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

In the providence of God the Fifth and Walnut-street church established the Holcombe Mission near where I lived, and among other waifs picked up on the street and taken to the Sunday-school were my children. While I had always been pretty bad myself, I had always tried to teach my children better. I shuddered at the thought of my boys going on in the way that I was going. When they went to Sunday-school and learned the songs there and came home and sang them, it broke me all to pieces. I had nothing left to do but to go and get drunk in self-defense. The Sunday-school teacher (Mrs. J. R. Clarke), who taught my children, had been trying to find me for a long time. She must have thought from seeing my children at Sunday-school that there was some good in me; and after awhile she sent me a Bible with a great many passages marked in it. She was looking for me and had sent for me to come and see her, and I had been trying to keep out of her way for a long time. Finally she found me at home one day, and would take no excuse, but insisted that I must come to Holcombe's Mission; and, of course, I promised to go, because I could not help myself. I could not get out of it; and if I had a redeeming trait in the world, it was that I would not break a positive promise.

I promised her to come, and that day I did go. They were holding noon-day meetings at the time. I do not remember just now that I was very deeply impressed. I was of a skeptical turn of mind and very critical. I well remember I criticised all the testimonies given there; but the thing was so strange to me, so different from anything that I was used to, that I was very considerably impressed in a strange kind of way, which is unaccountable to me even now. I had taken a seat near the door, so that I might get out very quick; but Brother Holcombe headed me off, and caught me before I got to the door. I did not know him personally at that time, but had known of him for a long time. Of course, I could not get out of the Mission without promising to come again. After having come two or three times, I was asked to say something, but did not feel like saying anything. Finally I stood up one day, perhaps the third or fourth day I was there. It was not a time when they were asking people if they wanted an interest in their prayers. I got up and said I wanted an interest in their prayers that I might be saved from myself. I had known for a long time that I was helpless, so far as delivering myself from drink was concerned. I knew nothing about Christianity, in fact, I did not care much about it, because I had not studied on the subject, and would not study on the subject. For many years I had not dared to stop and think seriously about such a subject, but when I heard that the Gospel of Christ was able to deliver such a man as I, I heard it gladly, because I had found there was no earthly power that could deliver such a man as I was. In the meantime, I had been reading my Bible, and had committed some of it to memory; and there was a good deal of mystery attached to the whole thing – things that I could not understand. When they asked me to speak, I quoted a passage from the Bible. One day I quoted the passage about a man having put his hand to the plow and looking back, not being worthy of the kingdom of God. Brother Messick, pastor of the church which I afterward joined, prayed directly afterward, and in his prayer he quoted this passage of Scripture, and prayed in such an encouraging and helpful way, that I rose from my knees satisfied in my heart that I was changed.

Well, from that time until now I have never drunk anything. That was in January or February, 1883. I have never had a desire for liquor but once since. Last summer I went to Crab Orchard. I was chef down there, and I had to handle very choice wines and liquors in my business, and I handled one brand of wine that I was particularly fond of in old times. I was tempted that time to drink wine. It seemed the tempter said to me: "You are way down here where nobody knows anything about you. It is good, and you know it won't hurt you. It don't cost you anything and it is nothing but wine, and you need not take too much." At that time I could get all the liquor I wanted. If I wanted it, I could order a hogshead of it just by a scratch of the pen. With that single exception, I have never had a temptation to drink. I don't know that I had an appetite to drink then. It was a clear cut temptation from without, and not from within.

I have had no trouble about getting positions since my conversion and deliverance from the appetite for drink. My family are well housed, well clothed and well fed, and have everything they need, and have had since the time I became a Christian man. They themselves are the greatest evidences in the world of what Christianity can do for a man. A short time ago – six months ago – I established myself in business, and have been doing a thriving, prosperous business from that time until now.

