Steve P. Holcombe.
By Rev. Gross Alexander.
INTRODUCTION BY
REV. SAM P. JONES.
LOUISVILLE:
PRESS OF THE COURIER-JOURNAL JOB PRINTING COMPANY.
1888.
Copyrighted, 1888.
TO
Mrs. S. P. Holcombe,
THE PATIENT WIFE,
THE FAITHFUL MOTHER,
THE FRIEND OF PUBLICANS AND SINNERS,
THIS ACCOUNT OF
THE LIFE AND WORK OF HER HUSBAND
IS DEDICATED.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
| PAGE | |
| INTRODUCTION BY SAM. P. JONES | ix |
| LETTER FROM DR. JOHN A. BROADUS | xiii |
| LIFE AND WORKS OF STEVE P. HOLCOMBE-- | |
| CHAPTER I | 1 |
| CHAPTER II | 19 |
| CHAPTER III | 28 |
| CHAPTER IV | 75 |
| CHAPTER V | 102 |
| CHAPTER VI | 111 |
| LETTERS | 125 |
| TESTIMONIALS OF CONVERTS | 173 |
| SERMONS | 269 |
It has been thought and suggested by some of those having knowledge of Mr. Holcombe's history, that an account of his life and work in book-form would multiply his usefulness and do good. And since the narration of his experiences by himself has been of such great benefit to those who have been privileged to hear him, why may not others also be benefited by reading some account of his uncommon career?
It is hoped that it will be of interest to the general reader as a revelation and record of the workings and struggles of some human hearts and the wretchedness and blessedness of some human lives. It is a sort of luxury to read about and sympathize with wretchedness, as it is a joy to see that wretchedness turned to blessedness. It will show to those who are unwillingly the slaves of sin what God has done for such as they. It will possibly interest and encourage those who are engaged in Christian work. It may furnish suggestions as to practical methods to be pursued in working among poor and needy classes, whether in towns or cities. Even ministers of the Gospel may find encouragement and instruction in the experience of Mr. Holcombe's life and the methods and successes of his work.
What few letters of Mr. Holcombe's could be found are put in as showing phases of this interesting character that could be shown as well no other way, and some letters written to him are selected out of several hundred of like character to show how he touches all classes of people.
The "Testimonies" are from men who have been rescued under Mr. Holcombe's ministry, and will give some idea of the work that is being done. These are only a few of the men who have been brought to a better and happier life through Mr. Holcombe's efforts. If any should feel that there is a sameness in these testimonies, which it is believed very few will do, perhaps others will feel the cumulative effect of line upon line, example upon example.
The sermons or addresses are inserted because they have been the means of awakening and guiding many to salvation, and they may be of interest and possibly of benefit to some who have not heard Mr. Holcombe. They contain much of the history of his inner life in statements of experience introduced by way of illustration. They are given in outline only, as will be seen.
The book lays no claim to literary excellence. The position and work of the man make his life worth writing and reading apart from the style of the book.
The accounts here given of Mr. Holcombe's character and work are not written for the purpose of glorifying him. Many of these pages are profoundly painful and humiliating to him. But they are written that those who read them may know from what depths he has been brought, and to what blessedness he has been raised, through Jesus Christ, to whose name the glory is given and to whose blessing the book is commended.
August, 1888.
BY REV. SAM P. JONES.
The author of this volume, the Rev. Gross Alexander, Professor of Theology in Vanderbilt University, was surely the man to give to the world the Life of Steve Holcombe. The warm heart and clear head of the author, and the consecrated, self-denying life of the subject of the volume, assure the reader ample compensation for the time given to the book.
Mr. Alexander has known Brother Holcombe from the beginning of his Christian life, and tells the story of his fidelity to Christ and loyalty to duty as no other could.
I first met Brother Holcombe at Louisville, in the year 1882, when I was preaching in the church of his pastor, Rev. J. C. Morris. It was from Brother Morris that I learned of this consecrated layman. He often told me with joy of many incidents connected with the conversion and work of Brother Holcombe. My acquaintance with him soon grew into a warm friendship. It has always been an inspiration to me to talk with him, and a source of gratitude to me to know that I have his affection and prayers.
The work he is doing now in the city of Louisville, Kentucky, is very much like Jerry Macauley's work in New York City years ago. No man has experienced more vividly the power of Christ to save, and no man has a stronger faith in Christ's ability to save. Brother Holcombe's humility and fidelity have made him a power in the work of rescuing the perishing and saving the fallen. I have been charmed by the purity of soul manifested by him on all occasions, and his continual efforts to bring back those who have been overtaken in a fault. Hundreds of men who have felt his sympathizing arms about them and listened to his brotherly words have grown strong, because they had a friend and brother in Steve Holcombe, who, in spite of their failures and faults, has clung to them with a love like that which Christ Himself manifested toward those who were as bruised reeds and smoking flax.
Brother Holcombe, rescued himself by the loving hand of Christ, has extended the hand from a heart full of love for Christ and men, and has done his best to save all who have come under his influence.
This volume will be especially instructive to those who are interested in the salvation of the non-churchgoers of the great cities. For surely Brother Holcombe's Mission is a place where the worst sinners hear of Christ's power to save, and where they see, in Brother Holcombe himself, with his rich experience, one of the greatest triumphs of the Gospel.
I heartily commend this volume to all Christian people, because it tells of the life of a saved man. It tells also what a saved man can do for others, and it will inspire many hearts with sympathy for such work and prepare many hands to help in it. I heartily commend this book because it is the biography of one whom I love and whom all men would love, if they knew him in his devotion to God and duty. Brother Holcombe has frequently been with me in my meetings and in my private room; I have frequently been with him in his Mission, in his family circle, on the streets of the great cities, and he is one man of whom it may be said: "His conversation is in heaven." I frequently feel that my own life would have been more successful with such a fervent consecration to my work as Brother Steve Holcombe exemplifies.
The sermons contained in this volume will be read with interest. They are his sermons. They come from his heart, and they have reached the hearts of hundreds and thousands who have heard him gladly.
I bespeak for the book a circulation which will put it into the library of all pastors and into thousands of homes.
Cartersville, Ga., October 18, 1888.
