consumed in England were placed in bottles, and the bottles piled on
one another, it would reach within five hundred miles of the moon.
He asked us if this were not an intolerable state of things and a
disgrace to our boasted civilisation? Of course, there could be no
two questions about it. We are not unreasonable, down in Troy.
We only want a truth to be brought home to us. The missionary said
that if only a man would deny himself his morning glass, in eight
months he could buy himself a harmonium, besides being better in mind
and body. And he wound up by inviting us to attend a meeting in the
Town Hall that evening.

Well, at the evening performance he made us all feel so uncomfortable
that, as soon as it was over, we held an informal gathering in the
bar of the "King of Prussia," and decided that temperance must be
given a fair trial. The missionary had laid particular stress on the
necessity of taking the rising generation and taking them early.
So we decided to try it first upon the children, and see how it
worked.

The missionary was delighted with our zeal. (Our zeal has often
surprised and delighted strangers.) And he helped with a will.
Early next morning he organised what he called a "Little Drops of
Water League," and a juvenile branch of the Independent Order of Good
Templars, entitled the "Deeds not Words Lodge of Tiny Knights of
Abstinence." Each of these had its insignia. He sent us down the
patterns as soon as he returned to Plymouth, and within a week the
drapers' shops were full of little scarves and ribbons--white and
gold for the girls, pink and silver for the boys. By this time there
wasn't a child under fourteen but had taken the pledge; and as for
narrow blue ribbon, it could not be supplied fast enough. I heard