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AUTHOR OF "THE PEOPLe's CHRIST," " WHITE SLAVES," " THE REVIVAL QUIVER," "--r,....,,., — 1 .. ,, LITK,' " "COMMON FOLKS' RELIGION," " THE HONEYCOMBS OF • " " HEAVENLY TRADE-WINDS, CHRIST AND HIS FRIENDS," "the CHRIST DREAM," " THE SALOON- KEEPER'S LEDGER," "the FISHERMAN AND HIS FRIENDS," ETC. WITH INTRODUCTION BY THE REV. C. II. MEAD, D.D., Secretary of the National Temperance Society NEW YORK FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY LONDON AND TORONTO 1896 # Copyright, 1896, By Funk & Wagnalls Company. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES, /7S » j ¥ t I ! ^ i I TO MY FRIEND, ^Ijr J?onoralJlr iHarcus ^adtrtt. OF SILVHK CKEEK, N.Y. A Faithful Worker in tiir Ticmi-eranck R EFORM, Ojis Fohmtc IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED BY The Author. CONTENTS. - I'Ar.R Introduction The Value of the Total Abstinence Pledge . . n Seeking for the Black Sheep 28 The Romance of Woman's Work for Tlmi-ekanck Reform ^ 4" The Church and thm Saloon y^ The Saloon as a Business Investment for the Community gj^ The Social Wine-Glas^s ,02 The Preslnt Status and Outlook of the Tem- perance Movement ,,§ i INTRODUCTION. KI*:V. C. H. MKAI), D.I). Secretary of the National Ten.perance Society. The last battle in the war against stron- drink will be fought at the ballot-box ; and at that point will King Alcohol meet his Appo- mattox. ]n,t before that battle, which will end in sure and certain victory, is fought, tre- mendous work must be done. Plearts must be stirred, consciences must be quickened, youth must be trained, soldiers must be re' cruited, and sentiment must be crystallized. That means agitation and education; at the fireside, in the schoolroom, in the church, and on the printed page. Every home and school and church must become a recruiting-station and every parent and teacher and preacher must become a recruiting-officer. The parent must train, and the teacher must instruct, and the preacher must warn. Apologists must be silenced, and appetites must be changed, and avarice must be checkmated. Protection must 9 10 IiVTROD UC TION. be taken from the saloon, and be given to the boy. All this involves consecration, and time, and labor, and sacrifice, and prayer, and speech, and song, before the walls of Jericho shall fall. It will require man to pray as if everything depended on God, and to work as if everything depended on man. No hesitat- ing, no faltering, no cowardice, but a never- failing confidence in the justice of the cause espoused, and a deep conviction that "what ought to be, will be." I commend the wisdom of my friend. Dr. Louis Albert Banks, in once more opening the Hanson Place Methodist Episcopal Church for a whole week, and giving his people a series of able discourses upon different phases of this great problem. His example is worthy of imitation by every pastor in the land. I am glad these lectures are to go out in printed form, and trust they will be read by thousands who were unable to hear them. New York, May i, 1896. SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. THE VALUE OF THE TOTAL ABSTI- NENCE PLEDGE. I AM convinced that our modern temperance work as a whole is weak at one important point. While we have been greatly strength- ened by the teaching of the Sunday-school, and in increased attention paid to temperance in the public school and college, there has, I think, been a letting-up in the public church service and on the lecture platform of the agi- tation which had for its great purpose the education of the individual upon the question of the personal danger from strong drink, and the necessity of definite and avowed total ab- stinence from intoxicating liquors. "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." There is no place in the world where this is truer than II 12 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. in our effort to save the youth of our land from falling into the cruel bondage of strong drink. We need to constantly bear in mind that every man in this nation who holds a liquor license is specially interested financially in increasing the number of people who drink liquors. In this city of Brooklyn alone there is an army of nearly five thousand men who have invested money in liquor saloons, and who, with their much larger army of bar- tenders, have a personal stake in making young men believe that the moderate use of strong drink is beneficial, and that the dangers so often mentioned by the pulpit and by temper- ance speakers are imaginary. Not only so, but a large portion of the daily press — in- fluenced, no doubt, in no small degree by the immense power of the advertising patronage of brewers, distillers, and saloon-keepers ap- plied to the money nerve in the counting- room — throws its influence on the side of dangerous drinking customs. These considerations, and others that I might mention, make it highly important that we should constantly keep before the minds THE VALUE OF TOTAL ABSTINENCE. 1 3 of the people the deadly effects of strong drink, and seek to win the allegiance of the young and of the tempted to the only really safe course — that of total abstinence from everything that can intoxicate. There has been no time in the history of the world when the disaster and desolation brought about by the liquor traffic — not only in its effects upon the municipal and politi- cal life of the people, but in its cruel blight- ing of individual homes and lives — were more terrible than to-day. A few weeks ago the New York Herald gave a ghastly and gruesome description of a new saloon opened up in the city of New York, which was given by its owner the strangely suggestive and appropriate name of the " Wine Shop of Death." A large reception was given, which was attended by many members of the theat- rical profession. On entering the first cham- ber, which is vaulted, the eye falls in the dim light on coffins which form tables. Coffins are on all sides ; and the walls are hung with black drapery with narrow white borders, or- namented with skulls and cross-bones, with a , 14 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. grisly skeleton here and there. This chamber is called the Restaurant of Death. Through a hole in the wall each individual may see an upright coffin, and a reflection of his own person ; and at intervals, by a curious ma- nipulation of lights behind the canvas, all figures are turned into skeletons. Alas, for the awful and horrible background of truth for all this daring and mocking play ! How many young men go into saloons who, if the mist could only be cleared away from their eyes, would see coffins on the shelves where the liquor bottles rest ; and if they could only look through a little hole in the wall into the future for a few years, would see their strong and healthy physical manhood, and their self-respecting and respectable manly character, shriveled into a skeleton of their former beauty and strength ! If I could summon before you all the skeletons of that sort that have been produced by the saloons of Brooklyn during the past year, it would be a sight so terrible that you would never forget it. Less than two months ago, right here in THE VALUE OF TOTAL ABSTINENCE. 1 5 Brooklyn, a young man got drunk one Sun- day with liquor bought from the neighboring saloon, which stood open because the mayor and the police authorities neglected to keep their oath of office. For the fourth time that day he came in with his demijohn, and, after a fight with a neighbor, went in where his mother was and shut the door. Soon the people up-stairs heard above the angry growls of the drunken son the pleading voice of the poor old mother, " O Mike, don't do it ! " Then there was a shot, and they heard some- thing fall. Then there was another shot. The people ran down-stairs, and tried to push the door open. There was something in the way. It was the body of the mother. She was lying on her side with her feet toward the door. They were doubled under her, and her hand was raised to a bullet wound in her head. About six feet away lay Michael, flat on his back, with a bullet wound in his cheek. Both bullets had found their way to the brain, and death had come instantly. The dead man's brother pushed his way into tiie room. He kneeled down, and gathered 1 6 SEVEN TIMES AROUXD JERICHO. his mother in his arms. The blood flowing from her neck stained his shirt. " O mother ! my dear mother, speak to me, speak to me ! " he cried, clutching her tightly to his breast. When he saw that she was dead he rose to his feet, and moved to the side of his brother. •' You drunken loafer ! " he said, and he kicked the body with all his might. " You swine, to kill the mother that bore you ! " His excitement and indignation were so great that the people present feared he would try to tear the body to pieces, and they drew him away. When the undertaker came, the living brother said, " I want only my mother cared for. Take this loafer away," and he kicked the body again. •* I have no money to bury a thing like him. Take him to the morgue, and bury him with the paupers, where he belongs." Could there be a more horrible scene con- ceived by the wildest imagination } But, re- member, that is not ancient history ; that is no fable from the age of hobgoblins and THE VALUE OF TOTAL ABSTINENCE. 1/ ghosts — it is a true picture of Brooklyn home- life, not yet two months old. How little that mother thought when she fondled both these little boys in her arms, loving one as much as the other, and each of them innocent and pure, that the day would come when one, transformed into a demon, should take away her life, and the other, with all love for the brother whom he had loved as his own soul blighted and gone, should kick his dead body in loathing and disgust, as he might the car- cass of a wild beast. How different would have been the outcome of this home if the boys had been brought up total abstainers, and this young man, Michael, had come to his manhood a pledged and intelligent enemy of all intoxicants ! It is easy to predict the sad fortune of a boy who begins to dally with strong drink. The Detroit Free Press has an amusing but suggestive little story about fortune-telling. A man was having his fortune told. " I see," said the " seventh daughter of the seventh daughter," contracting her eyebrows, " I see the name of John," i8 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. "Yes," said the sitter, indicating that he had heard the name before. " The name seems to have given you a great deal of trouble." " It has." " This John is an intimate friend." "That's so," he said, wonderingly. "And often leads you to do things you are sorry for." "True; every word." " His influence over you is bad." " Right again." "But you will soon have a serious quarrel, when you will become estranged." "I am glad of that. Now spell out his whole name." The fortune-teller opened one eye, and care- fully studied the face of the visitor. Then she wrote some cabalistic message, and handed it to him in exchange for her fee. "Do not read it until you are at home," she said, solemnly. " It is your friend's whole name. »» When he reached home he lit the gas and gravely examined the paper. There he •1 THE VALUE OF TOTAL ABSTINENCE, 19 read, in picket-fence characters, the name of his friend : " Demi-John." I hope these boys will never make a friend of him. He always gets his associates into trouble. Many years ago Hon. Neal Dow, who is now over ninety years old, and is known as the father of prohibition, was passing down one of the streets of Portland, Me., when he noticed a crowd of people, among whom was the mayor of the city. In the center of the group was a country lad, crying. The lad had been imposed upon by a noted horse jockey of the town, who had got the boy drunk, and then induced him to swap the horse he had driven into town for an old plug. Upon hearing his story, telling the boy to follow him and lead the jockey's horse, Mr. Dow led the way to the latter's stable! nearly a mile distant. Not finding the jockey in, the old horse was turned into the stable; and Mr. Dow, with the country lad still fol- lowing, turned to go down-town again. On the way they met the jockey, driving in a wagon to which the lad's horse was attached. 20 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. "That's my horse," said the boy. Mr. Dow stepped into the road, took the horse by the bridle, and calling to one of his own employees, who happened to be passing at the time, told him to unharness the horse, which he did, the irate jockey swearing the while like a trooper, and threatening to take the law on Mr. Dow, who replied, — "You will always know where to find me." Then telling the boy to take the horse, he started to lead the way down-town, where the lad's wagon had been left. "Look a-here," said the jockey, as they went, "what am I to do with my wagon.?" " Do what you like," said Mr. Dow. " It is nothing to me." As may be expected, the country lad was full of joy and profuse with thanks. When he had harnessed his horse, he said to Mr. Dow, — Now, what can I do for you.?" Promise me not to drink any more." And the boy did so. Some three years afterward Mr. Dow was (( {( I I THE VALUE OF TOTAL ABSTINENCE, 21 Stopped by a countryman in the streets, who, with mouth stretched on a broad grin, said, pointing to a horse, "There he is. I hain't drunk no more." It proved to be the boy for whom Mr. Dow had recovered the horse some years before. Any boy that wants a healthy body, a clear head, and a good reputation will do well to take the temperance pledge now, at the very beginning of his career. Frances E. Willard says that the Magna Charta of the temperance reform is the teetotal pledge. A champion bicyclist the other day, a bright young fellow from Iowa, who did a flying mile in 1.56, when asked by a reporter what advice he had to give young men who wished to become athletes, replied, "Tell them never to touch alcoholic liquors, never to touch tobacco, eat only the simplest food, and to sleep eight hours in every twenty-four." How much bet- ter it is for a boy or a young man to take the pledge as a guaranty of safety and a means of prevention against danger than to wait until it is like a plank which is thrown to a drown- ^ 22 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. ing man ! John B. Gough once said, " If the pledge had been offered me when I was a boy in Sabbath-school I should have been spared those seven dreadful years." Our good neighbor, Dr. Theodore L. Cuy- ler, in a letter to young preachers in The Golden Rule, gives some advice which is good for young men in all professions. "Take a total abstinence pledge," says this heroic vet- eran of many a good cause, "at the very start, to refrain from all sorts of alcoholic stimulants and all sorts of indigestible food. A minister sometimes calls in as an ally what proves to be a deadly enemy. Long years ago, the elo- quent Dr. K fell into sad inebriation from having used port wine to enable him, as he honestly said, 'to preach with more power.' He repented in dust and ashes. . . . Famous old Dr. Emmons, who died at ninetv-five, used to drink his coffee 'one-half milk and the other half sugar;* but when I saw the British Prime Minister, Lord Beaconsfield, trembling like an aspen leaf, I was not surprised that his wife said, 'My husband likes his coffee as black as ink and as hot as Topbet.