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What's your Name?

When strangers meet together it saves a good deal of embarrassment if they lose no time in stating one another's names. I have already told you my name, and shall presently endeavour to ascertain yours. But there may be one or two other particulars which you may naturally wish to know concerning a stranger who thus obtrudes himself upon you, which I ought briefly to communicate. Next to "What's your name?" will probably come the question, "What do you want?" Now, that is a matter which will more fully explain itself as we get along. Meanwhile, let me simply say, I want to make your acquaintance. Then, perhaps, you might feel inclined to ask, "What is your motive?" That, too, I fancy must be left to show itself by degrees. For the present I can only say it is not a sinister or dishonest one, and it will be for you to judge, when it shows itself more clearly, page 4 how far it is a good or bad one. And, once again, I think I hear some shrewd questioner, who evidently already regards me as a suspicious character, enquiring, "What do yon expect to get by it?" Well, Sir, I expect to get more kicks than halfpence. I expect to get called the irrepressible, the "Reverend Joe Miller," "Punch _ in the Pulpit," and a variety of other smart names which may suggest themselves to the quick wit of 'our own correspondent' in the Lambeth Lampooner, the Soulhwark Scarifier, and the New-Cut Knuckleduster. Any more questions? Yes, one more. "What will you take to go home again?" I'll take the honest promise of every working man before me to reconsider that judgment which they have passed on Christian clergymen, and give them the chance of drawing closer to them. I'll take the promise of every one who does not go to church or chapel that he will begin to take his family to a place of worship. I'll take the promise of every intemperate husband that he will become a sober man, and give his wages to his wife for the home and children, instead of to the publican. Give me these promises on your oath as a man, and I'll go home with a light heart, for my mission here will have been triumphantly accomplished.

You see it's the old story—the poor unfortunate working man—the much be-lectured working man—that tough subject which has been so often "improved" by this reformer and the other moraliser. Can't you let him alone? Well, no, I can't let him alone any longer. I have lived in London now nearly four years, and I have page 5 let him alone all that time; but for ten years in Manchester I made him my natural prey, and now the old appetite comes back. What is that appetite? I have been told that it is lust for notoriety; that it is impatience of obscurity; that it is the cacoœthes loquendi, or love of healing myself talk. Then, be it so. We won't quarrel about motives. If, after coming here for a few weeks, provided we are spared to meet as often, you should grow so deluded as to fancy you can detect a simpler, purer, and more honest purpose prompting this effort, if you should think you see the signs of any earnest aim at good, if any hint should strike you that a thing like this may be attempted unselfishly, and with a wish of helpfulness and brotherhood, I shall live in hope that by degrees I may advance from the position of a suspected stranger into that of a trusted and well-meaning friend.