I have read with very great interest the "Life of Steve Holcombe," and have carefully looked through the letters, testimonies and sermons to be included in the proposed volume, and I rejoice that it is to be published. Professor Alexander, who was Mr. Holcombe's first pastor, has written the life with the best use of his fine literary gifts, and with sound judgment and good taste. It is a wonderful story. I have long felt interest in Mr. Holcombe and his work, for after beginning his Mission he attended my seminary lessons in the New Testament through a session and more; but this record of his life warms my heart still more toward him and his remarkable labors of love. I think the book will be very widely read. It will stir Christians to more hopeful efforts to save the most wicked. It will encourage many a desperate wanderer to seek the grace of God in the Gospel. Such a book makes a real addition to the "evidences of Christianity." No one can read it without feeling that Christian piety is something real and powerful and delightful. Much may be learned from Mr. Holcombe's recorded methods and discourses, and from the testimonies of his converts, as to the best means of carrying on religious work of many kinds. The book will, doubtless, lead to the establishment of like Missions in other cities, and put new heart and hope into the pastors, missionaries and every class of Christian workers. It will show that zeal and love and faith must be supported by ample common sense and force of character, as in Mr. Holcombe's case, if great results are to hoped for. Many persons can be induced to read his brief outline sermons who would never look at more elaborate discourses. As to two or three slight touches of doctrinal statement, some of us might not agree with the speaker, but all must see that his sermons are very practical, pervaded by good sense and true feeling, and adapted to do much good.
Louisville, Ky., September 25, 1888.
Steve P. Holcombe, known in former years as a gambler and doer of all evil, no less known in these latter days as a preacher of the Gospel and doer of all good, was born at Shippingsport, Kentucky, in 1835. The place, as well as the man, has an interesting history. An odd, straggling, tired, little old town, it looks as if it had been left behind and had long ago given up all hope of ever catching up. It is in this and other respects in striking contrast with its surroundings. The triangular island, upon which it is situated, lies lazily between the Ohio river, which flows like a torrent around two sides of it, and the Louisville canal, which stretches straight as an arrow along the third. On its northeast side it commands a view of the most picturesque part of La Belle Riviere. This part embraces the rapids, or "Falls," opposite the city of Louisville, which gets its surname of "Falls City" from this circumstance. In the midst of the rapids a lone, little island of bare rocks rises sheer out of the dashing waters to the height of several feet, and across the wide expanse, on the other side of the river, loom up the wooded banks of the Indiana side, indented with many a romantic cove, and sweeping around with a graceful curve, while the chimneys and towers and spires of Jeffersonville and New Albany rise in the distance, with the blue Indiana "Knobs" in the deep background beyond. From this same point on the island, and forming part of the same extensive view, one may see the two majestic bridges, each a mile in length, one of which spans the river directly over the Falls and connects the city of Louisville with Jeffersonville, Indiana, while the other joins the western portion of Louisville with the thriving city of New Albany. Across the canal from the island, on the south, lies the city of Louisville with its near 200,000 population, its broad avenues, its palatial buildings.
In the very midst of all this profusion of beauty and all this hum and buzz and rush of commercial and social life, lies the dingy, sleepy old town of Shippingsport with its three hundred or four hundred people, all unheeded and unheeding, uncared for and uncaring. There are five or six fairly good houses, and all the rest are poor. There is a good brick school-house, built and kept up by the city of Louisville, of which, since 1842, Shippingsport is an incorporated part. There is one dilapidated, sad looking, little old brick church, which seldom suffers any sort of disturbance. On the northeast shore of the island directly over the rushing waters stands the picturesque old mill built by Tarascon in the early part of the century. It utilizes the fine water-power of the "Falls" in making the famous Louisville cement. Part of the inhabitants are employed as laborers in this mill, and part of them derive their support from fishing in the river, for which there are exceptional opportunities all the year around in the shallows, where the rushing waters dash, with eddying whirl, against the rocky shores of their island.
There are, at this time, some excellent people in Shippingsport, who faithfully maintain spiritual life and good moral character amid surrounding apathy and immorality. "For except the Lord had left unto them a very small remnant, they should have been as Sodom, and they should have been like unto Gomorrah."
And yet, Shippingsport was not always what it is now. Time was when it boasted the aristocracy of the Falls. "The house is still standing," says a recent writer in Harper's Monthly Magazine, "where in the early part of the century the Frenchman, Tarascon, offered border hospitality to many distinguished guests, among whom were Aaron Burr and Blennerhasset, and General Wilkinson, then in command of the armies of the United States." He might have added that Shippingsport was once honored with a visit from LaFayette, and later also from President Jackson. But in other respects also Shippingsport was, in former years, far different from what it is to-day. In business importance it rivaled the city of Louisville itself. In that early day, before the building of the canal, steamboats could not, on account of the Falls, pass up the river except during high water, so that for about nine months in the year Shippingsport was the head of navigation. Naturally, it became a place of considerable commercial importance, as the shrewd Frenchman who first settled there saw it was bound to be. Very soon it attracted a population of some hundreds, and grew into a very busy little mart. "Every day," says one of the old citizens still living, "steamboats were landing with products and passengers from the South, or leaving with products and passengers from Kentucky and the upper country." The freight which was landed at Shippingsport was carried by wagons and drays to Louisville, Lexington and other places in Kentucky and Indiana. This same old citizen, Mr. Alex. Folwell, declares that he has seen as many as five hundred wagons in one day in and around the place. There were three large warehouses and several stores, and what seems hard to believe, land sold in some instances for $100 per foot.
The canal was begun in 1824, the first spadeful of dirt being taken out by DeWitt Clinton, of New York. During the next six years from five hundred to a thousand men were employed on it. They were, as a general thing, a rough set. Sometimes, while steamboats were lying at the place, the unemployed hands would annoy the workmen on the canal so that gradually there grew up a feeling of enmity between the two classes which broke out occasionally in regular battles.
In 1830, when the canal was finished, the days of Shippingsport's prosperity were numbered. Thenceforth steamboats, independent of obstructions in the river, passed on up through the canal, and Shippingsport found her occupation was gone. The better classes lost no time in removing to other places, and only the poorer and rougher classes remained. Many of the workmen who had been engaged in building the canal settled down there to live; unemployed and broken-down steamboatmen gravitated to the place where they always had such good times; shiftless and thriftless poor people from other places came flocking in as to a poor man's paradise. Within easy reach of Louisville, the place became a resort for the immoral young men, the gamblers and all the rough characters of that growing city.
Such was the place to which Steve Holcombe's parents removed from Central Kentucky in 1835, the year of his birth; and, though coming into the midst of surroundings so full of moral perils, they did not bring that strength of moral character, that fixedness of moral habit and that steadfastness of moral purpose which were necessary to guard against the temptations of every sort which were awaiting them.
The father, though an honest and well disposed sort of man and very kind to his family, was already a drunkard. His son says of him: "My poor father had gotten to be a confirmed drunkard before I was born, and after he had settled at Shippingsport, my mother would not let him stay about the house, so that most of his time was spent in lying around bar-rooms or out on the commons, where he usually slept all times of the year." It is not surprising that as a consequence of such dissipation and such exposure he died at the early age of thirty-three, when his son Steve was eleven years old. Dead, he sleeps in an unmarked grave on the commons where formerly he slept when drunk and shut out by his wife from his home.
