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Steve P. Holcombe, the Converted Gambler: His Life and Work

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Title: Steve P. Holcombe, the Converted Gambler: His Life and Work

Author: Gross Alexander


        
Release date: October 30, 2011 [eBook #37883]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STEVE P. HOLCOMBE, THE CONVERTED GAMBLER: HIS LIFE AND WORK ***




Produced by David Garcia, Matthew Wheaton and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Kentuckiana Digital Library)







[Illustration: Steve P. Holcombe.]




  STEVE P. HOLCOMBE,

  THE CONVERTED GAMBLER:

  HIS LIFE AND WORK.

  BY REV. GROSS ALEXANDER.


  INTRODUCTION BY

  _REV. SAM P. JONES._


  LOUISVILLE:

  PRESS OF THE COURIER-JOURNAL JOB PRINTING COMPANY.

  1888.


   COPYRIGHTED, 1888.


  TO

  Mrs. S. P. Holcombe,

  THE PATIENT WIFE,

  THE FAITHFUL MOTHER,

  THE FRIEND OF PUBLICANS AND SINNERS,

  THIS ACCOUNT OF

  THE LIFE AND WORK OF HER HUSBAND

  IS DEDICATED.




  TABLE OF CONTENTS.


  INTRODUCTION BY SAM. P. JONES
  LETTER FROM DR. J. A. BROADUS
  LIFE AND WORK OF STEVE P. HOLCOMBE--
    CHAPTER I
    CHAPTER II
    CHAPTER III
    CHAPTER IV
    CHAPTER V
    CHAPTER VI
  LETTERS TESTIMONIALS OF CONVERTS
  SERMONS




PREFACE.


It has been thought and suggested by some of those having knowledge of
Mr. Holcombe's history, that an account of his life and work in
book-form would multiply his usefulness and do good. And since the
narration of his experiences by himself has been of such great benefit
to those who have been privileged to hear him, why may not others also
be benefited by reading some account of his uncommon career?

It is hoped that it will be of interest to the general reader as a
revelation and record of the workings and struggles of some human hearts
and the wretchedness and blessedness of some human lives. It is a sort
of luxury to read about and sympathize with wretchedness, as it is a joy
to see that wretchedness turned to blessedness. It will show to those
who are unwillingly the slaves of sin what God has done for such as
they. It will possibly interest and encourage those who are engaged in
Christian work. It may furnish suggestions as to practical methods to be
pursued in working among poor and needy classes, whether in towns or
cities. Even ministers of the Gospel may find encouragement and
instruction in the experience of Mr. Holcombe's life and the methods and
successes of his work.

What few letters of Mr. Holcombe's could be found are put in as showing
phases of this interesting character that could be shown as well no
other way, and some letters written _to_ him are selected out of
several hundred of like character to show how he touches all classes of
people.

The "Testimonies" are from men who have been rescued under Mr.
Holcombe's ministry, and will give some idea of the work that is being
done. These are only a few of the men who have been brought to a better
and happier life through Mr. Holcombe's efforts. If any should feel that
there is a sameness in these testimonies, which it is believed very few
will do, perhaps others will feel the cumulative effect of line upon
line, example upon example.

The sermons or addresses are inserted because they have been the means
of awakening and guiding many to salvation, and they may be of interest
and possibly of benefit to some who have not heard Mr. Holcombe. They
contain much of the history of his inner life in statements of
experience introduced by way of illustration. They are given in outline
only, as will be seen.

The book lays no claim to literary excellence. The position and work of
the man make his life worth writing and reading apart from the style of
the book.

The accounts here given of Mr. Holcombe's character and work are not
written for the purpose of glorifying him. Many of these pages are
profoundly painful and humiliating to him. But they are written that
those who read them may know from what depths he has been brought, and
to what blessedness he has been raised, through Jesus Christ, to whose
name the glory is given and to whose blessing the book is commended.

     AUGUST, 1888.




INTRODUCTION.

BY REV. SAM P. JONES.


The author of this volume, the Rev. Gross Alexander, Professor of
Theology in Vanderbilt University, was surely the man to give to the
world the Life of Steve Holcombe. The warm heart and clear head of the
author, and the consecrated, self-denying life of the subject of the
volume, assure the reader ample compensation for the time given to the
book.

Mr. Alexander has known Brother Holcombe from the beginning of his
Christian life, and tells the story of his fidelity to Christ and
loyalty to duty as no other could.

I first met Brother Holcombe at Louisville, in the year 1882, when I was
preaching in the church of his pastor, Rev. J. C. Morris. It was from
Brother Morris that I learned of this consecrated layman. He often told
me with joy of many incidents connected with the conversion and work of
Brother Holcombe. My acquaintance with him soon grew into a warm
friendship. It has always been an inspiration to me to talk with him,
and a source of gratitude to me to know that I have his affection and
prayers.

The work he is doing now in the city of Louisville, Kentucky, is very
much like Jerry Macauley's work in New York City years ago. No man has
experienced more vividly the power of Christ to save, and no man has a
stronger faith in Christ's ability to save. Brother Holcombe's humility
and fidelity have made him a power in the work of rescuing the
perishing and saving the fallen. I have been charmed by the purity of
soul manifested by him on all occasions, and his continual efforts to
bring back those who have been overtaken in a fault. Hundreds of men who
have felt his sympathizing arms about them and listened to his brotherly
words have grown strong, because they had a friend and brother in Steve
Holcombe, who, in spite of their failures and faults, has clung to them
with a love like that which Christ Himself manifested toward those who
were as bruised reeds and smoking flax.

Brother Holcombe, rescued himself by the loving hand of Christ, has
extended the hand from a heart full of love for Christ and men, and has
done his best to save all who have come under his influence.

This volume will be especially instructive to those who are interested
in the salvation of the non-churchgoers of the great cities. For surely
Brother Holcombe's Mission is a place where the worst sinners hear of
Christ's power to save, and where they see, in Brother Holcombe himself,
with his rich experience, one of the greatest triumphs of the Gospel.

I heartily commend this volume to all Christian people, because it tells
of the life of a saved man. It tells also what a saved man can do for
others, and it will inspire many hearts with sympathy for such work and
prepare many hands to help in it. I heartily commend this book because
it is the biography of one whom I love and whom all men would love, if
they knew him in his devotion to God and duty. Brother Holcombe has
frequently been with me in my meetings and in my private room; I have
frequently been with him in his Mission, in his family circle, on the
streets of the great cities, and he is one man of whom it may be said:
"His conversation is in heaven." I frequently feel that my own life
would have been more successful with such a fervent consecration to my
work as Brother Steve Holcombe exemplifies.

The sermons contained in this volume will be read with interest. They
are his sermons. They come from his heart, and they have reached the
hearts of hundreds and thousands who have heard him gladly.

I bespeak for the book a circulation which will put it into the library
of all pastors and into thousands of homes.

     SAM P. JONES.

     CARTERSVILLE, GA., October 18, 1888.




LETTER FROM DR. JOHN A. BROADUS.


I have read with very great interest the "Life of Steve Holcombe," and
have carefully looked through the letters, testimonies and sermons to be
included in the proposed volume, and I rejoice that it is to be
published. Professor Alexander, who was Mr. Holcombe's first pastor, has
written the life with the best use of his fine literary gifts, and with
sound judgment and good taste. It is a wonderful story. I have long felt
interest in Mr. Holcombe and his work, for after beginning his Mission
he attended my seminary lessons in the New Testament through a session
and more; but this record of his life warms my heart still more toward
him and his remarkable labors of love. I think the book will be very
widely read. It will stir Christians to more hopeful efforts to save the
most wicked. It will encourage many a desperate wanderer to seek the
grace of God in the Gospel. Such a book makes a real addition to the
"evidences of Christianity." No one can read it without feeling that
Christian piety is something real and powerful and delightful. Much may
be learned from Mr. Holcombe's recorded methods and discourses, and from
the testimonies of his converts, as to the best means of carrying on
religious work of many kinds. The book will, doubtless, lead to the
establishment of like Missions in other cities, and put new heart and
hope into the pastors, missionaries and every class of Christian
workers. It will show that zeal and love and faith must be supported by
ample common sense and force of character, as in Mr. Holcombe's case,
if great results are to hoped for. Many persons can be induced to read
his brief outline sermons who would never look at more elaborate
discourses. As to two or three slight touches of doctrinal statement,
some of us might not agree with the speaker, but all must see that his
sermons are very practical, pervaded by good sense and true feeling, and
adapted to do much good.

     JOHN A. BROADUS.

     LOUISVILLE, KY., September 25, 1888.




LIFE AND WORK.




CHAPTER I.


Steve P. Holcombe, known in former years as a gambler and doer of all
evil, no less known in these latter days as a preacher of the Gospel and
doer of all good, was born at Shippingsport, Kentucky, in 1835. The
place, as well as the man, has an interesting history. An odd,
straggling, tired, little old town, it looks as if it had been left
behind and had long ago given up all hope of ever catching up. It is in
this and other respects in striking contrast with its surroundings. The
triangular island, upon which it is situated, lies lazily between the
Ohio river, which flows like a torrent around two sides of it, and the
Louisville canal, which stretches straight as an arrow along the third.
On its northeast side it commands a view of the most picturesque part of
La Belle Riviere. This part embraces the rapids, or "Falls," opposite
the city of Louisville, which gets its surname of "Falls City" from this
circumstance. In the midst of the rapids a lone, little island of bare
rocks rises sheer out of the dashing waters to the height of several
feet, and across the wide expanse, on the other side of the river, loom
up the wooded banks of the Indiana side, indented with many a romantic
cove, and sweeping around with a graceful curve, while the chimneys and
towers and spires of Jeffersonville and New Albany rise in the
distance, with the blue Indiana "Knobs" in the deep background beyond.
From this same point on the island, and forming part of the same
extensive view, one may see the two majestic bridges, each a mile in
length, one of which spans the river directly over the Falls and
connects the city of Louisville with Jeffersonville, Indiana, while the
other joins the western portion of Louisville with the thriving city of
New Albany. Across the canal from the island, on the south, lies the
city of Louisville with its near 200,000 population, its broad avenues,
its palatial buildings.

In the very midst of all this profusion of beauty and all this hum and
buzz and rush of commercial and social life, lies the dingy, sleepy old
town of Shippingsport with its three hundred or four hundred people, all
unheeded and unheeding, uncared for and uncaring. There are five or six
fairly good houses, and all the rest are poor. There is a good brick
school-house, built and kept up by the city of Louisville, of which,
since 1842, Shippingsport is an incorporated part. There is one
dilapidated, sad looking, little old brick church, which seldom suffers
any sort of disturbance. On the northeast shore of the island directly
over the rushing waters stands the picturesque old mill built by
Tarascon in the early part of the century. It utilizes the fine
water-power of the "Falls" in making the famous Louisville cement. Part
of the inhabitants are employed as laborers in this mill, and part of
them derive their support from fishing in the river, for which there are
exceptional opportunities all the year around in the shallows, where
the rushing waters dash, with eddying whirl, against the rocky shores of
their island.

There are, at this time, some excellent people in Shippingsport, who
faithfully maintain spiritual life and good moral character amid
surrounding apathy and immorality. "For except the Lord had left unto
them a very small remnant, they should have been as Sodom, and they
should have been like unto Gomorrah."

And yet, Shippingsport was not always what it is now. Time was when it
boasted the aristocracy of the Falls. "The house is still standing,"
says a recent writer in Harper's Monthly Magazine, "where in the early
part of the century the Frenchman, Tarascon, offered border hospitality
to many distinguished guests, among whom were Aaron Burr and
Blennerhasset, and General Wilkinson, then in command of the armies of
the United States." He might have added that Shippingsport was once
honored with a visit from LaFayette, and later also from President
Jackson. But in other respects also Shippingsport was, in former years,
far different from what it is to-day. In business importance it rivaled
the city of Louisville itself. In that early day, before the building of
the canal, steamboats could not, on account of the Falls, pass up the
river except during high water, so that for about nine months in the
year Shippingsport was the head of navigation. Naturally, it became a
place of considerable commercial importance, as the shrewd Frenchman who
first settled there saw it was bound to be. Very soon it attracted a
population of some hundreds, and grew into a very busy little mart.
"Every day," says one of the old citizens still living, "steamboats were
landing with products and passengers from the South, or leaving with
products and passengers from Kentucky and the upper country." The
freight which was landed at Shippingsport was carried by wagons and
drays to Louisville, Lexington and other places in Kentucky and Indiana.
This same old citizen, Mr. Alex. Folwell, declares that he has seen as
many as five hundred wagons in one day in and around the place. There
were three large warehouses and several stores, and what seems hard to
believe, land sold in some instances for $100 per foot.

The canal was begun in 1824, the first spadeful of dirt being taken out
by DeWitt Clinton, of New York. During the next six years from five
hundred to a thousand men were employed on it. They were, as a general
thing, a rough set. Sometimes, while steamboats were lying at the place,
the unemployed hands would annoy the workmen on the canal so that
gradually there grew up a feeling of enmity between the two classes
which broke out occasionally in regular battles.

In 1830, when the canal was finished, the days of Shippingsport's
prosperity were numbered. Thenceforth steamboats, independent of
obstructions in the river, passed on up through the canal, and
Shippingsport found her occupation was gone. The better classes lost no
time in removing to other places, and only the poorer and rougher
classes remained. Many of the workmen who had been engaged in building
the canal settled down there to live; unemployed and broken-down
steamboatmen gravitated to the place where they always had such good
times; shiftless and thriftless poor people from other places came
flocking in as to a poor man's paradise. Within easy reach of
Louisville, the place became a resort for the immoral young men, the
gamblers and all the rough characters of that growing city.

Such was the place to which Steve Holcombe's parents removed from
Central Kentucky in 1835, the year of his birth; and, though coming into
the midst of surroundings so full of moral perils, they did not bring
that strength of moral character, that fixedness of moral habit and that
steadfastness of moral purpose which were necessary to guard against the
temptations of every sort which were awaiting them.

The father, though an honest and well disposed sort of man and very kind
to his family, was already a drunkard. His son says of him: "My poor
father had gotten to be a confirmed drunkard before I was born, and
after he had settled at Shippingsport, my mother would not let him stay
about the house, so that most of his time was spent in lying around
bar-rooms or out on the commons, where he usually slept all times of the
year." It is not surprising that as a consequence of such dissipation
and such exposure he died at the early age of thirty-three, when his son
Steve was eleven years old. Dead, he sleeps in an unmarked grave on the
commons where formerly he slept when drunk and shut out by his wife from
his home.

Mrs. Holcombe, the mother of Steve, a woman five feet ten inches in
height and one hundred and ninety pounds in weight, was as strong in
passion as in physical power. "When aroused," says her son, "she was as
fierce as a tigress and fearless of God, man or devil, although she was
a woman of quick sympathy and impulsive kindheartedness toward those who
were in distress, and would go further to help such than almost any one
I have ever known." She was a woman of more than ordinary mind, though
entirely without education. In the government of her children she was
extremely severe. "Though my father," says Mr. Holcombe, "never whipped
me but once in my life, and that slightly, my mother has whipped me
hundreds of times, I suppose, and with as great severity as frequency.
She has, at times, almost beaten me to death. She would use a switch, a
cane, a broom-stick or a club, whichever happened to be at hand when she
became provoked. She whipped me oftener for going swimming than for
anything else, I believe. If I told her a lie about it she would whip
me, and if I told her the truth, she would whip me."

From neglect and other causes little Steve was very sickly and puny in
his babyhood, so that he did not walk till he was four years old; but
from the beginning his temper was as violent as his body was weak, and
from his earliest recollection, he says, he loved to fight. At the same
time he had his mother's tenderheartedness for those who were in
distress. Once a stranger stopped for a few days at the tavern in
Shippingsport, and the roughs of the place caught him out on one
occasion and beat him so severely that he was left for dead; but he
crawled afterward into an old shed where little Holcombe, between five
and six years old, found him and took him food every day for about two
weeks.

The boys with whom he associated in childhood were addicted to petty
stealing, and he learned from them to practice the same. When about
seven years old his mother, on account of their poverty, provided him
with a supply of cakes, pies and fruits to peddle out on the steamers
while they were detained in passing the locks of the canal. Instead of
returning the money to his mother, however, he would often lose it in
gambling with the bad boys of the place, and sometimes even with his
half-brothers, so that he seldom got home with his money, but always got
his beating.

At eight years of age he played cards for money in bar-rooms with grown
men. At ten he began to explore those parts of the river about the
falls, in a skiff alone looking for articles of various kinds lost in
wrecks, that he might get means for gambling. This, together with the
fact that his hair was very light in color, gained for him the
distinction of the "Little White-headed Pirate."

In 1842 Shippingsport was taken into the city of Louisville, and a
school was established, which he attended about three months during this
period of his life, and he never attended school afterward. The
brown-haired, black-eyed little girl who afterward became his wife,
attended this school at the same time. Her parents had lately removed to
Shippingsport from Jeffersonville, Indiana. They were people of
excellent character and were so careful of their children that they
would not allow them to associate with the children of Shippingsport any
farther than was necessary and unavoidable. But, notwithstanding these
restrictions, their little Mary saw just enough of Steve Holcombe in
school to form a strange liking for him, as he did also for her--an
attachment which has lasted through many and varying experiences up to
the present. At that time he had grown to be "a heavy set little boy,"
as Mrs. Holcombe describes him, and was "very good looking," indeed,
"very handsome," as she goes on to say, "with his deep blue eyes and his
golden hair." She did not know that she was in love with a boy who was
to become one of the worst of men in all forms of wickedness, and as
little did she know that she was in love with a boy who was to become
one of the best of men in all forms of goodness and usefulness. Nor did
he foresee that he was forming an attachment then and there for one who
was to love him devotedly and serve him patiently through all phases of
infidelity and wickedness, and through years of almost unexampled trials
and sufferings, who was to cling to him amid numberless perils and
scandals, who was to train and restrain his children so as to lead them
in ways of purity and goodness in spite of the father's bad example, who
was to endure for his sake forms of ill treatment that have killed many
a woman, and who was in long distant years to be his most patient
encourager and helper in a singularly blessed and successful work for
God and the most abandoned and hopeless class of sinful men, and to
develop, amid all and in spite of all and by means of all, one of the
truest and strongest and most devoted of female characters. A singular
thing it seems, indeed, that an attachment begun so early and tested so
severely should have lasted so late. And yet it is perhaps at this
moment stronger than ever it was before.

[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF MR. HOLCOMBE. SHIPPINGSPORT.]

Notwithstanding young Holcombe's lack of religious instruction and his
extraordinary maturity in wickedness, he declares that at times he had,
even before his tenth year, very serious thoughts. He says:

"I always believed there was a God and that the Bible was from God, but
for the most part my belief was very vague and took hold of nothing
definite. Hence, nearly all my thoughts were evil, only evil and evil
continually. I am sure, however, that I believed there was a hell. When
a child, I used to dream, it seems to me, almost every night, that the
devil had me, and sometimes my dreams were so real that I would say to
myself while dreaming, 'Now this is no dream; he has got me this time,
sure enough.' I remember that one text which I heard a preacher read
troubled me more than anything else, when I thought about dying and
going to judgment. It was this: 'And they hid themselves in the dens and
rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, fall on us
and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne.' I always
had a fear of death and a dread of the future. The rattling of clods on
a coffin filled me with awe and dread. When I thought about my soul, I
would always say to myself, 'I am going to get good before I go into the
presence of God; but now I want to keep these thoughts out of mind so I
can do as I please and not have to suffer and struggle and fight against
sin--till I get consumption. When I get consumption I will have plenty
of warning as to death's approach and plenty of time to prepare for it.'
But I had gotten such an admiration for gamblers and such a passion for
gambling that I had a consuming ambition to become a regular blackleg,
as gamblers were called in those days. I made up my mind that this was
to be my business, and I began to look about for some way to get loose
from everything else, so I could do nothing but gamble, with nobody to
molest or make me afraid."