* God's THE VALUE OF TOTAL ABSTINENCE. 2% prohibitory law against the use of exciting stimulants appears, in that they are all armed with a whip of scorpions." There is an oft-quoted incident in the life of Henry Wilson, one of the noblest of all the senators and vice-presidents the United States has ever had, that is well worth keep- ing immortal for every new generation of young men. After Mr. Wilson's first election to the United States Senate, he gave his friends a dinner. The table was set with not one wine-glass upon it. " Where are the glasses } " asked several of the guests mer- rily. " Gentlemen," said Mr. Wilson, " you know my friendship for you and my obliga- tions to you. Great as they are, they are not great enough to make me forget * the rock whence I was hewn and the pit whence I was digged.* Some of you know how the curse of intemperance overshadowed my youth. That I might escape I fled from my early surroundings. For what I am, I am indebted, under God, to my temperance vow and my adherence to it. Call for what you want to eat, and if this hotel can provide it, it shall f n I ' 24 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. be forthcoming; but wines and liquors cannot come to this table with my consent, because I will not spread in the path of another the snare from which I escaped." Three rousing cheers showed the brave senator that men admire the man who has the courage of his convictions. I have no doubt that I speak to some who stand in great danger in relation to strong drink. You are not yet a drunkard, but you are beginning to accustom yourself to occa- sional drinking, and you are coming to like the taste of the liquor that excites your im- agination and for the hour stirs your blood. I beg of you to listen to me. Do not shrink into yourself, and say, " I am in no danger of becoming a drunkard. I take a glass now and then, but I have power of will enough to stop when I see that it is getting control of me." Alas, that is just when you will not stop! Tens of thousands of men who have crawled their loathsome way through the gut- ter into a drunkard's grave have talked just like you. When you look this matter square in the face you know that you are in danger. ii;: I THE VALUE OF TOTAL ABSTINENCE. 2$ If any other man was doing what you are doing you would say he was in great peril. The fact is, that if you are drinking strong drink at all, you are drinking too much for safety, and down in the honest places of your heart you know it. Have you taken into proper consideration the almost omnipotent power of an evil habit ? If you do not stop now, it will not be long before you will feel the tightening of its folds about you as relent- lessly as the death-grip of a boa-constrictor. Every poor drunkard who is staggering down his despairing way to a drunkard's hell once stood exactly where you stand to-night. You are treading in the same path where he once walked. The pulpit warned him, his friends pleaded with him, but he laughed and shrugged his shoulders as you do now. He went on and was ruined. What do you propose to do.? Go on as he did, or stop here and now, and by the help of God become a total abstainer from the drink that has led more souls to death, and afterward mocked them in their torment, than any other sin that has cursed the race ? I ilii lii 26 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. The sobriety of the community is a matter of the gravest importance to every one of us. And no one who intelligently considers the question can say, "It is a matter in which I have no interest." •'"Tis nothing to me,' the beauty said, With a careless toss of her pretty head; 'The man is weak who can't refrain From the cup you say is fraught with pain.' It was something to her in after years, When her eyes were drenched with burning tears, And she watched, in lonely grief and dread, And started to hear a staggering tread. ♦It's nothing to me,' the mother said; * I have no fear that my boy will tread The downward path of sin and shame. And crush my heart and darken my name.' It was something to her when her only son From the path of life was early won, And madly quaffed of the flowing bowl. Then — a ruined body and shipwrecked soul. •It's nothing to me,' the merchant said. As over the ledger he bent his head; 'I'm busy to-day with tare and tret; I have no time to fume and fret.' It was something to him when over the wire A message came from a funeral pyre — A drunken conductor had wrecked the train — His wife and child were among the slain. THE VALUE OF TOTAL ABSTINENCE 2^ •It's nothing to me,' the young man cried; In his eye was a flash of scorn and pride. *I heed not the dreadful things you tell; I can rule myself, I know full well ! ' 'Twas something to him when in prison he lay, The victim of drink, life ebbing away, As he thought of his wretched child and wife And the mournful wreck of his wasted life. Is it nothing to us who idly sleep While the cohorts of death their vigils keep, Alluring the young and thoughtless in To grind in their midst a grist of sin? It is something for us, for us all, to stand And clasp bv faith our Saviour's hand; Learn to labor, live, and fight . On the side of God and changeless right. " 28 SETEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. SEEKING FOR THE BLACK SHEEP. At a revival meeting in the State of Ken- tucky a few weeks ago, Rev. George Stuart, an earnest Methodist evangelist, was in the midst of his sermon one evening, when a poor Irish woman, half-crazed with sorrow, came down the aisle, crying out, ** Mr. Stuart ! Mr. Stuart ! the saloon has got my boy ! " The kind- hearted man was so deeply moved that for a moment he was unable to respond. Finally he said, " How many women in this great audi- ence can hold up their hands with this poor woman } " Hands went up all over the room, showing that there were many other mothers there who were having the same sad experi- ence. Some of the hands wore white gloves. Some were white, tender hands, while some were hard and toil-worn hands. Mr. Stuart said, "Men of Kentucky, I don't know what kind of stuff you are made of, but I am that kind of stuff to stand by the side of these sad SEEKING FOR THE BLACK SHEEP. 29 and stricken women, with their uplifted hands, and help them save their boys from the clutches of the dreadful saloon." The great audience was so aroused to indignation and sympathy by the woman's wail and the preach- er's earnest appeal, that they stood up and cheered again and again. Every community where intoxicating drinks are sold has its wrecked and ruined men and women and children, whose pitiful condition appeals to us to give our earnest and devoted efforts to their rescue. This wreckage of hu- man life and happiness is the most cruel work of the saloon. The ruin which it brings to a man's business prosperity, and the poverty which it so often causes, are bad enough ; but yet its disastrous influence on the community would be very slight compared to what it really is, if its destruction stopped at a man's prop- erty. The awful thing about it is that it de- stroys the man himself. The eloquent W. H. H. Murray, who once charmed great audiences in Park Street Church, Boston, once said to his throng of listeners that "tempests might sweep every ship from the seas, and in twelve 30 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. months those seas would be as white as ever with sails. Fires can consume your store- houses, melt your iron blocks, and granulate, by their excessive heat, your structures of stone; and yet out of the ashes shall rise new walls, the melted iron be replaced, the crum- bling granite be restored, and commerce rejoice with more adequate equipment than before the destruction came. But when a man is wrecked — when the pillars of his virtue are cast down and broken into fragments ; when the torch of inflammable appetite has kindled flames within his bosom which feed on the strength and integrity of his soul — a ruin has been wrought greater than the winds make when they pile up wrecks, greater than fire makes when it reduces warehouses to ashes. To bring against drinking habits the charge that they destroy not only property, but men, is to send forth into the air a warning against their formation solemn enough even to make idiots look grave. A ruined man ! A man who has been great, has been wealthy, has been good, has held and administered large trusts ; a man with an immortal soul, with possibilities in his \\ SEEKING FOR THE BLACK SHEEP. 31 nature which only eternity could realize — such a man, ruined, in estate, in mind, in soul ! Bring him to me!" cried the eloquent Murray. " Bring him to me, with or without his coffin, and I will take the wreck and remnant of what was once a glorious being, out to the center of that Common, and I will call the city together ; I will call to the governor f '' the State; I will call to all who love Boston and the Common- wealth, high and low, and say, * Come, gather round me here, and let us mourn a loss greater than if our property had all been swept into the center of the sea — the loss of a man!' Yea, and with you all gathered round me there, thousands of us, so that Boston Common would not hold another human form, it would be allowable for me, voicing your sense of loss, to call on the angels, and the mercy of the great God, to mourn with us over the loss of what earth cannot give, nor heaven with all its power of ministration restore — the loss of a soul. For never is the sky so blue, never is the sun so bright, never are the clouds so dense above me, that I cannot see, written in gigantic letters, reaching from pole to pole, the 32 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. dreadful sentence : * No drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of God.' " I suppose it is not possible for any man who has always lived a sober life to conceive the misery and despair that come sometimes to a poor drunkard who has touched the depths of that awful bondage, and never quite gets over the horror of his fear that he may sink again into that slimy ooze. After John B. Gough was dead his pastor read at a public meeting a prayer which they found written in his diary, and which, during Mr. Gough's life, was per- haps never read by any eyes but his own. Every sentence is suggestive of how his great soul was haunted by those seven terrible years of drunkenness. This is the prayer : " Al- mighty God, if it be thy will that man should suffer, whatever seemeth good in thy sight, impose upon me. Let the bread of sorrow be given me to eat. Take from me the friends of my confidence. Let the cold hut of poverty be my dwelling-place, and the scourging hand of disease inflict its painful torments. Let me sow in the whirlwind, and reap in the storm. Let those have me in derision who are younger % m SEEKING FOR THE BLACK SHEEP. 33 than I. Let the passing away of my welfare be like the fleeting of a cloud, and the shouts of my enemies like the rushing of waters. When I anticipate good, let evil annoy me. When I look for light, let darkness be upon me. Let the terrors of death be ever before me. Do all this, but save me, merciful God, save me from the fate of a drunkard ! " Alas ! that there should be so many of our brothers and sisters in such sorrow, and we so often indifferent about reaching out to them the hand of help. There is no work in this world more blessed than that which brings us into fellowship with Jesus Christ in seek- ing after the lost, and rescuing those who will miserably perish but for our aid. Dr. Burrell relates that when he was a lad in a frontier town he saw, one morning, a dram- shop burning down. The fire had gotten headway before the old hand-engines were brought into play ; and when he, with other boys, got to the fire, it did not seem to them that there was any hope for anybody that was in there. But suddenly the smoke lifted a little, and away in the distance, i I 1 34 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. at the back of the dram-shop, they could sec a man lying on the floor. Then one of the volunteer firemen determined to go in and try to save him. He put a wet towel around his mouth and nostrils, and got down upon his hands and knees, and crawled under the smoke ; and they watched him until he reached the rear of the wretched drinking- den, and saw him put his arm around the poor insensible wretch and drag him toward the door, until at last he reached the threshold, where he dropped his burden and fell back in a swoon. The village rang with shouts and hurrahs for him, and he was the hero of the town. And I am sure that in heaven, where they ring all the joy-bells over every repenting sinner, there will be welcome and victory for the men and the women who, denying themselves, give up their lives to the snatching of the brands from the burn- ing. The rescuing of an individual often means a great deal more than that simply. None of us stand alone. No man can rise to great- ness without drawing other lives higher than S£EA-/Ara I-OR THE BLACK SHEEP. 