Mrs. Holcombe, the mother of Steve, a woman five feet ten inches in height and one hundred and ninety pounds in weight, was as strong in passion as in physical power. "When aroused," says her son, "she was as fierce as a tigress and fearless of God, man or devil, although she was a woman of quick sympathy and impulsive kindheartedness toward those who were in distress, and would go further to help such than almost any one I have ever known." She was a woman of more than ordinary mind, though entirely without education. In the government of her children she was extremely severe. "Though my father," says Mr. Holcombe, "never whipped me but once in my life, and that slightly, my mother has whipped me hundreds of times, I suppose, and with as great severity as frequency. She has, at times, almost beaten me to death. She would use a switch, a cane, a broom-stick or a club, whichever happened to be at hand when she became provoked. She whipped me oftener for going swimming than for anything else, I believe. If I told her a lie about it she would whip me, and if I told her the truth, she would whip me."
From neglect and other causes little Steve was very sickly and puny in his babyhood, so that he did not walk till he was four years old; but from the beginning his temper was as violent as his body was weak, and from his earliest recollection, he says, he loved to fight. At the same time he had his mother's tenderheartedness for those who were in distress. Once a stranger stopped for a few days at the tavern in Shippingsport, and the roughs of the place caught him out on one occasion and beat him so severely that he was left for dead; but he crawled afterward into an old shed where little Holcombe, between five and six years old, found him and took him food every day for about two weeks.
The boys with whom he associated in childhood were addicted to petty stealing, and he learned from them to practice the same. When about seven years old his mother, on account of their poverty, provided him with a supply of cakes, pies and fruits to peddle out on the steamers while they were detained in passing the locks of the canal. Instead of returning the money to his mother, however, he would often lose it in gambling with the bad boys of the place, and sometimes even with his half-brothers, so that he seldom got home with his money, but always got his beating.
At eight years of age he played cards for money in bar-rooms with grown men. At ten he began to explore those parts of the river about the falls, in a skiff alone looking for articles of various kinds lost in wrecks, that he might get means for gambling. This, together with the fact that his hair was very light in color, gained for him the distinction of the "Little White-headed Pirate."
In 1842 Shippingsport was taken into the city of Louisville, and a school was established, which he attended about three months during this period of his life, and he never attended school afterward. The brown-haired, black-eyed little girl who afterward became his wife, attended this school at the same time. Her parents had lately removed to Shippingsport from Jeffersonville, Indiana. They were people of excellent character and were so careful of their children that they would not allow them to associate with the children of Shippingsport any farther than was necessary and unavoidable. But, notwithstanding these restrictions, their little Mary saw just enough of Steve Holcombe in school to form a strange liking for him, as he did also for her—an attachment which has lasted through many and varying experiences up to the present. At that time he had grown to be "a heavy set little boy," as Mrs. Holcombe describes him, and was "very good looking," indeed, "very handsome," as she goes on to say, "with his deep blue eyes and his golden hair." She did not know that she was in love with a boy who was to become one of the worst of men in all forms of wickedness, and as little did she know that she was in love with a boy who was to become one of the best of men in all forms of goodness and usefulness. Nor did he foresee that he was forming an attachment then and there for one who was to love him devotedly and serve him patiently through all phases of infidelity and wickedness, and through years of almost unexampled trials and sufferings, who was to cling to him amid numberless perils and scandals, who was to train and restrain his children so as to lead them in ways of purity and goodness in spite of the father's bad example, who was to endure for his sake forms of ill treatment that have killed many a woman, and who was in long distant years to be his most patient encourager and helper in a singularly blessed and successful work for God and the most abandoned and hopeless class of sinful men, and to develop, amid all and in spite of all and by means of all, one of the truest and strongest and most devoted of female characters. A singular thing it seems, indeed, that an attachment begun so early and tested so severely should have lasted so late. And yet it is perhaps at this moment stronger than ever it was before.
BIRTHPLACE OF MR. HOLCOMBE. SHIPPINGSPORT.
Notwithstanding young Holcombe's lack of religious instruction and his extraordinary maturity in wickedness, he declares that at times he had, even before his tenth year, very serious thoughts. He says:
"I always believed there was a God and that the Bible was from God, but for the most part my belief was very vague and took hold of nothing definite. Hence, nearly all my thoughts were evil, only evil and evil continually. I am sure, however, that I believed there was a hell. When a child, I used to dream, it seems to me, almost every night, that the devil had me, and sometimes my dreams were so real that I would say to myself while dreaming, 'Now this is no dream; he has got me this time, sure enough.' I remember that one text which I heard a preacher read troubled me more than anything else, when I thought about dying and going to judgment. It was this: 'And they hid themselves in the dens and rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, fall on us and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne.' I always had a fear of death and a dread of the future. The rattling of clods on a coffin filled me with awe and dread. When I thought about my soul, I would always say to myself, 'I am going to get good before I go into the presence of God; but now I want to keep these thoughts out of mind so I can do as I please and not have to suffer and struggle and fight against sin—till I get consumption. When I get consumption I will have plenty of warning as to death's approach and plenty of time to prepare for it.' But I had gotten such an admiration for gamblers and such a passion for gambling that I had a consuming ambition to become a regular blackleg, as gamblers were called in those days. I made up my mind that this was to be my business, and I began to look about for some way to get loose from everything else, so I could do nothing but gamble, with nobody to molest or make me afraid."
It is hard enough for a boy to keep from doing wrong and to do right always, even when he has inherited a good disposition, enjoyed good advantages and had the best of training. But our little friend, Steve Holcombe, poor fellow, inherited from his father an appetite for drink and from his mother a savage temper. To balance these, he had none of the safeguards of a careful, moral or religious education, and none of those sweet and helpful home associations which follow a man through life and hold him back from wrong doing.
Thus unprepared, unshielded, unguarded, at the tender age of eleven years he left home to work his own way in the world. No mother's prayers had hitherto helped him, and no mother's prayers from henceforth followed him. No hallowed home influences had blessed and sweetened his miserable childhood and no tender recollections of sanctified home life were to follow him into the great wicked world. On the contrary, he was fleeing from his home to find some refuge, he knew not what, he knew not where. He was going out, boy as he was, loaded down with the vices and hungry with the passions of a man. He did not seek employment among people that were good or in circumstances encouraging to goodness, but just where of all places he would find most vice and learn most wickedness—on a steamboat. One knowing his antecedents and looking out into his future could easily have foreseen his career in vice and crime, but would hardly have predicted for him that life of goodness and usefulness which now for eleven wonderful years he has been leading.
He was employed on a steamboat which ran on the Tennessee river, and his first trip was to Florence, Alabama. His mother did not know what had become of him. He was employed in some service about the kitchen. He slept on deck with the hands and ate with the servants. Hungry as he was for some word or look of sympathy which, given him and followed up, might have made him a different character, nobody showed him any kindness. The steward of the boat on the contrary showed him some unkindness, and was in the act of kicking him on one occasion for something, when young Holcombe jumped at him like an enraged animal and frightened him so badly that he was glad to drop the matter for the present and to respect the boy for the future. On this trip he found five dollars in money on the boat, and was honest enough to take it to the steward for the owner.
