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

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.

You may think gamblers are happy, and it looks like it; but they are not – they are miserable. Just to look back in our lives and think what we have done with all the money! It is nothing to be compared with the life of a Christian. If I could go back to-morrow and make a million dollars gambling, I would not do it. I would say, "Take your million of dollars. I will stay where I am." My wife is the best woman in the world. I leave her at home and she is reading the Bible. You can not go in there any time, when she is not at work, that she is not either singing or reading the Bible. She was raised a Catholic. She is now trying to help me along. She has joined the Methodist church; she is with me. I do not think she was a Christian before we came in contact with Brother Holcombe. It was just her interest in me, and her patient, long-suffering love. She never went to church nor prayed nor knelt down. She prayed after she went to bed like I did, for I said prayers every day even then. I always said, "If I forget, God will forget me." Every day of my life I prayed; and if I forgot it, I asked the Lord to forgive me; but I never would kneel down. I prayed after I went to bed; but now I get down on my knees and pray. Do you know how we do at night? We get down on our knees and say the Lord's prayer; and after we get through, I pray; and after I get through, the old lady prays. You see the old lady was raising our little girl up to be a Catholic; and I said to her, after we were converted – maybe a month afterward – "I don't know whether I am right or wrong – I want you to say – do you not think it is right to teach Kittie to do the way we do in our prayers? I think it would be a sin to try to teach her any other way. Now, let us set her an example, and she will come over gradually and gradually until she will be one of us." She has asked her mother about Jesus. She said to her mother one day, "I can't pray like you all can." The old lady said to her, "You will learn after awhile." Last night I was out late, and when I came home she said, "We will all kneel down and pray." We started off, "Our Father, who art in heaven," and Kittie went along with us, repeating it. She knows all that, you know. After we were done saying that, I prayed; and after I got through the old lady prayed; and after we had prayed I said, "Kittie, you must say your prayer." She said, "I can not pray like you do." But she did the best she could.

If you ask me how I came to change my life, it was this way: I knew that Brother Holcombe was a good man, and knew that he was reformed and I had so much faith in him, and I studied about that so much that I just thought if he could be such a good man, why could not I be a good man; and that is the way it came. I tell you, backwardness is a fault with a good many preachers. If I was a preacher and I saw a man on the street that I saw was going wrong, I would go right up to him and touch him on the shoulder. I do it now – I never let him get away; I never let a friend of mine get away, I do not care who he is. I go to him and tell him what God has done for me. I say, "Why don't you come up to the Mission? Don't you know Brother Holcombe?" If he says "No; I don't live here," I say, "If you come up there, we will be pleased to see you. You don't know what good it might do your soul."

I do wish I had an education. I reckon there has been more money spent on me than on all the rest of my family. I went to three colleges; was expelled from one and ran away from the other two. I was the worst boy on earth; there is no use talking. I would rather fight that eat; but no more fighting for me; I am done. You know that I have been trying to get work to do, and at last I have found a place. I am earnestly praying every day more and more – I can pray now. A man asked me the other day – I don't know whether I answered him right or not – he asked me, "Do you ever expect to go back to gambling?" I said, "I would starve to death before I would gamble any more." He said, "What about your wife – if you knew your wife was going to starve, would you gamble?" I said, "Before I would let my wife and child starve, I would gamble – I would gamble to get them something to eat; but," I said, "there is no danger of their starving. But you put that question to me so strong." I said, "I know that God would not censure me for that, but there is no danger of it."

I wish I could say more. I know I mean what I have said, God knows I do, and it is all true as near as I can remember.

Note. – Mr. Price is a brother of the late Hon. J. Hop Price, for many years a well-known lawyer and judge in Louisville. He is now engaged as night watchman on Main street.

