gh small,
was like a palace; for none could excel my Jenny for cleanliness and
order. I renovated the garden, and made it a pleasant place to walk
in. On the loom I was most industrious, working from early in the
morning often till ten, and sometimes later, at night; and she
not only did all the house work, but wound the bobbins for three
weavers--myself, uncle, and grandfather; and yet, with all this
apparently hard lot, these were happy days."

But it was not all sunshine at first. He fell ill, and the doctor
ordered him better living than he had been getting; and where the
money was to come from to get more nourishing food Livesey knew not.

He had been ordered to take some cheese in the forenoon, so he bought
a piece at about eightpence a pound; and as he munched it came this
thought: cheese wholesale cost but fivepence per pound; would it not
be possible to buy a piece wholesale and sell it to his friends, so
that he too might have the benefit of getting it at this low price?

No sooner thought of than done. But, when he had finished weighing out
the cheese to his friends, he found he had made, quite unexpectedly,
a profit of eighteenpence, and that it was more than he could have
gained by a great deal of weaving.

So he changed his trade: weaving gave place to cheese mongering; and,
after some very hard work and persevering efforts, he placed himself
beyond the reach of poverty.

Now came the important moment of his life. One day in settling a
bargain he drank a glass of whisky. It was, he said, the best he ever
drank, because it was the last. For the sensation it produced made him
resolve he would never again taste a drop of intoxicating liquor.

Finding himself the better for this course, he soon tried to get
others to join him. His first convert to _total abstinence_ was a man
named John King; Livesey and he signed together; and on 1st September,
1832, at a meeting held at Preston, seven men--"the Seven Men of
Preston," as they are called--signed the pledge, of which the
following is a facsimile:--

[Handwritten: We agree to _abstain_ from all Liquors of an
_Intoxicating Quality_, whether ale porter Wine, or Ardent
Spirits, except as Medicine.

John Gratix
Edw'd Dickinson
Jno: Broadbelt
Jno: Smith
Joseph Livesey
David Anderson
Jno: Ring.]

It was a terrible struggle for these men at first. They were laughed
at, they were abused, they were persecuted; but t