When he returned home from this trip, strange to say, his mother so far from giving him a severer beating than usual, as might have been expected, did not punish him at all. She was probably too glad to get him back and too afraid of driving him away again. But nothing could restrain him now that he had once seen the world and made the successful experiment of getting on in the world without anybody's help. So that he soon went on another trip and so continued, going on four or five long steamboat runs before he was fourteen years of age, and spending his unoccupied time in gambling with either white men or negroes, as he found opportunity.
After he was fourteen years old he went on the upper Mississippi river and traveled to and from St. Louis. On the Mississippi steamers of those days gambling was common, not only among the servants and deck-hands, it was the pastime or the business of some of the first-class passengers also. Sometimes when a rich planter had lost all his ready money in gambling, he would put up a slave, male or female, that he might happen to have with him, and after losing, would borrow money to win or buy again the slave. Professional gamblers, luxuriously dressed and living like princes, frequented the steamers of those days for the purpose of entrapping and fleecing the passengers. All this only increased the fascination of gambling for young Holcombe, and he studied and practiced it with increasing zeal.
About this time, when he was in the neighborhood of fourteen years of age, his mother, awaking all too late to his peril and to her duty, got him a situation as office-boy in the office of Dr. Mandeville Thum, of Louisville, hoping to keep him at home and rescue him from the perilous life he had entered upon. Dr. Thum was much pleased with him, took great interest in him, and treated him with unusual kindness. He even began himself to teach him algebra, with the intention of making a civil engineer of the boy. And he was making encouraging progress in his studies and would, doubtless, have done well, had he continued.
During the time he spent in the service of Dr. Thum, he attended a revival meeting held by the Rev. Mr. Crenshaw, at Shippingsport, and was much impressed by what he heard. He became so awakened and interested that he responded to the appeals that were made by this devoted and zealous preacher and sought interviews with him. He tried his level best, as he expresses it, to work himself up to a point where he could feel that he was converted, a not rare, but very wrong, view of this solemn matter. But he could not feel it. While, however, he could not get the feeling, he determined to be a Christian, anyhow, a rarer and better, but not altogether correct, view of the subject either. For a week or ten days he succeeded in overcoming evil impulses, and in living right, but he was led away by evil companions. Soon after this he tried it again, and this time he succeeded for a longer time than before in resisting temptations and following his sense of right, but was one day persuaded to go on a Sunday steamboat-excursion to New Albany, with some young folks from Shippingsport, which proved the occasion of his fall. On returning home he and two other boys went part of the way on foot. They heard a man, not far away, crying for water, and Holcombe's quick impulse of sympathy led him to propose to go to the relief of the sufferer. When they found he was not so bad off as they thought, the two other boys began to abuse and mistreat the stranger. He was an unequal match for the two, however, and as he was about to get the best of them, young Holcombe knocked the poor man down, and they all kicked him so severely over the head and face that when they left him he was nearly dead. Holcombe went back the next day, and half a mile away he found the coroner holding an inquest over the man. He was preparing to flee to Indiana when he heard that the verdict of the jury was: "Death from exposure to the sun."
This cowardly and wicked deed wrought in him such shame, such self-loathing and such discouragement that he abandoned all hope and purpose of living a better life. With a sort of feeling of desperation and of revenge against his better nature for allowing him to yield and stoop to such meanness, he left his position in Louisville and shipped on a steamboat again for St. Louis. While the boat was lying at the wharf at St. Louis he got into a difficulty with one of the deck-hands who applied to him a very disgraceful name. Instantly young Holcombe seized a heavy meat-cleaver and would have split the man's head in two if the cook had not caught his arm as he swung it back for the stroke. From St. Louis he went up the Missouri river to Omaha, engaging, as usual, in gambling and other nameless vices.
On his second trip from Omaha to St. Louis he innocently provoked the anger of the steward of the boat, who abused him in such a way that Holcombe ran at him with an ice-pick, when the terrified man rushed into the office and took refuge behind the captain. It was decided that Holcombe should be discharged and put ashore. When the clerk called him up to pay him off, he volunteered some reproof and abuse of the seventeen-year-old boy. But, upon finding he was dealing with one who, when aroused, knew neither fear nor self-control, he was glad to quiet down and pay him his dues, as Holcombe remarked: "You may discharge me and put me ashore, but you shall not abuse me." And they put him ashore at Kansas City, then a small village. While waiting at Kansas City for the next boat to St. Louis (all traveling being done in those days and regions by water), he spent his time around bar-rooms and gambling-houses. There he saw a different and more extensive kind of gaming than he had ever seen before. Great quantities of money were on the tables before the players, greater than he had ever seen, and he saw it change hands and pass from one to another. Such a sight increased his desire to follow such a life. So he put up his money, the wages of his labor on the boat, and lost it—all. He spent the remainder of his stay in Kansas City wandering around, destitute, hungry, lonely, with various reflections on the fortunes and misfortunes of a gambler's life, till at last he got deck-passage on a boat to St. Louis, and paid his fare by sawing wood. During this trip his violent and revengeful temper led him to commit an act that nearly resulted in murder. One of the deck-hands threw down some wood which he had piled up, and Holcombe protested, whereupon the deck-hand cursed him and said: "You little rat, I will throw you overboard!" Mr. Holcombe replied: "I guess you won't," and said nothing more at the time. After the man had lain down and gone to sleep, Mr. Holcombe got a cord-stick, slipped upon him, and hit him on the skull with all his might, completely stunning the man. "Now," says Mr. Holcombe, speaking of this incident, "I can not understand how a man could do so cruel a thing, but then I felt I must have revenge some way, and I could not keep from it."
At St. Louis he got a position on a boat for New Orleans, and soon after arriving in that city he shipped on board a steamship for Galveston, Texas, but returned immediately to New Orleans. Here, however, he soon lost, in gambling, all the money he had made on the trip, and was so entirely without friends or acquaintances that he could find no place to sleep, and wandered about on the levee until one or two o'clock in the morning. To add to the loneliness and dismalness of his situation, it was during an epidemic of yellow fever in the city, and people were dying so fast they could not bury them, but had to plow trenches and throw the corpses in, as they bury soldiers on a battle-field. About one or two o'clock, a colored man, on a steamboat seeing him walking around alone, called him, and finding out his condition, took him on board the steamer and gave him a bed. But Holcombe was so afraid the negro had some design upon him, as there were no others on board, that he stole away from the boat and wandered around, alone, all the rest of the night.
