to know what to do with him; for he was under the impression that some members of the family where he expected to lodge would not give a very hearty welcome to this rough fellow.
This is Mr. Whittaker's narrative of the sequel:--
"We walked together to Derby that day. At the meeting he spoke a little, and pleased the people. When the meeting was over, he said:--
"'Can't I sleep with you?'
"'Well,' I said, 'I have no objection; but, you know, I am only a lodger.'
"However, go with me he would, and did. That was the man. When John made up his mind to do a thing he did it; and to that feature in his character, no doubt, much of his future success may be attributed. The gentleman at whose house he met me at Nottingham, and who was ashamed of him, subsequently became his servant, and touched his hat to him; and John has pulled up at my own door in his carriage, with a liveried servant, when I lived near to him in London."
John Cassell was now in the thick of the fight. In those days the opposition to the Gospel of Temperance was keen and bitter. Sometimes there were great disturbances at the meetings, sometimes he was pelted with rubbish, at times he did not know where to turn for a night's lodging. It was, on the whole, a fierce conflict; but John was nothing daunted.
It is, of course, impossible to sum up the amount of a man's influence. John Cassell scattered the seed of temperance liberally. Here is a case showing how one of the grains took root, and grew up to bear important fruit.
The Rev. Charles Garrett, the celebrated teetotal President of the Wesleyan Conference, writing several years after John Cassell's death, says:--
"I signed the pledge of total abstinence in 1840, after hearing a lecture on the subject by the late John Cassell. I have therefore tried it for