Now, then, have I so far advanced as to give myself the right to ask, "What's your name?" We should require a pretty large card-basket if we were to collect the actual titles of every person present now. But we don't intend to make any such collection. Will you introduce yourselves as working people? It was as such you were invited hither, and as such, I trust, you have come. If so, I am heartily rejoiced, and bid you a cordial welcome. "I, too, am a working man," says the Bishop, who is stumping his diocese, or the young lord or squire who is canvassing a constituency. "I, too, am a working man," writes the city knight, who wants to be re-elected soup-drinker for Puddlewash page 6 Ward. "Humbug," says the real working man, whose hands are rough as a file, and whose muscles are hard as nails, who has the ache of his daily load still heavy on his broad shoulders, and the grime of his trade all ditched into his skin. "Humbug! If you were a working man your waistcoat would'nt be so white, nor your hands so smooth, nor your hat so shiny, nor your shape so portly, nor your voice so clear. Let me only get you on a twelve-inch plank with a big wheelbarrow, and run you up and down from six till twelve, and see if you are a working man. Let me see you sit down upon a windlass, or a bucket, or a heap of clay in the open street, and tuck into a hunch of bread-and-meat with a clasp knife, and see if you are a working man. Let me see you sweat before the puddler's fire, or strip beside the smith's anvil; let me see you turn into the pottery, or the gasworks, or the brewery, or the bakery, or the candlestick makery, and see if you are a working man. Let me see how you get on with a spade, a pick-axe, or a hammer, so that I may know that you are a working man." Perhaps the city alderman who shrinks from the test of the plank and the wheelbarrow, will tell you he is a working man out of practice. But it won't do. These men are not working men in the sense in which they call you working men. It is all cant for us ministers to get up and smile at a crowd of hard-handed men, and tell them that we, too, belong to the working classes. The banker may say that he is a working man upon the hustings, but he does not look like it when his legs are under the mahogany. The Old Bailey lawyer may call himself a page 7 working man, but if his voice is husky it is not with the grit of the forge, but with the lies he tells. It is nonsense to make these genteel black-coated asseverations of being working men. So when you tell me you are working men, I am not going to say, "Oh! I am so glad, for I, too, am a working man, I have been a working man all my life, and there is nothing I enjoy so much as the society of working men." When a man talks like that, I always think that instead of having been a working man all his life, he must have been a monthly nurse all his life, and been in the habit of talking to nobody but babies. When I say I am no working man, I don't mean that I am an idle man, for I will undertake to say I work as hard or harder than any man in this room; but I am not a working man for all that, and don't pretend to be. But if I don't set up for a sham working man, I look upon you as real ones. And I congratulate you on being such. I congratulate you on having work to do, instead of having to fatten on the Christian charity of the parish, or to appease your hunger on the debates of the Emigration Society. Labour is honourable, no matter what form it takes, if it be not convict labour. Kings of two hands though you be, instead of principalities, we would yield the honour due to the crown of brown paper, the work-bench throne, and the sceptre of a two-foot rule. Though you are not bishops you wear aprons as worthy as theirs; and though not judges of the land you are members of an honourable bench.

And this word, Bench, suggests to me to ask if there page 8 are not other names belonging to at least sections of this audience? You are working-men, all of you. Are you sober working-men all of you? While the factory bell calls you to the Bench, does not the craving of a burning thirst sometimes call you to the Bar? Now, let me be honest. I want to talk to you under no false pretence. I am no total abstainer, but there is not a total abstainer in the land who hates drunkenness more than I, or who deplores its terrible effects more than I. I am not here to quarrel with the advocates of total abstinence, but to co-operate with them all I can. I believe in many cases teetotalism is the only cure for drunkenness. It is hardly possible to exaggerate the evils which spring out of this vice. Evils which run through generations like a rushing stream, and carry manhood, honesty, and principle, a drifted wreck upon their tide; evils which bear onward through a life of sadness to a death of sorrow, wives, children, sisters, all that should be dearest and most tenderly cherished, and valiantly defended.

Whenever a husband or a father drinks away his wages at the public house, would that he would remember that for every excessive glass he fills there is a corresponding one filled at home! For each excessive glass of spirits that he drains, his wife and children drain a cup of tears—for each maddening gulp he takes, they take a draught of blood. If we are spared to meet again here, I mean to tell you a little more how I feel about this drunkenness. Our present, interview is simply an intimation of what we hope to do. But if you ask me why I should be so page 9 eager to talk to working men rather than other men about this evil, I reply—not because I think the working man is more drunken than other classes, but because social retribution falls heavier upon him than others. The incidence of the disgrace is sterner on himself; and the consequence of the vice recoils more fearfully on those who are around him in the case of the working man. Drunkenness in the house of a rich man means perhaps an ill-natured quarrel, and then retirement to some quiet chamber till the senses come back again, and a polite intimation to all callers that his lordship is unwell. But drunkenness in a poor man's house, means a wife with scars upon her bosom and a broken heart within it. It means an empty cupboard, a cold hearthstone, and children crying for the bread there are no means to buy. It means the daily battling of a helpless woman for dear life; pilgrimages to the pawnshop; the stripping of the little home of all that made it like a home; the gradual turning of that home into a hell; the driving of sons to theft, and of daughters to something worse than death. It means all this, and more than this, when a poor man takes to intemperance. And it is because the phantom of that thin wife rises before the fancy and speaks its ghostly tale; because the cry of the pining child comes ringing to our ears; because we see the young boy standing at the dock and telling the magistrate that a drunken father drove him there; because we see the daughter flaunting on the streets, and declaring that it was a drunken father who consigned her to the pity of its stones; because the bed of Father Thames is freighted page 10 with the pent-up testimony of hundreds of still ghosts who wait to charge their debauchery, disgrace, and death upon a drunken father at the judgment-seat of God—this is why we speak to working men about this hellish vice, and entreat them by all that is true in manhood; by all that is sacred in marriage; by all that is tender in a father's care; by all that is beautiful in the ties of home; by the vows they swore before God's altar; by everything worth living for on earth; by everything worth flying from in hell; and by everything worth striving for in heaven; to give up drunkenness, and become sober, honest, striving, valiant men.