35 they would have been without his aspiration and noble struggle and success. On the other hand, it is true that no man can be degraded and not draw others down with him into the darkness of his sorrow and defeat And often it is true that in rescuing an in- dividual one rescues a family and a home as well. One of the bitterest ingredients in the misery of a drunkards life is that he blights and destroys innocent ones who suffer for^his misdoings. In a small town there lived a little family, the husband and father of which died in a drunken spree. About a week after the father's death the heart-broken mother and widow, who took in washing and ironing to get food for her children, asked her little boy, a bright little fellow six years old, to go into the woodshed and get some wood to replenish her fire. The little fellow's lips quivered, and he said he did not want to go. When his mother pressed him for the rea son, he said, " I don't want to go because father's boots hang up there, and when I see them they look like they wanted to kick me " 36 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. I Think of the misery behind a statement like that from the lips of a little child ! Dr. John Hall, in an article entitled " Some- thing to Cry Over," relates how he stood one day on a boat in New York Harbor. Not far off was a well-dressed but tipsy young man. Beside the doctor was a plainly dressed man. When Di. Hall saw tV»e people laughing at the drunkard, he saw in his neighbor's eyes such a sad, pitying look, that he said to him, " They should hardly laugh at him." The man replied, " It is a thing to cry over." Then he told Dr. Hall of his own wife, who took to drink in Scotland, and who promised to reform if he would come to this country, but did not, and died of drunkenness ; and when the good doctor hoped he had comfort in his children, he said, " One, the second, is ; she is a good child. The eldest is not steady. I can do nothing with her ; and the youngest can't be kept from drink. I have sold my place, and am going to a town in the West where I am told no liquor can be had, to tiy and save him." Surely one in coming close to an incident like that feels I, SEEKING FOR THE BLACK SHEEP. 3; like crying out for total abstinence societies, tracts, books, sermons, prohibitory laws — any- thing that will rescue these poor innocent victims, and stop this "cruel murder of home- love, of men, of women, of little children, of hope, of peace, of lost souls." In our efforts to rescue men from the power of the saloon we need to take into considera- tion more earnestly than we ever have yet the way the saloon is intrenched in the craving of multitudes of men who do not have com- fortable homes, and thousands who do not have homes at all, for some place to spend their evenings that is warm and light, and has at least a show of sympathy and socia- bility. I agree with Rev. Thomas Dixon that I have yet to hear of the everyday young man who buys a keg of beer or whisky, takes it up to his cheerless hall-room, sits down over it, and drinks merely for the sake of drinking. And I agree with him in his graphic stated ment of the case in "The Saloon Social," that multitudes of men are first attracted to the saloon because th ^y are lonely, and they go to the devil because, for the time beincr. . ' -JU.L. I LJ. 38 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. there does not seem to them to be any other place specially desiring them. They have the natural longing for beautiful things; and the saloon appeals in its polished wood and ham- mered brass, flashing mirrors, beautiful fres- coes, and brilliant lights, to this element of their nature. Multitudes are attracted to these brilliant bar-rooms who would not go near them if they were dingy and dark. There is one bar-room in the city of New York where the decorations alone cost forty thousand dollars. The coloring of this room is delicate and harmonious, and if a visitor has any eye for beauty his first sensations on entering are most pleasing. The floors are of the finest Italian marble, and the ceilings are the work of an artist. The bar itself is of African marble, with Mexican onyx panels and heavy brass trimmings. The cut-glass ware and everything connected with the fixtures of the place are elegant to the last degree. Five hundred electric lights, and more, set in floral bulbs and cluster^ of brilliancy, make the place brighter than day, and beautiful as a fairy- land. It is against liquor saloons that are i SEEKING FOR THE BLACK SHEEP. 39 thus intrenched in wealth and beauty, which extend to every young man who crosses the threshold the heartiest welcome to easy-chairs and illustrated papers and possibilities for con- versation, that we are to contend in our efforts to rescue the homeless and the tempted. I fear Mr. Dixon's comparison is, on the whole, very fairly drawn when he says, "Only sup- pose it were as easy for a young man to go to the good as it is for him to go to the devil in New York! Ten thousand saloons stand open, with beauty and good cheer and com- panionship for welcome, every day and every night in the year. Five hundred churches stand silent and gloomy, used only as the background for undertakers' signs, save for a few hours on Sunday and one or two hours in the week. Only a few steps from the Ven- dome Caf6 I passed St. Luke's Methodist Church. It was Saturday night. The church was locked and barred, and, lest any man should draw nigh, a heavy iron picket fence bristled against the sidewalk. Through eight clear windows on the side, and two on the front, a flood of light poured from the caf^, and I I!: i |;: I 40 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. invited the passing stranger to come and make himself at home ! The saloon is a social in- stitution. Thousands of men go there simply because it is open and they are welcome. They long for companionship, and there they find it. Could they find fellowship under as fair conditions without the drink, at least one- half of them would prefer it. Men become drunkards often under protest." We cannot expect to rescue from these deadly snares men who are thus fascinated and tempted without bringing to our efforts hearts full of sympathy and kindness. Chris- tian workers often need to have the great truth emphasized that in undertaking to rescue men and women they must bring to their work not only religious devotions but abun- dant common sense, and, above all, a hearty sympathy and fellowship that make it possible for them to put themselves into association with the ones they would rescue without any thought of patronizing them, but in the spirit of sharing with them in their misery and wretchedness in order to lift them out of it. Maud Ballington Booth, in a recent article SEEKING FOR THE BLACK SHEEP. 41 in Harper's Weekly, under the suggestive title "The Church of the Black Sheep," tells the story of the rescue of a desperate char- acter who lived in a small town in California, and had made himself infamous by his life of drunken outlawry. He was part Mexican and part Indian, and, though yet young, had been a desperate whisky-drinker for years. Almost a giant in stature, and with proportionate de- velopment of muscle, he was considered most dangerous in his fights, and was a constant cause of trouble and difficulty to the police. One evening Mota, as he was called, walked into a Salvation Army meeting out of curi- osity. The audience was not only surprised, but alarmed ; but it in no wise disconcerted the captain, who was a young girl. She at once tried to show to him a kindly interest. He felt that he was welcome, and he came again and again. Though densely ignorant and utterly godless, he was touched by the sincere lives, and convinced by the simple but powerful truths he heard in such plain and unvarnished language. He was converted, and his life gave evidence of the sincerity and I 42 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. depth of the work accomplished. The captain naturally watched and prayed over this new convert with interest; and it was well that she did, for he would soon have been over- thrown but for her wisdom and devotion. Mota suffered one day with a raging tooth- ache, which compelled him to seek out a den- tist. The man tugged away for a while at the offending tooth, but failed to get it out. The pain and sensitiveness of the nerves were so great that he gave up the attempt, and ordered Mota to get a glass of whisky to nerve him for another effort. The poor fellow at once refused ; for not only as a Salvationist was it prohibited him, but he knew what this step would mean to his life. The dentist, however, insisted that it was necessary, and that as a doctor he prescribed it, until Mota yielded, and took the first glass that he had tasted since he had come under the Salva- tion Army's influence. Again the dentist at- tempted in vain to extract the tooth. Again he ordered a glass of whisky for the sufferer, who, reluctantly, and hesitating at first as to the right or wrong of it, at last yielded. As SEEKINC FOR THE BLACK SHEEP. 43 he put it in his own words, " He did not have to tell me to take the third nor the fourth glass, nor all that followed after it." The dreadful craving for drink had returned, and with it a sense of disgrace which made him feel : " I am done for. I have fallen. I have disgraced the Army. I may as well go all lengths now." A message reached the cap- tain just as she closed her meeting that night to say that Mota had been seen reeling down the streets raving drunk, and that the police had "run him in." Some might have lost hope, or perhaps have been too disappointed and discouraged to have done anything more for this very black sheep; but not so the . earnest, loving captain. She went immedi- ately to the jail and asked to see Mota. The police demurred, saying that he was dead drunk, was in a disgraceful condition, and she really could do no good if she did see him. She insisted, however, and was admitted to the cell. There he lay, her once promising re- cruit, helplessly, hopelessly drunk, with cloth- ing torn, and covered with mud from his dishevelled head to his feet. Then, to the 44 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. surprise of the on-looking officials, the captain knelt and prayed for the wandering sheep to a God whom she evidently felt was not afar off. Before she arose she wrote on a piece of paper as follows : " Do not despair nor be discouraged. God will not forsake you, and I shall not. I will call for you in the morn- ing. God bless you. Your Captain." Mrs. Booth well says, "How much these hopeful, loving words meant to the poor fellow when he came to himself no one but God will ever know." In the meantime, the captain bor- rowed a team and drove out to the place where Mota had been working steadily since his conversion, and talked with his employer. She told of his trouble, and showed convin- cingly that to lose his employment through it would mean the forcing of him back to the old life. Her pleadings availed, and she was told if he got off at court he should be kept right on at his work. The captain drove back to town and borrowed ten dollars from a friend, and then reached the jail in time to drive Mota to the court-room. At the bar it was the captain who pleaded for him, and SEEKING FOR THE BLACK SHEEP. 45 when the ten-dollar fine or imprisonment was imposed, poor Mota thought his future doom was sealed ; but, to his amazement, she quickly paid the fine and told him to come with her. From the court-room he followed her meekly, and she took him to the house of a brother soldier, where he could wash and tidy himself; and after a good breakfast she prayed with hin. dealing earnestly with him about his soul. He then and there renewed his consecration to God, confessed his wrong, and went to his work with a hopeful heart. From that day to this he has remained a sober and honorable man, and has won the confidence of the entire community. Let any one of us who would be a rescuer of his brother from sin emulate the same spirit of Christlike brotherhood. 46 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. THE ROMANCE OF WOMAN'S WORK FOR TEMPERANCE REFORM. The work of woman for reform, her fidelity and devotion to great causes, has always been full of heroism and self-denial. From the days of Miriam to Frances Willard, woman's work for reform has been of romantic interest. One of the most heroic stories of the Bible, and one which illustrates the characteristics which have made many women such irresistible defenders of a good cause, is that of Esther. Perhaps it may do us good to recall it. Xerxes, the King of Persia, had atcempted the invasion of Europe, and meeting with dis- astrous failure had come home to his magnifi- cent palace at Shushan. It was four years after Vashti tixe queen had fallen into dis- grace, and the king fancied that it would take away some of the smart of his defeat to put another beautiful queen in her place. So the command was sent forth throuo:hout all the I WOMAN ^S WORK FOR TEMPERANCE. 47 provinces, in the old despotic style, that the fair- est girls that could be found anywhere should be sent to Shushan for the king's inspection. Among the people who read this decree was an ambitious man by the name of Mordecai. Mordecai was a Jew, and he had a beautiful niece -so beautiful, indeed, that he dared hope she might surpass all the rest of the women of the land. He introduced her to the head eunuch, who had charge of such mat- ters, and after twelve months' perfecting of her charms she was introduced to the king, and he seems to have fallen in love with her gt first sight, and the result was that she was chosen to be the sultana. Soon after this, Mordecai, who appears to have been a very keen, wide-awake kind of a man, unearthed a conspiracy against the life of the king, and through his niece, Esther, the queen, made the matter known to the king, and probably saved his life. Yet P^Tordecai was very careful to keep his own relationship to the queen a secret. Among the people who were attracted to this splendid court in those days was a brilliant 48 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. and ambitious young exile, a descendant of the old Amalekites, between whom and the Jews there was a most deadly feud. There was nothing on this earth that this young Haman hated so much as a Jew. Haman was a very bright man, full of cunning and intrigue, and aroused a great deal of interest in the mind of Xerxes. Indeed, he became so highly honored at the court that the king issued a special order that everybody about the palace and in the streets should bow down before him when- ever he approached. Now, one can imagine that this was a bitter order for Mordecai. It was so bitter that he determined that he would risk losing his head rather than obey it. And so when everybody else was bowing and prostrating themselves before Haman, there was one backbone that was unbending, and one neck that held the head above it straight in the air. When Ha- man heard about it he was filled with anger and determined to get vengeance. But while he was at it he concluded to strike the whole Jewish race at a blow. Taking advantage of his friendship with fVOA/JAT^S IVOHA' FOJi TEMPERANCE. 