"On the Stump for the Pump."
By Sir Wilfrid Lawson.
HE Editor of The Strand asks Sir W. Lawson to send him an article with some such title as 'Thirty Years of Temperance Advocacy,' or 'On the Stump for the Pump.'
You ask me to write "On the Stump for the Pump,"
Don't you think 'twould be better, "The Pump on the Stump?"
Sure that "pump" should be able a tale to unfold,
For you hint in your letter it's thirty years old!
Just think of one pumping for thirty long years,
And the water scarce yet has got up to their ears.
Yet while water's so hard to the right pitch to rise,
The full tide of beer mounts quite up to our eyes.
There is Goschen, and Randolph, and Booth, and old Smith,
Men of fame and renown, and great vigour and pith,
They come with their brooms, and they come with their mops,
And they labour and sweep, but the tide never stops.
Away in the torrent go virtue and wealth,
Peace, plenty, and happiness, order and health,
And "Bung" with a chuckle cries, "Pump as you may,
But beer and the brewer still carry the day."
Now you kindly have asked me to say what I think
On this troublesome, terrible question of drink.
So the "Pump" will endeavour to pour something out,
A "pump" at the least should be able to "spout!"
Well, well, I must hope that I shall not quite fail,
So the "Pump," as you've asked him, will pour out his tale.
Almost everyone who proposes a toast at a public dinner commences his speech by saying that he feels himself to be the most unfit person who could have been selected to perform the duty.
In this matter I am neither the most fit, nor the most unfit person to give such a narrative as the Editor desires. There are many advocates of temperance still living who have addressed far more audiences on the subject than I have done, and whose account of their experience would be far more interesting and instructive than mine can be.
On the other hand—
"I've been about a bit in my time,
And troubles I've seen a few;
But I always found it the best of plans
To paddle my own canoe."
And I have sometimes had to paddle that canoe through tolerably stormy waters. For generations a "Temperance lecturer" has usually been viewed by the "respectable" classes with a mixture of pity and contempt. Drink was blended with all our ideas of real happiness and enjoyment. Doctors ordered drink as a potent medicine, and, at the same time, as a valuable article of daily diet. Clergymen, certainly at times, mildly hinted that their flocks might peradventure be more moderate in its consumption, but rarely indeed condemned the thing itself.
Elections were won to the inspiriting cry of the "National Church and the National Beverage," while all those who had enriched themselves by the making and selling of strong drink were held in the highest esteem and veneration by the rest of the community.
For anyone to enter on a crusade against drink was held to be audacious, vulgar, disreputable, and unconstitutional, and a man who took such a course was considered to be, if not a fool, certainly a hypocritical knave. I have always thought that Dickens' portrait of "Stiggins, the Temperance lecturer," did much to maintain this idea. Any way, it was in full force at the time when I ventured to launch the above-mentioned cause.
But I did not start as a Temperance lecturer. The field was already well occupied. Father Mathew, Joseph Livesey, Samuel Bowling, and many other devoted men had said pretty well all that could be said in favour of abstinence from intoxicating liquor, and, where their teaching had been
