Читать книгу Beneath the Banner - F. J. Cross - Страница 15

"I were summat ruff afore I went to Lunnon," said John Cassell.

He had called to see his friend Thomas Whittaker, who was staying at

Nottingham, and John was announced as "the Manchester carpenter".

He was dressed on the occasion in a suit of clothes which a Quaker friend had given him; but Cassell being tall and thin, and the Quaker short and stout, they did not altogether fit!

The trousers were too short, and the hat too big; accordingly, John's legs came a long way through the trousers, and his head went a good way in at the top. "It was something like taking a tin saucepan with the bottom out and using it as a scabbard for a broad sword," remarked one who knew him. He had on an old overcoat, and a basket of tools was thrown over his shoulder with which to earn his food in case temperance lecturing failed.

When John remarked that he was "summat ruff," the gentleman at whose house Mr. Whittaker was staying nearly had a fit; and after he had at length recovered his gravity he ejaculated, "Well, I would have given a guinea to have seen you before you did go".

Yet John Cassell was a diamond—though at that time the roughest specimen one could come across from the pit's mouth to the Isle of Dogs. His ideas were clear cut; he had confidence in himself, he meant to make a name in the world—and he did.

John Cassell was born in Manchester in 1817. His father, the bread-winner of the family, had the misfortune to meet with an injury which entirely disabled him, and from the effects of which he died when John was quite young. His mother worked hard for her own and her son's support, and had little time left to look very particularly to the education of her boy. He, however, grew up strong and hardy.

It is true that when he ought to have been at school he was often at play, or seeing something of the world, its sights and festivities, on his own account. True, also, that he tumbled into the river, and nearly ended his career at a very early age. Still he survived his river catastrophe; and, though he gained little book learning, possessed such a good and retentive memory, and was so observant, that his mind became stored with vivid impressions of the scenes and surroundings of his youth, which he related with great effect in after-life.

He had, of course, to begin work at an early age. First of all, he went into a cotton factory, and later to a velveteen factory; then, having a taste for carpentering, he took to it as a trade, though he was at best but a rough unskilled workman, tramping about the country, and doing odd jobs wherever he could get them.

One day John Cassell was working at the Manchester Exchange when he was persuaded to go and hear Dr. Grindrod lecture on temperance. The lecture seems to have bitten itself into John's mind; for a little later on, in July, 1835, after hearing Mr. Swindlehurst lecture, he signed the pledge. That was the unsuspected turning-point of carpenter John's life.

After this he attended meetings and took an active part on the platform, and became known as "the boy lecturer". Though he was dressed in fustian, and wore a workman's apron, he spoke effectively, and his words went to the hearts of his hearers. His originality of style, too, pleased the audiences of working people whom he addressed.

In 1836 John Cassell made his first move towards London.

He worked his way to town, and lectured on the road. He carried a bell, and with that brought together his audiences.

At times he was very roughly handled by the crowd; yet this had no effect upon him, except to make him the more determined.

His clothes became threadbare, his boots worn out, his general appearance dilapidated; but he got help from a few good people, who saw the hero beneath his rags.

He was three weeks accomplishing the journey; and when he arrived in London spent the first day in search of work, which he failed to obtain.

In the evening, seeing that a temperance meeting was to be held in a hall off the Westminster Road, he went to it; and asked to be allowed to speak. Some of those on the platform viewed with distrust the gaunt, shabby, travel-stained applicant. But he would take no denial, and soon won cheers from the audience. When he stopped short, after a brief address, someone shouted "Go on". "How can a chap go on when he has nothing to say?" came the ready reply. That night he had no money in his pocket to pay for a bed; so he walked the streets of London through the weary hours till dawn of day.

Other temperance meetings he addressed; for his heart and mind were full of that subject. After one of the meetings a gentleman questioned him as to his means; and, finding the straits he was in, asked if he were not disheartened.

"No," replied John; "it is true I carry all my wealth in my little wallet, and have only a few pence in my pocket; but I have faith in God I shall yet succeed."

Struck by his manifest sincerity, the gentleman introduced him next day to a friend who took a warm interest in the temperance cause.

"Which wouldst thou prefer, carpentering or trying to persuade thy fellow-men to give up drinking, and to become teetotalers?" he asked.

