This was the advent of a new life to me. I was taken in hand by the
head groom and fitted out with two suits of clothes, and in this
change the first great ambition of my life was satisfied. I became the
possessor of a hard hat. For two years, I had instinctively longed for
something on my head that I could politely remove to a lady. The first
night I marched down that village street, shoes well polished,
starched linen, and hard hat, I expected the whole town to be there to
see me. I had made several attempts at this hat business before. They
organized a flute band in the town and I joined it for the sake of the
hat. But it was too nice a thing to be lying around when people were
hungry, and, as it was in pawn most of the time, I finally redeemed
it, returned it, and quit. But this time the hat had come to stay.

With my new vision still warm in my heart, I became very active in the
parish Sunday School. My inability to read relegated me to the
children's class; but I had a retentive memory, and before I was able
to read, I memorized about three hundred texts from the Bible.

The first outworking of my vision was on a drunken stone mason of our
town. His family, relatives, and friends had all given him up. He had
given himself up. I went after him every night for weeks; talked to
him, pleaded with him, prayed for him, and was rewarded by seeing him
make a new start. Together we organized a temperance society. I think
it was the first temperance society in that town. I was much more at
home in this kind of work than in the Sunday School; for, while I
could be neither secretary, treasurer, nor president of the temperance
society I had organized, my inability to read or write did not prevent
me from hustling after such men as my first convert.