It is hard enough for a boy to keep from doing wrong and to do right
always, even when he has inherited a good disposition, enjoyed good
advantages and had the best of training. But our little friend, Steve
Holcombe, poor fellow, inherited from his father an appetite for drink
and from his mother a savage temper. To balance these, he had none of
the safeguards of a careful, moral or religious education, and none of
those sweet and helpful home associations which follow a man through
life and hold him back from wrong doing.

Thus unprepared, unshielded, unguarded, at the tender age of eleven
years he left home to work his own way in the world. No mother's prayers
had hitherto helped him, and no mother's prayers from henceforth
followed him. No hallowed home influences had blessed and sweetened his
miserable childhood and no tender recollections of sanctified home life
were to follow him into the great wicked world. On the contrary, he was
fleeing from his home to find some refuge, he knew not what, he knew not
where. He was going out, boy as he was, loaded down with the vices and
hungry with the passions of a man. He did not seek employment among
people that were good or in circumstances encouraging to goodness, but
just where of all places he would find most vice and learn most
wickedness--on a steamboat. One knowing his antecedents and looking out
into his future could easily have foreseen his career in vice and
crime, but would hardly have predicted for him that life of goodness and
usefulness which now for eleven wonderful years he has been leading.

He was employed on a steamboat which ran on the Tennessee river, and his
first trip was to Florence, Alabama. His mother did not know what had
become of him. He was employed in some service about the kitchen. He
slept on deck with the hands and ate with the servants. Hungry as he was
for some word or look of sympathy which, given him and followed up,
might have made him a different character, nobody showed him any
kindness. The steward of the boat on the contrary showed him some
unkindness, and was in the act of kicking him on one occasion for
something, when young Holcombe jumped at him like an enraged animal and
frightened him so badly that he was glad to drop the matter for the
present and to respect the boy for the future. On this trip he found
five dollars in money on the boat, and was honest enough to take it to
the steward for the owner.

When he returned home from this trip, strange to say, his mother so far
from giving him a severer beating than usual, as might have been
expected, did not punish him at all. She was probably too glad to get
him back and too afraid of driving him away again. But nothing could
restrain him now that he had once seen the world and made the successful
experiment of getting on in the world without anybody's help. So that he
soon went on another trip and so continued, going on four or five long
steamboat runs before he was fourteen years of age, and spending his
unoccupied time in gambling with either white men or negroes, as he
found opportunity.

After he was fourteen years old he went on the upper Mississippi river
and traveled to and from St. Louis. On the Mississippi steamers of those
days gambling was common, not only among the servants and deck-hands, it
was the pastime or the business of some of the first-class passengers
also. Sometimes when a rich planter had lost all his ready money in
gambling, he would put up a slave, male or female, that he might happen
to have with him, and after losing, would borrow money to win or buy
again the slave. Professional gamblers, luxuriously dressed and living
like princes, frequented the steamers of those days for the purpose of
entrapping and fleecing the passengers. All this only increased the
fascination of gambling for young Holcombe, and he studied and practiced
it with increasing zeal.

About this time, when he was in the neighborhood of fourteen years of
age, his mother, awaking all too late to his peril and to her duty, got
him a situation as office-boy in the office of Dr. Mandeville Thum, of
Louisville, hoping to keep him at home and rescue him from the perilous
life he had entered upon. Dr. Thum was much pleased with him, took great
interest in him, and treated him with unusual kindness. He even began
himself to teach him algebra, with the intention of making a civil
engineer of the boy. And he was making encouraging progress in his
studies and would, doubtless, have done well, had he continued.

During the time he spent in the service of Dr. Thum, he attended a
revival meeting held by the Rev. Mr. Crenshaw, at Shippingsport, and was
much impressed by what he heard. He became so awakened and interested
that he responded to the appeals that were made by this devoted and
zealous preacher and sought interviews with him. He tried his level
best, as he expresses it, to work himself up to a point where he could
feel that he was converted, a not rare, but very wrong, view of this
solemn matter. But he could not _feel_ it. While, however, he could not
get the feeling, he _determined_ to be a Christian, anyhow, a rarer and
better, but not altogether correct, view of the subject either. For a
week or ten days he succeeded in overcoming evil impulses, and in living
right, but he was led away by evil companions. Soon after this he tried
it again, and this time he succeeded for a longer time than before in
resisting temptations and following his sense of right, but was one day
persuaded to go on a Sunday steamboat-excursion to New Albany, with some
young folks from Shippingsport, which proved the occasion of his fall.
On returning home he and two other boys went part of the way on foot.
They heard a man, not far away, crying for water, and Holcombe's quick
impulse of sympathy led him to propose to go to the relief of the
sufferer. When they found he was not so bad off as they thought, the two
other boys began to abuse and mistreat the stranger. He was an unequal
match for the two, however, and as he was about to get the best of them,
young Holcombe knocked the poor man down, and they all kicked him so
severely over the head and face that when they left him he was nearly
dead. Holcombe went back the next day, and half a mile away he found the
coroner holding an inquest over the man. He was preparing to flee to
Indiana when he heard that the verdict of the jury was: "Death from
exposure to the sun."

This cowardly and wicked deed wrought in him such shame, such
self-loathing and such discouragement that he abandoned all hope and
purpose of living a better life. With a sort of feeling of desperation
and of revenge against his better nature for allowing him to yield and
stoop to such meanness, he left his position in Louisville and shipped
on a steamboat again for St. Louis. While the boat was lying at the
wharf at St. Louis he got into a difficulty with one of the deck-hands
who applied to him a very disgraceful name. Instantly young Holcombe
seized a heavy meat-cleaver and would have split the man's head in two
if the cook had not caught his arm as he swung it back for the stroke.
From St. Louis he went up the Missouri river to Omaha, engaging, as
usual, in gambling and other nameless vices.

On his second trip from Omaha to St. Louis he innocently provoked the
anger of the steward of the boat, who abused him in such a way that
Holcombe ran at him with an ice-pick, when the terrified man rushed into
the office and took refuge behind the captain. It was decided that
Holcombe should be discharged and put ashore. When the clerk called him
up to pay him off, he volunteered some reproof and abuse of the
seventeen-year-old boy. But, upon finding he was dealing with one who,
when aroused, knew neither fear nor self-control, he was glad to quiet
down and pay him his dues, as Holcombe remarked: "You may discharge me
and put me ashore, but you shall not abuse me." And they put him ashore
at Kansas City, then a small village. While waiting at Kansas City for
the next boat to St. Louis (all traveling being done in those days and
regions by water), he spent his time around bar-rooms and
gambling-houses. There he saw a different and more extensive kind of
gaming than he had ever seen before. Great quantities of money were on
the tables before the players, greater than he had ever seen, and he saw
it change hands and pass from one to another. Such a sight increased his
desire to follow such a life. So he put up his money, the wages of his
labor on the boat, and lost it--all. He spent the remainder of his stay
in Kansas City wandering around, destitute, hungry, lonely, with various
reflections on the fortunes and misfortunes of a gambler's life, till at
last he got deck-passage on a boat to St. Louis, and paid his fare by
sawing wood. During this trip his violent and revengeful temper led him
to commit an act that nearly resulted in murder. One of the deck-hands
threw down some wood which he had piled up, and Holcombe protested,
whereupon the deck-hand cursed him and said: "You little rat, I will
throw you overboard!" Mr. Holcombe replied: "I guess you won't," and
said nothing more at the time. After the man had lain down and gone to
sleep, Mr. Holcombe got a cord-stick, slipped upon him, and hit him on
the skull with all his might, completely stunning the man. "Now," says
Mr. Holcombe, speaking of this incident, "I can not understand how a man
could do so cruel a thing, but _then_ I felt I must have revenge some
way, and _I could not keep from it_."

At St. Louis he got a position on a boat for New Orleans, and soon after
arriving in that city he shipped on board a steamship for Galveston,
Texas, but returned immediately to New Orleans. Here, however, he soon
lost, in gambling, all the money he had made on the trip, and was so
entirely without friends or acquaintances that he could find no place to
sleep, and wandered about on the levee until one or two o'clock in the
morning. To add to the loneliness and dismalness of his situation, it
was during an epidemic of yellow fever in the city, and people were
dying so fast they could not bury them, but had to plow trenches and
throw the corpses in, as they bury soldiers on a battle-field. About one
or two o'clock, a colored man, on a steamboat seeing him walking around
alone, called him, and finding out his condition, took him on board the
steamer and gave him a bed. But Holcombe was so afraid the negro had
some design upon him, as there were no others on board, that he stole
away from the boat and wandered around, alone, all the rest of the
night.

On that awful night the great deep of his heart was broken up and he
felt a sense of loneliness that he had never felt before in his life. He
was in a strange city among a strange people. He had no friends, he had
no means. He had not where to lay his head. The darkness of the night
shut off the sight of those objects which in the day would have diverted
his mind and relieved his painful reflections; and the awful stillness,
broken only by the rattling of wheels that bore away the dead, made it
seem to him as if his thoughts were spoken to him by some audible voice.
His past life came up before him, but there was in it nothing pleasant
for him to remember. It had been from his earliest recollection one
constant experience of pain and sin. He was uneasy about himself. He was
frightened at the past, and the recollection of his hard, but vain,
struggle to get his evil nature changed and bettered, cast a dark cloud
over his future. What could he do? Where could he go? Who was there
could help him? Who was there that loved him? At his own home, if home
it could be called, there was nothing but strife and cruelty and sin.
Father, he had none. He that was his father had lived a drunkard's life,
had died a drunkard's death and was buried in a drunkard's grave. And
his mother--she had no power to help him or even love him as most
mothers love their children, and as on that lone dismal night he would
have given the world to be loved. Of God's mercy and love he did not
know, he thought only of his wrath, nor had he learned how to approach
him in prayer. Alone, alone, he felt himself to be shut up between a
past that was full of sin and crime and a future that promised nothing
better. But he did think of one who had loved him and who had said she
would always love him and he felt there was truth in her soul and in her
words. It was the brown-haired, sweet-faced, strong-hearted little girl
he had left in Shippingsport. He would go back to her. She alone of all
people in the world seemed able to help him and this seemed his last,
his only hope. If she had remained true to him, and if she would love
him, the world would not seem so dreary and the future would not seem so
dark, and maybe she could help him to be a better man. "On the next
day," says Mr. Holcombe, "an acquaintance of mine from Louisville ran
across me as I was strolling about the streets, took me aboard a steamer
and made me go home with him."

[Illustration: THE OLD MILL AT SHIPPINGSPORT.]




CHAPTER II.


As has already been said, Mr. and Mrs. Evans, the parents of Mrs.
Holcombe, were people of excellent moral character and were so careful
of their children that as long as they could prevent it, they did not
allow them to associate freely with the Shippingsport children. But of
Steve Holcombe, the worst of them all, they had a special dread. Mr.
Evans could not endure to see him or to hear his name called. And yet,
this same Steve Holcombe was in love with their own precious child, and
had now come home to ask her to marry him. Of course, he did not visit
her at her own home but he managed to see her elsewhere. He found that
she had not wavered during his absence, but that the bond of their
childhood had grown with her womanhood. And yet she knew full well his
past career and his present character. She went into it "with her eyes
open," to quote her own words. Against the will of her parents and
against the advice of her friends she adhered to her purpose to marry
Steve Holcombe when the time should come. Even his own mother, moved
with pity at the thought of the sufferings and wretchedness which this
marriage would bring the poor girl, tried to dissuade her from it and
warned her that she was going to marry "the very devil." She replied
that she knew all about it, and when asked why she then did it, her
simple answer was "because I love him."

He promised her that he would try to be a better man and _she_, as well
as _he, believed it_, though not because she expected he would some time
become a Christian and not because she had the Christian's faith and
hope. Her simple belief was that the outcome of her love would be his
reformation and return to a better life. It was not thus definitely
stated to herself by herself. It was an unconscious process of reasoning
or rather it was the deep instinct of her strong and deeply-rooted love.

Mrs. Holcombe was recently asked if, during all the years of her
husband's recklessness and disgraceful dissipation, his sins and crimes,
his cruel neglect and heartless mistreatment of herself, her love ever
faltered? She answered: "No; never. There never was a time, even when
Mr. Holcombe was at his worst, that I did not love him. It pained me, of
course, that some things should come _through_ him, but I never loved
_him_ any less." A rare and wonderful love it surely was. When she was
asked if during those dark and bitter years she ever gave up her belief
that her husband would change his life and become a good man, she
answered, "No; I never gave it up." A woman of deep Insight, of large
reading and wide observation, on hearing these replies of Mrs. Holcombe,
said: "It is the most wonderful case of love and patience and faith I
have ever known."

He had come home then to marry Mary Evans. He met her at the house of a
mutual friend and proposed an elopement. She was frightened and refused.
But he pleaded and besought her, and, wounded and vexed at what seemed a
disregard of his feelings and rights, he ended by saying, "It must be
to-night or never." Whereupon she consented, though with great
reluctance, and they went together to the house of his mother, in the
city of Louisville. But his own mother would not consent to their
marriage under such circumstances until she could first go and see if
she could get the consent of the girl's parents. Accordingly, she went
at once to Shippingsport, night as it was, and laid the case before
them. They did not consent, but saw it would do no good to undertake to
put a stop to it. So that, at the house of his mother in Louisville,
they were married, Steve Holcombe and Mary Evans, the hardened gambler
and the timid girl.

After his marriage he quit running on the river, settled down at
Shippingsport and went to fishing for a living. And it did seem for a
time that his hope was to be realized and that through the helpful
influences of his young wife he was to become a better man. He grew
steadily toward better purposes and toward a higher standard of
character, and within two or three months after their marriage they
joined the church together. Mrs. Holcombe says, however, that she does
not now believe that she was a Christian at the time. They thought in a
general way that it was right to join the church, and that it would do
them good and somehow help them to be good. If they had had some one,
wise and patient and faithful, to teach them and advise them and
sympathize with them at this time of awakening and of honest endeavor
after a spiritual life, they would probably have gone on happily and
helpfully together in it. But alas! as is true in so many, many cases
to-day, nobody understood or seemed to understand them, nobody tried or
cared to understand them; nobody cared for their souls. It was taken for
granted, then as now, that when people are gotten into the church,
nothing special is to be done for them any further, though, in fact, the
most difficult and delicate part of training a soul and developing
Christian character comes after conversion and after joining the church.
Mr. Holcombe attributes his present success in the helping and guidance
of inquiring and struggling souls to his lack on the one hand of careful
and sympathetic training in his earlier efforts to be a Christian and on
the other hand to the great benefit of such training in his later
efforts. In such a nature as his, especially, no mere form of religion
and no external bond of union with the church was sufficient. The
strength of his will, the tenacity of his old habits, the intensity of
his nature and the violence of his passions were such that only an
extraordinary power would suffice to bring him under control. It was not
long, therefore, before he was overcome by his evil nature, and he soon
gave over the ineffectual struggle and fell back into his old ways. His
poor wife soon found to her sorrow that reforming a bad man was a
greater undertaking than she had dreamed of, and was often reminded of
her mother-in-law's remark that she had married "the very devil." And
Mr. Holcombe found out, too, that his wife, good as she was, could not
make him good. Some men there are so hungry-hearted and so dependent,
that they can not endure life without the supreme and faithful and
submissive affection of a wife, but who know not how to appreciate or
treat a wife and soon lose that consideration and love for her which
are her due. Then marriage becomes tyranny on the one side and slavery
on the other.

Perhaps the reader will conclude later that this description applies all
too well to the married life of Steve Holcombe and his faithful and
brave-hearted young wife; for it was not long before he returned, in
spite of all his solemn vows and his earnest resolutions, to his old
habit of gambling and to all his evil ways. On a certain occasion not
long after he married, in company with a friend, who is at this moment
lying in the jail in Louisville for the violation of the law against
gambling, he went on a fishing excursion to Mound City, Illinois. Having
returned to the landing one night about midnight they found a
fierce-looking man sitting on the wharf-boat who said to them on
entering, "I understand there are some gamblers here and I have come to
play them, and I can whip any two men on the Ohio river," at the same
time exposing a large knife which he carried in his boot. He was
evidently a bully who thought he could intimidate these strangers and in
some underhanded way get from them their money. Mr. Holcombe did not
reply but waited till the next morning when he "sized up the man" and
determined to play against him. After they had been playing some time
Mr. Holcombe discovered that the man was "holding cards out of the pack"
on him. He said nothing, however, till the man had gotten out all the
cards he wanted, when Mr. Holcombe made a bet. The other man "raised
him," that is, offered to increase the amount. Mr. Holcombe raised him
back and so on till each one had put up all the money he had. Then the
man "showed down his hand" as the saying is, and he had the four aces.
Mr. Holcombe replied "That is a good hand, but here is a better one;"
and with that struck him a quick heavy blow that sent the man to the
floor, Mr. Holcombe took all the money and the other man began to cry
like a child and beg for it. Mr. Holcombe was instantly touched with
pity and wanted to give him back his money but his partner objected. He
did, however, give the man enough for his immediate wants and left him
some the wiser for his loss of the rest.

At the same place the owner of the storeboat left a young man in charge,
who, during the absence of his proprietor, offered to play against Mr.
Holcombe and lost all the money he had. Then he insisted on Mr.
Holcombe's playing for the clothing which he had in the store and Mr.
Holcombe won all that from him, leaving him a sadder, but it is to be
hoped a wiser, man.

Having thus once again felt the fascination of gambling and the
intoxication of success, Mr. Holcombe was impelled by these and by his
naturally restless disposition to give up altogether his legitimate
business and to return to the old life. So without returning to visit
his wife and child or even informing them of his whereabouts, he shipped
on a steamer for Memphis and thence to New Orleans.

On his return trip from New Orleans he played poker and won several
hundred dollars. On landing in Louisville, his half-brother, Mr. Wm.
Sowders, the largest fish and oyster dealer in Louisville, gave him a
partnership in his business, but they soon fell out and he quit the
firm.

He removed to Nashville, Tennessee, and opened a business of the same
kind there in connection with his brother's house in Louisville, Mr.
Holcombe shipping his vegetables and produce in return for fish and
oysters. This was early in 1860. It was a great trial for his young wife
to be taken from among her relatives and friends and put down among
people who were entire strangers, especially that she had found out in
four or five years of married life that her husband had grown away from
her, that his heart and life were in other people than his family, in
other places than his home and in others pleasures than his duty. She
knew that she could not now count on having his companionship day or
night, in sickness or in health, in poverty or in wealth. And to make
the outlook all the more gloomy for her, she had just passed through one
of the severest trials that had come into her life.

When an intense woman finds that she is deceived and disappointed in her
husband, and the hopes of married bliss are brought to naught, she finds
some compensation and relief in the love of her children. So it was with
Mrs. Holcombe. But just before the time came for them to remove to
Nashville, death came and took from her arms her second-born child. This
made it all the harder to leave her home to go among strangers. But
already, as a wife, she had learned that charity which suffereth long
and is kind, which seeketh not her own and which endureth all things.

Mr. Holcombe's business in Nashville was very profitable and he made
sometimes as much as fifty dollars a day, so that in a short time he had
accumulated a considerable amount of money. But his passion for
gambling remained. His wife had hoped that the sufferings and death of
their little child might soften his heart and lead him to a better life.
But it seemed to have no effect on him whatever. Though he did not
follow gambling as a profession, he engaged in it at night and in a
private way with business men.

When the active hostilities of the war came on, his communication with
Louisville was cut off and so his business was at an end. Leaving his
wife and only remaining child alone in Nashville he went to Clarksville
and engaged in the ice business. While he was there, the Kentucky
troops, who were encamped near that place, moved up to Bowling Green,
Kentucky. The sound of fife and drum and the sight of moving columns of
soldiers stirred either his patriotism or his enthusiasm so that he got
rid of his business and followed them on up to Green river in Kentucky,
and went into camp with them where he spent some time, without, however,
being sworn into service. But this short time sufficed for him and he
became satisfied that "lugging knap-sack, box and gun was harder work
than" gambling.

