Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1913-09-07

The sailor insisted upon hght1ng Hunter on
the spot. Hadn't Hunters table been in his
way? Sure Consequently there was moth
ing to do but fight. OF course fiction YER
sion of this story should now go on and tell
how the little, innocent looking Hunter
cleaned up the floor with the giant brute.
But, unfortunately for the melodrama and
spectacularity of our narrative, this event
did not occur What did occur seems COM
monplace enough beside it.
Hunter, with perfect seriousness, chal
lenged the man to soap bath. The laugh
ter of the DRINKS that crowded the place
laughed the fight out of the sailors fists, as
laughter has way of doing with intoxicated
men. After very brief pause the drunken
sailor, slamming his hand down unsteadily
on the table, said that "by' many marine
things he'd accept.
The next morning, in the Turkish bath,
when the sailor woke up, Hunter insisted on
treating him to shave. The treat negoti
ated, the sailor remarked that he felt SO
good that he thought it would be grand
idea if he and his neighbor (meaning Hunter)
would go out and "inhale a little redeye.
1t was up to Hunter to win the sailor back
to deCency now or never, and it was up to
him to do it quickly. "Preaching," as he
has said, he had long and vainly tried-no
more preaching for him! What to take its
place? His thoughts had to work with
speed. They did that day. And they
formed, accidentally, he admits, one of the
numerous utilitarian plans that were to
stand him in such effective stead in the
years to come. The sailor had dropped
hint in his more lucid moments in the hot
room that he was "keen on exciting dime
novels" That was Hunters cue.
"All right he said, relative to the invita-
ton to imbibe, "1ll go out on jamboree
with you tonight but let's send out for some
novels and lie around reading for awhile
It'll put us in good shape" he bluffed along
genially, "for this evenings party The
sailor agreed. And Hunter sent out for a
couple of the detective novels of Gaboriau
If you know the detective tales of Gaboriau
you are aware they are exciting tales, and
also that they are pretty long. Well, any
way, Hunter managed to Excite that sailor
so with one of the novels, which he proceeded
to read aloud to him, that the sailor re-
manned passive, so far as the whisky was
concerned, all through the afternoon. And
the second novel, at the sailors own sug
gestion, kept him away from saloons that
night The sailor slept in the Turkish bath
again. He was getting cleaner, and with his
increasing cleanliness of body came increas-
ing cleanliness of mind. This is the most
truthful of p1ous platitudes, always. And
soon he began to let up on the whisky
detective stories were more exciting, and
when you were boozed up you couldn' read,
and soon he and MAC" were comrades.
HUNTER has turned many sailor
- straight with methods like that,-the
methods of brotherhood and good time
combined as he calls them. He has won
many a wretched sailor back to decency
with a baseball and bat, many another
with amateur theatricals of a more or less
aboriginal artistic sort, many another by
introducing him to decent woman who has
been able to inspire him to a decentcr life
For the last nine years, as the fighting of
ficer on the bridge of the American Seamen's
Friend Society he has handled over three
hundred thousand seamen each month, and
his is now the biggest marine parish in the
world, the marine parish, so called that exists
in the mile between 23d-st. and Christopher
St. in the city of New York. And when we
say nine years we cover almost the entire era
of the Problem of the Modern Sailor; for the
old type of sailor, the man of the sailing
vessels, went out and the new sailor, the
man of the steamships, came in ten years
ago. AS Hunter expresses it, "Ten years ago
the sailor went to sea for months and stayed
ashore for weeks; now the sailor goes to sea
for weeks and stays ashore for days
But, ask you, is this so-termed modern