Читать книгу Josiah Allen's Wife as a P. A. and P. I - Marietta Holley - Страница 11

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Last Tuesday evenin’ the “Creation Searchin’ Society” argued on this question.

“Resolved; It is right to licence intemperance.”

Cornelius Cork, the President, got up and give the question out, and then a stern majestic look swept over his face, some like a thunder cloud, and says he, pintin’ out his forefinger nobly:

“Brother ‘Creation Searchers,’ and friends and neighbors promiscous. Before we tackle this momentous subject to-night, I have got a little act of justice to preform, which if I shirked out of doin’ of it, would send my name down to posterity as a coward, a rank traitor, and almost a impostor. The public mind is outraged at the present time, by officers in high places provin’ traitors to their trust: traitors to the confidin’ public that have raised ’em up to their high stations. The public of Jonesville will find that I am not one of that kind, that I am not to be trifled with, nor will I be seduced by flattery or gifts, to permit them that have raised me up to the height I now stand on, to be trifled with.”

Here he paused a moment, and laid his forefinger on his heart and looked round on us, as if he was invitin’ us all to take our lanterns and walk through it, and behold its purity. That gesture took dretful well with the audience. The President realized it, he see what he had done, and he kep’ the same position as he proceeded and went on.

“Every one who was present at the last meetin’ of our ‘Creation Searchin’ Society’ knows there was a disturbance there. They know and I know that right in the midst of our most searchin’ investigations, some unprincipled villain in the disguise of humanity outraged us, and insulted us, and defied us by blimmin’; in other words by yellin’ out ‘Blim! Blim!’ every few minutes. And now I publicly state and proclaim to that blimmer, that if he blims here to night, I will put the papers onto him. I will set the law at him. I’ll see what Blackstone and Coke has to say about blimmin’.”

He hadn’t no more’n got the words out of his mouth, when “Blim!” came from one side of the house, and “Blim! Blim!” came from the other side. Nobody couldn’t tell who it was, there was such a crowd. Cornelius Cork’s face turned as red as a root-a-bagy beet, and he yelled out in the awfulest tone I had ever heerd him use—and if we had all been polar bears right from the pole, he couldn’t have took a more deadly aim at us with that awful forefinger:

“Stop that blimmin’ instantly!”

His tone was so loud and awful, and his gesture so fearfully commandin’ and threatenin’, that the house was still as a mice. You could hear a clothes-pin drop in any part of it.

Here he set down, and the meetin’ begun. Elder Easy was on the affirmative, and Thomas J. on the negative, as they call it.

Elder Easy is a first-rate man, and a good provider, but awful conservative. He believes in doin’ jest as his 4 fathers did every time round. If anybody should offer to let him look at the other side of the moon, he would say gently but sweetly: “No, I thank you, my 4 fathers never see it, and so I would rather be excused from beholdin’ it if you please.” He is polite as a basket of chips, and well meanin’; I haint a doubt of it in my own mind. But he and Samantha Allen, late Smith, differs; that female loves to look on every side of a heavenly idee. I respect my 4 fathers, I think a sight of the old men. They did a good work in cuttin’ down stumps and so 4th. I honor ’em; respect their memory. But cities stand now where they had loggin’ bees. Times change, and we change with ’em. They had to rastle with stumps and brush-heaps, it was their duty; they did it, and conquered. And it is for us now, who dwell on the smooth places they cleared for us, to rastle with principle and idees. Have loggin’ bees to pile up old rusty brushwood of unjust laws and customs, and set fire to ’em and burn ’em up root and branch, and plant in their ashes the seeds of truth and right, that shall yet wave in a golden harvest, under happier skies than ourn. If we don’t, shall we be doin’ for posterity what they did for us? For we too are posterity, though mebby we don’t realize it, as we ort to.

THE AFFIRMATIVE.

