p. 513 | THE YOUNG ORATOR

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 17, 1881

THE YOUNG ORATOR.

WHEN Hugh Miller, the great geologist, was traveling in England, among the interesting people that he saw, was a boy of nine, who was fond of making temperance speeches, in his mother's coffee-house. On the evening when Hugh Miller heard him, he commenced by saying that he was a temperance man for about nine years. He told them he knew men who were ragged and hungry before they took the pledge, and who had to wear shoes without soles; but by taking the pledge they had come to be gentlemen. After the speech was over, as the customers for coffee or confectionery came and went, they stopped for a minute to talk with the boy, Samuel, about his temperance work. To some he was very polite; answered them respectfully; others, among them two well-dressed young ladies, he did not answer at all.

"You were rude to them, my son," his mother said. "Why did you not answer their question?"

"They drink," said Samuel.

"Drink! The young ladies! What do you mean?"

"Yes'm," said Samuel; "they won't sign my pledge."

In Samuel's opinion, people who would not sign the total abstinence pledge were people who drink.

"I suppose," he said to himself, "if they didn't ever intend to drink liquor, they would be perfectly willing to say so, and that is all the pledge asks them to do.—The Pansy.