I might say something about my going to the work-house: Two years ago, or a little over, I was asked to go to the work-house one Sunday evening. I was very much impressed with the necessity for working for the poor men there. I was at that time identified with the Mission work, and the services at the work-house were all under the auspices of the Y. M. C. A. I continued going to the work-house for some length of time – three or four months. The Y. M. C. A. very kindly divided time with me and other Mission workers. After having gone to the work-house three or four months, I stopped going. The Chairman of the Devotional Committee of the Y. M. C. A. sent for me and gave me charge of the work-house and jail, which, of course, I accepted in the name of the Mission; and from that time until now both of them have been under Mission workers. I was very anxious to return to the work-house, but our head decided that I should take the jail, where I have continued to go for a year and a half – I suppose about that length of time – every Sunday when I was in the city, with possibly one or two exceptions.

Note. – Mr. Denny is at present the joint-proprietor, with Mr. Ropke, of a thriving restaurant on Third street, between Jefferson and Green, Louisville.

B. F. DAVIDSON

Twenty years ago I resided in the city of Cincinnati; was President of a Boatman's Insurance Company, proprietor of a ship chandlery, and interested largely in some twenty odd steamboats; and also interested largely in other insurance companies, and was rated as worth half a million of dollars. Through depreciation in property, bad debts, and indorsing for other parties largely, in four years I had lost all my money. To retrieve my fortune, I then started West, not being willing, of course, to accept a position where I had been a proprietor. While there, associating with the miners and Western people generally, I contracted the habit of drinking. This grew upon me and was continued, with short intermissions of soberness, up to four years ago – about last January. I was brought very low as a consequence of my dissipation, and I have traveled as a tramp from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the lakes to the Gulf, spending my time in alternately fighting and yielding to the demon of drink. For five years previous to my coming to Louisville, I had given up all hope of ever being able to make anything of myself, as I had tried, in vain, every known remedy to cure me of the appetite. My pride was effectually humbled, and I was in despair.

From the time that I went West – which was in 1872 – until my arrival in 1884, my children, a daughter and son, knew not whether I was dead or alive – knew nothing of me whatever. After I took to drink, I lost all interest in them and everything else.

As soon as I got off the ferry-boat in Louisville, in as sad a plight as any wretched man was ever in, I met an old friend, who had known me in years previous, and who handed me two dollars, requesting me to call at his office the next morning, when he would give me such assistance as I needed. The two dollars I spent that day for whisky. That night I begged a quarter to pay for my lodging. The next day, by begging, I filled up pretty well on whisky again. Toward evening I went into a Main-street house and asked a gentleman for a quarter to pay for a night's lodging, I had lost all pride, all self-respect, and could beg with a brazen face. The gentleman handed me a card of Holcombe's Mission. As I did not know or care anything about missions or churches, I merely stuck the card in my pocket and went on my way. After walking around for some time I heard the remark: "There goes that old man now." Upon looking up I recognized the gentleman whom I last asked for a quarter to pay for a night's lodging, and another man, engaged in conversation. The other gentleman, who proved to be the Rev. Steve Holcombe, of Holcombe's Mission, took me by the hand and invited me up to the Mission rooms, where I told him my story. He asked me if I ever had asked God through Jesus Christ to assist me in my endeavors to become a sober man. I told him I had not, as I had made up my mind years ago that God had no use for me. I felt as though I had sinned beyond redemption.

I had left home very early in life. My mother was the best Christian woman I had ever seen. She was a Methodist, but she never could preach Christianity to me – I fell back on my own righteousness. I did not drink, I did not smoke, I did not chew, I did not swear, I did not run after women, I did not loaf around saloons like other young men. When my mother was after me to join the church, I told her that would not make me any better: "Look at your church members; is that man any better than I am?" My sister, along toward the last, having joined the Episcopal church, I took two pews in that church; was a lay member, but I did not attend it. That was in Newport – St. Paul's Episcopal church, Newport. When the minister insisted on my going to church, I told him that while he would be preaching sermons I would be building steamboats, so his sermons would not do me any good.

