"
The next extract is from the Manchester (N.H.) Press:
"Smyth's Hall was completely filled, seats and standing room, at two
o'clock Sunday afternoon, with an audience which came to hear Luther
Benson. The officers of the Reform Club, clergymen and reformed drunkards
occupied seats upon the platform. Mr. Benson is a native of Indiana, and
says he has been a drunkard from six years of age. He was within three
months of graduation from college when he was expelled for drunkenness.
Then he studied for a lawyer, and was admitted to practice, being drunk
while studying, and drunk while engaged in a case. At length he reduced
himself to poverty, pawning all he had for drink. At length he started to
reform, and though he had once fallen, he was determined to persevere.
Since his reformation two years ago he had been giving temperance lectures.
He is a young man, a powerful, swinging sort of speaker, with a good
command of language, original, with peculiar intonation, pronunciation and
idioms, sometimes rough, but eminently popular with his audiences. He spoke
for an hour and a half steadily, wiping the perspiration from his face at
intervals, taking up the greater part of his address with his personal
experience.
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