But Elder Easy, although he lives in the present time, is in spirit a 4 father, (though I don’t say it in a runnin’ way at all, for I like ’em, have swapped hens with him and her, and neighbored with ’em considerable.) He was on the likker side, not that he wants to get drunk, or thinks anything particular of likker himself, but he believes in moderate drinkin’ because his 4 fathers drank moderate. He believes in licensin’ intemperance because his 4 fathers was licensed. And Shakespeare Bobbet was on his side, and old Mr. Peedick, and the Editor of the Auger, (he is a democrat and went for slavery strong, felt like death when the slaves was set free, and now he wants folks to drink all they can, goes for intemperance strong. He drinks, so they say, though I wouldn’t have it go from Josiah or me for the world.) And Solomon Cypher was on that side. He drinks. And Simon Slimpsey; howsumever, he haint of much account anyway, he has almost ruined himself with the horrors. He has ’em every day stiddy, and sometimes two and three times a day. He told a neighborin’ woman that he hadn’t been out of ’em sense the day he was married to Betsey, she was so uncommon mean to him. I told her when she was a tellin’ me about it (she is a real news-bearer, and I didn’t want to say anything she could carry back) I merely observed in a cool way: “I have always had my opinion about clingers, and wimmen that didn’t want no rights, I have kep’ my eye on ’em, I have kep’ my eye on their husbands, and my mind haint moved a inch concernin’ them from the place it stood in more formally.” I didn’t say no more, not wantin’ to run Betsey to her back, and then truly, as a deep thinker observes in one of his orations, “a dog that will fetch a bone, will carry one.”

On Thomas Jefferson’s side was himself, the Editor of the Gimlet, Lawyer Nugent, Doctor Bombus, Elder Morton, and Whitfield Minkley—six on each side. Thomas Jefferson spoke first, and he spoke well, that I know. I turned right round and give sister Minkley a proud happy look several times while Thomas J. was a talkin’; she sot right behind me. I felt well. And I hunched Josiah several times when he said his best things, and he me, for we both felt noble in mind to hear him go on.

His first speech was what they call an easy, or sunthin’ considerable like that; Josiah said when we was a goin’ home that they called it an essence, but I told him I knew better than that. He contended, and I told him I would leave it to Thomas J. but it slipped my mind. Howsumever it haint no matter; it is the thing itself that Josiah Allen’s wife looks at, and not the name of it. The easy—or sunthin’ like it,—run as follows: I believe my soul I can git the exact words down, for I listened to it with every ear I had, and upheld by the thoughts of the future generations, and the cause of Right, I kinder took it out of his overcoat pocket the next day, and read it over seven times from beginnin’ to end. I should have read it eight times, if I had had time.

He seemed to be a pryin’ into what the chief glory and pleasure of gettin’ drunk consisted in; he said the shame, the despair, and the ruin of intemperance anyone could see. And he pictured out the agony of a drunkard’s home, till there wasn’t a dry eye in my head, nor Josiah’s nuther. And he said in windin’ up, (I shan’t put down the hull on’t, for it would be too long) but the closin’ up of it was:

“I don’t believe there is a sadder sight for men or angels, than to see a man made in the image of God willfully casting aside his heritage of noble and true manhood; slipping the handcuffs over his own wrists; and offering himself a willing captive to the mighty but invisible wine spirit.

“No slave bound to the chariot wheels of a conqueror is so deplorable a sight as the captive of wine. His face does not shine like the face of an angel, as did a captive in the old time—but with so vacant and foolish an expression, that you can see at once that he is hopelessly bound, body, mind and soul to his conqueror’s chariot. And a wonderful conqueror is he, so weak in seeming as to hide beneath the ruby glitter of a wine cup, and yet so mighty as to fill our prisons with criminals, our asylums with lunatics—and our graveyards with graves. Mightier than Time or Death, for outstripping time, he ploughs premature furrows on the brow of manhood and alienates affection Death has no power over.