49 Xerxes, Haman found opportunity to tell the monarch that there was a certain class of people among his subjects who clung to their old customs and ceremonies, who had only con- tempt for his Majesty, and slighted his com- mands. He represented to the king that his own personal friendship with him was so great that it gave him keen sorrow to witness such ^ state of affairs, and that if the king would give him authority he would leid a crusade against these worthless and disobedient peo- pie, and destroy them, and out of the spoils would turn in a large sum of money into the king's treasury. The king was completely taken in. He was angry in a moment at the knowledge of such a class of rebellious subjects. And though he refused the bribe, he gave Haman his signet ring and authority to work his will on the Jews. Haman lost no time in getting about his devilish work, and sent orders, bearing the king's seal, throughout all the provinces, com- manding a massacre of the Jews, including men, women, and children, on a day named. 50 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO, When Mordecai heard of the doom that threatened himself and his people, he rent his clothes and put on sackcloth, so that Esther in the palace sent to find out what was the matter ; and when the wicked plot was made known to her, she was filled with horror. Now, Esther was a true Jewish maiden, with all the tender love and fidelity of a Jewess for her own people ; but there was at that time a law in force in the palace forbidding any one to approach the king except when specially commanded to do so, on pain of death, unless the monarch chose to hold out his golden scepter to the one approaching, as a token of forgiveness. Xerxes seems at this time to have had his mind taken up with many other things, and Esther had not been summoned to appear before him for the last thirty days. If she waited until the king commanded her to come it might be too late, and she and her people would perish. Surely Esther was in a hard place! While she was wondering what she should do, Mor- ■ ^OAfAN^S WORK FOR TEMPERANCE. 51 decai sent her word, arousing her to act at once with courage, and inspiring her to be- lieve that perhaps God had exalted her to be queen for just such an occasion as the one that confronted her. Esther was a brave woman, and she imme- diately made her resolution. She sent back word to Mordccai to gather together all the Jews living in Shushan, and hold with them a three days' and nights' prayer-meeting, fast- ing before God, declaring that she and her maidens would do likewisf;. " And so," said the heroic young queen, " will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law ; and if I perish, I perish." On the third day, arrayed in her queenly robes, Esther took her life in her hands, and drew near to the king; and to her great joy he held out the scepter, inviting her to ap- proach him. When he asked, her wish she told him that she sought his presence and that of Haman that day at a banquet. The request was at once granted, and Haman sent for. The banquet passed off so pleasantly, and Xerxes was so captivated by Esther, that $2 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. he vowed he would give her half his king- dom if she asked for it. Manlike, the old king thought there must be something back of all this, and so he quizzically asked her what it was that she wanted, and why she had invited him. She nafvely replied that she desired that he and Haman should ban- quet with her the next day also, and that at that time she would tell him what she had on her mind. Haman was so excited at the honor that had been done him by the invitation to dine alone with the king and queen, that he went home boasting of his great success at court ; "but," said he, "what is all this to me, while Mordccai the Jew sits there at the king's gate ? " Poor Haman ! Everybody else was bowing to him, but it all went for nothing because one old Jew had a stiff neck. So in the family council that followed it was de- termined that the carpenters should be set to work in the morning to build a gallows fifty cubits high, to hang Mordecai on, and then he could go to the king's banquet with a merry heart. IVOMAN'S WORK FOR TEMPERANCE. 53 Now, it happened that Xerxes was troubled with insomnia, as many other busy men are, and he had discovered that when he could not sleep well it would often put him to sleep to read some of his own writings. I have heard of preachers who have found their old sermons very serviceable in that way. It seems Xerxes kept a diary of the important incidents of his reign, and, looking it over that night, he came to the place where was the story of the discovery by Mordecai of the conspiracy against his life ; and he remem- bered with a flush of shame that he had never done anything to honor Mordecai for his fidelity. Next morning, when the king had gone into the room where he received visitors, and the courtiers were waitmg out- side to have an audience with him, Haman was waiting at the door, determined to ask the king that very morning for permission to hang Mordecai on the new gallows he had left the carpenters building. But when he was admitted, before he had a chance to ask his question, the king turned to Haman and said, "What should be done to the man 54 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. whom the king delights to honor ? " Imme- diately Haman thought within himself that this honor was to be bestowed on his own head, and with flashing eyes he replied, " Let a robe of state which the king has himself worn be brought, and a horse on which the king has ridden, with its royal trappings, espe- cially the head ornament of a royal crown which the king's charger bears, and let one of the highest princes array the king's friend in these robes, and seat him on the horse, and lead him on horseback through the city, proclaiming before him. Thus shall it be done to the man whom the king delighteth to honor." To his astonishment and horror the king ordered him to go at once and do all that to Mordecai, the vQrj man whom he had come to ask permission to hang. The bitterness of that experience must have been a good preparation for death. The banquet that afternoon brought out the vil- lainy of Haman's plot, and before the sun set Haman was hanging on the gallows he had erected the day before for Mordecai. And Esther until this day is regarded by her peo- WOMAN'S WORK FOR TEMPERANCE. $$ pie, wherever they are scattered to the four winds of heaven, as a type of all that is beautiful, romantic, and noble. We have sitting on this platform and in these pews to-night representatives of the largest organization formed by women since the world began. This noble organization, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, had a beginning as romantic as the story of Esther. And as a new generation of boys and girls has grown up since those days, perhaps it will be interesting for us if we shall recall that story also. Dr. Dio Lewis, a distinguished physician and lyceum lecturer of Boston, delivered a lecture in Hillsboro, Ohio, on the evening of Dec. 22, 1873, on "Our Girls." He had come to the town engaged by the Lecture Association to fill only a single evening in the winter lecture course for the entertainment of the people ; but as he happened to have no engagcn.cnt for the next evening, some of the people who were present persuaded him to remain in Hillsboro and deliver a free lecture on the subject of temperance. ^F^ 56 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. Dr. Lewis was entertained in the home of Judge Thompson ; but Mrs. Thompson was unable to attend the lecture that evening be- cause of duties at home. Her son, a youth of sixteen, was present, however, and after the lecture, greatly excited about what had tran- spired, he related to his mother that Dr. Lewis had said that his own mother and several of her good Christian friends had united in prayer with and for the liquor sellers of his native town, until they had given up their soul-de- stroying business, and then had said, " Ladies, you might do the same thing in Hillsboro if you had the same faith ; " and, turning to the ministers and temperance men who were upon the platform, added, " Suppose I ask the ladies of this audience to signify their opinions upon the subject ? " As they all seemed pleased with the idea, he called on the women who were in favor of such action to rise ; and fifty or more women had stood up in token of approval. He then asked the men how many of them would stand to back up the women if they should undertake the work ; and some sixty or seventy had arisen. " And now. I: IVOA/AJV^S WOKA' FOR TEMPERANCE. 57 mother," said the enthusiastic boy, "they have got you into business, for you are on a committee to do some work at the Presby- terian church in the morning at nine o'clock, and then the laH-es want you to go out with them to the saloons." Judge Thompson had that evening returned from court in another county, and, being very tired, was resting on the sofa, and the mother and her son, supposing that he was asleep, had been speaking in an undertone; but as the boy spoke about his m.other going to the saloons the judge suddenly roused up and exclaimed, "What tomfoolery is all that?" The boy slipped out of the room and went to bed, while Mrs. Thompson assured her husband that she would not be led into any foolish act by Dio Lewis or anybody else. After he had relaxed into a milder mood, though continuing to scoff at the whole plan as "tomfoolery," the good woman ventured to remind him that the men had been in the "tomfoolery" business a long time, and suggested that it might be "God's will" that the women should now take their part. 58 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. The next morning, after breakfast, when they were gathered in the sitting-room, the boy came up, and, laying his hand on his mother's shoulder, inquired, "Mother, are you not going over to the church this morning?" As she hesitated, and doubtless showed in her counte- nance that she was greatly perplexed, the boy said, "But, my dear mother, you know you have to go." Then her daughter, who was sitting on a stool at her side, leaned over in a most tender manner, and, looking up in her face, said, "Don't you think you will go?" While this conversation had been going on. Judge Thompson had been walking the floor in silence. Suddenly he stopped, and placing his hand upon the family Bible that lay upon his wife's work-table he said, " Children, you know where your mother goes to settle all vexed questions. Let us leave her alone," going out of the room as he spoke, the children following him. Mrs. Thompson turned the key in the lock, and was in the act of kneeling down to pray when she heard a gentle tap at the door. Upon opening it, she found her daughter with her Bible open and the tears rVOM^AT^S IVO/^A- FOR TEMPERANCE. 59 coursing down her cheeks as she said, "I opened to this, mother; it must be for you." She immediately left the room, and her mother sat down to read with new insight the wonder- ful message of promise in the 146th Psalm. It seemed a new Psalm to her as she read : " Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. . . . Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God: which made heaven, and earth, the sea, and all that therein is : which keepeth truth for ever : which executeth judgment for the oppressed : which giveth food to the hungry. The Lord looseth the prisoners : the Lord opencth the eyes of the blind: the Lord raiscth them that are bowed down : the Lord loveth the righteous : the Lord preserveth the strangers ; he relieveth the fatherless and widow : but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down." Doubting no longer what her duty was, she at once went to the Presbyterian church, where quite a large congregation had already gath- ered. She was at once unanimously chosen as the president; Mrs. General McDowell, vice- i f\^~ TT ^ i ii m i m il rt iii r iii 60 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. i Pi HI ill !i! II president; and Mrs. D. K. Finner, secretary of the unique work which they were to perform. They drew up appeals to druggists, saloon- keepers, and hotel proprietors. Then Dr. Mc- Surely, the Presbyterian minister, who had up to this time occupied the chair, called upon the new president to come forward and take her place. She tried to get up; but, having never done any public work, her limbs refused to act, and she sat still. Wise Dr. McSurely looked around at the men and said, " Brethren, I see that the ladies will do nothing while we remain ; let us adjourn, leaving this new work with God and the women." After the men had filed out, and the door was closed behind them, new strength seemed to come to Mrs. Thompson ; and she walked forward to the minister's table, took the large Bible, and, opening it, told the story of the morning in her own home. After she had tearfully read the Psalm and commented on it, she called upon Mrs. McDowell to lead in prayer. Now, Mrs. McDowell, though a good Christian woman for many years, had never in all her life heard her own voice in prayer; WOMAN'S WORK FOR TEMPERANCE, 6 1 but she prayed that morning as though Isaiah's "coal of fire" had unsealed her lips. As they rose from their knees the president asked Mrs. Cowden, the wife of the Methodist minister, to lead in the singing of the old hymn "Give to the winds thy fears;" and turning to the rest of the women she said, "As we all join in singing this hymn, let us form in line, two and two, the small women in front, leaving the tall ones to bring up the rear, and let us at once proceed to our sacred mission, trusting alone in the God of Jacob." As they marched out through the door of the church into the street, they were singing these prophetic words : — " Far, far above thy thought, His counsels shall appear, When fully he the work hath wrought That caused thy needless fear." They went to drug stores and saloons and hotels ; they pleaded and sung and prayed, un- til saloon after saloon was closed at their entreaties. It was a divine contagion that spread throughout the land. In hundreds of towns and villages, from one ocean to the ^= SSB 62 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. Other, Christian women followed their ex- ample. Sometimes they were abused and mobbed; in some places they were arrested and thrown into jail ; but it was a divine work, and God was in it, and great good was ac- complished. But the women soon found that this sort of work could only be temporary, and that no permanent results could be achieved unless the law, which was the fortress of the traffic, could be changed. If by their prayers and entreaties they should persuade every man in the town to give up his wicked business to- day, to-morrow the greed of some other man would lead him to set up a new saloon. And so, out of this romantic upheaval of CViristian devotion on the part of American women, fighting for all that was dear to them, arose the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and thus was inaugurated its struggle " For God, and Home, and Every Land." At every step in the temperance reform, in every State of the Union, woman's romantic daring for her home and her people has glori- fied this mighty movement. Frances Willard, JVOM^JV'S WORK FOR TEMPERANCE. 