After I got to drinking, my poor daughter did not see me. I did not go to my children at all. I never got but one letter from them during that time, from 1872 to 1884, and that was a letter that went to Cincinnati, and they held it there, I believe, for two years. I was at Cincinnati a good many times; but they could never get me to stay there long enough to get my children down to see me. As soon as I had an idea that they were manœuvring for anything of that kind, I would get out of town at once, and they would not know where I had gone.

During my life as a tramp, there is no kind of work that can be thought of that I did not work at more or less, and the money I earned – sometimes I earned as much as eight dollars a day – eventually went to the barkeepers; I could not even buy my clothes.

After a long talk with Brother Holcombe, I told him that, having tried everything else, I was perfectly willing to try God. That night I went to church, and went up to be prayed for. There was no regular meeting at the Mission then, from the fact that the church that was running the Mission had a revival. So, with Brother Holcombe, I went around to the revival meeting at the Fifth and Walnut-street church. When the invitation was given for those who wanted to be prayed for to come forward, I was among the first to accept it, and went up clothed in all my rags. After prayer I felt much better than I had for many years. That night I went back and lay on the floor in the Mission, having refused an invitation from Brother Holcombe to go to a boarding-house, telling him if God, in His mercy, would take from me the appetite for strong drink, I had still strength and will enough left to make my own living. The next morning I asked Brother Holcombe to go with me to the paper-mill of Bremaker-Moore Company, where they were building a dam to prevent an overflow from stopping the engines in the paper-mill. I secured a position there, at a dollar and a quarter a day, to shovel mud. As soon as the river commenced to fall that occupation was gone; but the superintendent of the mill, becoming in the meantime somewhat acquainted with my history, offered me a situation inside, which I held for three weeks, when I was sent for to see the business manager of the Post. I accepted a position on the Post as advertising solicitor at fifteen dollars a week, which was afterward increased to twenty-five. I was then made business manager, at thirty dollars, which position I now hold.

I can say this: That while I had an abundance of means to find happiness, pleasure and contentment, and had sought it in every possible way that a man could, I failed to find it until I accepted Christ as my Saviour, and gave myself into His hands. Since then I have had a happiness I never knew before. My life has been one of constant peace and uninterrupted prosperity. My children are both happily married, and I have married myself.

Though I was before so proud that I could not accept my mother's teaching, I was at a point where I would have accepted anything. They would tell me that doctor so-and-so would cure me; which was no kindness to me, because it kept me from asking God's help. But nothing would do me any good. So I said, "God, here I am; accept me. If there is any good in me, bring it out. I am down, down, down; I can not help myself."

Brother Holcombe had told me what God had done for him. I had confidence in him from the start, from the fact of his having told me he was a gambler so long; and when he told me God had redeemed him from the desire for gambling, I thought he might take away the appetite for drink from me; and He has done so, I am very thankful to say. I expect I was the worst-looking sight you ever saw, but I do not take a back seat now for any one – I look as well as anybody. As I told a man last week: "With the Lord on my side, I do not fear anything!" I had had charge of men, and had succeeded in managing them. I did not accept religion because I was a weak-minded man. As evidence of that, I have proved it since as I had proved it before. I proved that when I was trying to be a good man in my own way. I have proved since that I was not a weak-minded man from the responsible positions I have held and do hold.

But, as I was going to say, I had not shaved for two years, and had not had my hair cut, I am satisfied, for one year. My hair was hanging down on my shoulders; my face, of course, not very clean; my clothes were rags. My shoes were simply tops, and the gentleman who gave me these two dollars, told me: "Captain, you are the hardest-looking man I ever saw in my life. I do not know how I recognized you." I said: "This is the condition I am in, and drinking has brought me to it."