On that awful night the great deep of his heart was broken up and he felt a sense of loneliness that he had never felt before in his life. He was in a strange city among a strange people. He had no friends, he had no means. He had not where to lay his head. The darkness of the night shut off the sight of those objects which in the day would have diverted his mind and relieved his painful reflections; and the awful stillness, broken only by the rattling of wheels that bore away the dead, made it seem to him as if his thoughts were spoken to him by some audible voice. His past life came up before him, but there was in it nothing pleasant for him to remember. It had been from his earliest recollection one constant experience of pain and sin. He was uneasy about himself. He was frightened at the past, and the recollection of his hard, but vain, struggle to get his evil nature changed and bettered, cast a dark cloud over his future. What could he do? Where could he go? Who was there could help him? Who was there that loved him? At his own home, if home it could be called, there was nothing but strife and cruelty and sin. Father, he had none. He that was his father had lived a drunkard's life, had died a drunkard's death and was buried in a drunkard's grave. And his mother—she had no power to help him or even love him as most mothers love their children, and as on that lone dismal night he would have given the world to be loved. Of God's mercy and love he did not know, he thought only of his wrath, nor had he learned how to approach him in prayer. Alone, alone, he felt himself to be shut up between a past that was full of sin and crime and a future that promised nothing better. But he did think of one who had loved him and who had said she would always love him and he felt there was truth in her soul and in her words. It was the brown-haired, sweet-faced, strong-hearted little girl he had left in Shippingsport. He would go back to her. She alone of all people in the world seemed able to help him and this seemed his last, his only hope. If she had remained true to him, and if she would love him, the world would not seem so dreary and the future would not seem so dark, and maybe she could help him to be a better man. "On the next day," says Mr. Holcombe, "an acquaintance of mine from Louisville ran across me as I was strolling about the streets, took me aboard a steamer and made me go home with him."
THE OLD MILL AT SHIPPINGSPORT.
As has already been said, Mr. and Mrs. Evans, the parents of Mrs. Holcombe, were people of excellent moral character and were so careful of their children that as long as they could prevent it, they did not allow them to associate freely with the Shippingsport children. But of Steve Holcombe, the worst of them all, they had a special dread. Mr. Evans could not endure to see him or to hear his name called. And yet, this same Steve Holcombe was in love with their own precious child, and had now come home to ask her to marry him. Of course, he did not visit her at her own home but he managed to see her elsewhere. He found that she had not wavered during his absence, but that the bond of their childhood had grown with her womanhood. And yet she knew full well his past career and his present character. She went into it "with her eyes open," to quote her own words. Against the will of her parents and against the advice of her friends she adhered to her purpose to marry Steve Holcombe when the time should come. Even his own mother, moved with pity at the thought of the sufferings and wretchedness which this marriage would bring the poor girl, tried to dissuade her from it and warned her that she was going to marry "the very devil." She replied that she knew all about it, and when asked why she then did it, her simple answer was "because I love him."
He promised her that he would try to be a better man and she, as well as he, believed it, though not because she expected he would some time become a Christian and not because she had the Christian's faith and hope. Her simple belief was that the outcome of her love would be his reformation and return to a better life. It was not thus definitely stated to herself by herself. It was an unconscious process of reasoning or rather it was the deep instinct of her strong and deeply-rooted love.
Mrs. Holcombe was recently asked if, during all the years of her husband's recklessness and disgraceful dissipation, his sins and crimes, his cruel neglect and heartless mistreatment of herself, her love ever faltered? She answered: "No; never. There never was a time, even when Mr. Holcombe was at his worst, that I did not love him. It pained me, of course, that some things should come through him, but I never loved him any less." A rare and wonderful love it surely was. When she was asked if during those dark and bitter years she ever gave up her belief that her husband would change his life and become a good man, she answered, "No; I never gave it up." A woman of deep Insight, of large reading and wide observation, on hearing these replies of Mrs. Holcombe, said: "It is the most wonderful case of love and patience and faith I have ever known."
He had come home then to marry Mary Evans. He met her at the house of a mutual friend and proposed an elopement. She was frightened and refused. But he pleaded and besought her, and, wounded and vexed at what seemed a disregard of his feelings and rights, he ended by saying, "It must be to-night or never." Whereupon she consented, though with great reluctance, and they went together to the house of his mother, in the city of Louisville. But his own mother would not consent to their marriage under such circumstances until she could first go and see if she could get the consent of the girl's parents. Accordingly, she went at once to Shippingsport, night as it was, and laid the case before them. They did not consent, but saw it would do no good to undertake to put a stop to it. So that, at the house of his mother in Louisville, they were married, Steve Holcombe and Mary Evans, the hardened gambler and the timid girl.
After his marriage he quit running on the river, settled down at Shippingsport and went to fishing for a living. And it did seem for a time that his hope was to be realized and that through the helpful influences of his young wife he was to become a better man. He grew steadily toward better purposes and toward a higher standard of character, and within two or three months after their marriage they joined the church together. Mrs. Holcombe says, however, that she does not now believe that she was a Christian at the time. They thought in a general way that it was right to join the church, and that it would do them good and somehow help them to be good. If they had had some one, wise and patient and faithful, to teach them and advise them and sympathize with them at this time of awakening and of honest endeavor after a spiritual life, they would probably have gone on happily and helpfully together in it. But alas! as is true in so many, many cases to-day, nobody understood or seemed to understand them, nobody tried or cared to understand them; nobody cared for their souls. It was taken for granted, then as now, that when people are gotten into the church, nothing special is to be done for them any further, though, in fact, the most difficult and delicate part of training a soul and developing Christian character comes after conversion and after joining the church. Mr. Holcombe attributes his present success in the helping and guidance of inquiring and struggling souls to his lack on the one hand of careful and sympathetic training in his earlier efforts to be a Christian and on the other hand to the great benefit of such training in his later efforts. In such a nature as his, especially, no mere form of religion and no external bond of union with the church was sufficient. The strength of his will, the tenacity of his old habits, the intensity of his nature and the violence of his passions were such that only an extraordinary power would suffice to bring him under control. It was not long, therefore, before he was overcome by his evil nature, and he soon gave over the ineffectual struggle and fell back into his old ways. His poor wife soon found to her sorrow that reforming a bad man was a greater undertaking than she had dreamed of, and was often reminded of her mother-in-law's remark that she had married "the very devil." And Mr. Holcombe found out, too, that his wife, good as she was, could not make him good. Some men there are so hungry-hearted and so dependent, that they can not endure life without the supreme and faithful and submissive affection of a wife, but who know not how to appreciate or treat a wife and soon lose that consideration and love for her which are her due. Then marriage becomes tyranny on the one side and slavery on the other.