He quit the camp, settled down at Bowling Green, and opened a grocery
and restaurant, doing a very prosperous business. While there, he had a
severe spell of sickness and came near dying, but did not send for his
wife and child, who were still alone in Nashville. Just before the
Federal troops took possession of Bowling Green, he sold his grocery for
a large claim on the Confederate Government which a party held for some
guns sold to the Confederacy. He then rode horseback from Bowling Green
to Nashville, where he rejoined his wife and child. After another
severe spell of sickness through which his wife nursed him, he left his
family again in those trying and fearful times and went South to collect
his claim on the Confederate Government. Having succeeded in getting it
he returned to Nashville with a large sum of money.

As he had no legitimate business to occupy his time and his mind, he
returned to gambling and this is his own account of it: "Then I began
playing poker with business men in private rooms; and one of those
business men being familiar with faro banks, roped us around to a faro
room to play poker; and while we were playing, the faro dealer, who had
cappers around, opened up a brace game, and the game of poker broke up,
and I drifted over to the faro table, and did not look on long until I
began to bet, and soon lost two or three hundred dollars which I had in
my pockets, and lost a little on credit, which I paid the next morning.
I lost what I had the next day, and kept up that same racket until I was
broke. During this time I had been very liberal with the gamblers,
treated them to oyster stews and other good things; and when I got broke
I got to sitting around the gambling-house, and heard them say to each
other, 'We will have to make Steve one of the boys,' and thus it was I
became familiar with faro."




CHAPTER III.


The initiation of Mr. Holcombe into the game of faro was an epoch in his
life. He was so fascinated with it, and saw so much money in it, that he
now finally and deliberately gave up all attempts at any other business
or occupation, and, removing again to Louisville, in partnership with a
gambling friend he "opened up a game" or established a house of his own
for playing faro in that city. He sent for his family thinking he was
settled for life. Alas! how little he knew of that heart of his that
knew so little of God. He found out later what St. Augustine has so
beautifully said for all humanity: "Thou hast made us for Thyself and
our hearts find no repose till they repose in Thee." It was not long
before he had lost all his money and was "dead broke" again. It was
about this time and during this residence at Louisville, that,
uncontrolled by the grace and power of God, and untouched by the love
that can forgive as it hopes to be forgiven, he committed the greatest
crime of his life.

A young man was visiting and courting a half-sister of his at
Shippingsport, and, under promise of marriage, had deceived her. When
Mr. Holcombe found it out, he felt enraged, and thought it his duty to
compel him to marry her. But knowing himself so well, and being afraid
to trust himself to speak to the young man about it, he asked his two
older half-brothers to see him and get the affair settled. They refused
to do so. Mr. Holcombe then got a pistol and looked the man up with the
deliberate intention of having the affair settled according to his
notion of what was right, or killing him. He met him at Shippingsport,
near the bank of the canal, and told him who he was--for they scarcely
knew each other. Then he reminded him of what had occurred, and said
that the only thing to be done was to marry the girl. This the man
declined to do, saying: "We are as good as married now." He had scarcely
uttered the words when Mr. Holcombe drew his derringer and shot him.
When he fell, Mr. Holcombe put his hand under the poor man's neck,
raised him up and held him until a doctor could be called. He was
touched with a great feeling of pity for his victim, and would have done
anything in his power for him. But all his pity and repentance could not
bring back the dying man. He went into a neighboring house and washed
the blood from his hands, but he could not wash the blood from his
conscience. In after years the cry of another murderer, "Deliver me from
blood-guiltiness, O, God!" was to burst from his lips, and faith in the
blood of a murdered Christ was to bring the answer of peace to his long
troubled soul. But alas! alas! he was to add crime to crime and multiply
guilt manifold before that time should come.

He was soon arrested and taken to jail, where, after some hours, he was
informed that the man was dead. Some time afterward he was tried by a
jury and acquitted, though the Commonwealth's Attorney, assisted by
paid counsel, did all he could to procure his conviction. But no human
sentence or approval of public opinion can quiet a guilty human
conscience when awakened by the God whose sole prerogative of executing
justice is guarded by His own solemn and awful words, "Vengeance is
mine; I will repay," saith the Lord. When the conscience is pressed with
a great sense of guilt, it seeks relief by the way of contrition and
repentance, or it seeks relief by a deeper plunge into sin and guilt, as
if the antidote to a poison were a larger dose of poison. There is no
middle ground unless it be insanity. Nor did Mr. Holcombe find any
middle ground, though he declares that he never allowed himself to think
about the killing of Martin Mohler, and could not bear to hear his name.
He had to _keep very busy_ in a career of sin, however, to _keep from_
thinking about it, and that is exactly the second alternative of the two
described above.

"After this," says Mr. Holcombe, "I continued gambling, traveling around
from place to place, and at last I settled down at Nashville and dealt
faro there. I took my family with me to Nashville. I gambled there for
awhile, and then came back to Louisville, where I opened a game for
working men. But when I looked at their hard hands and thought of their
suffering families, I could not bear to take their money. Then I turned
my steps toward the South and landed in Augusta, Georgia. I went to
Augusta in 1869 in connection with a man named Dennis McCarty. We opened
there a big game of faro, where I did some of the biggest gambling I
ever did in my life. On one occasion I played seven-up with a man and
beat him out of five thousand dollars, which broke him up entirely."

Let us now take a peep into his home-life: Mrs. Holcombe says that in
Augusta he was in the habit of staying out for several days and nights
at a time, a thing which he had never done before. They lived in Augusta
something over two years, and during all that time she had not one day
of peace. He was more reckless than he had ever been before. She
suffered most from his drunkenness and his ungovernable temper.
Sometimes he would come into the house in a bad humor and proceed to
vent his wrath on her and the furniture; for he was never harsh to his
children, but on the contrary, excessively indulgent, especially to his
sons. During his outbursts of anger, Mrs. Holcombe always sat perfectly
still, not in fear, but in grief; for she knew as little of fear as he.
Many a time he has come into the house in a bad humor and proceeded to
upset the dining-table, emptying all the food onto the floor and
breaking all the dishes. On one occasion he came home angry and found
his wife sitting on a sofa in the parlor. He began to complain of her
and to find fault with her, and as her silence seemed to provoke him, he
began to curse her; and as she sat and wept in silence, he grew worse
and worse, using the most dreadful oaths she ever heard. When he had
fully vented his passion, he walked out and stood awhile at the front
gate as if in a study. Then he walked back into the house where she sat,
still weeping, and said, in a mild and gentle tone: "Well, Mary, I was
pretty mad awhile ago, wasn't I?" Then he began to apologize and to
tell her how sorry he was for having talked to her so harshly, and wound
up by petting her. He was at times almost insanely jealous of his wife,
and if he saw her even talking with a man, no matter whom, it put him in
a rage which ended only when he had vented it in the most abusive
language to her.

On another occasion, while they were living in Augusta, an incident
occurred which illustrates at once her unexampled devotion and his
unexampled depravity. On the night in question she had gone to bed, but
not to sleep. About midnight he came staggering in and fell full length
on the floor at the foot of the stairway. She tried to help him up, but
he was so dead drunk she could not lift him. She left him lying at the
foot of the stairway and went back to bed. But, though she was very
tired, she could not endure the thought of lying in a comfortable bed
while her husband was on the floor. She got up, therefore, and went down
stairs again and sat on the floor beside him in her night-dress till
morning. Then she left him and went up stairs to dress, that she might
be prepared for the duties of the day. When, some time afterward, she
came back to where he was lying, he abused and cursed her for leaving
him alone, and, before his tirade was ended he was sorry, and tried to
smooth it over by saying: "I did not think _you_ would leave me."

Mrs. Holcombe says concerning her life at this period: "I usually walked
the floor, after the children were in bed, till past midnight waiting
for him to come home. One night in particular, between eleven and
twelve o'clock, I heard a shot fired and I heard a man cry out not far
from the house. I thought it was Mr. Holcombe, and my agony was almost
more than I could bear while waiting for day to come, for I was sure
somebody had shot him. But between three and four o'clock In the morning
he came in, and his coming brought me great relief." "Then another
time," she goes on to say, "I was sitting by the window when an express
wagon drove up with a coffin in it. The driver said to me, 'Does this
coffin belong here?' I understood him to say, 'Does Mr. Holcombe live
here?' I thought it was Mr. Holcombe and that he had been killed and
sent home to me in his coffin. The driver repeated his question twice,
but I was so paralyzed I could not answer him a word."

From Augusta Mr. Holcombe removed with his family to Atlanta, where he
made a good deal of money. Mrs. Holcombe says concerning their stay in
Atlanta, "My life at Atlanta was no better than it had been at Augusta.
Much of my time was spent in walking the floor and grieving. Often in my
loneliness and sorrow my lips would cry out, 'How can I endure this life
any longer?' I had not then become a Christian and did not know what I
do now about taking troubles and burdens to God. And yet I believe that
it was God who comforted my heart more than once when my sorrow was more
than I could bear. I cried to Him without knowing Him. All these years I
tried to raise my children right, and I taught them to respect their
father. I hid his sins from them when I could, and when I could not, I
always excused him to them the best I could." But Mr. Holcombe instead
of aiding his wife's efforts to bring up their children in the right
path, often perversely put obstacles in her way and increased her
difficulties, though he did try to conceal his drinking from them, and
would never allow his boys to have or handle cards. So in many things he
was a combination of contradictions. He could not endure, however, for
his wife to punish the children, and especially the boys. On one
occasion he came home and the younger son was still crying from the
punishment inflicted by his mother for wading in a pond of water with
his shoes on. Mr. Holcombe asked him what was the matter, and when he
found out, he was so angry he made the boy go and wade in the pond again
with his shoes on. And yet Mrs. Holcombe's love for her husband "never
wavered," and she loved him "when he was at his worst."

While Mr. Holcombe was living in Atlanta he attended the races in
Nashville, and while there, two men came along that had a new thing on
cards, and they beat him out of five or six thousand dollars--broke him,
in fact. After he was broke, he went to one of the men by the name of
Buchanan and said, "I see that you have got a new trick on cards, and as
I am well acquainted through the South, if you will give it away to me,
we can go together and make money." The man, after some hesitation,
agreed to do so. They went in partnership and traveled through the South
as far as Key West, Florida, stopping at the principal cities and making
money everywhere. At Key West he and his partner had a split and
separated. From Key West Mr. Holcombe crossed over to Cuba, and spent
some time in Havana. In seeking adventures in that strange city he made
some very narrow escapes, and was glad to get away. On landing at New
Orleans, though he had a good deal of money, the accumulations of his
winnings on his late tour through the South, he got to playing against
faro bank and lost all he had. But he fell in with a young man about
twenty years of age, from Georgia, on his way to Texas, and became very
intimate with him. Finding that this young man had a draft for $1,050,
by the most adroit piece of maneuvering he got another man, a third
party, to win it from him for himself, and gave this third party $50 for
doing it. Then he took charge of the young man in his destitution and
distress, paid his bill for a day or two at a hotel in New Orleans, and
gave him enough to pay his way on to Texas. The young man departed
thinking Mr. Holcombe was one of the kindest men he had ever met. The
gentle reader, if he be a young man who thinks himself wise enough to be
intimate with strangers, might learn a useful little lesson from this
young Georgian's experience as herein detailed.

From New Orleans, Mr. Holcombe went by river to Shreveport, Louisiana,
where he met again with his former partner, Buchanan. They made up their
differences and went into partnership again, and were successful in
winning a good deal of money together. But afterward their fortunes
changed and they both lost all they had. This soured Buchanan, who had
never cordially liked Holcombe since their quarrel and separation at Key
West. Mr. Holcombe himself shall narrate what took place afterward:
"During this time we had been sleeping in a room together. Buchanan knew
that I had two derringer pistols. He got Phil Spangler to borrow one,
and I feel satisfied he had snaked the other. A friend of mine, John
Norton, asked me to deal faro bank, and I got broke, and the night that
I did, I put the box in the drawer pretty roughly, and made some pretty
rough remarks. Buchanan was present, but took no exception to what I
said that night. The next morning, however, in the bar-room he began to
abuse me, and we abused each other backward and forward until I had
backed clear across the street. During this time I had my derringer
pistol out in my hand. He had a big stick in his hand and a knife in his
bosom. When we got across the street I made this remark, 'Mr. Buchanan,
I do not want to kill you,' He was then about ten feet from me, and made
a step toward me. I took deliberate aim at his heart and pulled the
trigger, but the pistol snapped. He walked away from me then. I ran up
to the hotel where Aleck Doran was, knowing that his six-shooter was
always in good condition. I borrowed it and started to hunt Buchanan up,
and when I found him, he came up to me with his hand out. We made up and
have been good friends ever since. After we left there, these parties
with whom we had been playing, got to quarreling among themselves about
the different games, and the result was that John Norton killed Phil
Spangler and another one of the men. And such is the life of the
gambler." And such is too often, alas! the death of the gambler.

From Shreveport he went back to Atlanta where his family, consisting now
of his wife, two sons and two daughters, had remained. But he could not
be contented at any one place. It seemed impossible for him to be
quiet, no matter how much money he was making. Indeed, the more he got
the more disquieted he seemed, and yet it was his passion to win money.
Sometimes he would go to his home with his pockets full of it and would
pour it out on the floor and tell the children to take what they wanted.
He was so restless when he had won largely that he could not sleep; and
his wife says she has known him to get up after having retired late and
walk back to the city to his gambling house to find somebody to play
with. He seemed to want to lose his money again. In fact, he seemed
happier when he was entirely without money than when he had a great
deal.

Not contented, then, at Atlanta, he went from there to Beaufort, South
Carolina, to gamble with the officers of the navy. He got into a game of
poker with some of them and won all the money. Then he was ready to quit
and leave the place, but he got into a difficulty with a man there whose
diamond pin he had in pawn for money lent him, and though it be at the
risk of taxing the reader's patience with these details, yet, in order
to show vividly what a gambler's life is, we shall let Mr. Holcombe give
his own account of the affair:

"This man was the bully of the place. I had his diamond pin in pawn for
seventy-five dollars, and another little fellow owed me eighteen
dollars, or something like that, and I wanted him to pay me. Instead of
paying me, however, he began to curse and abuse me; and I hit him on the
nose, knocked him over and bloodied it, and he was bleeding like
everything. He got over into the crowd; and under the excitement of the
moment, I drew my pistol and started toward him. This big bully caught
me gently by the vest, and asked me quietly to put up my pistol. I did
so. Then he said, 'You can't shoot anybody here,' I said 'I do not want
to shoot anybody.' I then asked him to turn me loose. He again said 'You
can't shoot anybody here.' I then said, 'What is the matter with you?
Are we not friends?' And he said 'No,' and made the remark, 'I will take
your pistol away from you and beat your brains out.' I struck him and
knocked him over on a lounge, but he rose up and came at me, and we had
quite a tussle around the room. The others all ran and left the house,
and the barkeeper hid.

"When we separated, the big fellow had quite a head on him; was all
beaten up. He then went into the other room and sat down, and the
barkeeper came in where I was. I was willing to do or say anything to
reconcile this man, and I said to the barkeeper that I was sorry of the
difficulty, as I liked the man, which was a lie, and a square one, for I
hated him from the moment I saw him. When he heard what I said, he came
sauntering into the room, and I said to him, 'I am sorry this occurred,
but you called me such a name that I was compelled to do as I did. You
know that you are a brave man; and if any man had called you such a
name, you would have done just as I did.' He called me a liar, and at it
we went again. We separated ourselves every time. I got the best of the
round. After that he stepped up to the sideboard and got a tumbler; but
I looked him in the eye so closely that he could not throw it at me, and
he put it down. After a little more conversation, he started to lift up
a heavy spittoon of iron. I stepped back a foot or two, drew my pistol,
and told him if he did not put that down, I would kill him. He put it
down. I then told the barkeeper he must come in there and witness this
thing, because I expected to have to kill him. After the barkeeper came
in, the man went out, saying, 'You had a gun on me to-night, and I will
have one on you to-morrow.' Feeling satisfied if I remained, one of us
would have to be killed; and feeling that I did not want to kill him,
neither did I want to get killed on a cold collar, I concluded to walk
out of the place. I got the barkeeper to promise to ship my trunk to
Atlanta, and walked through the swamps to a station fourteen miles away,
arriving there some time next day." Other such experiences Mr. Holcombe
had enough to fill a volume perhaps, but these are sufficient to give an
impression of what a gambler's life is and to show what _was_ the life
of that same Steve Holcombe who now for eleven years has been a pattern
of Christian usefulness and zeal.

After spending a short time at Atlanta, he went to Hot Springs,
Arkansas, and then again to Louisville, where he opened a faro bank and
once more settled down for life, as he thought. _At any rate for the
first time in his life he thought of saving a little money_, and he did
so, investing it in some houses in the West End. Poor man! he had
wandered _nearly_ enough. He had almost found that rest can not be
found, at least in the way he was seeking it, and the time was
approaching when he would be _prepared_ to hear of another sort and
source of rest. Until he should be prepared, it would be vain to send
him the message. To give the truth to some people to-day would be to
cast pearls before swine, to give it to them to-morrow may be
re-clothing banished princes with due tokens of welcome and of royalty.
To have told Steve Holcombe of Christ yet awhile would probably have
excited his wonder and disgust; to tell him a little later will be to
welcome a long-lost, long-enslaved and perishing child to his Father's
house and to all the liberty of the sons of God.

So _he thought_ of saving a little money and of investing in some
cottages in the west end of Louisville. And God was thinking, too, and
He was thinking thoughts of kindness and of love for the poor wicked
outcast. He was _more_ than thinking, He was getting things ready. But
the time was not yet. A few more wanderings and the sinning one,
foot-sore, heart-sore and weary will be willing to come to the Father's
house and rest. Truth and God are always ready, but man is not always
ready. "I have many things to say to you, but you can not bear them
now."

His income at Louisville at this time was between five and seven
thousand dollars a year. He had a large interest in the bank and some
nights he would take in hundreds of dollars. But he could not be
contented. The roving passion seized him again, and in company with a
young man of fine family in Louisville, who had just inherited five
thousand dollars, he set out on a circuit of the races. But in
Lexington, the very first place they visited, they lost all they had,
including the young man's jewelry, watch and diamond pin. They got more
money and other partners and started again on the circuit and they made
money. At Kalamazoo, Michigan, Mr. Holcombe withdrew from the party,
just for the sake of change, just because he was tired of them; and in
playing against the faro banks at Kalamazoo he lost all he had again.
Then he traveled around to different places playing against faro banks
and "catching on" when he could. He visited Fort Wayne, Cleveland,
Utica, Saratoga and New York. At New York he was broke and he had become
so disgusted with traveling around and so weary of the world that he
determined he _would_ go back to Louisville and settle down for life. He
did return to Louisville and got an interest in two gambling houses,
making for him an income again of five thousand dollars a year.

During all these years his faithful wife, though not professing to be a
Christian herself, endeavored in all possible ways to lead her children
to become Christians. She taught them to pray the best she could, and
sent them to Sunday-school. After her first child was born she gave up
those worldly amusements which before she had, to please her husband,
participated in with him--a good example for Christian mothers. She was
in continual dread lest the children should grow up to follow the
father's example. She always tried to conceal from them the fact of his
being a gambler. The two daughters, Mamie and Irene, did not, when
good-sized girls and going to school, know their father's business. They
were asked at school what his occupation was, and could not tell. More
than once they asked their mother, but she evaded the question by
saying, "He isn't engaged in any work just now," or in some such way.
Mrs. Holcombe begged her husband again and again not to continue
gambling. She says, "I told him I was willing to live on bread and
water, if he would quit it." And she would not lay up any of the money
he would give her, nor use any more of it than was necessary for herself
and the children, for she felt that it was not rightly gotten. And
because she would neither lay it up nor use it lavishly, she had nothing
to do but let the children take it to play with and to give away. Under
the training of such a mother with such patience, love and faith, it is
no great marvel, and yet perhaps it is a great marvel, that Willie, the
eldest child, notwithstanding the father's example, grew up to discern
good, to desire good and to be good. While he was still a child, when
his father came home drunk, the wounded and wondering child would beg
him not to drink any more. Mrs. Holcombe says of him further, "When
Willie would see his father on the street drinking, I have seen him,
when twelve years old, jump off the car, go to his father and beg him
with tears to go home with him. And I never saw Mr. Holcombe refuse to
go."