63 in her book entitled "Woman and Temper- ance," tells how, when the Prohibition Amend- ment was being discussed in the Kansas Legislature, the courage of one little woman proved to be the pivot on which the question turned. For while the resolution to submit the Constitutional Amendment to the people passed the Senate without special difficulty, in the House it trembled in the balance. Public feeling was at fever heat, and the debate was long and hotly contested. Temperance men and women flocked to the Capitol, and the liquor -en were out in full force. At last, at midnight, the vote came. The roll of ayes and nays was called, while every ear in the vast assembly that filled galleries and corridor was strained to catch each man's response as he answered to his name. Busy pencils kept the tally, and when the voting ceased, a sigh from many a temperance man's heart accom- panied the words : " We've lost our cause by just one vote ! " "But look! A woman, gentle, modest, sweet, advances from the crowd. What! is she going down that aisle, where woman never w 64 SBVEJi; TIMES AROUND JERICHO. I I 1.^ trod before, and in among that group of party leaders? Yea, verily; and every eye follows her with intense interest, and the throng is strangely still as she goes straight to her husband, takes his big hand in her little one, lifts her dark eyes to his face, and speaks these thrilling words : * My darling, for my sake, for the sake of our sweet home, for Kansas' sake and God's, I beseech you change your vote.' When, lo ! upon the silence broke a man's deep voice : * Mr. Speaker, before the clerk reads the result, / ivish to change my vote from no to aye ! ' How loud rang out the cheers of men ! how fell the rain of women's tears ! for love had conquered, as it always will at last ; and the voices of the people when heard in Kansas said, * Give us prohibition for home and children's sake.' So Kansas leads the van, and one little woman saved the day." God bless these women who arc making this brave fight for their homes ! Surely there is enough in the history of rum's dealings with the American home to arouse the hot blood in every true heart. There is an old IVOMAN'S WORK FOR TEMPERANCE. 65 Story, whether legendary or not I do not know, of a queer old miser down on the coast of California who, being a little off in the upper story, conceived the strange fancy of building himself a home out of the fragments of wrecked vessels. And it is said that with tireless patience he persisted in his purpose until his odd dream grew to be a reality. The whole edifice is a combination of bulk- heads and bulwarks, of lockers and cabins. It is weather-boarded on the outside with planks that have been ripped off from the ship's side by the savage violence of wind or breaker. The ceilings are decorated with the rare and beautiful linings of sumptuous steamer cabins. The kitchen is the galley of a wrecked mer- chantman. Now, all that is vc^y strange and inter- esting. But I can take you into any city in this land where liquor saloons abound, and show you a wreckage palace more interesting than that. Let us go out into some splendid suburb where great wealth is accustomed to resort. Here is a magnificent palace. Great stone pillars stand guard at the gate, and the r «'.i ^■evi 66 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. f grounds are spacious and are arranged accord- ing to the best skill of the landscape gar- dener's art. Splendid trees stand gracefully on the sward. In the conservatories rare or- chids and beautiful plants from all parts of the world blossom at the bidding of the man who dwells in the palace in the midst of all this splendor and beauty. We approach the doors, and we find them of massive walnut. They swing at the touch on noiseless hinges. The carpet under our feet is soft as velvet. The frescoes on the ceilings over our heads are the work of an artist. Beautiful pictures from the studios of the whole world ran- sacked hang on the wails. Everything about the house suggests abundance of wealth. We are assured that the man who lives here re- poses at night on a bed of the softest down ; the rarest viands and the most sparkling champagne grace his board — and yet this house is built of wrecks ! Every stone in the stairway, every yard of carpet on the floor, every lamp in the chandelier, every fresco on the ceiling, every picture hanging on the wall, is in whole or in part the frag- WOMAN ^S WORK FOR TEMPERANCE. 6/ ments of a wreck sadder than ever outlaw of the sea hath wrought — a wreck not of a ship, but of a home, a life, a soul ! ^ Need I tell you that the owner of this man- sion is also a prince of the liquor dealers ? And I know more than one city in this coun- try where I can take you from a wreckage palace like that to a house where once the honest industry of a faithful, hard-working man brought peace and comfort and blessing to a happy and self-respecting family. They were not rich, but they were comfortable. They loved and respected each other; they had enough to eat and to wear, and were happy in their home. There was a carpet on the floor; there were comfortable chairs and tables ; there was a book-shelf with books on it; and there was plenty in the cupboard. But come with me and see it now! The carpet is gone off the floor; the books, and the book-shelf that mocked them after they had disappeared, are gone ; the furniture is gone ; the cupboard is bare ; a faded, broken woman sits on a three-legged stool by the window and sews for a Jewish sweater on : i m 68 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. w il ill knee pants at fifteen cents a dozen pairs, or bends her broken back, fit associate for her broken heart, over the wash-tub, to try to earn enough to keep the wolf from the door, and save her little ones from starving. The children are ragged and ill-kept and quarrel- some. What has wrought this horrid desola- tion } Ah, everything that was beautiful and comfortable in this home has been built into that wreckage palace yonder on the hill. The love and nobility out of the heart of this hus- band and father, the strength and manhood out of his mind and body, the very carpet off the floor, the book-shelf off the wall, the shoes off this little girl's feet, the coat off this ragged boy's back, the bread out of this baby's mouth, the roses out of this woman's cheeks, and, it may be, the very hope of heaven out of her heart, have been built into that wreckage palace yonder. That the wrecker might sleep on down, this family sleep on the floor. That he may eat costly meats and drink rare wines, they feed on stale crusts. That he may have rare orchids that cost five thousand dollars a bloom, this, WOMAN'S WORK FOR TEMPERANCE. 6g and a hundred other homes like it, have been plundered and wrecked. And yet Christian men all over the land have seen these wreck- age palaces going up one after another, and multitudes of them have been dumb and silent as if they did not care. Multitudes of preachers have seen it, and remained "dumb dogs that could not bark." No wonder the women are aroused ! May God arouse them more and more, multiply their numbers, and hasten the day when not only with voice and pen, but with ballot as well, they shall lead us to the victory that is coming against this infamous traffic in strong drink! , 1 ? 70 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. M THE CHURCH AND THE SALOON. I BELIEVE it to be honestly true that the licensed saloon exists in this country on the sufferance of the Christian Church. I mean by that that there are professed Chris- tian people sufficient in this country to en- act laws prohibiting the sale of intoxicaL mg drinks as a beverage, and enforce those laws in most parts of the country fully as well as other laws are enforced, were they suffi- ciently aroused to their duty and united in the achievement of their purpose. I am not bringing a railing accusation against the Christian Church. I believe that the church represents the organized goodness of the country. The modern temperance movement was of Christian birth, and such success as it has had has been achieved through the earnest conviction and self-denying toil of Christian men and women. And I have no hope of the final triumph of sobriety and THE CHURCff AND THE SALOON. yi the overthrow of this infamous liquor traffic except through the intelligent and united action of the Christian churches. History shows us that after the Christian Church has reached a righteous position so far as theory and principle are concerned, it sometimes takes a good while to bring the everyday living of the membership of the churches up to the standpoint of their pro- claimed principles. Attention has been recently called to the parallel between the action of the Christian ministers and churches in the antislavery agi- tation and that which is going on in our own generation against the liquor traffic. We are told that at Springfield, III., in Lincoln's great campaign against Douglas, twenty of the twenty-three ministers of the city were for Douglas and against Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln had made a careful canvass of the city of Springfield. One day he called V in Mr. Bateman, the superintendent of public instruction, and, having previously locked all the doors, he said, "Let us look over this book. I wish particularly to see how the 72 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. ministers of Springfield are going to vote." The leaves were turned, one by one ; and as the names were examined Mr. Lincoln fre- quently asked if this one and that were not a minister, or an elder, or a member of such or such church, and sadly expressed his sur- prise on receiving an affirmative answer. In that manner they went through the book, and then he closed it, and sat silently for some minutes regarding a memorandum in pencil which lay before him. At length he turned to Mr. Bateman with a face full of sadness and said, " Here are twenty-three min- isters of different denominations, and all of them are against me but three ; and here are a great many prominent members of the churches, and a very large majority are against me. He drew forth a pocket New Testament. " These men well know," he continued, " that I am for freedom in the Territories, freedom everywhere as far as the Constitution and the lav/s will permit, and that my opponents are for slavery. They know all this, and yet with this Book in their hands, in the light of THE CHURCH AND THE SALOON. 73 which human bondage cannot live a moment, they are going to vote against me ; I do not understand it at all." Here Mr. Lincoln paused — paused for a long minute — his features surcharged with emotion. Then he rose and walked up and down the reception-room in the effort to re- tain or regain his self-possession. Stopping at last, he said with a trembling voice, and his cheeks wet with tears, "I know there is a God, and that he hates in- justice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that his hand is in it. If he has a place and work for me — and I think he has — I believe I am ready. I am nothing, but truth is everything. I know I am right, because I know that liberty is right, for Christ teaches it, and Christ is God. I have told them that a house divided against itself cannot stand ; and Christ and reason say the same ; and they will find it so. Douglas doesn't care whether slavery is voted up or down ; but God cares, and humanity cares, and I care, and with God's help I shall not fail. I may not see the end, but it will come, and I shall 74 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. \ b*^ vindicated, and these men will find that they have not read their Bibles right." Much of this was uttered as if he were speaking to himself, and Mr. Bateman, who listened to it, declared that the words were spoken with a sad and earnest solemnity of manner impossible to be described. After a pause he resumed, " Doesn't it ap- pear strange that men can ignore the moral aspects of this contest } A revelation could not make it plainer to me that slavery or the government must be destroyed. The future will be something awful as I look at it from this Rock on which I stand [alluding to the Testament which he still held in his hands], especially with the knowledge of how these ministers are going to vote. It seems as if God has borne with this thing until the very teachers of religion have come to defend it from the Bible, and claim for it a divine character and sanction ; and now the cup of iniquity is full, and the vials of wrath will be poured out." And yet at that time all the leading churches of the North believed and declared THE CHURCH AND THE SALOON 75 human slavery to be so wrong that they would not admit a slaveholder to member- ship. But when it came to put their prin- ciples into action, and make a stand, risking party loss in order to uphold their principles, how long they delayed ! History is repeating itself in .the present agitation against the traffic in strong drink. So far as our manifestoes are concerned, we have made tremendous advancement in the last two or three generations. If you take the Methodist Church as an example of the advancement of temperance sentiment among the great middle class of American citizen- ship, you cannot but be impressed with this fact. In the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, held in 18 12, Rev. James Axley, an heroic temperance worker, introduced this resolution : — ''Resolved, That no stationed or local preacher shall retail spirituous or malt liquors without forfeiting his ministerial character among us." The bare fact that there was necessity for the introduction of such a resolution is a fearful commentary on the condition of the 76 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICFJO, church and the times; but it appears sadder still when we reflect that even this could not be carried in that General Conference. Five unsuccessful attempts were made to pass it. Laban Clark, who records it, says, " Axley was in earnest, but m'> ^ .