Perhaps the reader will conclude later that this description applies all too well to the married life of Steve Holcombe and his faithful and brave-hearted young wife; for it was not long before he returned, in spite of all his solemn vows and his earnest resolutions, to his old habit of gambling and to all his evil ways. On a certain occasion not long after he married, in company with a friend, who is at this moment lying in the jail in Louisville for the violation of the law against gambling, he went on a fishing excursion to Mound City, Illinois. Having returned to the landing one night about midnight they found a fierce-looking man sitting on the wharf-boat who said to them on entering, "I understand there are some gamblers here and I have come to play them, and I can whip any two men on the Ohio river," at the same time exposing a large knife which he carried in his boot. He was evidently a bully who thought he could intimidate these strangers and in some underhanded way get from them their money. Mr. Holcombe did not reply but waited till the next morning when he "sized up the man" and determined to play against him. After they had been playing some time Mr. Holcombe discovered that the man was "holding cards out of the pack" on him. He said nothing, however, till the man had gotten out all the cards he wanted, when Mr. Holcombe made a bet. The other man "raised him," that is, offered to increase the amount. Mr. Holcombe raised him back and so on till each one had put up all the money he had. Then the man "showed down his hand" as the saying is, and he had the four aces. Mr. Holcombe replied "That is a good hand, but here is a better one;" and with that struck him a quick heavy blow that sent the man to the floor, Mr. Holcombe took all the money and the other man began to cry like a child and beg for it. Mr. Holcombe was instantly touched with pity and wanted to give him back his money but his partner objected. He did, however, give the man enough for his immediate wants and left him some the wiser for his loss of the rest.
At the same place the owner of the storeboat left a young man in charge, who, during the absence of his proprietor, offered to play against Mr. Holcombe and lost all the money he had. Then he insisted on Mr. Holcombe's playing for the clothing which he had in the store and Mr. Holcombe won all that from him, leaving him a sadder, but it is to be hoped a wiser, man.
Having thus once again felt the fascination of gambling and the intoxication of success, Mr. Holcombe was impelled by these and by his naturally restless disposition to give up altogether his legitimate business and to return to the old life. So without returning to visit his wife and child or even informing them of his whereabouts, he shipped on a steamer for Memphis and thence to New Orleans.
On his return trip from New Orleans he played poker and won several hundred dollars. On landing in Louisville, his half-brother, Mr. Wm. Sowders, the largest fish and oyster dealer in Louisville, gave him a partnership in his business, but they soon fell out and he quit the firm.
He removed to Nashville, Tennessee, and opened a business of the same kind there in connection with his brother's house in Louisville, Mr. Holcombe shipping his vegetables and produce in return for fish and oysters. This was early in 1860. It was a great trial for his young wife to be taken from among her relatives and friends and put down among people who were entire strangers, especially that she had found out in four or five years of married life that her husband had grown away from her, that his heart and life were in other people than his family, in other places than his home and in others pleasures than his duty. She knew that she could not now count on having his companionship day or night, in sickness or in health, in poverty or in wealth. And to make the outlook all the more gloomy for her, she had just passed through one of the severest trials that had come into her life.
When an intense woman finds that she is deceived and disappointed in her husband, and the hopes of married bliss are brought to naught, she finds some compensation and relief in the love of her children. So it was with Mrs. Holcombe. But just before the time came for them to remove to Nashville, death came and took from her arms her second-born child. This made it all the harder to leave her home to go among strangers. But already, as a wife, she had learned that charity which suffereth long and is kind, which seeketh not her own and which endureth all things.
Mr. Holcombe's business in Nashville was very profitable and he made sometimes as much as fifty dollars a day, so that in a short time he had accumulated a considerable amount of money. But his passion for gambling remained. His wife had hoped that the sufferings and death of their little child might soften his heart and lead him to a better life. But it seemed to have no effect on him whatever. Though he did not follow gambling as a profession, he engaged in it at night and in a private way with business men.
When the active hostilities of the war came on, his communication with Louisville was cut off and so his business was at an end. Leaving his wife and only remaining child alone in Nashville he went to Clarksville and engaged in the ice business. While he was there, the Kentucky troops, who were encamped near that place, moved up to Bowling Green, Kentucky. The sound of fife and drum and the sight of moving columns of soldiers stirred either his patriotism or his enthusiasm so that he got rid of his business and followed them on up to Green river in Kentucky, and went into camp with them where he spent some time, without, however, being sworn into service. But this short time sufficed for him and he became satisfied that "lugging knap-sack, box and gun was harder work than" gambling.
He quit the camp, settled down at Bowling Green, and opened a grocery and restaurant, doing a very prosperous business. While there, he had a severe spell of sickness and came near dying, but did not send for his wife and child, who were still alone in Nashville. Just before the Federal troops took possession of Bowling Green, he sold his grocery for a large claim on the Confederate Government which a party held for some guns sold to the Confederacy. He then rode horseback from Bowling Green to Nashville, where he rejoined his wife and child. After another severe spell of sickness through which his wife nursed him, he left his family again in those trying and fearful times and went South to collect his claim on the Confederate Government. Having succeeded in getting it he returned to Nashville with a large sum of money.
As he had no legitimate business to occupy his time and his mind, he returned to gambling and this is his own account of it: "Then I began playing poker with business men in private rooms; and one of those business men being familiar with faro banks, roped us around to a faro room to play poker; and while we were playing, the faro dealer, who had cappers around, opened up a brace game, and the game of poker broke up, and I drifted over to the faro table, and did not look on long until I began to bet, and soon lost two or three hundred dollars which I had in my pockets, and lost a little on credit, which I paid the next morning. I lost what I had the next day, and kept up that same racket until I was broke. During this time I had been very liberal with the gamblers, treated them to oyster stews and other good things; and when I got broke I got to sitting around the gambling-house, and heard them say to each other, 'We will have to make Steve one of the boys,' and thus it was I became familiar with faro."
The initiation of Mr. Holcombe into the game of faro was an epoch in his life. He was so fascinated with it, and saw so much money in it, that he now finally and deliberately gave up all attempts at any other business or occupation, and, removing again to Louisville, in partnership with a gambling friend he "opened up a game" or established a house of his own for playing faro in that city. He sent for his family thinking he was settled for life. Alas! how little he knew of that heart of his that knew so little of God. He found out later what St. Augustine has so beautifully said for all humanity: "Thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts find no repose till they repose in Thee." It was not long before he had lost all his money and was "dead broke" again. It was about this time and during this residence at Louisville, that, uncontrolled by the grace and power of God, and untouched by the love that can forgive as it hopes to be forgiven, he committed the greatest crime of his life.
