Temperance > Autobiography and personal recollections of John B. Gough

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ain?t I?” Then, coming close to me, “Would you gi’e a
body like me the pledge ?”
I answered at once, “Yes, ma’am.”
A gentleman said: “She cannot kjep it; she will be
drunk before she goes to bed to-night;—better not give
her the pledge.”
I turned to her: “Madam, here is a gentleman who says
you cannot keep it if you sign it.”
Clenching her fist, she said, “Show me the mon.”
I asked, “ Can you keep it 1”
“Can II—if I say I wull, I can.”
“Then say you will.”
“ I wull.”
“Give me your hand on that,” — and I shook hands with
her. She signed it, and I said: “I know you will keep it;
and before I go to America I will come and see you.”
“Come and see me when you wull,” she answered, “and
you’ll find I ha’e keepit it.”
It must have been two years from that time, I was
speaking there again, and after the lecture a gentleman
said to me: “I wish to introduce to you an old friend,
whom perhaps you have forgotten,—‘Mrs. Archer,’ no
longer ‘Fire.’ ”
I was introduced, and shook hands heartily with her
and her daughter, who sat by her. I had noticed the
woman during my speech, for she hardly took her eyes off
me, from the time I rose till I sat down. I went to her
house, and part of what she said to me was this:—
“Ah! Mr. Gough, I’m a puir body; I dinna ken much,
and what little I ha’e kenned has been knocked out of me
by the staffs of the policemen; for they beat me aboot the
head a good deal, and knocked prutty much a’ the sense
out of me; but sometimes I ha’e a dream—I dream I’m
drunk, and fichting, and the police ha’e got me again;