In this way the boy grew up with a disgust and horror of drunkenness and
drinking, and when in the year 1877 the great temperance movement was
rolling over the country and meetings were held everywhere, and in
Louisville also, though the boy had never drunk any intoxicating liquor
in his life, he signed the pledge. He took his card home with his name
signed to it, and when his father saw it, he was very angry about it.
And yet, strange to say, on that very evening the father himself
attended the meeting; and on the next evening he went again, in company
with his wife. During the progress of the meeting he turned to his wife
and said, "Mary, shall I go up and sign the pledge?" Concealing her
emotions as best she could, lest the show of it might disgust and repel
him, she replied, "Yes, Steve, Willie and I would be very glad if you
would," and he did so.

Some time after that, Willie asked his father and mother if they would
accompany him to the Broadway Baptist church in the city to see him
baptized. While witnessing the baptism of his son, Mr. Holcombe made up
his mind that he would quit gambling, and as he went out of the church,
he said to his wife, "_I will never play another card_."

Some friend of his who overhead the remark said to him, "Steve, you had
better study about that." He answered, "No, I have made up my mind. I
wish you would tell the boys for me that they may count me out. They may
stop my interest in the banks. I am done."

His wife, who was hanging on his arm, could no longer now conceal her
emotions, nor did she try. She laughed and cried for joy. God was saying
to her, "Mary, thy toils and tears, thy sufferings and patience have
come up for a memorial before me, and I will send a man who will tell
thee what thou oughtest to do, and speak to thee words whereby thou and
all thy house shall be saved."

Mr. Holcombe was as good as his word. He did give up gambling from that
time. But he had had so little experience in business that he was at a
great loss what to do. Finally, however, he decided to go into the
produce and commission business as he had had some experience in that
line years before in Nashville, and as that required no great outlay of
money for a beginning. All the money he had was tied up in the houses
which he had bought in Portland, the western suburb of Louisville. He
was living in one of these himself, but he now determined to rent it out
and to remove to the city that he might be nearer his business.

One day in October, 1877, a stranger entered his place of business, on
Main street, and, calling for Mr. Holcombe, said: "I see you have a
house for rent in Portland."

"Yes," said he, "I have."

"Well," said the stranger, "I like your house; but as my income is not
large, I should be glad to get it at as low a rent as you can allow."

Mr. Holcombe replied: "I am rather pressed for money now myself, but
maybe we can make a trade. What is your business?"

"I am a Methodist minister, and am just sent to the church in Portland,
and you know it can not pay very much of a salary."

"That settles it then, sir," said Mr. Holcombe, with that abruptness and
positiveness which are so characteristic of him, "I am a notorious
gambler, and, of course, you would not want to live in a house of mine."

He expected that would be the end of the matter, and he looked to see
the minister shrink from him and leave at once his presence and his
house. On the contrary, the minister, though knowing nothing of Mr.
Holcombe's recent reformation, yet seeing his sensitiveness, admiring
his candor and hoping to be able to do him some good, laid his hand
kindly on his shoulder and said:

"Oh no, my brother; I do not object to living in your house; and who
knows but that this interview will result in good to us both, in more
ways than one?"

Mr. Holcombe's impression was that ministers of the Gospel were, in
their own estimation, and in fact, too good for gamblers to touch the
hem of their garments, and that ministers had, for this reason, as
little use and as great contempt for gamblers as the average gambler
has, on the very same account, for ministers. But he found, to his
amazement, that he was mistaken, and when the minister invited him to
come to his church he said, not to the minister, yet he said:

"Yes, I will go, I never had a good man to call me 'brother' before. And
he knows what I am, for I told him. I am so tired; I am so spent. Maybe
he can tell me what to do and how to go. If Sunday ever comes, I will go
to that man's church."

And when Sunday came the minister and the gambler faced each other
again. With a great sense of his responsibility and insufficiency the
preacher declared the message of his Lord, not as he wished, but as he
could. To the usual invitation to join the church nobody responded.
After the benediction, however, Mr. Holcombe walked down the aisle to
the pulpit and said to the minister: "How does a man join the church?"
He had not attended church for twenty-three years, and had been engaged
in such a life that he had forgotten what little he knew. The minister
informed him.

"Then," said he, "may I join your church?"

"You are welcome, and more than welcome," replied the minister, and the
people wondered.

"From the day I joined his church," says Mr. Holcombe, "that minister
seemed to understand me better than I understood myself. He seemed to
know and did tell me my own secrets. He led me into an understanding of
myself and my situation. I saw now what had been the cause of my
restlessness, my wanderings, my weariness and my woe. I saw what it was
I needed, and I prayed as earnestly as I knew how from that time. I
attended all the services--preaching, Sunday-school, prayer-meeting,
class-meeting in any and all kinds of weather, walking frequently all
the way from Second street to Portland, a distance of three miles,
because I was making too little to allow me to ride on the street-cars.
But with all this, I felt something was yet wanting. I began to see that
I could not make any advance in goodness and happiness so long as I was
burdened with the unforgiven guilt of forty years of sin and crime. It
grew worse and heavier until I felt I must have relief, if relief could
be had. One day I went in the back office of my business house, after
the others had all gone home, and shut myself up and determined to stay
there and pray until I should find relief. The room was dark, and I had
prayed, I know not how long, when such a great sense of relief and
gladness and joy came to me that it seemed to me as if a light had
flooded the room, and the only words I could utter or think of were
these three: 'Jesus of Nazareth.' It seemed to me they were the sweetest
words I had ever heard. Never, till then, did the feeling of
blood-guiltiness leave me. It was only the blood of Christ that could
wash from my conscience the blood of my fellowman."

As in his case, so always, in proportion as a man is in earnest about
forsaking sin, will he desire the assurance of the forgiveness of past
sins, and _vice versa_. But Mr. Holcombe did not find this an end of
difficulty and trial and conflict--far from it. Indeed, it was the
preparation for conflict, and the entrance upon it. Hitherto, in his old
life, he had made no resistance to his evil nature, and there was no
conflict with the world, the flesh and the devil. But such a nature as
his was not to be conquered and subjected to entire and easy control in
a day. His passions would revive, his old habits would re-assert
themselves, poverty pinched him, people misunderstood him, failure after
failure in business discouraged him. Hence, he needed constant and
careful guidance and an unfailing sympathy. And he thus refers to the
help he received from his pastor in those trying days:

"Seeing the great necessity of giving me much attention and making me
feel at home in his presence and in the presence of his wife, he spent
much time in my company, and with loving patience bore with my
ignorance, dullness and slowness. In this way I became so much attached
to him that I had no need or desire for my old associations. He led me
along till I was entirely weaned from all desire for my old sinful life
and habits. I think he gave me this close attention for about two years,
when he felt that it was best for me to lean more upon God and less upon
him."

Mr. Holcombe received continual kindness and encouragement from the
minister's wife also, who not only had for him always a cordial greeting
and a kindly word of cheer, but who took great pleasure in entertaining
him frequently in their home. It was a perpetual benediction to him to
know her, to see the daily beauty of her faithful life, to feel the
influence of her heavenly spirit. With quick intuition she recognized
the sincerity and intensity of Mr. Holcombe's desires and efforts to be
a Christian man; with ready insight she comprehended the situation and
saw his difficulties and needs, and with a very Christlike
self-forgetfulness and joy she ministered to this struggling soul. Not
only Mr. Holcombe, but all who ever knew her, whether in adversity or
prosperity, whether in sickness or in health, admired the beauty and
felt the quiet unconscious power of her character. As for Mr. Holcombe
himself, his mingled feeling of reverence for her saintliness and of
gratitude for her sisterliness led him always to speak of her in terms
that he did not apply to any other person whom he knew. He could never
cease to marvel that one of her education, position and tender
womanliness should take such pains and have such pleasure in helping,
entertaining and serving such as he. A few years only was he blessed
with the helpfulness of her friendship. In 1885, when she was just past
the age of thirty-one, her tender feet grew so tired that she could go
no further in this rough world, and Christ took her away. Few were more
deeply bereaved than the poor converted gambler, and when he was asked
if he would serve as one of the pallbearers on the occasion of her
funeral, he burst into tears and replied, "I am not worthy, I am not
worthy." If those who knew her--little children of tender years, young
men and women, perplexed on life's threshold and desiring to enter in
at the strait gate, people of rank and wealth, people in poverty and
ignorance, worldly-minded people whom she had unconsciously attracted,
experienced Christians whom she unconsciously helped, and, most of all,
her husband and children who knew her best--if all these should be
asked, all these would agree that St. Paul has written her fitting
epitaph:

    "Well reported of for good works;
    If she have brought up children,
    If she have lodged strangers,
    If she have washed the saints' feet,
    If she have relieved the afflicted,
    If she have diligently followed every good work."

It was not long after Mr. Holcombe's conversion before his entire family
became members of the church. Though this was to him cause of
unspeakable joy and gratitude, it did not mark the limit of his love and
zeal. From the time of his conversion he had a deep and brotherly
sympathy for all who were without the knowledge and joy he had come into
the possession of, but he felt a special interest in the salvation of
the wretched and the outcast, and of the men of his own class and former
occupation who were as ignorant as he was of these higher things and as
shut out from opportunities of knowing them. So that from the very
beginning of his Christian life he undertook to help others, and when
they were in need, not stopping to think of any other way, he took them
to his own house. This, with the support of his own family, increased
the cost of his living to such an extent that he was soon surprised and
pained to find that he could not carry on his business. He had taken to
his home, also, the father of his wife, whom he cared for till his
death. And in a short time he was so pressed for means that he had to
mortgage his property for money to go into another kind of business.

When it was first reported that Steve Holcombe, one of the most
successful, daring and famous gamblers in the South, had been converted
and had joined the church, the usual predictions were made that in less
than three months, etc., he would see his mistake or yield to
discouragements and return to his old life of self-indulgence and ease.
But when men passed and repassed the corner where this man had a little
fruit store and was trying to make an honest living for his family,
their thoughts became more serious and their questions deepen Steve had
got something or something had got him. He was not the man of former
times. And most of his friends, the gamblers included, when they saw
this, were glad, and while they wondered wished him well. But there was
one man engaged in business just across the street from the little fruit
store, who with a patronizing air bought little fruits from Mr.
Holcombe, and then spent his leisure in discussions and arguments to
prove not only that he had made a big blunder in becoming a Christian,
but that religion was all a sham, the Bible a not very cunningly devised
fable and that Mr. Ingersoll was the greatest man of the day, because he
had shattered these delusions. Mr. Holcombe patiently heard it all, and
perhaps did not frame as cogent or logical an answer to this man's
sophistries as he could do now, but he felt in his own heart and he saw
in his own life that he was a new man. He felt a profound pity for his
friend who knew not nor cared for any of these things, and he lived on
his humble, patient, uncomplaining Christian life. It may not be out of
place to add as the sequel of this little episode that the testimony of
this man across the way, who was such an unbeliever and scoffer, is
given elsewhere in this volume, and doubtless will be recognized by the
reader. Mr. Holcombe's life was too much for his logic.

When Mr. Holcombe had failed in every kind of business that he
undertook, his property was forced on the market and nothing was left
him from the sale of it. Christian men of means might have helped him
and ought to have helped him, but for reasons known to themselves they
did not. Perhaps they were afraid to take hold of so tough a case as
Steve Holcombe was known to have been, perhaps they saw he was not an
experienced business man, perhaps they felt indisposed to help a man who
was so incapable of economy and so generous in entertaining his friends
and helping the needy. Greatly pressed, he went at last to his
half-brother with whom in former years he had been associated as partner
in business, and putting his case and condition before him asked for
employment. But his half-brother declined on the spot, giving as his
short and sole reason that he believed Mr. Holcombe was a hypocrite and
was making believe that he was a Christian for some sinister purpose.

This was "the most unkindest cut" of all and for days the poor wounded
man felt the iron in his soul. During his former life he would have
cared nothing for such treatment. A ruined character is benumbed like a
paralyzed limb, but a revived and repentant soul is full of sensitive
nerves and feels the slightest slight or the smallest wound. He found
out months afterward, however, that his half-brother was already losing
his mind and was not responsible for this extraordinary behavior. He
tried and his friends tried everywhere and every way to find employment
for him, but he could get nothing to do. His money was all gone, his
property was all gone, he sold his piano, he sold his Brussels carpets,
he removed from place to place, following cheaper rent till at last he
took his family to a garret. It was now two years since his conversion.
During these two years he had done nothing to bring reproach on his
profession or to give ground for a doubt of his sincerity. He had not
only lived a consistent life himself, he had striven earnestly to help
others to do so. He assisted in holding meetings in Shippingsport, and
the people marveled and magnified the grace of God in him. But he was
with his family on the point of starvation. When at last everything had
been tried and no relief was found, in his desperation he thought of the
improbable possibility of finding something, at least something to do,
in the West, and he decided to go to Colorado.

In Louisville, where he was suffering and where his family was
suffering, he could have returned to gambling and have been independent
in a month. He could have been living in a comfortable house; he could
have had, as he was wont, the best the market afforded for his table, he
could have decked himself with jewelry and diamonds, he could soon have
been once more in position to spend, as he had regularly done, from two
to ten dollars a day for the mere luxuries of life. He could have done
all this and he could do all this even yet; for even yet he is in the
prime of life and power. But he did not, and he does not. He did not
turn Christian because he had played out as a gambler. He did not turn
to Christianity because fortune had turned away from him. But he turned
away himself from fortune when he was fortune's pet, in order to turn to
a better and worthier life.

When he had decided to go to Colorado, he went to his pastor and told
him. The pastor was astonished, alarmed. After two years and more of
faithful and self-denying service was his friend and brother about to
give away? Was this a plan to get away into a "far country" where he
might turn again to sin? He reasoned with him, he appealed to him, he
besought him. He tried to picture the perils of the journey and the
perils of the place. He reminded Mr. Holcombe of the condition, as far
as he knew it, of his family. But all to no purpose. He committed his
friend trustfully to God and gave it up.

"But," said the pastor, "how are you going to get there?"

"I am going to walk from place to place and work my way out. I can not
stay here, I can get nothing to do and I must try elsewhere. I am
desperate."

"Then," said the pastor, "if your mind is made up and you are going, I
can let you have some money. I have about sixty-one dollars in bank
which I laid aside when a single man, to use for Christ, and if that
will pay your way out, you can have it. Christ has called for his own."

He accepted it with tears, left a few dollars of it with his wife and,
with the rest, started for Leadville.

When he first landed at Denver, he met an old friend, John Chisholm,
with whom he had gambled in Atlanta. This man had left Atlanta on
account of having killed somebody there, and had made a considerable
amount of money in California. He had now come to Denver and opened a
game of faro. When he saw Mr. Holcombe on the street, he said: "You are
just the man I want. I have opened a game of faro here, and I am afraid
I can not protect myself. I will give you a good interest if you will go
in with me."

Mr. Holcombe replied: "Yes, John; but I am a Christian now, and can not
deal faro."

"I know," said the man, "you were a Christian in Louisville, but you are
a long ways from there."

"Yes," Mr. Holcombe said, "but a true Christian is a Christian
everywhere."

Notwithstanding, he insisted on Mr. Holcombe's going to his room to see
another old Atlanta friend. He did so, but felt so much out of place
there that he did not remain ten minutes.

From Denver he concluded to go to Silver Cliff instead of Leadville.
When he arrived in that strange village, his money was all gone and he
lacked fifteen cents of having enough to pay the stage-driver. "It was
about sundown," says he, "when I got there. I did not know a living
soul. I had not a cent of money. My courage failed me. I broke down and
wept like a child."

Having a good trunk he knew he would not be asked to pay in advance, and
he went to a hotel and spent the night. In the morning he walked out
after breakfast to see what sort of a place he had gotten into. As he
stood at the post-office, he saw across the street what he recognized as
a gambling-house, "everything wide open," no attempt at concealment or
privacy. He asked some one out of curiosity who was the proprietor, and
found that two of his old acquaintances were running the house. He could
easily, and at once, have gotten a situation with them, and could soon
have had money to relieve his own wants and the wants of his family. But
he had already stood severe tests, and had now arrived at a point where
he had no inclination whatever to gamble and felt no temptation to
procure money in that way or from that source. He did not even look for
the proprietors of the establishment or let them know he was in the
village. But while he was standing there, thinking of his condition and
wondering what he should do, he overheard a man say that a dining-room
waiter was wanted at the Carbonate hotel, the one at which he had spent
the night. He went at once to the hotel, made application for the place,
and was accepted at a salary of twenty-five dollars a month and board.

He was filled with thankfulness and joy, and he has declared since, that
though, on one night during his gambling life, he had won three thousand
dollars in money, the satisfaction which he felt then could not be
compared with that which he felt now when the hotel-proprietor gave him
this position of dining-room waiter _at a salary of twenty-five dollars
a month_. He entered at once upon his duties. To his great surprise he
found several Louisville gentlemen stopping at the hotel, some of whom
had known him in other days and circumstances, and whom he had boarded
with at hotels where he paid five dollars a day, with two to four
dollars a day, extra, for wine and cigars. But, notwithstanding that, he
was not ashamed of his present position. On the contrary, he was very
thankful for it and happy in it. He did such faithful service there that
the proprietor became interested in him and showed him much kindness.

During his stay at Silver Cliff he did not neglect any opportunity of
doing good to others.

One day, when he was standing in the door of the post-office, a man,
whose name he afterward found to be James Lewis, came in, got a letter
and sat down on the step right under Mr. Holcombe to read it. As he read
it, he was much affected and tears were running down his hardened face.
Mr. Holcombe became so interested that he read the man's letter over his
shoulder. It was from his wife, who, with her three children, had left
her husband on account of his drunkenness. Mr. Holcombe made up his mind
he would see if he could do something for the poor man to better his
condition, and, if possible, bring about the reunion of the family. He
did not like to approach him then and there. He watched him till he got
up and moved away and started down through an alley. As he emerged from
the alley, at the farther end, Mr. Holcombe, who had gone around another
way, met him. Little did the man suspect that the stranger who accosted
him knew his trouble and his family secrets. Mr. Holcombe, with that
tact which his knowledge of men had given him, spoke to him kindly, but
in a way that would not arouse his suspicions. He told him, after a
little while, his own condition in that far-off land away from his
family and friends. He found out from the man where he stayed. He went
to see him, found that he slept in a stable, provided him with some
things he needed, and then got down on his knees there in the stable and
prayed for him.

Finally, when the proper time had come, Mr. Holcombe showed him a Murphy
pledge and asked him if he would not sign it. He told him what he
himself had been before, and what he had become, since signing that
pledge. The man gave Mr. Holcombe his confidence, unbosomed himself to
him and eagerly sought counsel. He signed the pledge also and said he
would, by God's help, give up his sins that had separated him from a
loving wife, and would try to live a better life. Mr. Holcombe wrote to
the man's wife informing her of the change in her husband and the effort
he was making to do right. She came at once to Silver Cliff and Mr.
Holcombe had the pleasure of seeing them reunited and ate with them in
their humble cabin.

When he had been some time at the Carbonate hotel, he found a position
where he could make more money and worked there till he had saved enough
to buy an outfit for "prospecting" in the mountains. This outfit
consisted of a little donkey, several "agricultural implements for
subverting _terra firma_" such as spade, pick, etc., and provisions for
two or three weeks. Having procured these and packed his burro, as the
donkey is called out West, he and his partner started for the
mountains. Mr. Holcombe kept a sort of diary of this part of his Western
trip, and we give it here, including the time from his leaving Silver
Cliff to his return to Denver.


DIARY.