A young man was visiting and courting a half-sister of his at Shippingsport, and, under promise of marriage, had deceived her. When Mr. Holcombe found it out, he felt enraged, and thought it his duty to compel him to marry her. But knowing himself so well, and being afraid to trust himself to speak to the young man about it, he asked his two older half-brothers to see him and get the affair settled. They refused to do so. Mr. Holcombe then got a pistol and looked the man up with the deliberate intention of having the affair settled according to his notion of what was right, or killing him. He met him at Shippingsport, near the bank of the canal, and told him who he was—for they scarcely knew each other. Then he reminded him of what had occurred, and said that the only thing to be done was to marry the girl. This the man declined to do, saying: "We are as good as married now." He had scarcely uttered the words when Mr. Holcombe drew his derringer and shot him. When he fell, Mr. Holcombe put his hand under the poor man's neck, raised him up and held him until a doctor could be called. He was touched with a great feeling of pity for his victim, and would have done anything in his power for him. But all his pity and repentance could not bring back the dying man. He went into a neighboring house and washed the blood from his hands, but he could not wash the blood from his conscience. In after years the cry of another murderer, "Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O, God!" was to burst from his lips, and faith in the blood of a murdered Christ was to bring the answer of peace to his long troubled soul. But alas! alas! he was to add crime to crime and multiply guilt manifold before that time should come.
He was soon arrested and taken to jail, where, after some hours, he was informed that the man was dead. Some time afterward he was tried by a jury and acquitted, though the Commonwealth's Attorney, assisted by paid counsel, did all he could to procure his conviction. But no human sentence or approval of public opinion can quiet a guilty human conscience when awakened by the God whose sole prerogative of executing justice is guarded by His own solemn and awful words, "Vengeance is mine; I will repay," saith the Lord. When the conscience is pressed with a great sense of guilt, it seeks relief by the way of contrition and repentance, or it seeks relief by a deeper plunge into sin and guilt, as if the antidote to a poison were a larger dose of poison. There is no middle ground unless it be insanity. Nor did Mr. Holcombe find any middle ground, though he declares that he never allowed himself to think about the killing of Martin Mohler, and could not bear to hear his name. He had to keep very busy in a career of sin, however, to keep from thinking about it, and that is exactly the second alternative of the two described above.
"After this," says Mr. Holcombe, "I continued gambling, traveling around from place to place, and at last I settled down at Nashville and dealt faro there. I took my family with me to Nashville. I gambled there for awhile, and then came back to Louisville, where I opened a game for working men. But when I looked at their hard hands and thought of their suffering families, I could not bear to take their money. Then I turned my steps toward the South and landed in Augusta, Georgia. I went to Augusta in 1869 in connection with a man named Dennis McCarty. We opened there a big game of faro, where I did some of the biggest gambling I ever did in my life. On one occasion I played seven-up with a man and beat him out of five thousand dollars, which broke him up entirely."
Let us now take a peep into his home-life: Mrs. Holcombe says that in Augusta he was in the habit of staying out for several days and nights at a time, a thing which he had never done before. They lived in Augusta something over two years, and during all that time she had not one day of peace. He was more reckless than he had ever been before. She suffered most from his drunkenness and his ungovernable temper. Sometimes he would come into the house in a bad humor and proceed to vent his wrath on her and the furniture; for he was never harsh to his children, but on the contrary, excessively indulgent, especially to his sons. During his outbursts of anger, Mrs. Holcombe always sat perfectly still, not in fear, but in grief; for she knew as little of fear as he. Many a time he has come into the house in a bad humor and proceeded to upset the dining-table, emptying all the food onto the floor and breaking all the dishes. On one occasion he came home angry and found his wife sitting on a sofa in the parlor. He began to complain of her and to find fault with her, and as her silence seemed to provoke him, he began to curse her; and as she sat and wept in silence, he grew worse and worse, using the most dreadful oaths she ever heard. When he had fully vented his passion, he walked out and stood awhile at the front gate as if in a study. Then he walked back into the house where she sat, still weeping, and said, in a mild and gentle tone: "Well, Mary, I was pretty mad awhile ago, wasn't I?" Then he began to apologize and to tell her how sorry he was for having talked to her so harshly, and wound up by petting her. He was at times almost insanely jealous of his wife, and if he saw her even talking with a man, no matter whom, it put him in a rage which ended only when he had vented it in the most abusive language to her.
On another occasion, while they were living in Augusta, an incident occurred which illustrates at once her unexampled devotion and his unexampled depravity. On the night in question she had gone to bed, but not to sleep. About midnight he came staggering in and fell full length on the floor at the foot of the stairway. She tried to help him up, but he was so dead drunk she could not lift him. She left him lying at the foot of the stairway and went back to bed. But, though she was very tired, she could not endure the thought of lying in a comfortable bed while her husband was on the floor. She got up, therefore, and went down stairs again and sat on the floor beside him in her night-dress till morning. Then she left him and went up stairs to dress, that she might be prepared for the duties of the day. When, some time afterward, she came back to where he was lying, he abused and cursed her for leaving him alone, and, before his tirade was ended he was sorry, and tried to smooth it over by saying: "I did not think you would leave me."
Mrs. Holcombe says concerning her life at this period: "I usually walked the floor, after the children were in bed, till past midnight waiting for him to come home. One night in particular, between eleven and twelve o'clock, I heard a shot fired and I heard a man cry out not far from the house. I thought it was Mr. Holcombe, and my agony was almost more than I could bear while waiting for day to come, for I was sure somebody had shot him. But between three and four o'clock In the morning he came in, and his coming brought me great relief." "Then another time," she goes on to say, "I was sitting by the window when an express wagon drove up with a coffin in it. The driver said to me, 'Does this coffin belong here?' I understood him to say, 'Does Mr. Holcombe live here?' I thought it was Mr. Holcombe and that he had been killed and sent home to me in his coffin. The driver repeated his question twice, but I was so paralyzed I could not answer him a word."
From Augusta Mr. Holcombe removed with his family to Atlanta, where he made a good deal of money. Mrs. Holcombe says concerning their stay in Atlanta, "My life at Atlanta was no better than it had been at Augusta. Much of my time was spent in walking the floor and grieving. Often in my loneliness and sorrow my lips would cry out, 'How can I endure this life any longer?' I had not then become a Christian and did not know what I do now about taking troubles and burdens to God. And yet I believe that it was God who comforted my heart more than once when my sorrow was more than I could bear. I cried to Him without knowing Him. All these years I tried to raise my children right, and I taught them to respect their father. I hid his sins from them when I could, and when I could not, I always excused him to them the best I could." But Mr. Holcombe instead of aiding his wife's efforts to bring up their children in the right path, often perversely put obstacles in her way and increased her difficulties, though he did try to conceal his drinking from them, and would never allow his boys to have or handle cards. So in many things he was a combination of contradictions. He could not endure, however, for his wife to punish the children, and especially the boys. On one occasion he came home and the younger son was still crying from the punishment inflicted by his mother for wading in a pond of water with his shoes on. Mr. Holcombe asked him what was the matter, and when he found out, he was so angry he made the boy go and wade in the pond again with his shoes on. And yet Mrs. Holcombe's love for her husband "never wavered," and she loved him "when he was at his worst."
