e that
it was an attempt, however poor, to help them. Drink, of course, was
the chief cause of the downfall of most; but as I have already said,
there were cases of genuine, undeserved poverty--like our sailor
friend, overtaken with sickness in a foreign port. We induced some to
sign the pledge and to keep it, if only temporarily, but I think that
we ourselves got most out of the work, both in pleasure and uplift. I
recall one clergyman, one doctor, and many men from the business world
and clerk's life in the flotsam and jetsam.

One poor creature, in the last stage of poverty and dirt, proved to be
an honours man in Oxford. We looked up his record in the University.
He assured us that he intended to begin again a new life, and we
agreed to help start him. We took him to a respectable, temperance
lodging-house, paid for a bed, a bath, and a supper, and purchased a
good second-hand outfit of clothing for him. We were wise enough only
to give this to him after we had taken away his own while he was
having a bath in the tub. We did not give him a penny of money,
fearing his lack of control. Next morning, however, when we went for
him, he was gone--no one knew where. We had the neighbouring saloons
searched, and soon got track of him. Some "friend" in the temperance
house had given him sixpence. The barman offered him the whiskey; his
hands trembled so that he could not lift the glass to his mouth, and
the barman kindly poured it down his throat. We never saw him again.

In this lodging-house work a friend, now a well-known artist and
successful business man, often joined us two doctors.

My growing experience had shown me that there was a better way to the
hearts of my Sunday-School boys than merely talking to them. Like
myself, they worshipped the athlete, whether he were a prize-fighter
or a big football player. There were no Y.M.C.A.'s or other places for
them to get any physical culture, so we arranged to clear our
dining-room every Saturday evening, and give boxing lessons and
parallel-bar work: the ceiling was too low for the horizontal. The
transformation of the room was easily accomplished. The furniture was
very primitive, largely our own construction, and we could throw out
through the window every scrap of it except the table, which was soon
"adapted." We also put up a quoit pitch in our garden.

This is no place to discuss the spiritual influences of the "noble art
of boxing." Personally I have always belie