The people who told me of this, ridiculed the man, and ridiculed
the movement for temperance reform. I was rather pleased with the news,
though news of a more thorough movement might have pleased me better.
But the beginnings of things are small. The movement soon became radical
enough, and I kept pace with it.
In 1832 I gave up the use of ardent spirits, and became a member of the
old-fashioned temperance society. In 1833 I gave up the use of
intoxicating drinks of all kinds, and joined the teetotal society. In
1834 I gave up the use of tobacco. A few months later I gave up tea and
coffee, and took water as my usual drink.
These changes in my way of life gave great offence to many in the church
to which I belonged, and led them to speak of me, and act towards me, in
a way that was anything but kind and agreeable. This was especially the
case with regard to my disuse of intoxicating drinks, and my advocacy of
teetotalism. I might have been borne with perhaps if I had become a
drunkard; for drunkards were in some cases tolerated; but a teetotaler
was not to be endured. Some called me a fool, and some a madman, and one
man pronounced me no better than a suicide and a murderer. "You will be
dead," said he, "in twelve months, if you persist in your miserable
course, and what will become of your wife and children? And what account
can you give of the people you are leading to untimely death by your
example?" One person at Chester, at whose house I had visited some years
before, when supplying the place of the deceased minister, would neither
invite me to his house, nor speak to me in the street, except in the way
of insult, now that I had become a teetotaler.
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