Without hesitation John Cassell replied:—

"The work of teetotalism."

"Then thou shalt have an opportunity, and I will stand thy friend."

John Cassell now went forth as a disciple of the temperance cause. Remembering his experiences on the way to London he furnished himself with a watchman's rattle, with which he used to call together the people of the villages he visited.

A temperance paper thus speaks of him in 1837:—

"John Cassell, the Manchester carpenter, has been labouring, amidst many privations, with great success in the county of Norfolk. He is passing through Essex—(where he addressed the people, among other places, from the steps leading up to the pulpit of the Baptist chapel, with his carpenter's apron twisted round his waist)—on his way to London. He carries his watchman's rattle—an excellent accompaniment of temperance labour."

Cassell had a great regard for Thomas Whittaker. It was an address given by this gentleman which had first made him wish to become a public man.

When he called on Mr. Whittaker in Nottingham, as already related, after some conversation had taken place, he remarked:—

"I should like to hear thee again, Tom".

"Well," remarked Whittaker as a joke, "you can if you go with me to

Derby."

John accepted the invitation forthwith, much to his friend's chagrin, who was bothered to know what to do with him; for he was under the impression that some members of the family where he expected to lodge would not give a very hearty welcome to this rough fellow.

This is Mr. Whittaker's narrative of the sequel:—

"We walked together to Derby that day. At the meeting he spoke a little, and pleased the people. When the meeting was over, he said:—

"'Can't I sleep with you?'

"'Well,' I said, 'I have no objection; but, you know, I am only a lodger.'

"However, go with me he would, and did. That was the man. When John made up his mind to do a thing he did it; and to that feature in his character, no doubt, much of his future success may be attributed. The gentleman at whose house he met me at Nottingham, and who was ashamed of him, subsequently became his servant, and touched his hat to him; and John has pulled up at my own door in his carriage, with a liveried servant, when I lived near to him in London."

John Cassell was now in the thick of the fight. In those days the opposition to the Gospel of Temperance was keen and bitter. Sometimes there were great disturbances at the meetings, sometimes he was pelted with rubbish, at times he did not know where to turn for a night's lodging. It was, on the whole, a fierce conflict; but John was nothing daunted.

It is, of course, impossible to sum up the amount of a man's influence. John Cassell scattered the seed of temperance liberally. Here is a case showing how one of the grains took root, and grew up to bear important fruit.

The Rev. Charles Garrett, the celebrated teetotal President of the Wesleyan Conference, writing several years after John Cassell's death, says:—

"I signed the pledge of total abstinence in 1840, after hearing a lecture on the subject by the late John Cassell. I have therefore tried it for more than thirty years. It has been a blessing to me, and has made me a blessing to others."

How to cure the curse of drink, what to give in its place when the pleasures of the glass were taken away—that was the problem which many have tried to solve. None more successfully than John Cassell.

At a meeting in Exeter Hall he suddenly put a new view before his audience. "I have it!" he exclaimed.

"The remedy is education. Educate the working men and women, and you have a remedy for the crying evil of the country. Give the people mental food, and they will not thirst after the abominable drink which is poisoning them."

He had hitherto been doing something to assist the temperance cause by the sale of tea and coffee, and he now turned his attention to the issue of publications calculated to benefit the cause.

Having, at the age of twenty-four, married Mary Abbott, he became possessed of additional means for carrying out his publishing schemes.

Cheap illustrated periodicals began to issue from the press under his superintendence, and copies were multiplied by the hundred thousand.

He never forgot that he had been a working man, and one of the first publications he started was called The Working Man's Friend.

It is not necessary to say more. Though John Cassell died comparatively young—he was only forty-eight when his death took place in 1865—he had done a grand life's work; and the soundness of his judgment is shown by the fact that works which he planned retain their hold upon the people to this day.

John Cassell had his ambitions, but they were of a very simple kind.

"I started in life with one ambition," he said, "and that was to have a clean shirt every day of my life; this I have accomplished now for some years; but I have a second ambition, and that is to be an MAP., and represent the people's cause; then I shall be public property, and you may do what you like with me." This latter desire he would doubtless have realised but for his early decease.