“I have been drunk for three days. Earlier tonight, I was going past the Bowery Mission and I stumbled in there and sat down on a back seat. Someone came and asked me to go down near the platform. “When the meeting began, I was too drunk to understand anything about what was going on. I remember hearing a lot of confused noises and singing and men were standing up and talking.

“Then I seemed to wake up from a sleep and felt as if something had happened out of the ordinary. A great mob of people poured into the room and down the aisle, crowding around a man who, when he turned around on the platform and began to speak, looked right into my soul.

“I can’t tell all I felt then. All I know is that he came down among us for a while, and the people crowded around him in a great mass. As he passed by me, he laid his hand on my head and I felt like a new man.”

“The touch of Jesus! Father, we have all felt it now.” The girl threw her arms about her father’s neck and cried like a little child.

“Yes,” said the man, while his tears fell over the face of the once-wayward lost girl. “It redeemed me. I am a new man in him. The passion and the appetite are gone. Praise God! What a miracle! Praise God! Now we can understand what happened in the house of the paralytic when he walked home carrying his couch.”

After a moment of unspeakable, silent happiness, the father went on.

“When Jesus went out on the street, I followed him. It seemed to me I could never lose sight of him again. I cannot tell all he said and did. Such a mass of people was never seen in New York before.

“He stood at one place and spoke to the crowd. I cannot recall it all, but I shall never forget how he spoke, as if all the city were listening, about the sin of those who made and sold liquor, and the sin of those who owned the daily papers and did not use their powerful influence to drive this sin out of the city. Such flaming words they were. The people crouched down while he spoke. It was like lightning striking down in between the skyscrapers.

“I kept following him from place to place. The streets have been simply choked all night. But once when I was very near him, he turned and spoke to me and smiled. ‘Brother,’ he said, ‘go home and tell your wife and children what great thing has come to you. And then go out and save others!’ And here I am. Let us thank God!”

The man fell on his knees, his wife and daughter and son beside him, and prayer went up from lips that for weary, bitter, tear-stained years had known only curses and blasphemy.