The Bargemen and their Clubs

Monday, November 2.—I preached at Windsor at noon and in the afternoon rode to Reading. Mr. J. R. had just sent his brother word that he had hired a mob to pull down his preaching house that night. In the evening Mr. S. Richards overtook a large company of bargemen walking toward it, whom he immediately accosted and asked if they would go with him and hear a good sermon; telling them, “I will make room for you, if you were as many more.”  They said they would go with all their hearts. “But neighbors,” said, he, “would it not be as well to leave those clubs behind you? Perhaps some of the women may be frightened at them.” They threw them all away and walked quietly with him to the house where he set them in a pew.

In the conclusion of my sermon, one of them who used to be their captain, being a head taller that ¹⁵¹⁵     Correct to the text his fellows, rose up and looking round the congregation, said, “The gentleman says nothing but what is good; I say so; and there is not a man here that shall dare to say otherwise.”