Tuesday, May 27, 1879.--I entered into partnership with a man by the
name of J. E. White from Wisconsin for prospecting in the mountains. He
had some blankets at Oak Creek, a distance of thirty miles from Silver
Cliff. We walked out there one day and returned the next. The road was
very full of dust and gravel. My shoes would get full of it. Every
little mountain stream we came to I would stop and wash my feet, which
was very refreshing. This made me think of the blessed Son of God and
why, when he was a guest at different places, they brought him water for
his feet,

    "Those blessed feet
    Which, eighteen hundred years ago, were nailed
    For our advantage on the bitter cross."

Wednesday, May 28.--After having bought a burro and a two weeks'
grub-stake, J. E. White and myself started for the Sangre de Christo
mountain, a wild, high range of the Rockies. We paid for our burro
twenty-one dollars, and for our grub seven dollars. It consisted of
flour, coffee, sugar, bacon, salt, pepper, potatoes and baking powder.
We had a coffee-pot, frying-pan, tin cups. We used our pocket-knives
instead of table-knives. We had a butcher-knife and some teaspoons. With
these and some other things we packed our burro and started. It was a
funny sight. It all looked like a house on top of the poor little
animal which was not much larger than a good sized Newfoundland dog. But
it was strong, faithful and sure-footed and could go anywhere in the
mountains that a man could. We traveled this first day about ten miles
and camped in a gulch at night. Had a hard storm. Our only shelter was a
hut made of boughs of trees, Indian fashion.

Thursday, May 29.--We moved up the gulch as far as we could for the
snow. Did some little prospecting of which neither of us knew very much,
and, of course, we found nothing. Every once in awhile, White would pick
up a rock, look at it wisely and say "This is good float. I think there
is a paying lode up on this mountain somewhere." Up the mountain we go
about 9,000 feet above the sea level. We turned over all the stones and
dug up the earth every now and then and toward night we went to work to
make our hut which we got about half finished. During the night snow
fell about three inches. We were on the side of the mountain. Could
hardly keep the fire from rolling down the side of the mountain. Could
hardly keep our victuals from upsetting. This and the snow made me
weaken considerably, and I did say in my heart I wished I was back home.

Friday, May 30.--We prospected the second ridge, south of Horn's Peak,
going up about 300 feet above timber line, or about 12,000 feet above
the sea-level. There were no indications of minerals. About five miles
off we could see a beautiful lake. I was very anxious to go to it, but
White objected. Said it would be dangerous, might be caught in a
snow-storm. The sun was shining brightly. Weather was very pleasant. I
could not conceive of a snow-storm on the 30th of May. So I persuaded
him to go. After we had gone some distance, all of a sudden it began to
blow up cold and in a little while to snow. We turned our faces toward
camp. Just then we saw one of those beautiful Rocky mountain spotted
grouse. We were so hungry for something fresh to eat, we took several
shots at it with White's pistol. But the blinding snow made it
impossible for us to hit it. We had no grouse for supper.

It grew cold very rapidly and in a very short time it seemed to me as
cold as I ever felt it in my life. My moustache froze stiff. At last the
storm got so heavy, and, the evening coming on, we could hardly see our
way. The side of the mountain was full of dead timber, which was slick
like glass and, as everything was covered with snow, we could not always
see where to put our feet down, and to have slipped would have been
almost certain death. Once White did slip and but for having the pick
and sticking it in a soft place, he would have been killed. We got lost
and wandered about over the mountain side till late in the evening when
we providentially struck on our camp. We were hungry, tired and wet. Our
bedding was covered with snow. Before going to bed I read the first
chapter of Romans.

Saturday, May 31.--Cloudy morning. Four inches of snow. No wind. Felt
very well. We moved our camp. Stopped at a deserted cabin. Found a
grindstone and ground our hatchet. We pitched camp about three miles
South-east. Built a hut of boughs. We got wet. I had but one pair of
pants and one pair of socks. My feet were soaking wet. At bedtime I
read Romans, second chapter.

Sunday, June 1, 1879.--Snowed Saturday night. When I awoke our blankets
were wet. I had symptoms of rheumatism in knees and wrists. I read
Romans, third chapter, and we had prayer together. White sang "Tell Me
the Old, Old Story" and "Safe in the Arms of Jesus." It made me think of
my family so far away, of my dear pastor, Brother----, and the dear old
Portland church, and the tears streamed down my face. Spent the day in
camp.

Monday, June 2.--Woke up very cold. Our hut of pine boughs was not
sufficient to keep us warm. So much snow on the mountains that we
prospected the foot-hills and found what we thought were indications of
mineral. At night read Romans, fourth chapter. Much encouraged by
Abraham's faith. So cold I had to get my hat in the night and put it on
my head to keep warm. Dreamed that I was at home with my precious wife.
Tried to wake her up, but she was dead. What awful feelings!

Tuesday, June 3.--A beautiful bright morning. Read Romans v. Partner
wanted to go deer hunting with a pistol. Seemed to me so foolish I would
not go. I stayed at camp and was very lonesome.

Wednesday, June 4.--Bright, clear morning. Read Romans vi. Had our
breakfast, bread, bacon, coffee and potatoes, early, so as to prospect
on third mountain south of Horn's Peak. Started for the mountains. Went
up above timber line. Ate lunch up there. Too much snow to go any
higher. Found what we thought were indications of mineral. Saw a gray
eagle sailing around. It looked very grand away up above that lonely
mountain. Suppose its nest was near. In evening returned to camp very
tired. Read Romans vii., and it did me a great deal of good.

Thursday, June 5.--Clear morning. Prospected some around the foot-hills.
Found nothing. Began to get disgusted with prospecting. Struck camp
about ten or eleven o'clock A. M. Packed our burro and crossed valley
about fifteen miles. Very hot crossing. Pack slipped out of place
several times. Very troublesome. White got out of humor. Was inclined to
quarrel, but I would not quarrel with him. After getting across the
valley we had trouble finding a place to camp convenient to water, but
found it at last. While we were unpacking a big rabbit jumped up. White
fired three or four shots at him with his revolver. Followed him up the
side of the mountain. At last he killed him. He came down the mountain
swinging old Brer Rabbit, and I think he was as happy looking a man as I
ever saw. No doubt a smile of satisfaction might have been seen on your
Uncle Remus' face, too, when I saw that rabbit. That was the first thing
in shape of fresh meat we had had for about ten days.

    SUPPER--BILL OF FARE.

    _Fried Rabbit,              Fried Bread,
             Potatoes,    Coffee._

After supper we raised a few poles and threw our blankets over them for
shelter. Read Romans viii., and went to sleep, feeling satisfied that if
I died before morning, I would wake up in heaven.

Friday, June 6.--Bright morning. Fine appetite. Good breakfast. Read
Romans ix. We moved from the foot-hills and went up into the mountain.
White went prospecting while I built us a hut for the night. When he
came back he said he had found some very good float. Very cold night.
Our burro got loose in the night and made considerable noise moving
around. We were sure it was a mountain lion, but, of course, we were not
afraid. I had my hatchet under my head and he had his pistols. Of
course, we were not afraid.

Saturday, June 7.--Very cold morning. Prospected. Found a lode of black
rock. Felt sure we had struck it rich. Dug a whole in the ground and
staked a claim. Read Romans x, at night. Slept cold. Got to thinking.
Thought it was easier to find a needle in a haystack than a paying mine
in the Rocky mountains.

Sunday, June 8.--Morning clear and bright. Owing to the disagreeable
place in which we were camped, we thought our health justified us in
moving even on the Lord's day. Found an old cabin. It was worse than any
horse stable, but we cleaned it out. Made a bed of poles, which we cut
and carried some distance. This was on the Pueblo and Rosita road.

Monday, June 9.--Bright, cold morning. Ice on the spring branch. After
breakfast we started prospecting. Found nothing, except another old
deserted cabin of the Arkansaw Traveler's style. Returned to camp in the
evening. Read Romans xii. and xiii. and slept like a prince.

Tuesday, June 10--Another bright, clear, cold morning. We prospected
some. Staked off a claim, more in fun than anything else, for we knew it
was worth nothing. The locality is called Hardscrabble. And it was the
right name. Our provisions had about given out, and it was a hard
scrabble for us to get along. Concluded to return to Silver Cliff, go to
work, get another grub stake, and take another fresh start. In the
afternoon we rested. Read Romans xiv., xv. and xvi.

Wednesday, June 11.--Another beautiful Colorado morning. Read 1 Cor., i.
Started for Silver Cliff about 7:00 A. M. I carried White's pistol. On
the way I killed two doves. Had them for dinner about 3:00 P. M. How
sweet they did taste! Arrived at Silver Cliff about dark.

Thursday, June 12.--Concluded the best thing I could do was to get home
as soon as possible. We sold our burro for $15.00, and with my part
($7.50) I started with a friend by the name of Hall for home. We got a
cheap ride in a freight wagon from Silver Cliff to Pueblo. The country
through which we passed is the wildest and grandest I ever saw anywhere
in my life. Hardscrabble canon is one of the most picturesque in the
world, and then the beautiful mountain stream all the way, winding like
a serpent down the valley. We crossed and re-crossed it several times.
That night we slept in the wagon. I never neglected praying any day
while I was on the prospecting tour.

Friday, June 13.--Arrived at Pueblo about 2:00 P. M. Had a little money.
Got a bite to eat. At that time there was a railroad war. Men were
killing each other for three dollars a day for corporations. The
excitement about this, and the moving bodies of men all anxious for
news, kept me from thinking of my condition till night. At night I went
out to the commons, on the edge of the city, and, with other tramps,
went to sleep on the cold ground.

Saturday, June 14.--Had a little money. Some others of the tramps had a
little. We pooled it, bought a little grub, and at 12:00 o'clock started
on a tramp to Denver, a distance of about one hundred and twenty-five
miles. I felt fresh and strong. We walked about six miles and slept on
the ground at night.

Sunday, June 15.--Got up early. Had a little breakfast. Started about
6:00 A. M. Walked about three miles when, two of our party having such
sore feet, we stopped. I had a voracious appetite. Went to cooking. We
had some canned tomatoes and canned syrup. I cooked some tomatoes and
ate them. Then I went to a ranch, bought a nickel's worth of milk, fried
some cakes, ate them with the syrup, drank the milk and was--sick. Did
not feel strong again all the time. I had had no experience in tramping
and tried to carry too much luggage. My feet got sore. Every day's tramp
after that was a drag. One of the party left us and went on ahead by
himself. We never saw him again. Another was so broken down we had to
leave him. Hall and I went on sick and tired. About dark we went up to
the house of a ranchman, and I told him my story. He took us in. I found
out he was a professing Christian. I read Romans vii., and prayed with
the family. His name is John Irvine, El Paso, Colorado.

Monday, June 16.--Left John Irvine's soon after breakfast. Walked five
miles to a water-tank where the train had to stop for water. We waited
till the train came along, and boarded her. The conductor did not see
us till we had passed Colorado Springs some distance. When he did see
us, I made the appeal of my life on account of myself and my friend,
whose feet were so sore he could, with difficulty, hobble along. I told
the conductor my own condition, and of my anxiety to get home to a
suffering family. When I saw he would not believe what I said, I offered
him my pocket-knife, a very fine and costly one, to let us ride a short
distance further, but he was like a stone. At the next stop he put us
off without a cent of money or a bite to eat. We walked about six miles,
lay down on the ground, with the sky for a covering, and slept like
logs.

Tuesday, June 17.--We started about daybreak, without anything to eat.
Walked about eight miles to a little place called Sedalia. Saw a German
boarding house. Sent Hall in to see if we could get anything to eat. Had
no money, but told him to tell her I would give her a butcher-knife and
a silver teaspoon, which I had brought from home, for something to eat.

She said to him so I could hear her: "Breakfast is over, but I will give
you what I have." That was enough for me. In I went. Sat down to a real
German lunch, and never did a breakfast taste sweeter to me than that.
God bless that good old German woman, not only for her good breakfast,
but for her kind, motherly words to two strangers in want. It taught me
a lesson which I have not forgotten yet, and I pray God I never may.

I left Sedalia feeling comfortable. Walked about four miles. Hall was
about done. He could go no further. While we were sitting there, a
Christian man by the name of Jennings came along, took pity on us, took
us in his wagon, gave us something to eat and brought us to Denver. We
arrived there about 6:00 P. M., without one cent, nothing to eat, no
place to go. Slept that night in a stable-yard under Jennings' wagon.

Wednesday, June 18.--Got up next morning about daybreak. Had a little
cold breakfast with Jennings. Knocked about town a little. Had a baker's
blackberry pie and a cup of water for dinner.

Here the diary of the prospecting tour and the tramp to Denver ends.

Mr. Holcombe continued the next day to knock about town, not knowing
what to do, when his old friend, Frank Jones, by nature one of the
kindest-hearted men in the world, chanced to meet him and insisted on
sharing his room with him. As his friend Jones, however, was himself
broke, he could render Mr. Holcombe no further assistance and it was
necessary for Mr. Holcombe to look about for something to do. He spent a
week in this occupation, or want of occupation, and at the end of that
time found employment in a brickyard. But the work was so hard, at the
end of three weeks, he had to give it up. After some time what little
money he had was expended and again he was destitute. And at one time he
was so pressed that he went into a grocery store and offered his fine
pocket-knife again for something to eat, but it was refused. Several
times he passed the Young Men's Christian Association rooms. Each time
he stopped, looked wistfully in and debated with himself whether they
would probably believe him and help him if he ventured to go in and
make his condition known. But he had never been used to asking favors,
and he did not know how to approach Christian people, and so his heart
failed him.

At that time and in that condition he was assailed by a sore temptation.
The devil, he says, suggested these thoughts to him: "This is a fine
condition for Steve Holcombe to be in. Before you heard of God and this
religion, you could stop at first-class hotels, wear fine clothes, live
like a gentleman, have a good home and all that money could buy for your
family. Now, you say you are serving God. You say He is your father and
that He owns everything in the world. Yet here you are without food and
clothing and your family is at home in want. You have not enough to buy
a meal for them or for yourself. Can you afford to trust and serve such
a master as that?"

But he had not been serving God two years and more for naught. He had
learned some things in that time. One of them was that trials and
privations are a part of the Christian's heritage, and that if any man
will live godly in this present world, he must expect to suffer. So his
reply was ready and he met the temptation with decision. "Yea, and
though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." And the sequel will show
whether he made a mistake in trusting Him.

When he saw it was useless for him to remain longer away from home, he
informed his friend, Mr. Jones, of his purpose to leave at once for
Louisville. Mr. Jones got him money enough to buy a ticket to Kansas
City, and there the great temperance lecturer, Francis Murphy, having
found out his character and condition, gave him enough to get home.

Whether God can or not, at any rate He does not pour wisdom into a man
as we pour water into a bottle. He does not so favor even His own
children, if favor it could be called. But He gives a man opportunities
of self-discipline, and if, aided by His divine help and grace, the man
is willing to go through the process, he comes out with larger knowledge
and better equipment for life and service and usefulness.

Without the experiences and lessons of this Colorado trip, Mr. Holcombe
could not have been the efficient man he is to-day. That season of
loneliness and self-searching and severe testing and humiliation was to
him, though a painful, yet a helpful, and perhaps necessary, stage in
his Christian life.

Indeed, all the trying experiences that had come to him since his
conversion were helpful to him in one way or another. He needed to learn
patience, he needed to learn economy, he needed to learn self-control.
The disposition to practice all these was given him at the time of his
conversion, he needed now to be put to the test and to "learn obedience,
practically, by the things which he suffered." Moreover, if he was to
serve efficiently the poor and the tempted, he needed to become
acquainted with their condition, their sorrows, their conflicts, by
passing through them himself.

The endurance of the evils which give occasion for the exercise of
self-denial and for the acquisition of self-control is a far less evil
than the want of self-denial and of self-control. So Mr. Holcombe was
willing to suffer all these things rather than to decline them and be
without the blessing which comes through them. This reflection justified
his past sufferings and prepared him for any that might come in the
future. He knew what he had been and he had learned that he was to be
purified by fire. So he felt that if God would be patient with him, he
would be patient with God's dealings. When he arrived at home he found
his family in a very needy condition. Shortly after his departure for
Colorado, his wife had to remove from the house she was occupying,
because she could not pay the rent. She had never taken care of herself
before or done any sort of work, for he always provided well for his
family; but now she saw it was necessary for her to support the family.
Accordingly, she took in sewing, and in that way did support them till
Mr. Holcombe's return. For six weeks after his return he could find
nothing to do, and Mrs. Holcombe, brave, noble woman, continued to
support the family with her needle. The time of her full deliverance was
coming, but it was not yet. Nor did she know when it would come, or that
it would ever come. But all the same she waited, and while she waited,
she served, and with a glad heart, too, for had not her husband turned
his face heavenward? And poverty seemed now a small thing.

Some time after Mr. Holcombe's return, his friend, Major Ed Hughes, was
elected Chief of the Fire Department in Louisville, and he made
application to him at once for a position. Major Hughes gave it to him
unhesitatingly; but, as Mr. Holcombe was entirely without experience, it
had to be a subordinate one, in which the salary was not large, being
only a dollar and a half per day. It was impossible for him to support
his family on so little, and though Mrs. Holcombe undertook to help him
out by keeping boarders and doing all the work herself, they got
behind all the time he was in the fire department. Finding that keeping
boarders after Mrs. Holcombe's liberal fashion was entirely
unprofitable, she gave that up and commenced taking in sewing again. She
even learned to make coats for clothing stores in Louisville, and
continued that for some time.

[Illustration: ENGINE HOUSE.]

Meanwhile, he was having a hard time in his subordinate position in the
fire department. In the first place he was required to be at the
engine-house night and day and Sundays, with the bare exception of a
half hour or such a matter at meal time. For a man of his nature and
habits this confinement was almost intolerable, and would have been
quite so, if he had not been radically changed. In the second place he
was subject to the orders of his superiors, though he had never been
obliged to obey anybody, and as a matter of fact never had obeyed
anybody since he was a mere infant. In the third place, notwithstanding
his experience, his knowledge of the world and his capacity for higher
work, he was required to do work which a well-trained idiot might have
done just as well. One of his duties was to rub the engine and keep it
polished. In order to clean some parts of it, he would have to lie down
on the floor under it flat on his back; and in order to clean other more
delicate parts of the machinery, he had to work in such places that he
was always bruising and skinning his hands.

If repeated failure in business in Louisville was hard, if starving in
Colorado was harder, the confinement and drudgery of his position at the
engine-house were hardest. It would require some effort to think of a
position more thoroughly disagreeable and trying than this one which Mr.
Holcombe filled to the satisfaction of his superiors for two mortal
years. But he was learning some things he needed to know. He was passing
through a necessary apprenticeship, though he did not know it, for
something vastly higher. It perhaps should be added that Mr. Holcombe
was practically isolated and alone at the engine-house, for none of the
men there employed were congenial companions. However, to their credit,
be it said, they showed great respect for him and for his Christian
profession; they quit gambling, they refrained from using obscene or
profane language in his presence, and, in general, were very kind to
him.