I have been asked by several prominent men how it is I get up night after night and tell people how bad I have been. I told them it was like this; if they had been sick nigh unto death and were going to die, and a physician came and gave them some medicine and made whole men out of them, would they not be going around the streets telling people about that physician? I said that is the reason I get up every night and tell people about it. Christ was the physician that healed me. That is the remedy I have for all evil now – the blood of Jesus Christ. It was utterly impossible for a man to exist and be in a worse condition than I was. I was physically and mentally a wreck; and now by accepting Christ – becoming a Christian – I am physically, morally, mentally and spiritually restored and well. That is the reason why I do not hesitate to tell anybody – even people coming into my office. An editor of a paper said to me: "Is it possible you were a tramp?" I told him it was; and he was talking something about attacking me through his paper, about what I had been. I said, "Blaze away; it won't hurt me. I do not deny having been a tramp and a drunkard – everything that was mean. But what am I now?" I do not care what they bring back of my past record; they can not hurt me, for I do not deny it. It is what I am now. I think now that I was as bad and mean as a man could possibly be. But I am no longer what I was, by the grace of Him who called me out of the former darkness into His light.

H. CLAY PRICE

I used to know Brother Holcombe in those days; knew him to be a gambler. He was considered one of the best of gamblers, but I always looked upon him as being an honorable gambler, so far as I have heard. I knew him even before he was a gambler.

Well, my father and mother were very pious, my mother especially. She was a praying woman, and everybody knew her by the name of "Aunt Kittie," and my father as "Uncle Billy." My father did not think it was any harm to play cards in the parlor every night. When I was young he loved to play whist. I had a sister older than I, sixteen or seventeen years old, and she used to invite young men, and father used to invite them, to come there and play cards; and the moment they commenced to fix the table, my father beckoned his head to me, and I knew what that meant – to get out. We had a young negro that used to wait on the ladies in the parlor, and he told me one time, "You steal a deck of cards and I will show you how to play cards." And I stole a deck of cards from the house and we went back in the stable; and that is the way I came to learn how to play cards. I was twelve or fifteen years old at that time – not any older than that – and I commenced playing cards for money, and I kept on playing cards for money with the boys; for money or for anything. I was sent off to school – to St. Mary's College, and we got to playing cards there for money, and we were caught, and the oldest one was expelled from school, and I promised never to do it any more, and the other boys promised not to do it any more, and they did not. But I kept on and I was caught playing cards, and I was expelled from school. After that my father sent me to St. Joseph's College in Ohio. I ran off from that school and came home, and I was appointed a Deputy Marshal by my brother-in-law, W. S. D. McGowen; and I got to gambling then sure enough and running after women; and about that time the war came on, and I went off with my brother-in-law into the army, and I gambled all through the army – everywhere I could get five cents to play with. All I had I gambled away. I came back home and I gambled here; played in the faro banks all the time. And a proprietor of a gambling house by the name of Jo. Croxton came to me and said, "You are too good a man to be gambling around. I will give you an interest, and you can take charge of my house." I did not know much about gambling, but I knew how to take care of his house. He gave me the bank roll; and I went on down and down.

I was married then and had a faithful, gentle and devoted wife, but I thought I was smarter than anybody about gambling, and I thought I could make big money, and so I would leave my wife, devoted and dependent as she was, and I kept traveling on around the country, going to different towns. I went to Nashville; from there I went to New Orleans. I came back to Nashville. I left Nashville and went to Huntsville, Ala.; came back here and went to St. Louis; then to Chicago and Lexington. After that I went back to Nashville again. I made a good deal of money if I could have kept it; but the Lord would not let me have it. I averaged here for years and years $500 a month. Sometimes I made more – made as much as $1,700 a month, and once I went up as high as $2,100 a month – made big winnings. As fast as I got this money I could not keep it – threw it away on women all the time and gambling against the bank and poker; would spit at a mark for money. I have lost hundreds and hundreds of dollars without getting off of my seat, with men I knew were robbing me all the time. It was a passion I had to gamble and I'd not stop. In one game of poker that I was in I bet and lost $900 on one hand, and I have never played at poker since that time.

