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

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      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. СКАЧАТЬ