n of his most
cordial desire to welcome all his old companions there. In the midst of
these remarks there seemed to come up before him suddenly a memory of
Him who had saved him, his eyes filled with tears, and, with a manly and
deep feeling that swept right through the wild audience, he made his
acknowledgment to 'Him who sticketh closer than a brother--even the Lord
Jesus Christ.'

"No sermon could have been half so effective as these stammering
ungrammatical, but manly remarks."

Our Reading-room under this guidance became soon a very popular resort;
in fact, it deserved the nickname one gentleman gave it, "The Drunkards'
Club." The marked, simple, and genuine reform in a man of such habits as
this pugilist, attracted numbers of that large class of young men who
are always trying to break from the tyranny of evil habits and vices.
The rooms used to be thronged with reformed or reforming young men. The
great difficulty with a man under vices is to make him believe that
change for him is possible. The sight of Gardner always demonstrated
this possibility. Those men who are sunk in such courses cannot get rid
of them gradually, and nothing can arouse them and break the iron rule
of habits but the most tremendous truths.

"Awful Gardner" had but one theory of reform--absolute and immediate
change, in view of the love of Christ, and of a deserved and certain
damnation.

The men to whom he spoke needed no soft words; they knew they were "in
hell" now; some of them could sometimes for a moment realize what such a
character as Christ was, and bow before it in unspeakable humility. No
one whom I have ever seen could so influence the "roughs" of this city.
He ought to have been kept as a missionary to the rowdies. I extract
from our Journal:--

"The moral success of the room has been all that we could have desired.
Hundreds of young men have come there continually to read or chat with
their friends--many of them even who had habitually frequented the
liquor-saloons, and many persons with literally no homes. The place,
too, has become a kind of central point for all those who have become
more or less addicted to excessive drinking, and who are desirous of
escaping from the habit.

"There are days when the spectacle presented there is a most affecting
one; the room filled with young men, each of whom has a history of
sorrow or degradation--broken-down gentlemen, ruined merchants,
penniless clerks, homeless laboring-men a