What's your name? Society calls you a man. Is it right that a man should be turned into a cask, a mere vessel to hold Old Tom? There are some men who are very little better than this—just barrels or vats to hold the dribblings of a tap-room. Fill a man with gin, and when you tap him, it will come out in oaths; make him a mere tub for spirits, and it will evaporate in hell-fire. I have heard of men laying wagers who can drink most gin in the shortest time—and the man who can saturate his skin the most completely is worshipped as the greatest hero. A three-bottle or a six-bottle man in the good old times, used to be regarded as a mightier creature than the author of three volumes of philosophy, or six volumes of poetry. I remember when I was a lad at school, our school played another school a match at cricket. There was a waiter on the cricket-ground who used to be regarded as a bit of a character, though I question whether he had anything of the sort page 11 belonging to him. I can see him now shuffling round the ground with his tray and cloth in his hand, and a little white flannel jacket with a high collar, which looked all the whiter by contrast with his red face; I can see him now gliding round, and calling out, "Any orders, gents?" as clearly as if I had seen him yesterday, although he took his final order five-and-twenty years ago. Our side had won the match, and we were all hurrying in high glee into the pavilion, jumping over each other's backs, and shouting and hurrahing as only excited boys know how; when a group of gentlemen (at least as such they passed) who were standing round the table, lifted up their hands and told us to be quiet. It was evident something of importance was taking place, they all looked so solemn and serious. So we came into the pavilion, and held our breath. A row of small wine-glasses, twenty in number, stood upon the table, and there was the little flannel-jacketed waiter just about to perform a feat, which one of the gentlemen had promised him a sovereign, or a five-pound-note, I forget which, to achieve; namely to drink off the twenty glasses filled with raw gin in quick succession. The experiment was just commencing. The little man, with all the self-importance of a hero, tossed off the first glass, and set it down with a satisfied smack of the lips. He made short work of the second, and the third, and the fourth, and the fifth. The pace abated, but the performance went on. The gentlemen seemed delighted as they watched the ruddy colour of the man's face change to purple, and saw the hand begin to shake, page 12 and the liquor spilling as he raised it to his parching lips; when a glass was dropped and smashed upon the floor, a roar of laughter rent the air; but the laughter came to a sudden stop, and the merry faces changed to grim alarm, when as the row of empty glasses counted fifteen, and the full ones only five, the poor sot made a clutch at the next glass, and reeling back with a horrible rattle in his throat, and a face which haunts me still, fell upon an outstretched arm beside him, the black blood hurtling over his white jacket, and was laid down upon the floor a corpse. We boys were bundled out with little ceremony, but they could not shut out from my memory, though I lived a hundred years, the tragic dénouement of that gentlemanly comedy. And it is because I know that things like these are going on every day; because I know that the gin-fiend is loose here in Lambeth making a gay night of it amongst the cottages of working men, multiplying its hecatomb of widows and orphans, and spoiling stalwart manhood by the regiment; it is because of this that I have come here to implore my fellow men with all the emphasis of honest friendship I can dart into my words to be men, and never to be slaves.

