After he was fourteen years old he went on the upper Mississippi river and traveled to and from St. Louis. On the Mississippi steamers of those days gambling was common, not only among the servants and deck-hands, it was the pastime or the business of some of the first-class passengers also. Sometimes when a rich planter had lost all his ready money in gambling, he would put up a slave, male or female, that he might happen to have with him, and after losing, would borrow money to win or buy again the slave. Professional gamblers, luxuriously dressed and living like princes, frequented the steamers of those days for the purpose of entrapping and fleecing the passengers. All this only increased the fascination of gambling for young Holcombe, and he studied and practiced it with increasing zeal. About this time, when he was in the neighborhood of fourteen years of age, his mother, awaking all too late to his peril and to her duty, got him a situation as office-boy in the office of Dr. Mandeville Thum, of Louisville, hoping to keep him at home and rescue him from the perilous life he had entered upon. Dr. Thum was much pleased with him, took great interest in him, and treated him with unusual kindness. He even began himself to teach him algebra, with the intention of making a civil engineer of the boy. And he was making encouraging progress in his studies and would, doubtless, have done well, had he continued. During the time he spent in the service of Dr. Thum, he attended a revival meeting held by the Rev. Mr. Crenshaw, at Shippingsport, and was much impressed by what he heard. He became so awakened and interested that he responded to the appeals that were made by this devoted and zealous preacher and sought interviews with him. He tried his level best, as he expresses it, to work himself up to a point where he could feel that he was converted, a not rare, but very wrong, view of this solemn matter. But he could not _feel_ it. While, however, he could not get the feeling, he _determined_ to be a Christian, anyhow, a rarer and better, but not altogether correct, view of the subject either. For a week or ten days he succeeded in overcoming evil impulses, and in living right, but he was led away by evil companions. Soon after this he tried it again, and this time he succeeded for a longer time than before in resisting temptations and following his sense of right, but was one day persuaded to go on a Sunday steamboat-excursion to New Albany, with some young folks from Shippingsport, which proved the occasion of his fall. On returning home he and two other boys went part of the way on foot. They heard a man, not far away, crying for water, and Holcombe's quick impulse of sympathy led him to propose to go to the relief of the sufferer. When they found he was not so bad off as they thought, the two other boys began to abuse and mistreat the stranger. He was an unequal match for the two, however, and as he was about to get the best of them,