Nothing could lessen Mr. Holcombe's sympathy for the outcast and the
lost, and nothing destroy his zeal for their salvation. Though he was
not allowed to leave his post even on Sunday, without hiring, at his own
expense, a substitute, yet he frequently went to Shippingsport and other
places to hold services among the poor "with the hope," as he says, "of
helping and blessing them." He incurred the expense of a substitute that
he might, once in awhile, go out bearing light and blessing to others,
and he even took to his own home men who were trying to reform and live
better lives. In view of the condition of his family, this was doubtless
more than he ought to have done, and in after years he saw it was a
mistake, but such was his insatiable longing to help and bless others,
he let his zeal, perhaps, go beyond his prudence in that single
particular. Most of us err very far on the other side. He did not
hesitate to take to his home in some instances men who had gone in
their dissipation to the extent of delirium tremens. One such case was
that of a fine young fellow who belonged to an excellent family in
Louisville, but who through drink had gone down, down, down, until he
had struck bottom. During his drinking sprees he was the most forlorn
and wretched looking man in Louisville. He was at this time, by Mr.
Holcombe's invitation, staying at his house. He ate there, he slept
there; it was his home. But on one occasion, some time after midnight,
he was attacked with a frightful spell of delirium tremens, or, as he
said, the devils got after him. They told him, he said, that if he did
not kill Mr. and Mrs. Holcombe and their baby, they would kill him. He
heard them. They told him to go and get his razor, and he did it. Then
they advanced on him and he backed from them, his razor in hand. As they
advanced he retreated. He opened Mr. Holcombe's door (for he had hired a
substitute and remained at home on the night in question in order to
help his man through his spell). He backed to the bed in which Mr. and
Mrs. Holcombe were sleeping. He struck the bed as he retreated from the
devils, and Mrs. Holcombe awoke to find a demonized man standing over
them with a drawn razor. She woke her husband. He jumped out of bed,
caught the man's arm and took the razor from him. After that Mr.
Holcombe sat up with him the remainder of the night, and during most of
the time the man was talking to imaginary devils. About daylight he
snatched up a brickbat out of the hearth and rushed toward the door
saying there were three big men out there who had come to kill him. Mr.
Holcombe kept him with himself all next day. The next night while they
were walking together in the open air, the man imagined that a woman
whom he knew to be dead was choking him to death, and he was on the
point of dying with suffocation when Mr. Holcombe called a physician to
his aid.

Such was the kind of men Mr. Holcombe, even in those days of poverty and
discouragement, was trying to help and rescue, and such were his efforts
and trials and perils in rescuing them.

When Mr. Holcombe's pastor saw the grace of God that abounded in him, it
was plain to him that he might, in future, when a suitable opening
should come, make a very useful helper in the work of the church. In
order, therefore, that Mr. Holcombe might be prepared for an enlarged
sphere, if it should ever come, the pastor proposed to teach him in
certain lines and did so, visiting him regularly at the engine house for
that purpose. Mr. Holcombe studied very industriously, but it was with
extreme difficulty that he could apply himself to books at that time.
Later, however, he overcame to a great extent this difficulty and has
gotten now to be quite a student. He has attended also, for two years,
with great profit, the lectures of Dr. Broadus in the Baptist Seminary
in Louisville.

As has been said elsewhere, Mr. Holcombe remained in the fire department
for two years, enduring the confinement, performing the drudgery and
trying, as best he could, to help and bless others. Four years and more
had now elapsed since his conversion. It was a long stretch and at times
a heavy strain. But he endured it, and grew strong.




CHAPTER IV.


The time had now come for such an extraordinary career and such an
extraordinary man to be recognized, and he was. He had made an
impression and his work, humble as it was, had made an impression.
Moreover, Mr. Holcombe himself was now growing impatient to get into a
position more favorable to his usefulness. It was not the selfish
impatience that could not longer endure the humiliation and manifold
disagreeablenesses of his position at the engine house. He had overcome
all that. It was the noble impatience of love and zeal. Oh, how he did
long to get into a place where he could help somebody and serve somebody
and love somebody.

He had been very kindly treated by his old friends, the gamblers, during
all this time; and though he was loath to allow it and at first declined
it, yet fearing lest his refusal might alienate them, he had, more than
once, accepted substantial help from one or two particular friends among
them. Encouraged by assurances from some of these and by the promise of
all the help his pastor could possibly give him, financially and
otherwise, he had made up his mind to rent a room in the central part of
the city and to open a meeting for the outcast classes. But on the very
day when he was engaged in making these arrangements, his remarkable
conversion and character and career were the subject of discussion at
the Methodist Ministers' meeting. The result was that before the week
had passed, the Rev. Jas. C. Morris, pastor of the Walnut-street
Methodist church, visited him at the engine-house and informed him that
the Official Board of his church had authorized him to take measures for
the establishment of a mission in the central part of the city and to
employ Mr. Holcombe to take charge of it at an assured salary sufficient
to meet the wants of his family. He at once accepted it as a call from
God and gave up his position in the fire department, with no great
degree of reluctance.

A vacant store in the Tyler Block, on Jefferson street between Third and
Fourth, was offered free of rent. Regular noon-day meetings were held
there in charge of Rev. Mr. Morris and Mr. Holcombe. It was a
phenomenon. Within two blocks of the two faro banks which Steve Holcombe
used to own and run, he was now every day at high noon declaring the
Gospel of the grace of God. The people came to see and hear. They found
it was no mushroom fanatic, but a man who for forty years was a leader
in wickedness and for four years had been almost a pattern of
righteousness. He spoke no hot words of excitement, but narrated facts
with truth and soberness. Many of his old time friends, the gamblers,
their timidity overcome by their curiosity, joined the crowd and heard
the man. Poor drunkards, too far gone for timidity or curiosity, dragged
themselves to the place where the famous gambler was telling about his
conversion and his new life. And the power of God was present to heal,
and great grace was upon them all. Among those who were saved at that
time and place were Mr. Ben Harney, son of the distinguished editor of
the old _Louisville Democrat_, who lives again in happiness and
prosperity with his beloved family, and Mr. D. C. Chaudoin, at one time
a Main-street merchant, who remained faithful until death.

When the supporters of the movement saw that it promised so much, they
took steps at once to make larger provision for it and to secure its
permanence. They sought a suitable house in a convenient place, and
finally decided to take the room at No. 436 Jefferson street, between
Fourth and Fifth streets, which had formerly been used as a
gambling-house. Mr. Holcombe took possession of it, and found some of
the gambling implements still there. A Board of Managers was elected,
consisting of John L. Wheat, James G. Carter, P. H. Tapp, C. P. Atmore
and George W. Wicks. Some friends from the Walnut-street church and
others volunteered as singers; the room was supplied with hymn-books, an
organ was secured, and the meetings commenced under the most promising
circumstances. At first, meetings were held three nights in the week,
and the attendance was large. Soon after, meetings were held every night
and on Sundays. People of all classes came. The services consisted of
singing, prayers, reading of Scripture, a short, earnest address from
Mr. Holcombe, and sometimes testimonies from the men who had been helped
and saved--among whom were drunkards, gamblers, pick-pockets, thieves,
burglars, tramps, men who had fallen from high positions in business and
social circles, and in short, men of all classes and kinds. Many of
these gave unquestionable proofs of conversion, "of whom the greater
part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep," faithful
unto death. Among those who were converted during that period were
Robert Denny, Fred Ropke, Captain B. F. Davidson and Charles Wilson,
whose testimonies will be found elsewhere in this book--besides others,
some of whom are residents of Louisville and some of other places.

By request, the Rev. James C. Morris, D. D., now of Kansas City, Mo.,
has written a brief account of Mr. Holcombe's work from the beginning to
the point which we have now reached in this narrative. And, as no part
of it can well be omitted or changed for the better, it is here
introduced entire, with a part of the genial letter which accompanied
it:

    "KANSAS CITY, MO., August 14, 1888.

    "_My Dear Brother_:

    "I inclose the notes for which you ask. You see they are in a
    crude state. But do not judge from that that I have no interest
    in the work you have in hand. My Father in heaven knows I keep
    it very near my heart. I felt it would be sufficient for me to
    furnish you the matter in a crude state, and let you work it
    into your plan rather than give it any literary shape myself.
    Besides, I am pressed, pressed to my utmost, and I therefore
    send you this imperfect sketch with an apology. I am glad you
    are doing the work. It will surely do good. Brother Holcombe's
    work ought to be known. I wish in my heart of hearts that every
    city and town had such a man in it to work for God and souls.
    Praying God to bless you and your work, I am,

    "Yours affectionately,

    "JAMES C. MORRIS."

"In the year 1881, while I was pastor of the Walnut-street Methodist
church, in Louisville, Ky., I heard of Steve Holcombe, the converted
gambler; of his remarkable career; of his remarkable conversion, and of
his unusual devotion and zeal in the cause of religion. I heard also of
his efforts in the line of Christian work and of his desire for better
opportunities. I mentioned his case to the Official Board of the
Walnut-street church, and suggested that he might be usefully employed
by our churches in the city in doing missionary work. The matter was
kindly received, but the suggestion took no practical shape. As I walked
home from the meeting one of the stewards said to me: 'Why could not we,
of the Walnut-street church, employ Brother Holcombe ourselves?' This
question put me upon a course of thought about the work we might be able
to do, and at the next meeting of the Board I made the suggestion that
we organize some work of the kind and employ Brother Holcombe to take
charge of it. They unanimously accepted the suggestion and directed me
to investigate the case. If anything could be done, they were ready to
enter upon the work and support it. I lost no time in seeing Brother
Holcombe. He was then employed at the engine-house, on Portland avenue.
I found him rubbing the engine. It took but a moment to introduce
myself, and in a short time we were up-stairs, alone, talking about
religion and work for Christ. He told me how his heart was drawn out in
solicitude for the classes who never attended church--the gamblers,
drunkards and the like. It was easy to see that the movement
contemplated was of God. We talked and rejoiced together; we knelt down
and prayed together for God's guidance in all our plans and
undertakings. I then told him how I came to call on him, and laid before
him our plan. His eyes filled with tears--tears of joy--at the thought
of having an opportunity to do the work that was on his heart.

"At once I reported to the Board, and recommended that Brother Holcombe
be at once employed and the work set on foot without delay. God breathed
on them the same spirit that he had breathed on us together at the
engine-house. With unanimity and enthusiasm they entered into the plan
and pledged their support. They fixed his salary at nine hundred dollars
a year and authorized me to do all that was necessary to carry the plan
into effect.

"Early the next morning Brother Holcombe gave up his place at the
engine-house, and we went out to look for a house in which to domicile
our work. I can never forget that day. What joy there was in that heart
that had waited so long and prayed so fervently for an open door of
opportunity. Now the door was opened wide, and a song was put in his
heart and in his mouth. We walked miles to find a suitable place, while
we talked much by the way as our hearts burned within us.

"At length we found a vacant storeroom on Jefferson street, between
Third and Fourth, and as we looked in the window, we said: 'This
would make a grand place to begin in.' We went to see Mr. Isaac Tyler,
the owner, and he gave us a favorable answer and the key. The next day
we began a meeting which continued through three months. And who can
write the history of that work? Only the All-seeing God; and He has the
record of it in His book. We had a noon-day service every day, except
Sunday, and a Saturday evening service every week.

"The services were advertised and men stationed at the door invited the
passer-by to come in. At the meetings all classes of men were
represented. There were strong, wise, honorable business-men and there
were tramps and drunkards with all the classes that lie between these
two. No man was slighted. Many a man was brought in who was too drunk to
sit alone in his seat. Many were there who had not slept in a bed for
months. There were gamblers and drunkards and outcast men from every
quarter of the city. The gathering looked more like that in the police
courts of a great city on Monday morning than like a religious meeting.
The workers did literally go out into the highways and into the lowways
and compel them to come in. And marvelous things took place there.

"Steve Holcombe was known all over the city, and such a work done by
such a man who had lately been a noted gambler in the community drew men
who, for years, had had no thought of attending church. The old
companions of his worldly life came, the worst elements of the city
came, good men from all the churches came. Brother Holcombe was in his
element. His soul was as free to the work as that of an Apostle. Daily
he trod the streets inviting people to come, and daily, as they came, he
spoke words of deep feeling to them, urging them to be saved. No man
ever had a more respectful hearing than he had. No man ever devoted
himself more fully in the spirit of the Master to doing men good than
did he. His devotion to the poor outcast who showed any willingness to
listen or any wish to be saved was as marvelous as his own conversion. I
never saw such in any other worker for Christ.

"In the progress of the work we often spoke of keeping a record of those
who professed conversion there. I am sorry it was not done. Hardly a day
passed without some case of exceptional interest. Men were saved who had
been for years in the very lowest stages of dissipation and vagrancy.
Not a few of those who were thus saved were men who had belonged to the
very best social, and business circles of the city. Many of them are
bright and blessed lights in Christian circles to-day. Many homes were
built up out of wrecks where only ashes and tears remained. Many
scattered families were brought together after long separation. God only
knows the results of that three months' work. I remember some
conversions that were as marvelous as that of Saul of Tarsus. I could
tell of some of them but perhaps this is not the place.

"This meeting in the Tyler block was a feature of a meeting which was in
progress at the Walnut-street church and to this it was tributary. In
the evening those who had been reached by the services at the mission
were invited to the church. They were largely of a class not often seen
in the church but they came, and when they came the church welcomed
them.

"Then there was rejoicing in the presence of the angels, for many
sinners were repenting and returning. I saw the Gospel net dragged to
the shore enclosing fish that no one would have been willing to take out
of the net except Steve Holcombe. But it is far different with them
to-day. Changed by the power of God, these repulsive creatures are
honored members of the various churches, heads of happy families and
respected and useful citizens of the community.

"At the end of three months the meetings in the storeroom were
discontinued. Mr. Holcombe had won thousands of friends, hundreds had
been put in the way of a new life and the whole city was in sympathy
with the work.

"We were now to select and secure a suitable place for the permanent
home of the mission. Another search brought us to the room on the south
side of Jefferson between Fourth and Fifth streets, No. 436. It had been
occupied as a gambling room, and the gambling apparatus was still there
when we took possession of it. In a few days the house was fitted up and
the 'Gospel-Mission' was opened.

"The work was now thoroughly organized. There was, in addition to the
regular services, a Sunday-school for the children whose parents never
went to church. Colonel C. P. Atmore was superintendent. The 'Industrial
School' also was organized, where Christian women taught the girls to
sew, furnishing them the materials and giving them the finished
garments. It is especially worthy of remark that the old associates of
Mr. Holcombe, the gamblers, contributed more than $500 toward the
expenses of this work.

"This house became an open home for any weary, foot-sore wanderer who
was willing to come in, and through the years many were the hearts made
happy in a new life.

"The year following the organization of the work, Rev. Sam P. Jones
conducted a meeting at the Walnut-street church, and his heart was
strangely drawn to that mission. He himself conducted many services
there and he was more impressed with the character of the work and of
the man who was in charge of it than with any Christian work he had ever
seen. During this meeting of Mr. Jones a programme of street-preaching
was carried out by Mr. Holcombe and his fellow-workers. Mr. Holcombe
himself preached several times on the courthouse steps, and, even in the
midst of the tumult, souls were converted to God."

This is the end of Dr. Morris' account of the beginnings of Mr.
Holcombe's work, though the reader will probably wish it were longer,
and even more circumstantial.

Mr. Holcombe's family lived in the same building, over the mission room,
and whenever men in need or distress applied, he gave them board and
lodging. Mrs. Holcombe says that for three months they had never less
than twenty men eating two meals a day. Of course, among so many there
were, doubtless, some imposters, but it took a pretty keen man to play
imposter without being spotted by the keen man who was in charge of the
enterprise. Mr. Holcombe had mixed with men long enough to know them. He
had spent most of his life among bad men. He had studied their ways and
he knew their tricks. And it is not necessary to say to the reader who
has perused the foregoing pages, that Mr. Holcombe was not afraid of any
man. His former experience in sin and his former association with
sinners of every sort led him to see that it was necessary for him
rigidly to protect the work he was now engaged in and he determined to
do so. Men would come into the meetings, sometimes, in a state of
intoxication; sometimes lewd fellows of the baser sort would come in for
the purpose of interrupting the service and still others for other
purposes; but when Mr. Holcombe had put a few of them out, they saw that
this man in getting religion had lost neither common sense nor courage,
and that Steve Holcombe, the converted gambler, was not a man to be
fooled with any more than Steve Holcombe, the unconverted gambler; so
that all such interruptions soon ceased. But nobody should get the
impression that Mr. Holcombe was harsh or unsympathetic. On the
contrary, he is one of the most tenderhearted of men, and few men living
would go farther, do more or make greater sacrifices to save a drunkard
or a gambler or an outcast of any sort, than Steve Holcombe. For days he
has gone without meat for himself and his family that he might have
something to help a poor drunkard who was trying to reform. Indeed, his
pitying love for wretched men and women of every class and degree,
manifested in his efforts to look them up and to do them good in any
possible way, is the chief secret of his wonderful success in dealing
with hardened and apparently inaccessible cases. The following account
of his last and perhaps most desperate case is taken from one of the
Louisville daily papers and will illustrate what has been said:

[Illustration: JAMES WILLIAMS AS HE WAS.]


    DRUNK TWENTY-THREE YEARS.

    REMARKABLE STORY OF "WHISKY JIM'S" WASTED LIFE AND FINAL
    CONVERSION. HOW THE WORK WAS EFFECTED.

The work that Steve Holcombe is doing is well known, in a general way,
but the public understand but little of the wonderful good that man is
doing. The reformations he has brought about may be numbered by the
hundred, and the drunkards he has reclaimed would make a regiment.

But of all the wonderful and truly startling examples of what Mr.
Holcombe is doing, the case of James Williams is the climax. Williams
has been known for years as "Whisky Jim" and "Old Hoss," and there is
not a more familiar character in the city. Until the last two or three
weeks no man in Louisville ever remembers to have seen Jim free from the
influence of liquor. He was always drunk, and was looked upon as an
absolutely hopeless case, that would be able to stand the terrible life
he was leading but a year or two longer.

The story of his life and reformation as related to a _Times_ reporter
is very interesting. He had asked Mr. Holcombe when his protege could be
seen, and was told at nine o'clock at the mission. Williams was seen
coming up the steps, his face clean shaven, his eyes bright and his gait
steady. Mr. Holcombe said: "There he is now, God bless him; I could just
kiss him. I knew he'd be here. One thing I've learned about Jim is, that
he is an honest man, and another is that he will not tell a lie. I feel
that I can trust him. He has had the hardest struggle to overcome the
drinking habit I ever saw, and I feel sure that he has gained the
victory. I began on him quietly about one month ago and got him to
attend our meetings. But here he is." The reporter was introduced, and
Mr. Williams readily consented to tell anything concerning himself that
would be of interest to the public and calculated to do good in the
cause of temperance. He said: "I was born in Paducah, Ky., and am
forty-eight years old. My father's name was Rufus A. Williams. While a
boy I was sent to school, and picked up a little education. I was put at
work in a tobacco manufactory, and am a tobacco-twister by trade. My
father died when I was nine years old, after which our family consisted
of my mother, now seventy-five years of age, my sister and myself. We
now live on the east side of Floyd street, near Market. Shortly after I
grew up I found work on the river and have been employed on nearly every
boat between Louisville and New Orleans. That is what downed me. I began
to drink little by little, and the appetite and habit began to grow on
me until I gave up all idea of resistance. Up to yesterday a week ago, I
can truthfully say that I have been drunk twenty-three years, day and
night.

"In 1862 I got a job on the 'Science,' Number 2, a little Government
boat running the Ohio and Cumberland rivers. Coming down the Cumberland
on one trip I was too sick to work, and the boat put me ashore about
twenty miles above Clarksville. The woods where I was dumped out were
full of guerrillas, but I managed to secure a little canoe in which I
paddled down to Clarksville. There I sold it for three dollars and with
the small sum I had already I came to this city, where we were then
living. I then drank up every cent I could rake and scrape. I could get
all sorts of work, but could keep no job because I couldn't keep sober.
I finally depended on getting odd jobs along the river front, such as
loading and unloading freight, etc. But the work was so hard I could
scarcely do it, and finally I had to give that up, especially after
falling and breaking my leg while at work on the old 'United States'
several years ago. That accident laid me up in the Marine Hospital for
several months, and just as I felt able to get out I broke the same leg
again at the same place. After recovering I yielded entirely to the
appetite for strong drink and cared for nothing else. As I say, for
twenty-three years I have not known what it is to be sober until a few
days ago.

"For the past six years I have earned my drinks and some free lunch by
picking up old boxes and barrel staves which I would dispose of to the
saloon-keepers along the river front who knew me. I did not often ask
any one for money with which to buy whisky, for I could always earn it
in this manner. I usually slept at my mother's house. As to eating I did
not eat much and was getting so I could scarcely eat at all. I am
getting over that now, and have a good appetite, as Mr. Holcombe can
testify.

