Steve P. Holcombe, the Converted Gambler: His Life and Work. Alexander Gross

      Mr. Holcombe's family lived in the same building, over the mission room, and whenever men in need or distress applied, he gave them board and lodging. Mrs. Holcombe says that for three months they had never less than twenty men eating two meals a day. Of course, among so many there were, doubtless, some imposters, but it took a pretty keen man to play imposter without being spotted by the keen man who was in charge of the enterprise. Mr. Holcombe had mixed with men long enough to know them. He had spent most of his life among bad men. He had studied their ways and he knew their tricks. And it is not necessary to say to the reader who has perused the foregoing pages, that Mr. Holcombe was not afraid of any man. His former experience in sin and his former association with sinners of every sort led him to see that it was necessary for him rigidly to protect the work he was now engaged in and he determined to do so. Men would come into the meetings, sometimes, in a state of intoxication; sometimes lewd fellows of the baser sort would come in for the purpose of interrupting the service and still others for other purposes; but when Mr. Holcombe had put a few of them out, they saw that this man in getting religion had lost neither common sense nor courage, and that Steve Holcombe, the converted gambler, was not a man to be fooled with any more than Steve Holcombe, the unconverted gambler; so that all such interruptions soon ceased. But nobody should get the impression that Mr. Holcombe was harsh or unsympathetic. On the contrary, he is one of the most tenderhearted of men, and few men living would go farther, do more or make greater sacrifices to save a drunkard or a gambler or an outcast of any sort, than Steve Holcombe. For days he has gone without meat for himself and his family that he might have something to help a poor drunkard who was trying to reform. Indeed, his pitying love for wretched men and women of every class and degree, manifested in his efforts to look them up and to do them good in any possible way, is the chief secret of his wonderful success in dealing with hardened and apparently inaccessible cases. The following account of his last and perhaps most desperate case is taken from one of the Louisville daily papers and will illustrate what has been said:

      The work that Steve Holcombe is doing is well known, in a general way, but the public understand but little of the wonderful good that man is doing. The reformations he has brought about may be numbered by the hundred, and the drunkards he has reclaimed would make a regiment.

      But of all the wonderful and truly startling examples of what Mr. Holcombe is doing, the case of James Williams is the climax. Williams has been known for years as "Whisky Jim" and "Old Hoss," and there is not a more familiar character in the city. Until the last two or three weeks no man in Louisville ever remembers to have seen Jim free from the influence of liquor. He was always drunk, and was looked upon as an absolutely hopeless case, that would be able to stand the terrible life he was leading but a year or two longer.

      The story of his life and reformation as related to a Times reporter is very interesting. He had asked Mr. Holcombe when his protégé could be seen, and was told at nine o'clock at the mission. Williams was seen coming up the steps, his face clean shaven, his eyes bright and his gait steady. Mr. Holcombe said: "There he is now, God bless him; I could just kiss him. I knew he'd be here. One thing I've learned about Jim is, that he is an honest man, and another is that he will not tell a lie. I feel that I can trust him. He has had the hardest struggle to overcome the drinking habit I ever saw, and I feel sure that he has gained the victory. I began on him quietly about one month ago and got him to attend our meetings. But here he is." The reporter was introduced, and Mr. Williams readily consented to tell anything concerning himself that would be of interest to the public and calculated to do good in the cause of temperance. He said: "I was born in Paducah, Ky., and am forty-eight years old. My father's name was Rufus A. Williams. While a boy I was sent to school, and picked up a little education. I was put at work in a tobacco manufactory, and am a tobacco-twister by trade. My father died when I was nine years old, after which our family consisted of my mother, now seventy-five years of age, my sister and myself. We now live on the east side of Floyd street, near Market. Shortly after I grew up I found work on the river and have been employed on nearly every boat between Louisville and New Orleans. That is what downed me. I began to drink little by little, and the appetite and habit began to grow on me until I gave up all idea of resistance. Up to yesterday a week ago, I can truthfully say that I have been drunk twenty-three years, day and night.

      "In 1862 I got a job on the 'Science,' Number 2, a little Government boat running the Ohio and Cumberland rivers. Coming down the Cumberland on one trip I was too sick to work, and the boat put me ashore about twenty miles above Clarksville. The woods where I was dumped out were full of guerrillas, but I managed to secure a little canoe in which I paddled down to Clarksville. There I sold it for three dollars and with the small sum I had already I came to this city, where we were then living. I then drank up every cent I could rake and scrape. I could get all sorts of work, but could keep no job because I couldn't keep sober. I finally depended on getting odd jobs along the river front, such as loading and unloading freight, etc. But the work was so hard I could scarcely do it, and finally I had to give that up, especially after falling and breaking my leg while at work on the old 'United States' several years ago. That accident laid me up in the Marine Hospital for several months, and just as I felt able to get out I broke the same leg again at the same place. After recovering I yielded entirely to the appetite for strong drink and cared for nothing else. As I say, for twenty-three years I have not known what it is to be sober until a few days ago.