“I have often marvelled where the chief glory of dissipation came in. Its evil effects were always too hideously palpable to be misunderstood; but in what consists the gloating pleasure for which a man is willing to break the hearts of those who love him, bring himself to beggary, endow his children with an undeserved heritage of shame, destroy his intellect, ruin his body, and imperil his soul, is a mystery.

“I have wondered whether its chief bliss consisted in the taste of the cup; if so, it must be indeed a delicious enjoyment, transitory as it is, for which a man would be willing to loose earth and heaven. Or if it were in that intermediate stage, before the diviner nature is entirely merged in the animal—the foolish stage, when a man is so affectionately desirous of doing his full duty by his hearers, that he repeats his commonest remarks incessantly, with a thick tongue and thicker meaning, and if sentimentally inclined, smiles, oh how feebly, and sheds such very foolish tears. In lookin’ upon such a scene, another wonder awakens in me, whether Satan, who with all his faults is uncommonly intelligent, is not ashamed of his maudlin friend. Or is the consummation of glory in the next stage, where with oaths and curses a man dashes his clenched fists into the faces of his best friends, pursues imaginary serpents and fiends, thrusts his wife and children out into the cold night of mid-winter, and bars against them the doors of home. And home! what a desecration of that word which should be the synonym of rest, peace and consolation, is a drunkard’s home. Or is the full measure of pleasure attained when he, the noblest work of God, is stretched out at his full six feet length of unconsciousness, stupidity and degradation.

“If there be a lonely woman amid the multitude of lonely and sorrowful women, more to be pitied than another, I think it is a wife lookin’ upon the one she has promised to honor, lying upon the bed with his hat and boots on. Her comforter, who swore at her as long as he could speak at all. Her protector, utterly unable to brush a fly from his own face. Her companion, lying in all the stupor of death, with none of its solemn dignity. As he is entirely unconscious of her acts, I wonder if she never employs the slowly passing moments in taking down her old idol, her ideal, from its place in her memory, and comparing it with its broken and defaced image before her. Of all the poor broken idols, shattered into fragments for the divine patience of womanhood to gather together and cement with tears, such a ruin as this seems the most impossible to mould anew into any form of comliness. And if there is a commandment seemingly impossible to obey, it is for a woman to love a man she is in deadly fear of, honor a man she can’t help bein’ ashamed of, and obey a man who cannot speak his commands intelligibly.”

It was a proud moment for Josiah Allen and me, to hear Thomas J. go on; and to have the hull house so still, while he was makin’ his eloquent speech, that you could hear a clothes-pin drop in any part of the room. And though my companion, perfectly carried away by his glad emotions, hunched me several time harder than he had any idee of, and almost gored my ribs with his elbo, I didn’t, as you may say, seem to sense it at all. And though in hunchin’ and bein’ hunched, I dropped more’n 20 stitches in Josiah’s socks, I didn’t care for that a mite; I had plenty of time to pick ’em up durin’ the next speech, which was the Editor of the Auger’es, (he has got over the zebra, so’s to be out.)

I have said, and I say still, that I never see a man that would spread a idee out thinner than he will,—cover more ground with it. Talk about Ingy Rubber stretchin’,—why that man will take one small thought and pull it out and string on enough big words to sink it, seemin’ly.

Howsumever, his talk did jest about as much good on Thomas J’s side, as on hisen, for he didn’t seem to pay any attention to the subject, but give his hull mind to stringin’ big words onto his idees, and then stretchin’ ’em out as fur as human strength can go. That, truly, was his strong pint. But jest as he bent his knees and begun to set down, he kinder straightened up again and said the only thing that amounted to a thing. He said,—“Keepin’ folks from sellin’ likker, is takin’ away their rights.”

NOT THE RIGHT KIND OF HORNS.