MILES TURPIN

I had the example of Christian parents, and, of course, I had the benefit of a Christian education; but, like all young men, I was rather inclined to be wild; and after I had served four years in the Confederate army, my habits were formed rather for the worse. After I had returned home, being without avocation, I naturally resorted to what all idle men do; that was the beginning. I contracted the habit of frolicing, gambling and drinking, in that early period of my life, which has followed me through all these years, up to March 14, 1886, when, after considerable journeying through North America and portions of Mexico, I happened in Cincinnati, and heard a great many times about Steve Holcombe's conversion. Having known Steve in his gambling days, it occurred to me, like all persons in pursuit of happiness, going from place to place and not finding it, that if there was such a change and improvement in Steve as the newspapers described, I would come to Louisville and see for myself concluding that if religion had done so much for him, it might do something for me. I was a dissipated man – dissipated in the extreme. I had contracted this habit of drinking, and was rarely ever sober. I have some capacity, as a business man, and I have had a great many positions, but I had to give them up from this habit of drinking. While a man would express his deep friendship for me, he would say his business would not tolerate my drinking; consequently, I have been frequently but politely dismissed.

I had lived in I don't know how many places in the United States, I had lived in New Orleans, Savannah, Ga., Charleston, S. C., Birmingham, Montgomery, Selma, Vidalia, La., Cincinnati, Louisville, Ky., Macon, Ga., Pensacola, Fla., Fernandina, Fla., throughout the length and breadth of Western Mexico, Lower California and the Pacific coast, and through the State of Texas, end to end. In all these tortuous windings I was searching for happiness; but a man who is more or less full of whisky and without the religion of Jesus Christ is of necessity unhappy, in himself, and, in consequence, shunned by his fellowmen. No man can wander around the world in that condition without feeling a void which human wisdom can not fill; and I was forced to this conclusion by a careful survey of my past career. The desperation of the case was such, that I resolved if I could not find employment, and if I could not find happiness, which I then knew nothing about, I would destroy myself. I have contemplated suicide many times with the utmost seriousness; and I certainly in my sinful life was not afraid of death. But then it was because I was in despair.

I was in Cincinnati; had previously held a political position there, which paid me quite a handsome sum; but in the change of politics my pecuniary condition changed, and I found myself alone, poor and full of rum and corruption; as vile a sinner as ever lived. It was at that time that I heard of Steve. I was in a deplorable condition; I knew not where to turn for comfort, and it occurred to me that if I could go to Louisville and have these assertions verified about Steve's regeneration and if I could see and satisfy myself. I would do so, as vile as I was, and ask God to have mercy upon me. Of course, I was an infidel (at least, I imagined myself an infidel), an atheist, if you please, and my chief delight was deriding all Christian work, and ridiculing the Bible; and to more thoroughly uphold my atheistical notions I went so far as to defame the Saviour of mankind, not in vulgar language or profane, but by a mode of expression that was plain and unmistakable. Now, I do not see how a man can be an infidel. When a man says he is an atheist, I believe he is a liar. A man must be insane who does not recognize a Supreme Power and the Master-hand that made the world, and who does not rely upon and give obedience to that Higher Power. I do not believe that any atheist is honest in the announcement that he does not believe in God or a Creator. I believe now, since my conversion, that no man is in his right mind unless he has the habit of prayer.

All nature points to the existence of a Creator – every action of life, every hair of the head shows an unseen hand. If it is a mistake, it is a mistake man can never fathom; but if not and if, as we are told by the word of faith, you believe, you shall be saved. If you cast your burden upon Him, and there is a possibility of a hereafter, you lose nothing in this world. A man is wiser, purer, more companionable, more affectionate and more charitable. There must be immortality of the soul; there must be a future reward. Reflection upon these great facts induced me to become a Christian man. As I had served the devil so long as one of his allies, and had been treated so badly by him. I deserted him and put my faith in God, where I intend to remain the remainder of my life.