While Mr. Holcombe was living in Atlanta he attended the races in Nashville, and while there, two men came along that had a new thing on cards, and they beat him out of five or six thousand dollars—broke him, in fact. After he was broke, he went to one of the men by the name of Buchanan and said, "I see that you have got a new trick on cards, and as I am well acquainted through the South, if you will give it away to me, we can go together and make money." The man, after some hesitation, agreed to do so. They went in partnership and traveled through the South as far as Key West, Florida, stopping at the principal cities and making money everywhere. At Key West he and his partner had a split and separated. From Key West Mr. Holcombe crossed over to Cuba, and spent some time in Havana. In seeking adventures in that strange city he made some very narrow escapes, and was glad to get away. On landing at New Orleans, though he had a good deal of money, the accumulations of his winnings on his late tour through the South, he got to playing against faro bank and lost all he had. But he fell in with a young man about twenty years of age, from Georgia, on his way to Texas, and became very intimate with him. Finding that this young man had a draft for $1,050, by the most adroit piece of maneuvering he got another man, a third party, to win it from him for himself, and gave this third party $50 for doing it. Then he took charge of the young man in his destitution and distress, paid his bill for a day or two at a hotel in New Orleans, and gave him enough to pay his way on to Texas. The young man departed thinking Mr. Holcombe was one of the kindest men he had ever met. The gentle reader, if he be a young man who thinks himself wise enough to be intimate with strangers, might learn a useful little lesson from this young Georgian's experience as herein detailed.
From New Orleans, Mr. Holcombe went by river to Shreveport, Louisiana, where he met again with his former partner, Buchanan. They made up their differences and went into partnership again, and were successful in winning a good deal of money together. But afterward their fortunes changed and they both lost all they had. This soured Buchanan, who had never cordially liked Holcombe since their quarrel and separation at Key West. Mr. Holcombe himself shall narrate what took place afterward: "During this time we had been sleeping in a room together. Buchanan knew that I had two derringer pistols. He got Phil Spangler to borrow one, and I feel satisfied he had snaked the other. A friend of mine, John Norton, asked me to deal faro bank, and I got broke, and the night that I did, I put the box in the drawer pretty roughly, and made some pretty rough remarks. Buchanan was present, but took no exception to what I said that night. The next morning, however, in the bar-room he began to abuse me, and we abused each other backward and forward until I had backed clear across the street. During this time I had my derringer pistol out in my hand. He had a big stick in his hand and a knife in his bosom. When we got across the street I made this remark, 'Mr. Buchanan, I do not want to kill you,' He was then about ten feet from me, and made a step toward me. I took deliberate aim at his heart and pulled the trigger, but the pistol snapped. He walked away from me then. I ran up to the hotel where Aleck Doran was, knowing that his six-shooter was always in good condition. I borrowed it and started to hunt Buchanan up, and when I found him, he came up to me with his hand out. We made up and have been good friends ever since. After we left there, these parties with whom we had been playing, got to quarreling among themselves about the different games, and the result was that John Norton killed Phil Spangler and another one of the men. And such is the life of the gambler." And such is too often, alas! the death of the gambler.
From Shreveport he went back to Atlanta where his family, consisting now of his wife, two sons and two daughters, had remained. But he could not be contented at any one place. It seemed impossible for him to be quiet, no matter how much money he was making. Indeed, the more he got the more disquieted he seemed, and yet it was his passion to win money. Sometimes he would go to his home with his pockets full of it and would pour it out on the floor and tell the children to take what they wanted. He was so restless when he had won largely that he could not sleep; and his wife says she has known him to get up after having retired late and walk back to the city to his gambling house to find somebody to play with. He seemed to want to lose his money again. In fact, he seemed happier when he was entirely without money than when he had a great deal.
Not contented, then, at Atlanta, he went from there to Beaufort, South Carolina, to gamble with the officers of the navy. He got into a game of poker with some of them and won all the money. Then he was ready to quit and leave the place, but he got into a difficulty with a man there whose diamond pin he had in pawn for money lent him, and though it be at the risk of taxing the reader's patience with these details, yet, in order to show vividly what a gambler's life is, we shall let Mr. Holcombe give his own account of the affair:
"This man was the bully of the place. I had his diamond pin in pawn for seventy-five dollars, and another little fellow owed me eighteen dollars, or something like that, and I wanted him to pay me. Instead of paying me, however, he began to curse and abuse me; and I hit him on the nose, knocked him over and bloodied it, and he was bleeding like everything. He got over into the crowd; and under the excitement of the moment, I drew my pistol and started toward him. This big bully caught me gently by the vest, and asked me quietly to put up my pistol. I did so. Then he said, 'You can't shoot anybody here,' I said 'I do not want to shoot anybody.' I then asked him to turn me loose. He again said 'You can't shoot anybody here.' I then said, 'What is the matter with you? Are we not friends?' And he said 'No,' and made the remark, 'I will take your pistol away from you and beat your brains out.' I struck him and knocked him over on a lounge, but he rose up and came at me, and we had quite a tussle around the room. The others all ran and left the house, and the barkeeper hid.
"When we separated, the big fellow had quite a head on him; was all beaten up. He then went into the other room and sat down, and the barkeeper came in where I was. I was willing to do or say anything to reconcile this man, and I said to the barkeeper that I was sorry of the difficulty, as I liked the man, which was a lie, and a square one, for I hated him from the moment I saw him. When he heard what I said, he came sauntering into the room, and I said to him, 'I am sorry this occurred, but you called me such a name that I was compelled to do as I did. You know that you are a brave man; and if any man had called you such a name, you would have done just as I did.' He called me a liar, and at it we went again. We separated ourselves every time. I got the best of the round. After that he stepped up to the sideboard and got a tumbler; but I looked him in the eye so closely that he could not throw it at me, and he put it down. After a little more conversation, he started to lift up a heavy spittoon of iron. I stepped back a foot or two, drew my pistol, and told him if he did not put that down, I would kill him. He put it down. I then told the barkeeper he must come in there and witness this thing, because I expected to have to kill him. After the barkeeper came in, the man went out, saying, 'You had a gun on me to-night, and I will have one on you to-morrow.' Feeling satisfied if I remained, one of us would have to be killed; and feeling that I did not want to kill him, neither did I want to get killed on a cold collar, I concluded to walk out of the place. I got the barkeeper to promise to ship my trunk to Atlanta, and walked through the swamps to a station fourteen miles away, arriving there some time next day." Other such experiences Mr. Holcombe had enough to fill a volume perhaps, but these are sufficient to give an impression of what a gambler's life is and to show what was the life of that same Steve Holcombe who now for eleven years has been a pattern of Christian usefulness and zeal.