“Rights!” says Thomas Jefferson, jumpin’ upon his feet the minute he set down. “Rights! The first right and law of our nature, is self-preservation, and what safety has any man while the streets are filled with men turned into crazed brutes by this traffic you are upholdin’? Every one knows that a drunken man entirely loses for the time his reasoning faculties, his morality and his conscience, and is made ripe for any crime. That he is jest as ready to rob and murder innocent citizens as to smoke his pipe. So if you and I lend our influence and our votes to make intemperance legal, we make arson, burglary, rape, robbery, murder, legal. Tell me a man has a right to thus plant the seeds of crime and murder in a man’s soul, and imperil the safety of the whole community. Why, the Bible says, that if a man let loose a wild ox, and it gored men with its horns and killed them, the men that let it go loose should surely be put to death.”

Here Simon Slimpsey got up, kinder hangin’ on to the bench, and made a dretful simple sort of a wink with one eye, and says he:

“Them haint the kind o’ horns we are a talkin’ about, we are talkin’ about takin’ a horn of whisky now and then.”

“Yes,” said Thomas J. “there was never a more appropriate name; for if there ever were horns that gored, and stabbed, and killed, it is these.”

Elder Easy spoke out, and says he,—“The Bible says: ‘take a little wine for the stomach sake.’”

But Elder Morton jumped up, and says he,—“There was two kinds of likker in earlier times; one that was unfermented and harmless, and contained no alcohol or any principle of intoxication, and another that contained this raging mocker.”

Then old Peedick spoke up. Says he,—“Likker would be all right if it wasn’t for the adultery in it: poison stuff, wormwood, and etcetery.”

But Dr. Bombus jumped up, and says he,—“Nothing that can be put into it, can be worse poison than the pure alcohol itself, for that is a rank poison for which no antidote has ever been found; useful for medical purposes, like some other poisons: arsenic, opium, laudanum, and so 4th.”

But old Peedick kep’ a mutterin’,—“I know there’s adultery in it;” and kep’ a goin’ on till Cornelius Cork, the President, sot him down, and choked him off.

Solomon Cypher spoke up, and says he:

“No! licence bills don’t do no good; there is more likker drunk when there haint no licence, than when there is. If you hinder one man from sellin’ it, another will.”

I declare, that excited me so, that entirely unbeknown to myself, I spoke right out loud to Josiah:

“Good land! of all the poor excuses I ever heerd, that is the poorest. If I don’t kill my grandmother, somebody else will; or she’ll die herself, of old age, or sunthin’; good land!”

The sound of my voice kinder brought my mind back, and Josiah hunched me hard, and I went to knittin’ dretful fast. Whitfield looked round to me and kinder smiled, and says he, right out in meetin’:

“That’s so, Mother Allen!”

I declare for’t, I didn’t know whether I was seamin’ two and one, or towin’ off, or in the narrowins. I was agitated.

But Whitfield went right on, for it was his turn. His speech was about licencing wrong: admitting a thing was wrong, evil in itself and evil in its effects, and then allowin’ folks to carry on the iniquity, if they’d pay enough for it. It was about givin’ folks the privilege of bein’ mean, for money; about a nation sellin’ the right to do wrong, and so 4th.

Whitfield done well; I know it, and Tirzah Ann knows it. Jest as quick as he sot down, Solomon Cypher got up and says he—with an air as if the argument he was about to bring forred, would bring down the school-house, convince everybody, and set the question to rest forever:

“The way I look at it, is this:” said he, (smitin’ his breast as hard as I ever see a breast smote,) “if there haint no licence, if a man treats me, and I want to treat him back again, where—” (and again he smote his breast almost fearfully,) “where will I git my likker to do it with.”

“That’s so;” said Simon Slimpsey, “there he has got you; you can’t git round that.”