"Well, about one month ago Mr. Holcombe came to me and gave me a little
talk. He did not say much, but he set me to thinking as far as I was
capable of thinking. He saw me the second time, and then several times.
Of course, I was always drunk but I understood him. Finally he said
to me 'Jim, if you're bound to have whisky, come around to the Mission
and let me give it to you.' I promised him I'd come around, and I did
so, for I wanted some o' the liquor. After I had gone around several
times and he had given me a few drinks, not to make me drunk, of course,
but to help me get sober, if possible; he invited me to go in and attend
the religious services. I did so and he invited me to come again, which
I did. At last he insisted that I should take my meals at the mission,
and I have been doing so for some days. Finally I made up my mind to
quit drinking altogether, and I intend to stick to the pledge I have
taken. I was full last Sunday week for the last time. I was trying to
taper off then, but a saloon-keeper on Market, just below Jackson,
knowing my condition and knowing that I was trying to quit, gave me a
bucket of bock beer. I knew he meant no good to me, but I couldn't help
drinking it. Other saloon-keepers have been trying to get me to drink
again, and I think they are trying to get me to do a great wrong.

"I went to church yesterday for the first time since I was a boy. Heard
Dr. Eaton preach.

"My poor old mother is greatly rejoiced at the change in me, for I have
given her a great deal of torment and misery. As soon as the Murphy
meetings are over Mr. Holcombe and I will spend a couple of weeks at
French Lick Springs."

[Illustration: JAMES WILLIAMS, AS HE IS]

During this period, when the mission occupied rooms at No. 436 Jefferson
street, the meetings were not confined to that single place, but
services were held in other parts of the city, on the streets and even
on the courthouse steps. Many strangers, as well as citizens of
Louisville, attended these, and some were so powerfully impressed that
after going away to their distant homes they wrote back to Mr. Holcombe
acknowledging the good they had received, and in some instances giving
an account of their conviction, repentance and conversion. The Holcombe
Mission became one of the "sights" of the city, so that strangers
visiting the city would look it up and attend services there.

In 1884 a new feature was added which, in turn, added much to the
efficiency and usefulness of the mission. It was suggested by the sight
of the poorly clad children who attended the mission with their parents,
and who seemed willing and anxious themselves to do better and be
better. This new feature was the Industrial School, an account of the
origin, history and methods of which is furnished by Mrs. Clark, the
Superintendent. A Sunday-school was organized also, with C. P. Atmore,
Esq., as Superintendent, and some of the most earnest Christian people
of the city as teachers and helpers. A little later the Kindergarten was
also organized and is now in successful operation.

[Illustration: THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL. 1. CUTTING GARMENTS. 2. BOYS
MAKING CARPETS. 3. GIRLS SEWING.]


THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL AND THE KINDERGARTEN.

In order to enlarge the mission work and better reach the homes of the
needy, both spiritually and temporally, the Union Gospel Industrial
School was opened in April, 1884, with six little girls and three
teachers in attendance. In May following it was formally organized as
The Union Gospel Mission Industrial School with

    Mrs. J. R. Clark, Superintendent;
    Mrs. L. G. Herndon, Assistant Superintendent;
    Miss Ella Downing, Secretary;
    Miss Ella Harding, Treasurer.

In June, 1884, it closed for the summer with twenty-two pupils and five
teachers. In September following it opened for the fall and winter term
with the same teachers and a small increase in the number of pupils, all
from the neglected classes. The school was organized in the old mission
room, at No. 436 Jefferson street, between Fourth and Fifth, and
continued there for three winters. The children came, however, from all
parts of the city, some of them from garrets and cellars. Their ages
ranged from five to eighteen years.

In May, 1886, the school was removed to its present spacious rooms in
the Union Gospel Mission building on Jefferson street, above First. The
work has steadily increased, each year bringing in a larger number of
the neglected children. Those who come are so interested and benefited,
they become missionaries, so to speak, to other poor and neglected
children. There is one class of girls, however, who are not
charity-scholars, but come for the purpose of learning to sew. Their
work is done, not for themselves, but for the younger children of the
poorer class who are not yet old enough to sew. For this reason, the
class just mentioned is called The Missionary Class, and it is one of
which the school is justly proud. They not only do their work for
others, they do good in other ways and in general exert a good influence
over the other children who are less fortunate.

The children are first taught all the different stitches that are used
in sewing. Then work is cut out for them by a committee of ladies who
attend for that purpose, and the children are taught to make all kinds
of garments. When the garment is completed and passes examination, it is
given to the child who made it.

There is a class of boys, sixty in number, ranging from five to twelve
years of age. These are first taught to sew on buttons and to mend rents
in their own clothes and then other things follow. They are at present
engaged in making a carpet for Mr. Holcombe's office. The teachers in
charge of them endeavor to train them to habits of industry,
self-reliance, cleanliness, truthfulness, etc. Some of the boys are very
bright and promising and some of them seem hopelessly cowed and broken.
Their histories would, doubtless, be full of pathos and of pain, if they
were known.

The school meets every Saturday morning at 9:15. The opening services
consist of--

1. Singing (Gospel Hymns).

2. Responsive recitation of a Psalm, or the Beatitudes or the Ten
Commandments.

3. Prayer.

4. Distribution of work-baskets.

The sewing continues for one hour and a half, then, at the tap of the
bell, the work is folded nicely, replaced in the basket and taken to
another room. The children then return to the large room and join in the
closing exercises, which consist of--

5. Singing.

6. Repeating of Scripture texts, each teacher and child repeating a
verse; or this is sometimes replaced with a chalk-talk, sometimes with a
short address on the Sunday-school lesson for the following Sunday,
sometimes with a short earnest appeal to the children by some visitor
who is known to be an effective speaker for such occasions.

7. The Lord's Prayer is recited in concert.

8. Dismissal.

The teachers, besides instructing the children in the art of sewing,
converse with them on pleasant and profitable topics and upon the
subject of religion in seasonable times and ways.

Quite a number of families have been brought under Christian influence
through the pupils of the Industrial School. Several parents as well as
children have been converted. Mr. Robert Denny, the account of whose
conversion is given by himself in another part of this volume, was
induced to attend the meetings of the Holcombe Mission by what his
children told him of the things they learned at the Industrial School.
One of the members of the first class of six and her mother are now
acceptable members of the First Presbyterian church. The daughter has
become an artist and is employed in retouching pictures in one of the
city photograph galleries. Three or four of the girls connected with the
school have died. Two of them, one aged twelve and the other fourteen,
gave every evidence of being Christians. One of these when asked when
she learned to love God and to pray, answered, "At the sewing school;
Jesus is always there."

Many when they began to attend did not even know the little prayer
beginning:

    "Now I lay me down to sleep."

The ignorance of these poor children led the superintendent to open a
"Mothers' Meeting," for the mothers of these children and any others who
might wish to attend. The results have been wonderful. So many homes
have become changed, and are now neat, clean, orderly and happy. In the
rounds of the superintendent's visits she found a very sick woman who
said to her:

"Oh, I'm so glad you have come, Mrs. Clark. I want you to pray with me."

Mrs. Clark said, "Can't you pray yourself?"

She replied, "I don't know what to say. I did not know 'Now I lay me
down to sleep,' till my little Jennie learned it at the sewing school,
and I learned it from her."

"But can't you say 'Our Father who art in heaven?'" asked Mrs. Clark.

"No; not all of it, I know only a little of it."

Mrs. Clark was much moved at the ignorance, helplessness and need of the
poor woman, and was praying with her when the husband came in. She
talked with him and he was deeply impressed, and before she left
promised he would try to live a better life. A position as street car
driver was gotten for him, and for a while he did well, but after a time
he fell into his old ways and was dismissed. But, through the
intervention of the friends who had helped him before, he was restored
to his place, and to-day he is a sober industrious man and a member of
the First Christian church in the city.

[Illustration: KINDERGARTEN, THANKSGIVING DAY]

Perhaps a score of similar instances could be cited.

The sewing school closed May 12, 1888, with the annual picnic. The
following is the report for the year just past:

Average weekly attendance of girls, 162; average weekly attendance of
boys, 21; total average attendance of pupils, 183; average attendance of
officers and teachers, 32; average attendance of visitors, 4; total
average attendance, 219; total number of garments made by, and given to,
the children, 848.

The officers for the past year were as follows: Mrs. J. R. Clark,
superintendent; Miss Mary L. Graham, assistant superintendent; Mrs. L.
G. Herndon, superintendent of work; Miss Lithgow, treasurer; Miss Ella
Gardiner, secretary.


THE KINDERGARTEN.

In January, 1885, there were so many little boys and girls between the
ages of three and five years that the teachers did not know what to do
with them. The superintendent, who had some knowledge of the
kindergarten system, believed that its introduction here was what was
needed. She could not see her way clear, however, to incur any more
expense. But in answer to prayer the way was opened. Money was given for
the appliances and Miss Graham, an excellent teacher, offered her
services freely. The class at first averaged twenty-four pupils, met
each Saturday morning in connection with the sewing school, and was
called the Kindergarten class.

The interest increased till February, 1886, when the board of directors
of the Holcombe Mission consented that the superintendent should open a
regular kindergarten for every day in the week except Saturday. More
money was raised and a trained kindergarten teacher from Cincinnati was
employed. In June, 1886, the school closed with sixty little children in
attendance and four young ladies training for kindergarten teachers.
Arrangements were made for the following year and several hundred
dollars pledged. In September, 1887, the kindergarten was re-opened with
Miss Bryan, of Chicago, as teacher of training class and superintendent
of the school. In the following October a large and enthusiastic meeting
was held in the Warren Memorial church and the Free Kindergarten
Association was formally organized. In February, 1888, a second free
kindergarten was opened in another part of the city. The year's work
closed in June, 1888, five young ladies graduating as kindergarten
teachers. The number of children enrolled for the year was one hundred.
The kindergarten, it will be noticed, is thus distinct from the
industrial school.

In 1885, another department still was added to meet a want which had
been developed in the progress of the work. The great number of
broken-down men and tramps that came to Mr. Holcombe for food and help
of one sort or another made it impossible for him to give them lodging
in the mission rooms or board in his own family. And it encouraged
indolence in unworthy men to feed and lodge them as a mere charity. And
yet, if anything was to be done for their souls, they had for a time to
be cared for. Mr. Holcombe conceived the idea, therefore, of
establishing some sort of a place in connection with his work, where
these men might earn their food and lodging by the sweat of their brows
and at the same time be brought under the powerful religious influences
of the Mission.

[Illustration: MRS. J. M. CLARK.]

The result was the establishment of the "Wayfarers' Rest." Mayor Reed
and Chief of Police Whallen gave Mr. Holcombe a police station building
free of rent and Mr. J. T. Burghard gave the money to furnish it with
bunks, stove, cooking utensils, facilities for bathing, etc., and it
became at once an established feature, and a very admirable one, of the
Union Gospel Mission.

When Mayor Jacob came into office he gladly continued the use of the
building free of rent, and the institution has continued in successful
operation up to the present time--a space of three years.

The rooms are arranged for the accommodation of sixty men. All who come
are required to do some sort of work for whatever they receive, whether
it be food or lodging. The men do various kinds of work, according to
their several ability, but the chief employment is sawing kindling wood
out of material provided by the superintendent. Each man is required to
work an hour for one night's lodging or for a meal. The kindling wood is
sold all over the city, and under the excellent management of Mr. W. H.
Black, the present superintendent, the enterprise has become more than
self-supporting, bringing in enough to pay the salary of the
superintendent and the book-keeper, and leaving a surplus. It should,
perhaps, in justice be added, that donations of food are made daily and
have been from the beginning, by the Alexander Hotel Company.

During the winter of 1887 Mr. Black fed and lodged an average of fifty
men a day. He has never turned one away. The average income per day from
the sale of kindling wood is, in winter, ten dollars. The rules for the
government of the inmates requiring registration, cleanliness, bathing,
etc., are wisely conceived and strictly carried out.

This institution has proved in Louisville the solution of the vexed
question as to the proper treatment of tramps and beggars. The citizens,
instead of encouraging indolence and pauperism by feeding tramps at
their houses, some of whom are burglars in disguise, can now send them
to the Wayfarers' Rest, where they are always sure of finding food and
lodging, and, what is better, the opportunity of earning what they get
by honest work. And Mr. Holcombe's experience as a tramp in Colorado
leads him to take a brotherly interest in all these unfortunate men.

In 1886, the work had expanded beyond its quarters and beyond all
expectations. It was predicted that Steve Holcombe would hold out three
months. He had now held out three times three years, and that through
unprecedented trials and discouragements. During these nine years he had
helped many and many a man, almost as bad as he, into the blessed life
that he was living. He had established a unique institution in the city
of Louisville which had been the means of helping and uplifting and
blessing men and women and whole families. But the end was not yet. The
man and his work had so won the confidence of the people of the city
that in 1886, a formal request was made by the Evangelical churches of
the city that they be allowed to share with the Walnut-street Methodist
church in the expense and the care and the usefulness of the Mission. It
was changed then into a Union Mission, and representatives from the
Presbyterian, Baptist, Episcopal, Christian and Lutheran churches were
added to the board of directors.

In the same year, when Mr. Holcombe was feeling the need of more
spacious quarters for his expanding work, the large and elegant house on
Jefferson street above First, known as the "Smith Property," was
advertised for sale. Mr. Holcombe saw it and liked it. It was the very
sort of a building he needed for his work and all its various
departments.

He procured the keys and went through the building alone, from cellar to
garret, stopping in every room to pray that, in some way, God would put
it into his hands, with a firm persuasion, moreover, that his prayer
would be answered. An interesting letter written by Mr. Holcombe in
February, 1886, contains a reference to the project of purchasing the
new house. It is addressed to one of the converts of the Mission, Mr. S.
P. Dalton, of Cleveland, Ohio, and, as it shows also Mr. Holcombe's
interest in his spiritual children, it is given entire:

     LOUISVILLE, KY., February 3, 1886.

     _Dear Brother Dalton_:

     Your welcome and encouraging letter is just received. I
     acknowledge your claim, so gently urged, to something better
     than a hasty postal in reply. When I write you briefly, it is
     because my work compels it. My soul delights to commune with
     spirits like yours, consecrated to God, and with brothers who
     live in my memory as associates in our humble work here. Our
     mission is being abundantly blessed of God, although meeting,
     from time to time, with those drawbacks which remind us of our
     dependence and the need of constant prayer. We are having good
     meetings and conversions are numerous, and, as a rule, of such
     a character as to make us believe they are genuine and
     permanent. As I write, our friends are canvassing the city for
     the collection of means to purchase the old Smith mansion on
     Jefferson street, for our use, and believing all our work to be
     of God I have no doubt that it will be ours within a week. Then
     shall we do a great work for Louisville and for souls. Our
     sewing-school and our Sunday-school, having outgrown our
     present quarters, will be greatly enlarged, and every
     department of our work also.

     I am truly glad you are having such opportunities of doing
     good in Cleveland. May God bless you and your dear wife, my
     dear brother, and in His own time bring you back to us and to
     the work which always needs such help, is the prayer of

     Your brother,
     S. P. HOLCOMBE.


An incident that occurred in connection with the purchase of this
elegant property will show how Mr. Holcombe and his work were looked
upon in Louisville even by those who were not Christians.

[Illustration: THE WAYFARER'S REST. 1. EXTERIOR. 2. OFFICE. 3. SLEEPING
APARTMENT. 4. TAKING MEALS. 5. AT WORK. 6. ON THE LEVEE.]

A German singing society was negotiating for the building at the same
time, and had offered a higher price than the friends of the Mission
thought they could give. Mr. Holcombe went to the leader of the society
and told him he desired the building for the Mission, and, though the
man was an unbeliever, he said: "Mr. Holcombe, though I am not a
Christian and do not believe in Christianity, I do believe in the work
you are doing. I will not be in the way of your getting that building."
He withdrew his bid at once, and the Directors of the Holcombe Mission
purchased it for $12,500.

Mr. Holcombe at once took possession. He fitted up the rooms of the
lower floor for the various departments of the mission work. The large
and elegant double-parlors were thrown into one and arranged for the
audience-room. This has a seating capacity of two hundred or more. The
other rooms of the lower floor are used, one for Mr. Holcombe's office,
two others for the Kindergarten, another for a cloak-room, and so on.
The second floor, with its seven large, bright, airy rooms, is occupied
by Mr. Holcombe's family, and, for the first time since his conversion,
they are in comfortable quarters.




CHAPTER V.


At last after years of love and faith and faithfulness Mrs. Holcombe has
her full reward and joy. The long twenty-five years of sorrow and
suspense passed by and her husband is what she unconsciously believed
her love had the power of waiting for him to become--a good man. And
more than a good man. He is consumed with the desire and somehow clothed
with the power of making other men good, of making bad men good, of
making the worst of bad men good. This he has now been doing, by God's
grace, for seven faithful years and more--and continues to do. Her
husband is honored and beloved for his character, his work and his
usefulness--no man, no minister in Louisville more so.

All her children are members of the church even down to little Pearl,
the latest-born. Her oldest son, her Willie, is happily married,
occupies the position of book-keeper with the Sievers Hardware Company
on Main street, and is an efficient officer of the church of God. Her
second daughter is happily married to a Christian man, "one of the best
of husbands," who is book-keeper in the old Kentucky Woolen Mills, of
Louisville. Her oldest daughter is a devoted Christian and serves with
equal efficiency as organist of the Mission and teacher in the
Kindergarten. Her baby-boy now eighteen years old and the rise of six
feet in height is a member of the church and a good boy. He also is
in business with the Sievers Hardware Company on Main street. And Pearl,
the blue-eyed, golden-haired, eight-year-old girl baby is, nobody dare
question, the flower of the flock. Her dead children are in heaven all,
for they died before they knew sin, and her living children are on the
way to heaven, all, for they trust in and serve Him who was manifested
to take away sin.

[Illustration: MRS. S. P. HOLCOMBE.]

Mrs. Holcombe helps her husband in his noble work and the "converts"
look on her as their spiritual mother as they regard him as their
spiritual father. She _might_ say with Simeon, the _Nunc dimittis_, "Now
lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy
salvation;" but instead of that she says with St. Paul, "Nevertheless to
abide in the flesh is more needful" for my husband, my children and the
work of Christ.

Mrs. Holcombe still has trials, but they are few and small, while her
blessings are many and great. She still has faults, perhaps, as most of
mortals have; but they are few and small, while her virtues are very
many and very great. Many daughters have done virtuously but few have
excelled this one in those qualities which constitute a noble womanly
character.

The following letter, written to her by her husband during a short visit
in the country, will show how that after so long a time of waiting, the
hope of her earliest love is realized at last.

     LOUISVILLE, KY., May 29, 1888.

     My Dear Wife:

     Your letter to hand. I am so happy to know that you are having
     a good time. Isn't God good to us? When we look back over our
     past lives and see how good God has been to us, how thankful we
     should be. Very little sickness in our immediate family and no
     death in thirty years. The two babes that we lost thirty years
     ago are safe in the arms of Jesus, and all the living ones are
     sweetly trusting in Him. Let us from this hour be more earnest
     and untiring in our efforts to save the children of others.
     Kiss Mamie for me and then look in the glass and kiss yourself
     a thousand times for him who loves you with a true, deep love.
     Yours in life, yours in death,

     STEVE P. HOLCOMBE.