• the Conference opposed him, making i ry with his quaint speeches ; and when his motion was lost he turned his face to the wall and wept." I don't blame him. In the General Conference of 1816, Axley introduced the same resolu- tion, with " malt liquors " left out, still leav- ing it possible for preachers to sell beer, and carried it. It was not until 1824 that the Methodist Episcopal Church began to stand on strong ground on this subject. If you turn from this to the utterances of the last General Conference in 1892 at Omaha, one cannot but mark the tremendous advance. Here is the utterance of the last Confer- ence ; — ** We reiterate the language of the Episcopal Address of 1888 : ' The liquor traffic is so pernicious in all its bearings, so inimical to the interest of honest trade, so repugnant to the moral sense, so injurious to the THE CIlURCir AND THE SALOON. 77 peace and order of society, so hurtful to the home, to the church, and to the body politic, and so utterly antagonistic to all that is precious in life, that the only proper attitude toward it, for Christians, is that of re- lentless hostility. It can never be legalized without sin.' We concur in the Episcopal Address of 1892, where it is declared: 'In our judgment the saloon is an unmixed evil, full of diabolism, a disgrace to our civilization, the chief corrupter of political action, and a continual menace to the order of society and the peace and purity of our homes.' Believing as we do that the traffic in intoxicating beverages sustains the relation of an effi- cient cause to the vice of intemperance, we hold that no member of the Methodist Episcopal Church can con- sistently contribute by voice, vote, or influence to the perpetuation and protection of that traffic. We declare before all the world that the church of God ought to be known always and everywhere as the relentless and uncompromising foe of this ungodly business, and that It is the duty of every Christian to wage ceaseless war- fare against it." Not satisfied even with this searching and unequivocal statement, the General Conference proceeded to say : — " We recommend all members of the Methodist Epis- copal Church who enjoy the elective franchise, to so use that solemn trust as to promote the rescue of our coun- try from the guilt and dishonor which have been brought upon it by criminal complicity with the liquor traffic. •♦We do not presume to dictate the political conduct r w 78 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. of our people, but we do record our deliberate judg- ment that no political party has a right to expect, nor ought it to receive, the support of Christian men so long as it stands committed to the license policy, or refuses to put itself on record in an attitude of open hostility to the saloons." Surely there is nothing tame nor vague nor hard to be understood about that ! Time would fail me to quote like resolutions from the Baptist, Presbyterian, Congregational, Dutch Reformed, the English branch of the Lutheran Church, and other churches, on this subject. While, perhaps, with the exception of the Presbyterian Synod, the other churches have not spoken as explicitly as the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, yet they unite in an expression of their hatred of the saloon and their conviction that it ought to be suppressed. These facts show us that in theory and resolution, which express, of course, the intel- lectual and moral conscience of the people, we have reached very high ground. Alas ! when we come to the practical incarnation of these resolutions in the social, business, Tin CHURCH AND THE SALOON. 79 and political conduct of the people, we fall very short of our manifesto. VVe have a signal illustration of this in the election to a trusteeship in the Methodist Seminary at Kent's Hill, Me., of a notorious brewer of Portsmouth, N. H. That such a thing could be done in the State of Maine, the home of Neal Dow, and a State where throughout nme-tenths of its dominion the prohibitory law ,s well enforced ; and that in a Methodist semmary such an election could have been had, is enough to cover the heads of tem- perance and Christian people with shame! When the newspaper reporters came to me about it, I said to them that they had cer- tainly made a mistake, and advised them to inquire into it very carefully before they made any public statement. But it turns out to be too true. Think of what it means — the putting up of a notorious brewer as a model of business manhood to be emulated by the young men and young women who attend the school ! And yet when we study it a littl it seems very natural that such e, I think thing III wmmmm 80 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. )> siiould come to pass. We have been sow- ing to the wind, and now we are beginning to reap the whirlwind. We have been say- ing in our resolutions that the liquor traffic can never be legalized without sin, and have then gone deliberately to the polls and sup- ported candidates for office who were thor- oughly committed to accomplish and sustain the very sin we have denounced. Joseph Cook puts the logic of this wholj question in a nutshell. He says that when a traffic is so notoriously injurious that a man who practises it is excluded from church member- ship by the common consent of the great body of the Protestant denominations, then church members in those denominations have no right to legalize that traffic by their votes. It is a fiat contradiction for the church with one hand to excommunicate rumsellers, and with the other hand to manufacture rum- sellers, To put it plainly, here is a Metho- dist preacher who helped to elect to office the men who passed the Raines bill to con- tinue under certain conditions the licensing of the liquor traffic. Practically he voted to THE CHURCH AND THE SALOON. 8l license Frank Jones, on Fulton Street, as a saloon-keeper for so much money per annum. Some Saturday afternoon Frank Jones, the saloon-keeper, who was licensed by the politi- cal representatives this preacher supported, comes into the dominie's study and says, " I want to join your church to-morrow." At once the preacher will say, " According to the rules of the Methodist Episcopal Church it is not possible for me to admit you into the church." "Well, that is strange," re- plies Mr. Jones. " A few weeks ago you voted to make me a rumseller, and now you refuse to let me join your church because I am a rumseller." And I would like to know how that Methodist preacher is going to reply to Frank Jones "*. As a matter of fact, he can't reply. As preachers and peo- ple we stand convicted of hypocrisy before the community so long as we continue to preach and pray and pass resolutions for pro- hibition, and vote to perpetuate license in our towns and cities ; we cannot shake off our complicity with the traffic so long as that is our inconsistent attitude. 82 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. One winter morning, in Boston, a police- man rang my doorbell just at daybreak. I went down to the door, and he said to me, " I have just come from a scene which I think you ought to witness." I dressed myself as quickly as I could, and went with him. It was a cold, raw morning, and a rather heavy fall of snow lay on the ground. A brisk walk of seven or eight min- utes brought us into a decaying portion of the city, and into a dirty little alley where another policeman stood at the door of a tenement house. We passed him, and entered a room on the ground floor that was in a condition of disorder left by a drunken carousal of the night before. The chairs and table were broken, and the bare floor was dirty enough. Lying in a little room beyond this, on some damp straw, with her body thrown partially across the doorway, was the form of a dead woman. I stepped over the body, and stood where the light of the one window in the room fell across her face. She was an old woman, probably nearly seventy years of age. Her swollen face and bloated, sensual look THE CHURCH AND THE SALOON. ^^ gave every indication of years of drunkenness and dissipation ; and yet, as she lay there in the cold, gray light of that winter morning, with her damp white hair thrown back on the floor behind her head, revealing her broad forehead, one could not fail to perceive that she had been a woman of rather more than average native intelligence. While I stood looking upon the sad and repulsive figure, there came in from the snow- covered street a little boy about ten years of age, with bare feet, ragged jacket, and on his head an old hat that had once had a crown, but now let the lad's dishevelled hair appear through its top. The pitiful-looking boy stood in the doorway on the other side from me, and looked grimly and solemnly down on the dead face of his grandmother. His mother had died about six months before in a drunken spree, and his father was lying dead drunk in another room. As I looked from the grandmother to the grandson, memory, with one of those sudden leaps that it alone can perform, vaulted the gulf of twenty-five years, and I stood, a little 84 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. I ! boy of ten years, beside the death-bed of my grandmother. She was a sweet, pure, Chris- tian woman, full of love for all, and was my very ideal of what a good and noble woman ought to be. She had been very kind and good to me, and I loved her with great tender- ness. When she was near the end she had me brought to her side, and put her hands upon my head, and spoke tender and loving words of farewell. After a little she ceased to breathe ; her face was strangely white and quiet and still, and they told me grandmother was in heaven. That incident changed all my ideas about heaven. Up to that time I had supposed heaven was a very beautiful place with golden streets, and jasper walls, and beautiful mansions; but there was no one there that I knew, and it had no special at- tractions for me. But after that there was somebody in heaven that I knew ; and I have never thought of heaven since but that the pure, sweet, loving face of my grandmother has looked out of the vision. And as I thought of my own memory, and brought my mind back again to contemplate / J THE CHURCH AND THE SALOON. 85 the horrible position of this little barefooted lad, I asked myself what life would have meant to me if, at ten years of age, instead of having a father who was everything that was noble and Christian and manly, a mother whose tenderness was like the love of God, and a grandmother whose memory was the sweetest attraction in the thought of heaven, I had stood in a dirty, desolate, tenement house, my mother six months in her grave from dissipation, my father a drunken loafer, and my grandmother dead in her drunken debauch. And as my soul recoiled in horror from such a thought, I said to myself, "Who is responsible for the desolation and the ruin of this home? Who is responsible for the rob- bing of this innocent lad of mother and father and grandmother, and setting his bare feet so on the road to destruction that the chances are ninety-nine out of a hundred against his ever coming to anything better than the life of a drunken thief?" When I asked that question I thought of the saloon around the corner of the block, 86 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. \ I which I had noticed was being opened by the barkeeper as I passed by ; and in a moment my heart was hot with indignation against the saloon-keeper, and I said, " He is the man that did this vile work. Better that he had never been born than to have wrought this awful ruin on an innocent child ! " But as I reflected I said, " No ; I am mis- taken. This man could not carry on his saloon unless the city gave him authority to do so. The city itself must have given this man permission to open his saloon and sell the liquor that is the cause of all this deso- lation. "But," I asked myself again, "who gave the city the right to license certain of its citizens to sell this deadly poison which is con- stantly working results as horrible as this ? " And at once my mind leaped to the legisla- ture, and I said, " It is the legislature that passed the law authorizing the city to license the saloon-keeper to engage in this traffic which causes so much sorrow and misery and death." And still again I said, " Who is the legis- ( ' THE CHURCH AND THE SALOON. 8/ ^ lature, and who elects the members of it upon political platforms that are pledged to sustain this licensed liquor traffic, perpetuat- ing and protecting these vile dens of infamy and crime ? " When I had gotten that far a sudden blush of shame covered my face, and I cried out in anguish of heart, "O my God! Some of my class-leaders and stewards and trustees had a hand in this horrible tragedy." You may know some way to excuse yourself from complicity in the murderous work of the liquor traffic when you vote for politicians who do not care whether the saloon is voted up or voted down, but I do not! The political bosses of the leading political parties uo not care what havoc the saloon works so long as they may use it as an institution of blackmail, or as a political cat's-paw ; but, in the language of Lincoln, "God does care, and humanity cares, and I care," and by the help of God no such politician or political party shall ever attain political power by my ballot! ¥ 88 SEVEN TIMES AKOUND JEKICIIO, i Hi THE SALOON AS A BUSINESS INVESTMENT FOR THE COMMUNITY. The wise man of the Scriptures says, " The drunkard shall come to poverty. " Surely the truthfulness of no Scripture proverb can be more thoroughly established by the universal history of mankmd ! We all know that tor the individual man the use of intoxicating drinks is the poorest possible business in- vestment, and that for multiplied thousands it is the cause of complete disaster to every hope of business success. Many a promising young man has found his experience like that of the industrious young shoemaker who fell into the habit of spending much time in a saloon near by. One by one his customers began to desert him. When his wife remon- strated with him for so neglecting his work for the saloon, he would carelessly reply, ** Oh, I have just been down a little while playing /) THE SALOON AS AN INVESTMENT. 