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.