Hearing the singing several gamblers looked up in surprise.  The old man who was dealing the cards grew melancholy, stopped for a moment, gazed steadfastly at his partner in the game, and dashed the pack upon the floor under the table.  Then said he, ’Where did you learn that tune?’ The young man pretended that he did not know he had been singing.  ‘Well, no matter,’ said the old man, I’ve played my last game, and that’s the end of it.  The cards may lie there till doomsday, and I will never pick them up,’ The old man having won money from the other—­about one hundred dollars—­took it out of his pocket, and handing it to him said:  ’Here, Harry, is your money; take it and do good with it; I shall with mine.’  As the traveler followed them downstairs, he saw them conversing by the doorway, and overheard enough to know that the older man was saying something about the song which the young man had sung.  It had, perhaps, been learned at a mother’s knee, or in a Sunday-school, and may have been (indeed it was), the means of saving these gamblers, and of aiding others through their influence toward that nobler life which alone is worth the living.”

The old man had come from Westfield, Mass.  He died in 1888, at Salem, Oregon, having spent the last seven years of his life as a Christian Missionary among the sailors of the Pacific coast.  He passed away rejoicing in the faith that took him

  “Nearer the Father’s House,
  Where many mansions be,
  Nearer the great white throne,
  Nearer the jasper sea.”

The boy, Harry, utterly renounced gambling and kindred vices.

While coming from Bombay to Aden, cholera broke out on the ship and it was strictly quarantined.  It was a ship of grief and terror.  Passengers daily lost loved ones.  New victims were stricken every hour.  The slow days dragged away with death unceasingly busy among them.  Burials were constant, and no man knew who would be the next victim.  But Colonel Conwell escaped contagion.

On the trip home, across the Atlantic, the steamer in a fearful gale was so dismantled as to be helpless.  The fires of the engine were out, and the boat for twenty-six days drifted at the mercy of the waves.  No one, not even the Captain, thought they could escape destruction.  Water-logged and unmanageable, during a second storm it was thought to be actually sinking.  The Captain himself gave up hope, the women grew hysterical.  But in the midst of it all, Colonel Conwell walked the deck, and to calm the passengers sang “Nearer my God to Thee,” with such feeling, such calm assurance in a higher power, that the passengers and Captain once again took courage.  But strangest of all, on this voyage, while sick, he was cared for by the very colored porter whose life he had saved on the Mississippi steamboat.

CHAPTER XIV

BUSY DAYS IN BOSTON

Editor of “Boston Traveller.”  Free Legal Advice for the Poor.  Temperance Work.  Campaign Manager for General Nathaniel P. Banks.  Urged for Consulship at Naples.  His Work for the Widows and Orphans of Soldiers.