89 pool." His little two-year-old caught the re- frain, and would often ask, "Is you goin* down to play fool, papa?" The father tried in vain to correct this word. The child per- sisted in his own pronunciation, and day by day he accosted his father with, "Has you been playin' fool, papa?" This made a deep impression on the shoemaker, as he realized that the question was being answered in the falling off of his customers and the growing wants of the household. He resolved again and again to quit the pool-table and his in- temperate habits, but weakly allowed his ap- petites to hold him still. Finally, he found himself out of work, out of money, and out of food. Sitting on his bench one afternoon, idle and despondent, he was heard to exclaim, "No work again to-day; what I'm to do I don't know!" "Why, papa," prattled the little boy, "can't you run down and play fool some more?" "Oh, hush! you poor child," groaned his father, shame-stricken. "That's just the trouble. Papa has played the fool too much already." It is strange that intelligent men, as they 90 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. often arc, should so play the fool as to spend their hard-earned wages and rob themselves and their families in order to invest in another man's greed or luxury, while they receive nothing in return but poverty and distress. Eli Perkins, the humorist, tells about a man named John Jones, who began at the age of fifteen to build himself a monument, and worked on it for thirty-five years. He worked night and day, often all night long, and on the Sabbath. He seemed to be in a great hurry to get it done. He spent all the money he earned upon it — amounting to fifty thousand dollars. Then he borrowed all he could ; and when no one would loan him any more, he would take his wife's dresses and the bed- clothes, and many other valuable things in his home, and sell them to get more money to finish that monument. They said he came home one day, and was about to take the blankets which lay over his sleeping baby to keep it warm, and his wife tried to stop him ; he drew back his fist and knocked her down, and then went away with the blankets, and never brought them back, and the poor baby THE SALOON AS AN INVESTMENT. 91 sickened and died from the exposure. At last there was nothing left in the house. The poor heart-broken wife soon followed the baby to the grave. Yet John Jones kept working all the more at the monument. Toward the last his hands and face, indeed his whole body, were covered with scars which he got in laying up some of the stones. And this was John Jones's monument : On the day before he lay down in his drunken- ness and froze to death, he staggered by it, and looked up at it with his blear eyes. It was erected on one of the finest lots in the town. It was a handsome residence. It was high and large, with great halls and velvet carpets, elegant mirrors, and beautiful furnish- ings of every kind. This was John Jones's monument! And the man who sold John nearly all the whisky he drank lived there with his family, and the night he froze to death on the icy sidewalk they slept in elegant rooms on the softest down. What a fool a man is to build a monument like that at such a cost ! But it is not only the little, narrow-gauge men, who don't know n^uch about business taam IMAGF EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I |J0 ""^S 25 |||M 1.8 1.25 u 16 .« 6" ► V] ^. -c'l ^v (? A / >^ Photographic Sciences Corporation 4^ ■^ o-^\* 4^ 33 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 ^1^ <^ PI? '^o 1 92 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. anyhow, who play the fool by investing in the liquor traffic. Robert W. Garret, not long ago the president of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, was an exceedingly bright busi- ness man ; but he drank intoxicating liquor, and when it had reached his tongue he did not have will power enough to keep his busi- ness secrets. A few years ago he had been carrying on some important negotiations con- cerning the control of the Philadelphia, Wil- mington, & Baltimore Railroad, which was of the greatest importance to the Baltimore & Ohio system of which he was president. He arrived in New York one evening from Boston, feeling sure that the next forty-eight hours would see his cherished business plans consummated ; and so they would if he had not played the fool with the wine-glass. It was essential, however, to his success that his rivals should not know of the transaction in which he was engaged; and that night, dining at the hotel with a party of business men and corporation lawyers, the champagne passed freely, and Robert Garret drank it until he became a babbling child, and cried THE SALOON AS AN INVESTMENT. 93 out to the company, "Congratulate me! Drink to the B. & O., and her outlet to Phila- delphia. In two days I will control the P., W., & B." There was a man at that table who did not drink. He knew a business secret, also, when he heard it. He excused himself early. Before morning he was in Philadelphia, talking with the president of the rival railroad; and when the forty-eight hours had passed. Gar- ret's enemies had control of the road that was of such importance to him. Men who ought to know, say that that bottle of cham- pagne cost him and the company which he represented eight millions of dollars. Large employers of labor are coming to be unanimous in the opinion that employees who take intoxicating drinks are a bad invest- ment. One of our great railroad corporations recently gathered all the facts concerning the men and the conditions of every accident which had occurred on its lines for five years. When tabulated, it appeared that forty per cent of all accidents were due altogether, or in part, to the failure of the men who were 94 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. given to drinking ; that eighteen per cent had strong suspicion of similar causes, if no clear proof. In one year over a million dollars worth of property was destroyed by the fail- ures of beer-drinking engineers and switch- men on this road alone. The Chicago & Alton Railroad officials, less than a year ago, issued the following rules: — "The use of intoxicating drinks and frequenting of gambling places, or other places of low resort, have proven a most fruitful source of trouble to railways as well as to individuals. Recognizing the fact, this com- pany will exercise the most rigid scrutiny in reference to the habits of employees in this respect. "The use of beer or other intoxicating liquor by any employee of this company while on duty is strictly pro- hibited, and no employee will be allowed to have such liquors in or about any station, shop, or other premises of this company at any time or under any circumstances. "Any conductor, trainman, engineer, fireman, switch- man, or other employee who is known to use intoxicating liquors, or frequent gambling places, or other places of low rc'^'ort, either while on or off duty, will be promptly and permanently discharged from the service of this com- pany." When these rules were issued the saloon- keepers and bar-rooms along the line of the road threatened to boycott the railroad if they THE SALOON AS AN INVESTMENT. 95 attempted to enforce them. In reply, the gen- eral manager said: '*I notice the saloon-keepers are threatening to boycott us. Well, let them go ahead. We don't care anything about that. The loss of their business will not hurt us a particle. It does not amount to enough to pay one-tenth part the expense resulting from one bad accident." But it is just as bad an investment for a city as it is for an individual or a railroad company. In our modern cities the saloon problem from a business standpoint, as well as on the political side, is the most important question before the community. Take the city of New York last year as an example. As we are not to be tied up in an embrace with her until January, 1898, we can still hold her off and look on. According to a very carefully tabulated list of statistics, there were sold in the city of New York between Jan. I, 1895, and Jan. i, 1896, 4,805,167 bar- rels, or 168,960,177 gallons, of beer, ale, and porter; which, at a conservative wholesale valuation of ^5.50 per barrel, cost the saloon- keepers who sold them ;^26,428,4i8. The 96 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. people who drank this vast quantity of malt liquor paid nearly four times that sum for it, or $105,410,208. Thus New York city spent more money for beer last year, says the New York Journal^ to which I am indebted for this table of figures, than is computed in the for- tune of the richest living American. In the same city last year 200,000 cases of cham- pagne were consumed, at a cost to the people who drank it of 1^5,300,000. Of other wines, brandies, and cordials, exclusive of California products, coming by rail, New York consumed 2,990,865 gallons. These cost about 1^27,000,- 000 to the consumers. In addition to all this, 51,000 barrels of domestic whisky were con- sumed during the year, and 48,000 barrels of domestic alcohol were blended with it ; and enough other liquids were added to make New York's total whisky -guzzle during 1895 at least 130,000 barrels, which, when sold by the glass, amounted to over ;$ 2,000,000. Thus last year, in spite of the hard times, the citizens of New York drank 5,051,000 barrels, or 170,531,000 gallons, of vinous and spirituous liquors, at a cost of $139,710,208. THE SALOON AS AiV INVESTMENT. 97 If all this liquid were placed in a tank, you could immerse in it Trinity Church, and its spire would be covered over and lost out of sighn And if you were to tap it with a faucet arranged to run a gallon a minute, it would take over ninety years for it to run out. And if you were to make another tank for the malt liquors New York city drank last year, you could drop the New York City Hall into the tank, and never know it was there. Indeed, you could take the great Philadelphia City Hall and put it in beside it, and it would cover both of them. But, some man says, the liquor traffic pays an enormous revenue into the city treasury, and gives a great many people employment. Just now we are hearing a good deal of this sort of talk. We are told that the Raines bill, even, is going to throw out of employment several thousands of people, and the question is put forward in such a way that many people are blinded by it, and made to believe that the saloon business is, after all, a profitable in- vestment for the city. I remember that dur- ing the years I resided in Boston, in the vote 98 SEVEjV times around JERICHO. every year on the license question, this was the perennial argument — that if the city were to go no-license, and no revenue in the way of license fees came into the treasury from the liquor traffic, taxes would be greatly in- creased. There could not be anything more abso- lutely false and more easily disproved by in- disputable facts than this argument. The rev- enue received by the New York city treas- ury last year was as follows : 7,000 liquor saloons paid a tax of $200 each, amounting to $1,400,000; thirteen hotels paid $500 each, or $6,500; 267 other, smaller hotels, paid $300 each, or, in the aggregate, $80,100; 450 ale and beer saloons paid $50 apiece, or $22,500; 1,000 grocers each paid $200, or $200,000 ; amounting in the grand total to $1,729,100. Now let us take up the question of the labor furnished by the liquor traffic : 60,000 persons were employed in the breweries, and these men are supposed to support about 240,000 others; about 26,190 persons were employed in the wholesale and retail sale of liquor in the city, and these are supposed to support THE SALOON- AS AN INVESTMENT. 99 about 104,160 others. Thus liquor is the support of about 344,000 people. Now look at the cost. We have already shown that the malt liquors cost the people over $105,000,000, and the vinous and spirit- uous liquors more than $139,000,000. But look at its cost in directly looking after its crime and misery. There were during 1895 in the city of New York 31,897 arrests for drunkenness; and 8,414 of these were women. There were also 9,256 arrests for violations of the excise laws. The cost of these 41,153 arrests, including subsequent trials and impris- onments, was about $3,/ 03,770 — more than twice as much for the direct arrest for drunk- enness and violations of the excise law than .the city received for all its license income for the entire year. This does not take into con- sideration at all the crime of every sort that is caused by strong drink— the assaults and murders and every species of crime that finds its way into the courts. Neither does it take into consideration the cost for the insane, for the paupers, and for the pauper sick in the hospitals, who are the victims of the traffic. lOO SEVEN TIMES AROUND JEKJCHO. If this were counted in, it could be easily shown that for every dollar received into the New York city treasury last year from the licensing of the liquor traffic, her citizens who are engaged in honest trade had to make up not less than ten dollars to pay for the crime and misery brought about by the infamous business. These statistics do not portray before us the multitudes of young men who have be- come idle loafers because of the existence of the saloons. They cannot tell us of the homes which were happy and contented that have been filled with strife and sorrow. They do not show us the great army of children that have gone hungry and ragged, robbed of childhood's rightful innocence and joy. They do not reveal the broken-hearted mothers, the despairing wives, nor tell us of the men and women who, having struggled and been de- feated, have at last given up hope and taken their own lives. Alas ! no figures could prop- erly convey the untold sorrow which flows from this accursed business. No painter's brush nor orator's tongue was ever yet skilful I I' THE SALOON AS AN INVESTMENT. lOI or eloquent enough to properly paint the pic- ture of the heart-breaking sorrow and waste of humanity itself — the richest of all our treasures — seen in this foolish and bank- rupting investment our American cities are making in licensing the liquor saloon. U ft 102 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. THE SOCIAL WINE-GLASS. I There is an old and oft -quoted Scripture — "Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drinl<, that puttcst thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also " — that is more frequently than anywhere else applied to the saloon-keeper, but is equally applicable to the social drinking customs of society. While the saloon is the center and hotbed of the drink habit, it is also true that a great many people who at first would never think of such a thing as go- ing to the saloon to drink, become ensnared in the fatal habit through social enticements among their neighbors and friends. Many people make the fatal mistake of supposing that it is the vile atmosphere of the saloon, and the associations there, that make the drink dangerous. The danger is in the intoxicating liquor itself, which, taken under any circum- stances, arouses the appetite and creates the desire which never would have been awakened THE SOCIAL WINE-GLASS. 