The Second Mister

I
grew
up in Listowel in a house that was like a little island surrounded by a happy sea of licensed premises. One wet winter’s night in the Mid - Fifties I was standing at our hall door when a young woman rushed out from an adjoining pub. She was sobbing and the tears on her cheeks briefly reflected the light from a nearby streetlamp. A few seconds later a rather dishevelled figure followed her. She wheeled around to face him and said:
“ You don’t love me, Tomeen, you only loves porter”.
Tomeen hesitated for a moment and then turned and went back in to the love of his life. The unfortunate woman went on into the night and to loneliness, or to what else I do not know.

What I do know, is that her attitude to the unsanitary intoxi
cant would have been warmly endorsed by Mordecai Ham.

Mordecai who ? I hear you ask.

Mordecai Fowler Ham was born in Scottsville, Kentucky on the 2
^nd
of April 1877. He was descended from no less than eight generations of Baptist preachers and he himself, at a relatively early age, also took on the burden of the service of the Lord. For the next forty years or so, he laid into the practitioners of every evil in sight: fornicators, atheists, Roman Catholics, drunkards, harlots, Evolutionists and modernistic theologians. When Al Smith, a Catholic, ran for the Democrats in the presidential elec
tion of 1928 Ham declared: “
If you vote for Al Smith, you’re voting against Christ, and you will all be damned.”
It is sad to reflect that the 15015464 Americans who voted for Smith are now, apparently, being lit and licked by flames eternal.

Ham himself claimed that during his career he produced 303387 conversions, a figure which seems somewhat precise. Professor James A. Borland, a onetime pastor of Grace Bible Church in Madison Heights , claimed that nearly one million souls
“received Christ”
as a result of Ham’s efforts, but it is not clear whether or not this figure includes “
backsliders
”, so called. One of his most remarkable successes occurred in Macon, Georgia where his preaching resulted in the closing of thirteen brothels, all the whores having declared for Jesus. He was frequently assaulted while in full oratorical and holy flight and on one memorable occasion he dispatched a drunken assailant with a well aimed thump from his hefty Bible.

Oddly different were the attempts at redemption going on at much the same time on this side of the Atlantic.

Only fading memories now remain of the great mission conducted in Listowel by the formidable Father Collier of Limerick. He too had his list of favourite forms of sinfulness that he flayed with a vigour that would have been worthy of Ham himself. His standard stock of errors and horrors included Saturday night dancing, Friday morn
ing sausages, Protestantism and Communism, “
Pagan England
” and “
Atheistic Russia
,” “
jazz music”,
smoking outside the back door of the church and of course, again 
and again, anything related to “
the flesh
” and its attendant
and widespread occasions of sin. It is perhaps surprising that alcoholic beverages were mentioned in passing only, but then a great part of the mission’s success derived from the fact that large numbers of men took advantage of it to come to town and slake a thirst that had been building up for the previous year.

As the days, and more importantly the nights, of the mission went by the fervour, the excitement and the incidence of extraordinary happenings increased exponentially. Little slivers of Latin were heard in likely and unlikely places:
Pater noster, Ave Maria, Exultemus, Delirium Tre-mens.
Visions of a wide assortment of supernatural creatures became quite common as the drink and the sermons took their cumulative toll. Somebody took a photograph of Father Collier aloft in his pulpit
.
As the church was dark a flash had to be used. One credulous soul, who had not seen the photographer, declared the resulting wave of light to be
“
a bolt of celestial grace from Heaven itself.”

At least three times the missioner told the shocking but cautionary tale of a girl “
from a very nearby parish”
and who was innocent of the grave dangers posed by
“company keeping.”
It seems that she met a handsome stranger at a late-night dance. She was greatly taken by him and they both left the hall and went to an isolated place. It was only then that she looked down and saw that her companion
had cloven hooves instead of feet !

The climax of the mission came on the last night when the faithful were asked the traditional question:
“Do you
renounce the Devil with all his works and pomps ?”
This
inevitably produced an enthusiastic but inebriated response from the rear of the church:

“ We do, th’oul hoor, we do.”

Uniquely, the following day Father Collier was escorted to the Railway Station
by a small crowd led by a young man playing an accordion. As he was about to board the train a leading toper knelt before the priest and then took his hand and said:
“ Father Collier, the people of Listowel will be forever in your debt.
”

Of course it did not last.

The town soon returned to its innocent and sinful ways, but not before a curious incident occurred. It seems that a middle aged citizen had continued the bibulous aspects of the mission for some days after the priest had left. His wife grew increasingly exasperated and at about nine o’clock one morning she stormed out of her house in a great rage and ready to devour anything that moved. Unfortunately,
the first person she met was a neighbouring grocer who was in his place of business quietly reading the racing page of
The Irish Press
. She let loose a roar at him of seismic magnitude:

“ Your oul’ sausages are no good”.

The grocer yawned and then, perhaps thinking of the events of the previous week, replied:

“ They have one advantage mam, you can eat them of a Friday”.