Then Thomas J. spoke and brought up facts and figgers that nobody couldn’t git over, or crawl round; proved it right out, that intemperance caused more deaths than war, pestilence, and famine; that more than half the crimes committed in the United States could be traced back to drink; and eighty out of every hundred was helped on by it. And then he went on to tell how they transmitted the curse to their childern, and how, through its effects, infant babes was born drunkards, idiots, and criminals, entirely unbeknown to them; that the influence of our free schools is destroyed by the influence of the other free schools the nation allows for the childern of the people—the dram shops, and other legalized places of ruin—that while the cries of the starving and naked were filling our ears from all sides, seven hundred millions of dollars were annually spent for intoxicatin’ drink. Instead of spendin’ these millions for food and clothin’ for the perishin’, we spent them for ignorance, beastliness, taxation, crime, despair, madness and death. Says he:

“The cost of likker-drinkin’, from 1861 to 1870, was six thousand millions of dollars. Add to that, the labor in raisin’ the grain to make it; all the labor of distillin’ it; all the loss of labor the drinkin’ of it entailed; the sickness, deaths and crimes that resulted from its use; the ships that went down in mid-ocean, through the drunkenness of their crews—engulfin’ thousands of lives; the ghastly railroad accidents that fill our newspapers with long death-lists; the suicides and thousands of fatal accidents, all over the land, caused by it; the robberies and murders, and the cost of tryin’ the criminals, buildin’ the prisons, penitentiaries and jails, and supportin’ them therein; the alms-houses for the paupers made by it; the asylums for the insane, and the hirin’ of officers and attendants to take care of them. Imagine the sum-total if you can, and add to it, the six thousand millions of dollars,—and all spent for that which is not only useless, but ruinous. And honest, sober citizens consent to have their property taxed to support this system.

“What if this enormous amount of money was spent by our government, for the compulsory education of the childern of the poor; takin’ them from their wretched haunts and dens—schools of infamy, where they are bein’ educated in criminality—and teachin’ them to be honest and self-supportin’. What a marvelous decrease of crime there would be; what a marvelous increase of the national wealth and respectability.”

He said he had been lookin’ upon the subject in a financial point of view, for its moral effects could not be reduced to statistics. Says he:

“Now, with our boasted civilization, we support four drinkin’ saloons to one church. Which exerts the widest influence? In one of the finest cities of New England, there are to-day, ten drinkin’ saloons to one church, and a buildin’ owned by the Governor of the state has two drinkin’ saloons in it, the rumsellers hiring directly of him. The Indians, Buddhists, and Brahmins, the savage and heathen races, whom we look down upon with our wise and lofty pity, are our superiors in this matter, for they know nothin’ of drunkenness still we teach them. How will it be looked upon by the Righteous Judge above, that with all our efforts to evangelize the heathen; our money offerin’s of millions of dollars; our life offerin’s of teachers and missionaries; our loud talkin’, and our long prayers; after all the efforts of the Christian world, the facts face us: that for one heathen who is converted to Christ by the preachin’ of the tongue of our civilized race, one thousand sober heathen are made drunkards by the louder preachin’ of our example; are made by us—if we believe the Bible—unfit for ever enterin’ the heaven we make such powerful efforts to tell them of.”

“And” says he, “the sufferin’ intemperance has caused cannot possibly be reckoned up by figgers,—the shame, disgrace, and desolation, wretchedness to the guiltless, as well as the guilty. The blackness of despair that is dark enough to veil the very heavens from innocent eyes, and make them doubt the existence of a God—who can permit a nation to make such a traffic respectable and protect it with the shadow of the law.”

Says he, “When you have licenced a man to sell likker, and protected him by the law you have helped to make, he sells a pint of likker to a drunkard; do you know what you and he are sellin’? You know you are sellin’ poverty, and bodily ruin, and wretchedness; this you know. But you may be sellin’ a murder, a coffin and a windin’-sheet; sellin’ broken hearts, and a desolate hearth-stone; sufferin’ to the innocent, that will outlast a life-time; ruin, disgrace, despair, and the everlastin’ doom of a deathless soul. Tell me any one has a right to do this? Men in their greed and self interest may make their wretched laws to sanction this crime, but God’s laws are mightier and will yet prevail.”

