"

He sat down again amidst the profoundest silence, and then all joined
heartily in the hymn beginning,--

"Holy Bible, book divine,
Precious treasure, thou art mine."

The vicar then called upon James Barnes to speak.

"Well, I don't know," began Jim, starting up, and plunging headlong into
his address; "I don't feel at all fit to stand up in such a company as
this, and yet I've got summat to say, and it's a good deal to the point
too, I think. At our last public temperance meeting, the first I'd the
pleasure of speaking at, we had a noisy set of fellows trying to put me
down, and now we're all as quiet as lambs.

"Well, William Foster's just been giving you his experience about the
Bible, and I can say amen to all he's been a-saying; I mean this, that
the good book's been doing for him and me just what he says. It's been
and made a changed man of him, there's no doubt about that. He's been a
kind friend to me, and he's been a kind friend to many as has often had
nothing but hard words for him. I like to see a man live up to what he
professes.

"Perhaps you'll say, `Jim, why don't you set us an example?' Well, I'm
trying, and I hopes to do better by-and-by. But there's no mistake
about William. He aren't like a chap I heard talk of the other day. A
friend of mine were very much taken up with him.--`Eh! You should hear
him talk,' he says. `You never heard a man talk like him; he'd talk a
parrot dumb, he would.'--`Very likely,' says I; `but does he practise
what he preaches?'--`Why, they reckon not,' says my friend. Now that
sort don't suit me; and it oughtn't to suit any of us, I'm sure. We
temperance people aren't like that.

"Ah! It's a fine thing is this temperance, if you only get hold of it
by the Bible end. See what it's been and done for me and mine. Look at
my wife Polly there, sitting on that big stone--(Nay, Polly, 'tain't no
use your shaking your head and winking; I _must_ have it out)--just look
at her: you wouldn't believe as she's the same woman if you'd only seen
her at our old house a year ago. I can scarce believe myself as she's
the same sometimes. I has to make her stand at the other end of the
room now and then to get a long view of her, to be sure she's the same.
She's like a new pin now, bright and clean, with the head fixed on in
the right place.

"Ah! You may laugh, friends, but it's nothing but the plain truth.
There's a deal of difference in pins. You just take