Those who are familiar with Mr. Holcombe's career as a Christian worker
would regard any sketch of his life incomplete which did not contain
some account of the assault made upon him by three strange men in the
winter of 1887. A few months after his removal to the new quarters that
had been purchased by the Mission, he was attacked by three men in his
own house and severely injured. On a Sunday afternoon in January, 1887,
he heard some one walking in the hall on the second floor of the
building, and went out to see who it was. He found a man there whom he
had never seen before, and asked him who he was and what he wanted. The
man replied in an insolent, manner that he had come to visit a servant
girl who was at the time working in Mr. Holcombe's family. When Mr.
Holcombe asked him why he came into his private family apartments, the
man became more impudent and defiant, and gave utterance to some abusive
language. Already provoked at the man's audacity and alarmed at the
thought of what such a ruffian might have done to some one of his family
if he had been absent, Mr. Holcombe's quick nature now became so
exasperated that he forgot himself for a moment and thrust the man
violently down the stairway and out of the house. The man left the place
and Mr. Holcombe thought that was the end of it. But an hour or two
later some one knocked at his room door on the same floor, and as he
opened it, he saw himself confronted by three men, one of whom he
recognized as the man he had put out of the house. The two others
professed to be policemen who had come to arrest Mr. Holcombe, but when
he asked to see their badges of authority they seized him. One against
three, he resisted them with all his might, uttering no cry of distress
or call for help. In the struggle Mr. Holcombe's leg was broken, both
bones of it, and as he fell, with all his weight, the men thought he was
badly hurt and fled, leaving him lying helpless on the floor. He was
taken up by those whom he called and laid on his bed. Physicians were
sent for. The news spread in a few minutes all over the neighborhood,
and before night, all over the city. The Chief of Police, Colonel
Whallen, set his detectives to work looking for the men, and many
citizens, self-constituted detectives, inquired concerning the
appearance of the men and kept a sharp lookout for them. But they
succeeded in escaping, and it was, perhaps, well for them they did.
Before night Mr. Holcombe's room was crowded with friends filled with
sympathy and indignation. Drs. Kelly and Alexander set the broken limb
and gave Mr. Holcombe the unwelcome bit of information that he would
have to lie in his bed for some five or six weeks, a sore trial to his
restless spirit; but by the help of God he accepted it and settled down
to endure it, not knowing, however, what good he was to get out of it.
It was an opportunity for the people of Louisville to show their
estimation and appreciation of him, and it is safe to say that no man in
Louisville would have received the attentions and favors which this poor
converted gambler, Steve Holcombe, did receive. It reminds one of a
passage in Dr. Prime's account of the funeral of Jerry McAuley in the
Broadway Tabernacle in New York. Dr. Prime himself was to conduct the
funeral service, and this is what he says:

"We are going to-day to the tabernacle to talk of what Jerry McAuley was
and what he has done, to the little congregation that will gather there.
If it were Dr. Taylor, the beloved and honored pastor, the house would
be crowded and the streets full of mourners, but poor Jerry, he is dead
and who will be there to weep with us over his remains? Ah, how little
did I know the place poor Jerry held in the hearts of the people of this
vast city! I was to conduct the funeral and went early to complete all
arrangements. As I turned down from Fifth avenue through Thirty-fourth
street, I saw a vast multitude standing in the sunshine, filling the
streets and the square in front of the tabernacle. Astonished at the
spectacle and wondering why they did not go and take seats in the
church, I soon found that the house was packed with people so that it
was impossible for me to get within the door. Proclamation was made that
the clergy who were to officiate were on the outside, and a passage was
made for us to enter. What could be more impressive and what more
expressive of the estimate set upon the man and his work? There is no
other Christian worker in the city who would have called out these
uncounted thousands in a last tribute of love and in honor of his
memory."

The tribute which the people of Louisville paid to the work and worth of
Steve Holcombe _before_ his death was hardly less.

On Monday, the day following his misfortune, Mr. Holcombe's room was,
nearly all the day long, full of people of every grade, from the mayor
and the richest and finest people on Broadway and Fourth avenue, down to
the poor drunkard and outcast, who forgot his shabby dress and pressed
in among those fine people in order to see "Brother Holcombe," and find
out how he was. The ministers of the leading churches of every
Protestant denomination came with words of sympathy and prayer. Fine
ladies came in their carriages, bringing baskets of fruit and all sorts
of delicacies. Those who could not go sent letters and messages. And Mr.
Holcombe lay in his bed and wept--not for pain, but for gratitude and
humble joy. "Why," said he, "I would be willing to have half a dozen
legs broken to know that these people think so much of me and of my poor
efforts to be useful."

This, then, was the first compensation and blessing.

He learned also that it would be absolutely necessary for him to watch
more closely his impulsive and fiery temper, and get a better control of
it. For he does not deny that he was inexcusably hasty and severe in his
treatment of the impudent intruder.

And then he was temporarily relieved from the incessant demands and the
constant strain of his daily activity and his nightly anxiety. He had
time and opportunity, as far as the importunity and kindness of his
friends would allow, to get calmed, to look down into his own heart, to
analyze his motives, to study his own nature, to see his own faults, to
find out his own needs and to pray. He had been told by one of his
friends, that while he did not work too much, he did not pray _enough_,
and that he was, therefore, liable to be overtaken by some sudden
temptation and be betrayed into sin.

That same friend, in conducting service in one of the churches of the
city on that very Sunday morning, had offered special public prayer for
Mr. Holcombe and his work. He prayed specifically that if Brother
Holcombe needed a thorn in the flesh, to keep him humble, God would send
it. It was thought to be a special and speedy answer, that before
sundown of that very day, Mr. Holcombe did receive almost literally a
thorn in the flesh; a messenger of Satan it was withal to buffet him.
And Mr. Holcombe was the first to acknowledge that he needed this trial
and the threefold blessing which came with it.

The perpetrators of the cowardly deed were, some time afterward, caught
and imprisoned--every one of them. One of them has been pardoned and
released, and through Mr. Holcombe's kindly intervention the other two
probably will be, while through his friendly counsels one of them has
been brought to realize his own sinfulness, and has promised to live a
better life.

It would be out of the question to reproduce here all the written
messages of sympathy which Mr. Holcombe received during his confinement
from the injury he received. But one of them is too touching and
beautiful to be left out. It was written by Miss Jennie Casseday, a lady
of culture and refinement, who has, for eighteen years, been confined to
her "sick bed." She is well known as the originator of the "Flower
Missions," which, all over this country, have been the bearers of
blessing to many unblessed and unloved ones:


    "SICK BED, January 18, 1887.

     "_Dear Christian Friend_:

     "I send you some lines which have been a great blessing to me:

            "'I can not say,
    Beneath the pressure of life's cares to-day,
            I joy in these;
            But I _can_ say
    That I _had rather_ walk this rugged way
            If Him it please.

           "'I can not feel
    That all is well, when darkening clouds conceal
            The shining sun;
            But then I know
    God lives and loves, and say, since that is so,
            "Thy will be done."

            "'I can not speak
    In happy tones; the tear-drops on my cheek
            Show I am sad;
            But I _can_ speak
    _Of grace to suffer_ with submission meek,
            Until made glad.

            "'I do not see
    Why God should e'en permit _some things_ to be;
            When He is Love;
            But I _can_ see,
    Though often dimly, through the mystery,
            His hand above.

            "'I do not know
    Where falls the seed that I have tried to sow
            With greatest care;
            But I shall know
    The meaning of each waiting hour below
            Sometime, somewhere.'

     "Selected with tender sympathy.

    "Your friend,
    "JENNIE CASSEDAY."




CHAPTER VI.


In conclusion it will not be out of place to glance for a moment
backward and to call attention definitely to some plain facts.

Mr. Holcombe inherited from his parents a diversely perverse and bad
nature. Already in his childhood he was cross, irritable, spiteful. In
his boyhood his temper was savage and revengful. In his manhood he took
the life of a fellowman. He inherited the love of drink from his father,
who was a confirmed drunkard before the child was born; and the child
himself was drunk before he was twelve years old. He was given to
sensuality from his boyhood.

His education was not good--as far as the educating power of daily
example goes, it was bad, positively bad, continually bad. His
associations outside of home were, for the most part, of the worst sort.
His boyish companions were given to gambling, pilfering, fighting, and
in all these things they called him chief. But the companionship of boys
did not long satisfy him and already before he was fifteen, he drank and
gambled with grown men in the bar-rooms of the village.

He had an impulsive sympathy for helpless suffering when it was before
his eyes. He had a vague, faint fear of the Power that makes for
righteousness, so that in his youth he made three or four ineffectual
efforts to get the mastery of his evil nature and to become better. He
provided well for his family in meat and drink and the like. He was
generous to his friends. When this is said, about all is said on that
side. Apart from these things he gave himself up for forty years to the
indulgence of all his passions without let or hinderance from parental
authority, domestic bonds, fear of God or regard for man. So that the
adverse power of evil habit, strengthened by forty years of indulgence,
was superimposed upon the moral helplessness of an inherited bad nature
made worse by bad education and bad associations.

Such he _was_. The preceding pages have described in part what he _is_.
And only in part. The uttermost details of the purity of his life since
October, 1877, could not be stated without violating delicacy any more
than the uttermost details of his sinful life could be uncurtained
without injuring the innocent and offending the public. The candid
reader will bridge for himself the past and present of Mr. Holcombe's
life. These are the facts. And these facts are freely and fully
recognized by all classes of the community in which he lives his daily
life. Thousands of eyes have watched him for years and no one has
detected any immoral practice or act or found any fault of a serious
nature in him.

Candor requires us to say that he is sometimes over-sensitive, that he
has his own views as to the best methods of conducting his work and is
sometimes a little domineering in carrying them out; that he sometimes
uses unnecessary harshness in his public addresses in dealing with the
sins and shortcomings of people, especially of the converts of the
Mission, a thing which is probably due to his over-anxiety for them;
that he has not yet learned economy and the best way of conducting his
financial affairs, and that owing to his own former wicked life he would
be a trifle too severe in the control of his family but for the good
sense and prudent firmness of his wife. But these are minor matters and
when they are said, about all is said on _that_ side.

And Mr. Holcombe has come to occupy a unique and commanding position in
the city of Louisville. All classes respect him, all classes look up to
him and people from all classes seek his counsel and aid in certain
emergencies.

Mothers in distress over the sins of their sons, sisters in sorrow over
the dissipation of their brothers, wives in despair over the wickedness
of their husbands, all these go to Steve Holcombe for advice, comfort,
encouragement and help; and when they can not go, they write; sometimes
from distant places, as far away as Canada. The ministers of Louisville
refer to him those extreme cases which they meet with in their ministry,
and which they feel his experience and his knowledge of the ways and
temptations of dissipated men enable him to handle, as a letter from Dr.
Broadus and one from Dr. Willits, elsewhere reproduced, will show. And
the dissipated men themselves, the drunkards, the gamblers, the outcast,
the lost--all these feel that Steve Holcombe is their friend, a friend
who has the willingness and the power to help them up, and they go to
him when they are in distress or when they awake to a sense of their
wretched condition and desire to rise again. And through his
instrumentality many a one _has_ risen again, and to many a mother,
wife, sister, family, has come through him a resurrection of buried hope
and joy.

And those gamblers who have never yet come to distress or to religion
regard him with admiration and affection. The following letter from Mr.
A. M. Waddill, one of the leading sporting men of the South, was written
in answer to an inquiry as to how Mr. Holcombe is looked upon by the
gamblers:

     LOUISVILLE, KY., August 13, 1888.
     _Rev. Gross Alexander_:

     DEAR SIR: In writing of my friend, Steve P. Holcombe, I will
     say that his adoption of the pulpit has not lowered him in the
     esteem of his former associates--the gamblers. Far from it.
     They are his admirers and his friends, and, when they have the
     funds, are as willing supporters of his work as any. They can
     not show him too much respect and can not exhibit a more
     profound love than is shown him every day by some one of his
     old companions. He has wielded a wonderful influence over them
     for good, both here and elsewhere, and has made many converts
     from their ranks, who could not have been influenced probably
     by any other minister of the Gospel. I myself have been, I am
     happy to say, wonderfully benefited by the influence of his
     benevolent character.

     Very respectfully yours,
     A. M. WADDILL.

The esteem in which he is held by the leading business men of the city
is shown by the fact that the Board of Directors of the Mission is
composed of such men as John A. Carter, J. P. Torbitt, L. Richardson, J.
B. McFerran, R. J. Menefee, J. T. Burghard, H. V. Loving, Arthur Peter,
John T. Moore, J. K. Goodloe, P. Meguiar, C. McClarty, W. T. Rolph, John
Finzer, with P. H. Tapp as Treasurer.

He has the confidence and esteem of the officers both of the city and
State, and he has a large influence with them.

The Mayor, the Chief of Police, and the Judges of the Courts recognize
his usefulness, his ability and his efficiency by co-operating with him,
as far as may be, and by adopting his views and suggestions as to the
treatment of criminals charged with lesser crimes and misdemeanors.

The Governor, J. Proctor Knott, readily granted pardon to the only man
for whom Mr. Holcombe ever asked it, and the testimony of this now happy
man is given in this volume.

Not only is Mr. Holcombe thus in honor and demand at home; he is in
demand all over the country. Until it came to be known that he would not
leave his own work in Louisville, he was constantly receiving requests
to attend or conduct meetings of one sort or another in all parts of
Kentucky and in several other States.

Year before last, in the summer of 1886, he was, by appointment of the
Governor of the State, a Commissioner from Kentucky in the National
Convention of Corrections and Charities at Washington.

In the fall of 1887 he attended, by request, the Convention of Christian
Workers of the United States and Canada, in the Broadway Tabernacle in
New York City, and made two addresses, both of which are printed among
his sermons in this book. He was appointed a member of the Executive
Committee of that body, in which capacity he now serves.

But not only in direct results has the power of God been manifested
through this instrument. Mr. Holcombe's conversion and work have had the
effect of quickening the faith and zeal of all the churches of the city.
It has not only drawn them nearer together in fostering and furthering a
common enterprise into which they entered of their own motion, and
without solicitation, but it has revived the languishing faith of all
classes. Not only has the Gospel saved Steve Holcombe and others, he
(let it be said reverently and understood rightly) has, in one sense,
saved the Gospel. Many had lost faith in it. They thought it was an old,
worn-out story. It had lost its novelty and vitality, and it had not the
power it claimed to have. Its achievements were not equal to its
pretensions. Some of the men who have been brought to a better life
through Mr. Holcombe's instrumentality have said that, though they did
not, out of respect for other people, publish the fact, they had lost
all faith and were, at heart, utter infidels. Some of them continued to
attend church and to give to the church of their means, and to give
respectful attention to the preaching, but it was out of deference to
relatives or respect for custom, or for mere Sunday pastime. But the
conversion of Steve Holcombe, and the life he was living, arrested
their thought, awakened inquiry and revived their faith, and many of
these have been saved.

The conversion of these has in turn resulted in the conviction of others
and so the stream has broadened and deepened. As Mr. Holcombe says in
one of his addresses, "There is naturally in the minds of men a doubt as
to the truth and divinity of the religion which fails to do what it
proposes to do, and so in times of religious deadness men lose faith and
unbelief gets stronger and more stubborn while they see no examples of
the power of the Gospel to save bad men. But when bad men have been
reached and quickened and made better through the Gospel, and this
continues year after year, then the tide turns, and faith becomes
natural and easy not to say contagious and inevitable."

These effects have demonstrated the reality of conversion in opposition
to the view that it is an effect of the excitement of the imagination.
"One hears," it is said, "the narration of the experience of others who
claim to be converted, and he works at himself till he works himself up
to the persuasion that he also has got it." But, as one of the converts
in narrating his experience said, "Imagination could not take the whisky
habit out of a man. It never did take it out of me. But the power of
this Gospel which Steve Holcombe preaches has taken it out root and
branch."

Another thing is shown also by the history of this work. A distinguished
minister said once, "We must get the top of society converted and then
we may expect to reach the lower classes." Mr. Holcombe, on the
contrary, in accordance with the example and words of Jesus and of Paul,
of Luther and of Wesley, has given his time and labor primarily and
largely to the lower classes and the lost classes, and through these he
has reached also the higher classes, exemplifying again what was said by
the most apostolic man since the Apostles, that the Gospel "works not
from the top down but from the bottom up."

If you should ask what is the explanation of Mr. Holcombe's success, it
may be answered that it is due to three things. The extraordinary change
which has taken place in his character and in his life arrests attention
and produces conviction.

In the second place is his intense and pitying love for those who are
not saved, and especially for those who, besides being most utterly
lost, are, either by their own suspicions and fears or by the customs
and coldheartedness of society, or both, shut out from all sympathy and
opportunity. He has a very mother's love for poor, sinful, struggling
souls, and he shows this not in words only or chiefly, but in service.
Some account has already been given from one of the Louisville papers
concerning his rescue of a man who had been drunk continuously for
twenty-three years. To have preached temperance and morality and duty to
this wild and degraded man would have been useless, to have _told_ him
of the love of God would, perhaps, have been no better. But when this
far off love of God took concrete form in the person of Steve Holcombe
and was brought nigh and made real in his brotherliness and gentleness
and patience and service, it proved stronger than a twenty-three years'
whisky habit and to-day this man, who lately dwelt apart from men like
the man among the tombs and who was possessed by the demon of drink so
that no man could bind him with bonds of morality or duty--this man is
to-day clothed and in his right mind. And though he has not fully
apprehended the way of salvation, he says, yet a transfiguration has
taken place in him which is little short of miraculous. He says also
that he has got some light on the question of personal religion. He is
thoroughly honest and will not claim or profess what he has not. He says
a man who has always gone slow in everything else can't go fast in
getting religion.[1]

[1] This man has, since the above was written, been brought into a clear
experience of conversion, and is now a clean and happy Christian man.

In the third place, Mr Holcombe's success is due to the character of his
preaching. It is the simple Gospel, wherein two points are continually
made and emphasized, the reality and tenderness of God's love for sinful
men, even the worst, and the absolute necessity of regeneration and a
holy life. Both these great truths he illustrates with fitness and force
from his own life and that of the men who have been converted under his
ministry. His sermons are so striking in their directness and
simplicity, and so helpful withal, that some of them have been
reproduced in outline in the present volume, and the reader who has
never heard him may get some idea of his preaching from these, and, it
is hoped, some profit as well.

Whatever men may say, the fact remains that when the Gospel is preached
on apostolic conditions, it has still apostolic success.

In 1886, when Rev. Sam P. Jones was holding a meeting in Cincinnati, he
said of Mr. Holcombe:

"Mr. Holcombe's work is finer than anything done since the death of
Jerry McAuley. He is fully consecrated to the work of rescuing the
perishing and saving the fallen. Hundreds of men, dug by him from the
deepest depths of dissipation and degradation, are to-day clothed in
their right minds. Some of the most efficient Christian men have passed
through his Mission, at No. 436 Jefferson street, in Louisville. I feel
that in helping Steve Holcombe, I shall be able to say, at least: 'Lord,
if I did not do much when I was on earth, I did what I could to help
Steve Holcombe, the converted gambler, in his mission work among men who
never hear preaching, and to whom a helping hand is never extended.'

"There are mighty few men like Steve Holcombe to take hold of poor
fellows and bring them back to a purer and better life."

In 1888, during a great temperance meeting in Louisville, Mr. Francis
Murphy said of Mr. Holcombe:

"Of all the noble men I know, he is one of the noblest, and Louisville
may well be proud of the grand, big-hearted Christian man, who, in his
quiet, unassuming manner is doing such a world of good here."

Mr. D. L. Moody, during his great meeting in Louisville, in the months
of January and February, 1888, said of Mr. Holcombe:

"I have got very much interested in a work in your city conducted by a
man you call Steve Holcombe. I don't know when I met a man who so struck
my heart. I went up and saw his headquarters and how he works. He is
doing the noblest work I know of. I want you to help him with money and
words of cheer. Remember, here in Louisville you make so many drunkards
that you must have a place to take care of the wrecks. Steve Holcombe
rescues them. Let us help him all we can."

And Mr. Holcombe's work is not done. He is in the vigor of life, with
fifteen or twenty years of life and service, God willing, before him. He
is only beginning to reap the results of these ten years of study and
these ten years of Christian living and working. He knows the Gospel
better than he ever did before, and he preaches it better. He knows
himself and God better than he ever did before, and he lives nearer the
Source of Power. He knows men good and bad, better than he ever did
before, and he deals with them in all states and stages more wisely and
successfully.

He is of that nervous and Intense temperament which can not rest without
getting something done, and he is always doing something to advance his
work. And though so intensely in earnest, he is singularly, it is not at
all too strong to say, entirely free from fanaticism. He is in high
esteem, with large influence at home and abroad, and this he does not

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