Every word Thomas J. said went right to my heart. You see, a heart where a child’s head has laid—asleep or awake—till it has printed itself completely onto it, that heart seems to be a holdin’ it still when the head’s got too large to lay there bodily (as it were.) Their wrong acts pierce it right through, and their noble doin’s cause it to swell up with proud happiness.

Dr. Bombus bein’ dretful excited riz right up, and says he, “How any good man can sanction this infamous traffic, how any minister of the Gospel-—” But here the President made the Dr. set down, for it was Elder Easy’s turn.

And the Elder got up. I see he was kinder touched up by what the Dr. had said, and he made a long speech about what he thought it was a minister’s place to do. He thought it wasn’t their place to meddle in political matters. I kinder got it into my head from what he said, though he didn’t say it right out, that he thought there was bad men enough to make our laws without good men meddlin’ with ’em. And in windin’ up he said he thought ministers took too active a part in the Temperance move; he heerd of ministers preachin’ sermons about it on Sunday, and though he had no doubt they meant well, still, he must say he thought there was other subjects that was better fitted for good men to hold forth and improve upon. He thought the cross of Christ, warnin’ sinners to keep out of a future hell, was better subjects for ’em, and then he said the Bible was full of beautiful themes for Sunday discourses, such as the possibility of recognizin’ our friends in a future world, and so 4th.

Thomas J. got up and answered him.

Says he, “The subject of recognizin’ our friends in a future world is a beautiful one, and worthy of much thought. But I think it is commendable to try to keep our friends in a condition to recognize us in this world, try to keep a man while he is alive, so he will know his own wife and children, and not turn them out into the storm of a winter midnight, and murder them in his mad frenzy.”

Jest at this minute—when Thomas J. was goin’ on his noblest—some unprincipled creeter and no nothing,—whoever it was—yelled out “Blim!” again, and Cornelius Cork, the President, bein’ on a keen watch for iniquities, jumped out of his seat as if he had been shot out of it with a shot-gun. And he lifted up his head nobly and walked down the aisle of the school-house, in jest that proud triumphant way that Napoleon walked along on top of the Alp, and with that same victorious mean of a conqueror onto him, with his forefinger pinted out firmly and calmly, and almost nobly, he exclaimed in loud, glad tones, and the majesticest I ever heerd in my life:

THE BLIMMER CAUGHT.

“I’ve catched him at it! I’ve catched the blimmer! I heerd him blim! I seen him! I seen him when he was a blimmin’! Ike Gansey, I fine you ten cents and cost for blimmin.”

Here he collared him, dragged him out by the seat of his breeches, and shet the door in his face, and came back pantin’ for breath, but proud and victorious in his mean. Then the Editor of the Auger got up to make the closing speech, when all of a sudden the door opened, and in walked Miss Gowdey. I thought in a minute she looked dretful kinder flustrated and awe-struck. She sot right down by me—Josiah had gone across the school-house to speak to Whitfield on business—and says I:

“What is the matter, sister Gowdey!” (sister in the church;) says I: “you look as white as a white woolen sheet.”

Then she says to me and sister Minkley; says she:

“Sunthin’ dretful has happened!”

“What is it?” says I.

“Do tell us sister Gowdey!” says sister Minkley.

Says she, “You know how cold it is!”

Says I, “I guess I do; Josiah froze one of his ears a comin’ here to-night, as stiff as a chip offen the north pole.”

“And our buttery shelves froze for the first time in years,” says sister Minkley.

FOUND DEAD.

