From the Bottom Up | Page 6

finally redeemed it, returned it, and
quit. But this time the hat had come to stay.
With my new vision still warm in my heart, I became very active in the
parish Sunday School. My inability to read relegated me to the
children's class; but I had a retentive memory, and before I was able to
read, I memorized about three hundred texts from the Bible.
The first outworking of my vision was on a drunken stone mason of our
town. His family, relatives, and friends had all given him up. He had
given himself up. I went after him every night for weeks; talked to him,
pleaded with him, prayed for him, and was rewarded by seeing him

make a new start. Together we organized a temperance society. I think
it was the first temperance society in that town. I was much more at
home in this kind of work than in the Sunday School; for, while I could
be neither secretary, treasurer, nor president of the temperance society I
had organized, my inability to read or write did not prevent me from
hustling after such men as my first convert.
In the Sunday School, I felt keenly the fact that I was outclassed by
boys half my age; but I persevered and went from one class to another,
until I had gone through the grades, and was then given the opportunity
to organize a class of my own. This I did with the material on the
streets, children unconnected with any school or institution. I taught
them the Bible stories and helped them to memorize the texts that I had
learned myself.
Despite the fact that I was now clean and well groomed, I could not
help comparing my life to the life of the horses I was attending,
especially with regard to their sleeping accommodations. The slightest
speck of dirt of any kind around their bedding was an indictment of the
grooming. The stables were beautifully flagged and sprinkled with fine,
white sand. The mangers were kept cleaner than anything in the houses
of the poor, and, when I trotted a mount out into the yard, the master
would take out his white silk handkerchief, run it along the horse's side,
and then examine it. If the handkerchief was soiled in the slightest
degree, the horse was sent back. Probably not once in a year was a
horse returned under such circumstances. The regularity of meals was
another point of comparison, and the daily washings, brushings,
groomings.
It meant something to be a horse in that stable--much more than it
meant to be a groom. When these points of comparison arose, I pushed
them back as evil and discontent with the will of God. This master man
used to talk to his horses, but he seldom talked to his grooms.
Sometimes I was permitted the luxury of a look at the great dining-hall,
or the drawing-rooms. That also was another world to me, a world of
beauty for God's good people. Even the butlers, footmen, and other
flunkies were superior people, and I envied them, not only the uniform

of their servitude but their intimate touch with that inner world of
beautiful things.
I spent one winter at the big house, and then the shame of my ignorance
drove me forever from the haunts of my childhood. I entered the city of
Belfast, seventeen miles distant, and became coachman and groom to a
man who, by the selling of clothes, had reached the economic status of
owning a horse. In adapting himself to this new condition, he dressed
me in livery, and, after I had taught him to drive, I sat beside him in the
buggy with folded arms, arrayed in a tall hat with a cockade. The wages
in this new position were so small that when I had paid for my room
and meagre board, I had nothing left for the support of my brothers and
sisters, who were still in dire poverty.
The young lady I had met on the farm lived in this city and in my
neighbourhood; but I would have considered it a matter of gross
discourtesy to call on her, or, indeed, do anything save lift my hat if I
met her on the street, our social stations were so far apart. But she had
told me the name of the church she attended, and, as I was thinking
more about her at that time than about anybody else, I stole quietly into
the church as soon as the doors were opened, and, ensconcing myself in
a corner under the gallery, I scanned the faces eagerly as they came in.
From that obscure point I saw the young lady once a week. At the end
of three months, her family came without