When the gambling-houses were broken up here in Louisville, I concluded I would go off to Chicago. I had some money and I went to Chicago; and as soon as I got there, I got broke, lost all the money I had. I was among strangers and I was dead broke. Finally I got another situation, and worked there for some time. I then got hold of some money again, and I came home and remained some time. My wife was begging me all the time not to go away – did not think I ought to go away; she said that I could stay here and get some work to do, and make an honest living. But I thought I had better go back to Chicago and make some money; and I made some money as soon as I got there by playing faro bank; and I did very well at that time, made a good deal of money; and you know how a man feels when he has five hundred dollars in his pocket; and yet all that time I did not send my wife anything. I thought I would get about one thousand dollars and open some kind of a bar-room or cigar shop, or something of the kind. But the day before Christmas I got to playing against the faro bank, and got broke; and I was the most miserable man in the world, to think that I had lost the last chance I had. The day before Christmas my wife wrote me, "Why don't you come home? I had rather see you home than there again making money," I said, "Yesterday I got broke – I played to win. I had nothing to eat all day." But accidentally I found a twenty-five cent piece in my pocket; and I got up and went and bought a ten-cent dinner, and paid fifteen cents for a cigar. I have done that many times, I suppose, bought a quarter dinner and given the other quarter for a cigar. I just got to studying about it, studying about what I was to do. I said, "If I come back to Louisville, I will starve. I am not competent to keep a set of books, or clerk anywhere; but," I said, "I will go back if I do starve." So I wrote to my patient wife: "I have lost every cent I had in the world, I have got to work one week longer to make enough money to come home on, and I am coming. You may look for me the first of next week." As soon as they paid me off that evening I jumped on the cars and came home, having just the money to pay my fare.

Before this Brother Holcombe had met me time and again after he had been converted. He used to come after me; and every time he would see me, may be I would be looking at something in the street – he would hit me on the shoulder and say, "How do you do, old boy?" and then he would talk to me about my salvation, and about Jesus Christ. I used to hide from him; but it looked like every time he came around he would nail me, and talk to me about Jesus. That was when I was gambling here and prosperous. He told me about my mother and told me I ought to quit gambling. I said, "Brother Holcombe, what shall I do if I quit gambling? I have no way to make a living." He said, "Look to God, and He will help you." I went away about that time; and as soon as I came back, every time he would see me he would nail me again. After awhile I got interested in him. I would look for him and when I would catch him, I would say, "You can not get away from me now." That was after I came from Chicago. I had nowhere to go except to visit bar-rooms. So I began to go down around the old Mission every night. I heard the singing and praying down there. One night I said, "I am going to see Brother Holcombe." The clock struck eight, and I said "I am not going in to-night, it is too late. I will go to-morrow;" and to-morrow night came and I went down there and went in very early, before they commenced singing; and they sang and prayed and Brother Holcombe preached, and the next night I went, and the next night I went, and I went every night. And then they moved up here on Jefferson street and after they moved up here, I stayed away a week, and then I commenced coming again; and here I am now, thank God. I think God has been my friend all the way through. To think He has let me go as far as He could, and at last brought me home. I tell you it is a great thing for a man that has been living the life I have, to get up and say that he is now a child of God.

It came gradually, a little bit of it at a time, but when I was down in the Mission that night, God came to me in full power, I felt that I did not care what happened to me. I was willing to go if God called on me. Whatever He said I was willing to do. After my conversion I got a place where I was making a dollar a day, at Robinson's, on Ninth, between Broadway and York streets, and I worked there until I went up on a new railroad. They promised to give me forty-five dollars a month. I thought at the time, and so did Brother Holcombe, I would get forty-five dollars a month. He said, "You will get forty-five dollars a month, and it is so much easier than the work you are doing." I thought they would pay all my expenses and I worked up there at forty-five dollars and I had to pay all my own expenses; and all I received was not a cent more or less than thirteen dollars a month. But I was happier a thousand times – I will say a hundred thousand times – than I was with six or seven hundred dollars a month.