“Well,” says she “Willie Harris, Widder Harris’es Willie, was found froze to death in that big snow drift jest the other side of the canal. You know sense they licenced that new drinkin’ saloon, Willie has got into bad company, and he left there late last night, after he and a hull party of young fellers had been a drinkin’ and carousin’; he couldn’t hardly stand up when he left, and they s’pose he lost his way and fell in the snow; and there he was, jest the other side of his mother’s, half covered up in the snow; some boys that were skatin’ on the canal found him jest at dark. I never see such a house in my life; the Dr. thinks it will kill his mother, you know she has worked so hard to educate him, almost killed herself, and was happy a doin’ it; she loved him so, and was so proud of him; and she has such a loving, dependent nature; such a affectionate tender-hearted little woman; and Willie was all she had. She lays there, lookin’ like a dead woman. I have been there all the evenin’.”

All the while Miss Gowdey was a speakin’, my heart kep’ a sinkin’ lower and lower, further and further down every minute, till I declare for’t, I didn’t know where it would go to, and I didn’t much care. Willie Harris! that handsome, happy boy that had sot on my knee a hundred times with my Thomas Jefferson; played with him, slept with him. That bright pretty boy, with his frank generous face, his laughing blue eyes, and his curly brown hair—his mother’s pride and darling. Oh! what feelin’s I felt. And then all of a sudden, my heart took a new start, and sunk down more’n two inches I’ll bet, at one sinkin’, as a thought gripped holt of me. What if it had been my Thomas Jefferson! And as that thought tackled me, without mistrustin’ what I was a doin’ I turned round in my seat and spoke right out loud to sister Minkley. Says I:

“Sister Minkley what if it was my Thomas Jefferson that was murdered accordin’ to law? What if it was my boy that was layin’ out there under the snow?”

Sister Minkley had her white linen handkerchief up to her eyes, and she didn’t say a word; but she give several sithes, awful deep; she has got a mother’s heart under her breast bone; she has had between twelve and thirteen childern of her own, and they was on her mind. She couldn’t speak a word, but she sithed powerful, and frequent. But though I was as agitated as agitated could be, and though there wasn’t a dry eye in my head, I began to feel dretful eloquent in mind; my soul soared up awfully, and I kep’ on:

Says I, “Sister Minkley, how can we mother’s live if we don’t put our shoulder blades to the wheel?” says I, “we must put ’em there whether or no; we are movin’ the wheel one way, or the other anyway. In this, as in every other reform, public sentiment has got to work with the law, stand behind the law and push it ahead of it, or else it wont never roll onward to victory.” Says I, “It is a wheel that is loose jinted, the spokes are sot loose on the hub; it is slippery, and easy to run backwards; it is always easier to push anything down hill than up, and there is far more pushers in that direction. And one of the solemnest things I ever see, sister Minkley, is this thought—that you and I, and everybody else is a pushin’ it one way or the other every day of our lives; we can’t shirk out of it, we are either for it or ag’inst it. A man or a woman can’t git away from castin’ their influence one way or the other no more than they can git away from their shadder on a desert, with the sun bilein’ down on ’em, and no shade trees in sight. There haint no trees tall enough to hide us from the blazin’ sun of God’s truth; this cause is before us, and we must work with God or ag’inst him.”

“Amen!” says sister Minkley out from under her white linen handkerchief, and she sithed hard.

“How can we help workin’, sister Minkley? How can we fold our hands up, and rest on our feather beds? If a deadly serpent had broke loose from some circus, and was a wreathin’ and twistin’ his way through Jonesville, swallerin’ down a man or a woman every few days, would men stand with their hands in their pockets, or a leanin’ up ag’inst barn-doors a whittlin’; arguin’ feebly from year to year, whether it was best to try to catch the serpent and cut its head off, or whether it was best after all to let him go free? After they had seen some of their best friends swallered down by it, wouldn’t they make an effort to capture it? Wouldn’t they chase it into any hole they could get it into? Wouldn’t they turn the first key on it they could git holt of? And if it broke loose from that, wouldn’t they try another key, and another, till they got one that would holt him?

