Seeing the hundreds of craft and the thousands of fishermen, and the capital and interest vested against us as prohibitionists, it would have been obviously futile to put up a second-rate affair in a back street. It would only be sneered at as a proselytizing job. I had almost forgotten to mention that there was already an Old Seamen's Home, but it had gradually become a roost for boozers, and when with the trustees we made an inspection of it, it proved to be only worthy of immediate closure. This was promptly done, and the money realized from the sale of it, some ten thousand dollars, was kindly donated to the fund for our new building. After a few years of my collecting funds spasmodically, a number of our local friends got "cold feet." Reports started, not circulated by well-wishers, that it was all a piece of personal vanity, that no such thing was needed, and if built would prove a white elephant, to support which I would be going round with my hat in my hand worrying the merchants. We had at that time some ninety thousand dollars in hand. I laid the whole story before the Governor, Sir Ralph Williams, a man by no means prejudiced in favour of prohibition. He was, however, one who knew what the city needed, and realized that it was a big lack and required a big remedy. A letter which I published in all the St. John's papers, describing my passing fifteen drunken men on the streets before morning service on Christmas Day, brought forth angry denials of the actual facts, and my statement of the number of saloons in the city was also contradicted. But a saloon is not necessarily a place licensed by the Government or city to make men drunk--for the majority are unlicensed, and a couple of experiences which my men had in looking for sailors who had shipped, been given advances, and gone off and got drunk in shebeens, proved the number to be very much higher than even I had estimated it.