It spread over Ireland like wildfire.

It is computed that no less than five millions of people took the pledge of total abstinence from intoxicating poisons by his influence.

The revolution wrought in his day, in his own time and country, was marvellous, and, to this day, his influence is perpetuated in the vast number of Father Mathew Benevolent Temperance Societies.
[Illustration: DR CUYLER AT 32 (When Pastor of the Market St Church, New York)] Second only to Father Mathew in the number of converts which he has made to total abstinence was that brilliant and dramatic platform orator, John B.Gough.When he was a reckless young sot in Worcester, Massachusetts, he had owed his conversion to a touch on his shoulder by a shoemaker, named Joel Stratton, who had invited him to a Washingtonian temperance meeting.

Soon after that time he owed his conversion, under God, to the influence of Miss Mary Whitcomb, the daughter of a Boylston farmer in the neighborhood.

He formed her acquaintance very soon after he signed the temperance pledge in Worcester, and she consented to assume the risk of becoming his wife.