“Do you s’pose they would rent out that serpent at so much a year to crunch and swaller folks accordin’ to law? And would it be any easier for the folks that was crunched and swallered, and for the survivin’ friends of the same, if they was killed by act of Congress? What would such a law be thought of sister Minkley? and that is nothin’ to the wickedness of the laws as they be. For what is one middlin’ sized serpent in a circus, that couldn’t eat more’n one man a week with any relish, to this of intemperance that swallers down a hundred thousand every year, and is as big as that Great Midgard serpent I have heerd Thomas J. read about, whose folds encompass the earth.”

Sister Minkley sithed so loud that it sounded some like a groan, and I kep’ on in a dretful eloquent way:

“We have got to take these things to home sister Minkley, in order to realize ’em. Yours and mine, are as far apart as the poles when we are talkin’ about such things. As a general rule we can bear other folks’es trials and sufferin’s with resignation. When it is your brother, and husband, that is goin’ the downward road, we can endure it with considerable calmness; but when it is a part of my own heart, my Willie, or my Charley that is goin’ down to ruin, we feel as if men and angels must help rescue him. When it is mine, when it is mother’s boy that is lyin’ murdered by this trade of death—when the cold snow has drifted down over the shinin’ curls that are every one wove into her heart strings, and the colder drifts of disgrace and shame are heaped over his memory—how does the poison look to her that has killed her darling? How does the law that sanctions the murder seem to her? Then it is that yours and mine draw near to each other. It is the divine fellowship of suffering our Lord speaks of, that brings other hearts near to ours, makes us willin’ to toil for others, live for them, die for them if need be. It was this, that sent forth that wonderful Woman’s Crusade, made tender timid women into heroes willin’ to oppose their weakness to banded strength. It was this that made victory possible to them.

“When a king was chosen in the old time to lead the people of the Lord to victory, he was consecrated by the touch of a royal hand. And it was these women, weak and tender, touched with the divine royalty of sorrow, that God chose to confound the mighty.

“And other great souled women, who loved the praise of God better than the praise of the world, joined ’em; they swept over the land, the most wonderful army that was ever seen. Conquerin’ minds and hearts, instead of bodies, with tears and prayers for weapons. Hindered not by ridicule, helped by angels, enduring as seeing Him who is invisible, conquerin’ in His name. What was the Crusade to the Holy Land that I have heerd Thomas J. read about, to this? That was to protect the sepulchre where the body of our Lord was once laid, but this was to defend the living Christ, the God in man.”

I don’t know how much longer I should have kep’ on, for I seemed to feel more and more eloquent every minute—if I hadn’t all of a sudden heerd a little low modest snore right in front of me, and I see sister Minkley was asleep, and that brung my senses back as you may say, and when I took a realizin’ sense of my situation, and see how still the school-house was and everybody a listenin’ to me, I was completely dumbfounded to think I had spoke right out in meetin’ entirely unbeknown to me.

Cornelius Cork the President was a sheddin’ tears, though bein’ a man he tried to conceal ’em by blowin’ his nose and coughin’ considerable hard. But coughin’ couldn’t deceive me; no! the whoopin’ cough couldn’t, not if he had whooped like an Injun’s warwhoop. I see ’em, I had my eye on ’em.

You see he was own cousin to Willie Harris on his mother’s side—Willie’s mother and his, was own sisters. They was old Joe Snyder’ses girls by his first wife.

Cornelius Cork never asked a person to judge on the question, or vote on it, or anything. He jest jumped right up onto his feet, and says he in a real agitated and choked up voice:

“It is decided, that it is wrong to licence intemperance.” And then he coughed again awful hard. And Lawyer Nugent got up and said sunthin’ about adjournin’ the meetin’ till “Sime-die.” Though what Simon he meant, and what ailed Sime, and whether he died or not, I don’t know to this day no more than you do. Howsumever, we all started for home.