Temperance > Autobiography and personal recollections of John B. Gough

LECTURES.
127
Looking curiously at me, he half chuckled out: “Waal,
yes,—yes,—if I should give up the drink the children
would be better off.”
“You have a good wife?”
“ Yes, sir! as good a wife as ever a man had.”
“ You love your wife?”
“Sartain! (a little impatiently) I love my wife; it’s
natural for a man to love his wife.”
“Would you not do anything you could to please your
wife?”
“Sartain! I ought to please her if I can.”
“Do you not think if you signed the pledge that would
please her?”
Springing to his feet, he cried out: “I couldn’t do any¬
thing would please her like that! By thunder! if I should
sign the pledge, I really believe the old woman would be
up and about her business in a week, sick as she is now.”
“Then,” I said, “you’ll do it.”
“I will!”
He opened a closet, took out some ink and an old pen;
I spread out the pledge; he sat down, and laying his cheek
almost on the table,—if he did not flourish with his pen
he did with his tongue,—wrote his name. As he laid
down the pen he said, “There!”
The children had stopped their play when we began to
speak of temperance. They knew what a drunken father
was, and what the pledge would do for them; and as he
signed, their eyes grew large, like saucers, and one said to
the other, “Father has signed the pledge!”
Lifting up her hands, the other cried out: “Oh, my!
now I’ll go and tell my mother.”
She ran into the room; but the mother had been listen¬
ing, and heard it all, and I could hear her softly say:
“Luke! Luke! come in here, Luke!”