I got to Louisville a little over a year ago, the 15th of March, and went immediately to find Mr. Holcombe. He was sitting by the fire. He knew me at once. I shook hands with him and sat down by the fire, and had a conversation with him. He immediately entered upon the subject of religion, and I told him my condition. I told him what I wanted to do – I wanted to see for myself if it was possible for a man like him to become regenerated – if it was possible for such a great scoundrel as I knew him to be to become a Christian man. I wanted to see for myself if it were possible to make, out of so vile a creature, such a good man as he was said to be. As I said last night, I came, like the conqueror of old, and saw, but, unlike the conqueror of old, I was conquered. I made up my mind that I was done with the old life. Steve's appearance convinced me that he was cured, and I confessed then and there that I was convinced. That was the starting point. There was only one thing I have never been thoroughly satisfied about; I find that the Christian influence grows gradually on me, and becomes stronger and stronger the longer I live. I confess myself, when I first became a Christian man, with the exception of drinking whisky, I was like I was before; but, encouraged by my experiences in the beginning, I gradually began to see that it was a better life. A man was purer, and there was some hope a man could be changed through and through, and take his place among men; and from that time forward I was continually growing in grace. From the very moment I resolved to quit, I did not drink any more. After I saw Steve, I did not take a drop, though I had tried before to quit it many a time. I had oftentimes joined temperance societies, and made resolutions, which were of no avail. A man in that case was bound by no tie except his assertion – by his word: and might break it just as a man allows a note to be protested in bank. The moment I determined to change my life, this appetite for whisky left me. It was because my ideas were changed.

I used to think that no drunken man could become a Christian; but now I hope, by the grace of God, I am a Christian, I could not explain it; I do not believe any man can explain it. He may attempt it, but he can not do it. A man who lives a Christian life can hardly calculate the advantages; it is a matter of impossibility. In the first place, his associates put an entirely different estimate on him. His ambitions are entirely changed, and certainly his hope is. It makes him a more charitable man, a more forbearing man with the faults of his neighbors, makes him a more tolerant man, makes him a better citizen; and if he were a politician – though it is scarcely within the bounds of possibility – it would make him an honest politician.

I have had no trouble to get along in business since my conversion. Just as soon as I tried to get business, when I was once really in earnest about it, I had a number of offers. I have still a number of offers. When I became a Christian man I determined, in my own mind, I would live up to Christianity so far as I could in every particular, humbly and conscientiously. The opinions of man have no weight with me now. All I am I hold by the grace of God, through Jesus Christ.

FRED ROPKE

I think it was on the 25th of June, 1883, I was stopping at Fifth and Jefferson. Previous to that time I had been tramping the country for about eight years, from 1874 until the middle of 1883. My father was a Louisville man. He gave me all the advantages that wealth could command. He sent me to Germany in 1864, where I remained three years at school. In 1869 or 1870, I went into the sheriff's office here in Louisville. Previous to that time I had been with Theodore Schwartz & Co. I went from Theodore Schwartz & Co. into the sheriff's office. I got that position from courtesy of the sheriff to my father, who was his bondsman. I contracted the habit of drinking right there, through the associations. And, being ashamed to remain among my friends as a drunkard, I went then from pillar to post all over the country.

I left home just after my father's death, in 1872, not knowing whither I was going. I dragged around the country from that time until the summer of 1883 – eleven years; and if there ever was a man sick and tired, it was I. I beat my way through Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Kansas, Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York.

The box car was my home the greater part of the time. Of course, during those years, I came home off and on; but nothing could stop me in my downward course. As soon as I lost self-control I persuaded myself there was no hereafter, no God and no devil. I took to that idea to console myself for what I was doing more than for anything else; and I had a perfect indifference as to what became of me, except at times when I was alone and sober and thoughtful. But I never had any aim; no ambition at all; in fact, I had given up all hope. I do not know what I wandered for. I would come home and stay for a month or so, and I would get drunk and get ashamed of myself and go away. I would walk all night to get out of Louisville.

I had been brought up by religious parents. My father was a very religious man. He was considered by people as a fanatic because he was making money in the whisky business, and sold out rather than continue it. He lost money by selling out during the war. He saw what it was drifting to, and sold out. After that there was not a drop of whisky handled in his house on Main street until after his death. My mother also was a very religious woman, so that I had a careful religious training. But I had read a good deal of Ingersoll and Tom Paine. I heard Ingersoll lecture on one or two occasions; I wanted to get all the proof I could to sustain me. I wanted some consolation; I knew where I was drifting; there was a consciousness all this time that I was wrong; and I trembled at the thought of one day giving an account for the misdeeds of a wasted life; but I could not possibly help myself. From the mental anxiety I went through it is a wonder my hair is not gray to-day. It was terrible. I had two attacks of delirium tremens.