But what's your name? If society calls you a man, perhaps there is one who calls you husband. Such a name is a sacred one. It involves the concentration of the strength of manhood's arm, and the love of manhood's heart on the protection and support of one who has given everything she has to give to you, in return for your pledge, sworn in the name of the great God, that page 13 you will love and cherish her. You told her how hard you had been working for the love of her, you talked of a comfortable home which it would be your pride and struggle to make more and more easy and bright for her, and then you summed up the picture by a solemn oath, plighted before God, that you would love, cherish, and defend. And that same God who heard, and who wrote down that oath, heard too the silent sob which passed across her breast, when every little trinket, down to the wedding ring, was taken to the same three gilded balls to raise a crust of bread. Why should she sob to pawn a ring which is the memento of a perjured vow? But God heard that sob. And he saw the livid mark which she muffled in her ragged shawl, and knew the hand which branded it. And this is how the loving and the cherishing is done in hundreds of houses not very far from where we stand. The wife fears no wild beast so much as she fears her husband. If he comes homo able to stand upon his feet she is afraid—it is rather a relief to see him carried home too sottishly collapsed to injure her. What is your name? Not husband. Is ruffian too harsh a name? Is tiger too fierce a name to give to such a thing as this?

Or does some little blue-eyed girl or flaxen-headed boy call you father? What scathing satire! Oh! the confidence of little Red Riding Hood in the wolf that tore her limb from limb, was not so misplaced as the trust of a little child in a drunken father. When that child gets just to that ago when children climb upon a human father's knee and flash the sunshine of their page 14 innocence upon him like the blaze of morning, his children will scamper anywhere to hide themselves from the wild beast who calls himself their father. And that blue-eyed girl, God help her! shall come to nameless shame, to outcast harlotry, because she was a homeless orphan with her father yet alive. Man, husband, father—you turn them all into misnomers for the sake of drink. You substitute hell's nomenclature for that of earth or heaven for the sake of drink. You sell home, wife, and son and daughter, all for drink. You sell body and soul for drink. For the sake of your body I implore you to become a sober man. Become a teetotaller, if you can't become sober or crush the temptation without it. But at all events become a sober man. And for the sake of your soul let me entreat you to take one other, higher, better name, the name of Christian.

Would that some drunkard who may hear, or read these words when they are printed, would go home to his empty cottage, and on his knees before the God who sees his heart, declare, "that grate shall be black and cold no longer, that cupboard shall be bare no longer, that wife shall be wan and scarred no longer, those children shall shun me no longer. I will win them back to me by love, and they shall feel that they have a father yet." It is not too late to make such a vow. You are not ruined yet. If a wife is ready to forgive the wrongs which you have put upon her, there is Another upon whom you have heaped yet deeper wrong who is ready with a still tenderer forgiveness. Brother, you have heard of Jesus Christ! You have heard of page 15 bow be lived and died for us men and for our salvation! Hear of him again now. Be assured he loves you. Be persuaded to give your heart to him. Be persuaded to come to the sanctuaries where they sing his praise and call upon his name. There you shall hear that it is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. There you shall hear of how he lifted the dying thief from the cross on which he writhed in penitence, to a throne from which he reigns in princedom. There you shall learn to listen to the tones of Christ himself; and listening, you shall hear him pleading from the cross of his atonement for the wildest mockers of his pain, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do?" O that some sunken one might hear that melting intercession now, and be assured that his sins though as scarlet may become as wool, and though red like crimson they shall be whiter than snow!

My good friends, will you kindly accept this rugged effort as a sign of honest interest? And will you come and bring your wives next Sunday, and the next, and the next, that I may give another proof of it? I think you will. And, pending your decision, let me thank you very much for your attention now.