103 but by the taste of liquor itself. There are many natures peculiarly susceptible to social influence, to whom drinking under the excite- ments of social intercourse is far more danger- ous than it would be alone in a liquor saloon. The dangerous fallacy of moderate social drinking is, that it assumes that a little drink- ing is safe, whereas it is the first glass that breaks down the wall of habit and opens the way for all the dissipation and drunkenness that may follow. Dr. Charles L. Thompson of New York tells a little story of an old preacher who used to introduce the marriaire ceremony with these words: "John, matri- mony is a blessing to a few, a curse to many, and an uncertainty to us all. John, will you venture > " However that may be, all sensible men who keep an open eye for observation, must agree with the good doctor that total abstinence is a blessing to thousands, a curse to nobody, and right for everybody ; while, on the other hand, the most optimistic moderate drinker is compelled to say, " We know drink- ing is a curse to thousands, safety for a few, and an uncertainty to us all ; but let us chance If 104 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. it." Many do chance it to their lasting sorrow and regret. The only safe course is to shun the beginnings of the downward path. How strangely inconsistent we are when we m'^.ke our laws licensing men to sell liquor to sober men who have never been hurt as yet by strong drink, and make it a crime for them to sell it to those who have already practically destroyed themselves. A young man entered the bar-room of a village tavern and called for a drink. •* No," said the landlord ; "you have had too much already. You have been raving mad once, and I cannot sell you any more." The poor drunkard stepped aside to make room for a couple of young men who had just entered ; and tne landlord waited upon them very politely. The other stood by sullenly ; and when they had finished he walked up to the landlord and said: — " Six years ago, at that age, I stood where these young men are now. I was a man with fair prospects. Now, at the age of twenty- eight, I am a wreck in body and mind. You led me to drink. In this room I formed the THE SOCIAL WINE-GLASS. 105 habit that has been my ruin. Now, sell me a few more glasses and your work will be done ! I will be done! I will soon be out of the way ; there is no hope for me. But they can be saved; they may be men again. Do not sell it to them. Sell it to me, and let me die, and the world will be rid of me ; but, for Heaven's sake don't sell any more to them ! " Over in Massachusetts, a few years ago, a man who was serving a life sentence for a crime committed under the influence of strono- drink gave such evidence of having been thor- oughly converted to a new life of righteous purpose that the governor and his council were urged to grant him a pardon. They finally decided to let him out on parole, on condition that he was never again in his life to enter a liquor saloon or any place where strong drink was sold. On his breaking this rule he was liable to be arrested anywhere and brought back again to the penitentiary to serve out his life sentence. And yet that same governor and council were every one of them heartily in favor of licensing these same I06 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. saloons to sell to other young men who were yet untouched and unscarred the same dan- gerous drink which had ruined this man, and branded him with a prison record for life. When will we have wisdom enough to know that health itself is better than medicine, and that it is infinitely better to protect a man from becoming a drunkard than it is to under- take to rescue him after he has fallen ? Young people need to have the emphasis put upon the truth that the drinking of wine and beer is an unnatural and artificial habit, and to decline such at a public dinner or at a wedding is not a thing that needs to be apologized for, as though one had done some- thing not in good social form. A pretty story is told of Lady Macdonald, the wife of the late brilliant Premier of Canada, who has long been a total abstainer. Another lady of high social position met Lady Macdonald at dinner one day, and being surprised to see that she took no wine, at length asked, — " Did you not set out wine when you en- tertained the Marquis of Lome?" " Never," was the prompt reply. >ii! THE SOCIAL WINE-GLASS. 107 "But did you not feel that you must apolo- gize ? " "Certainly not. Wine is not a natural bev- erage, and so should rather come in than go out with an apology." This sensible answer, coupled with the in- fluence of so high an example, led the other lady to become a total abstainer also. Mr. Edward W. Bok, the prosperous young litterateur, in giving advice to young men, says that he has never touched a drop of wine at public dinners, and yet has never been made to feel that he was placed at a disadvantage. "Indeed," says Mr. Bok, "I am under the impression that a young m.an who refuses wine is always at a distinct advantage." The editor of the California Christian Ad- vocate was entertained on one occasion in that State at the home of a wealthy judge. During his stay his host took him on a de- lightful drive through the surrounding country. Passing a handsome country residence, the judge stopped to chat a few moments with the owner, who, with some guests, chanced to bv^ at the front gate. After introductions, I08 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. the judge and his friend wtre finally pre- vailed upon to enter the house for a brief rest. Californians are very hospitable, and so it was not long before everybody was invited into the spacious dining-room for some re- freshments. Two bottles of champagne were soon on the table, and the editor looked at his friend the judge to see what he would do. His face was a curious study; he seemed to be struggling with conscience and a false sense of courtesy to the temporary host. There was no time to lose, and the editor said re- spectfully, but decidedly, ** No, thank you ; I will take a glass of water." The judge instantly stammered out, " I'll take water also, please." There was a moment's consternation — only a moment — and good breeding came to the rescue of the lady of the house. "Do you ever drink milk.''" she said in a most pleasant voice. "We have such lovely Jersey milk." The editor and the judge both assured her in a breath that they liked Jersey milk exceed- ingly. And one of the daughters ran to bring the unskimmed morning's milk from the cool, THE SOCIAL WINE-GLASS. 109 sweet dairy. The host and the other guests drank the champagne; the hostess and her daughters joined the judge and the editor in taking the delicious Jersey milk. When they were out on the road again the judge drew a long breath and said, "This miserable wine ! I wish they'd let one alone, and never bring it out!" Then the editor had his reward for a good example. No one is able to measure the far-reachin"- power of an example, whether for good or for evil. Lady Henry Somerset hcts told how she was first drawn into temperance work. In her youth she had seen two children, a boy and a girl, sip wine at their father's table, and heard the guests laugh at the precocious little ones. She lived to see the boy go to a drunkard's grave when twenty-four years old. "But what of the girl.?" she went on. "The girl was happily married, and became the mother of lovely children. The fatal seed had been sown, however. The young mother became a slave to strong drink. I prayed with her and wept with her. She asked me one day if I would be a total abstainer if she no SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. renounced strong drink forever. The propo- sition was a strange one, and I asked twenty- four hours for consideration. When I saw her again she said it was too late. I felt that if I had given her promptly the answer she should have received, she might have been saved. To-day," continued Lady Somer- set, ** her home is shattered, and I resolved to do in the future all I could for God and humanity." Dr. Lyman Abbott, commenting on that graphic Scripture which characterizes the in- fluence of strong drink by saying, "The mean man is bowed down, and the great man is humbled," declares, "The low-bred fellow drinks his fiery liquor, and wallows in the gutter ; the high-bred and rich say that they can mind their own business, and go to the same disgusting squalor. It is the greatest of mysteries why any respectable man should do what he knows will make him a fool. No, it is not the greatest of mysteries. There is a greater one — one that puzzles me more and more. It is this : How can any one who is strong hesitate for one moment to say, *0f THE SOCIAL WINE-GLASS. Ill course I will give all the influence of my example to prevent the weak from getting into habits which will make them devils rather than noble men ' ? Many, otherwise good and helpful, have it in their power to make a new and better order in society ; they might have the joy of seeing multitudes who are now going straight toward a hell on earth, living as becomes God's children, if they would only aid the weak by the influence of their ex- ample. But intemperance is not chiefly the vice of the poor ; it is pre-eminently the vice of the rich. Who fill the Keeley Cures all over the country? Most of the inmates are men of wealth and social position. On an Atlantic steamer last summer two men were the pity of the passengers. One, a rich young Englishman, the best-dressed man on board, would come to the table like a driveling idiot. He could not have eaten his food had it not been for the motherly kindness of his neigh- bor — a good woman from Boston — who some- times almost put the food into his mouth. The other was a New York Congressman, who has a fine summer-house on the Hudson. 112 SEVEN TIMIIS AROUND JERICHO. He actually came on board in a state of de- lirium tremens. * * No tongue nor pen ever yet had skill enough to adequately describe the desolation which social drinking is constantly working in the home-life of the people. Only a few months ago in the city of New York the wife of a distinguished artist, who, with her husband, a few years ago, was received into the best society of the metropolis, stood before the magistrate to answer to the charge of drunk- enness. She had been found the evening be- fore lying upon the sidewalk near her home ; and, as blood was flowing from a wound over her eye, a policeman sent her to a hospital in an ambulance. The physicians at the hos- pital soon saw that the woman's injuries were slight, but that she was intoxicated. She was kept over night, and the next morning ar- raigned before the magistrate. She is only a middle-aged woman now, and in her youth was remarkable for her beauty. When her case was called, her husband joined her before the judge, who, addressing the woman, said, "You are charged with intoxi- cation. What have you to say ? " THE SOCIAL WINE-GLASS. "3 The woman paid no attention to the inquiry of the court. Instead, she turned to her hus- band, and in a weak, unsteady voice said, "Take me away, Bruce; I am frightened. Please take me home to the children." Her husband, however, never looked at her, but with his gaze fixed on the face of the magistrate, and while his lips quivered and his eyes filled with tears, exclaimed, "Your Honor, I don't know what to do with my wife, for she is an habitual drunkard. 1 have done all in my power to bring her to herself, and she and my friends have aided me, but all without avail. She has been in all kinds of institutions and sanitariums; private phy- sicians have treated her ; and she is no better to-day than she was years ago. I can think of nothing better than that she be placed under restraint " — ^ "Oh, no, Bruce!" the woman broke in at this point, throwing her arms around her hus- band's neck, and beginning to cry. "Don't send me away; don't keep me here another minute. If you do, I will surely go crazy. Please, please take me home," Ii 114 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JEKICIIO. " I can't take you home," he said. " You have wrecked our home ; you have wrecked my life." "Don't say that," Mrs. Crane replied. "Oh, for the love of God, don't send me to prison ! Set me free, and I'll go right to mother in Troy — or, at least, I'll go just as soon as I have seen the children ; but, whatever you do, don't send me to prison." ** You have disgraced your children ; you have disgraced me," said the broken-hearted husband. "No, no, darling; don't say that!" the woman exclaimed, while tears rolled faster down her cheeks; "don't say that! for you know how I love you, and how you love me. Take me away at once." At this the husband began to relent, and, covering his face with his hands, he sobbed aloud. That made his wife cry more bitterly. "Try me just once more, Bruce, dear," the woman went on, realizing, evidently, that this was her only chance, if she had any. "And, as I live, I'll never taste liquor again. Hear me plead to you, dear ; I plead as I never did THE SOCIAL WINE-GLASS. 115 before, and as I never will again. Oh, try me just once more — for my sake, and the chil- dren's sake ; for the sake of my unborn child, for " — But here the magistrate broke in, "No," he said, addressing the husband, "you have a duty to perform, and you must face it like a man. It is a strange duty and a harsh one, perhaps, but it is your duty, nevertheless." As the magistrate committed her to jail, and directed the officer to take her away, she shrieked, " Oh, don't do that ! Don't let them keep me ! Take me away; for God's sake, take me away ! " Her husband could do nothing, however, and court officers stepped forward to lead the woman away ; but scarcely had they touched her when she fell fainting to the floor. Then she was carried from the room. Later, when she was seen in prison, she said, " Had it not been for my drinking, our home would have been without a care. My husband and I are devoted to each other, but liquor has made trouble ever since the year after our mar- riage. I was the widow of a wholesale jeweller, ■I' Il6 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JEKICIIO. whose name was X , when I met Mr. , and I never drank then. But shortly before my first child was born a physician advised me to take stimulants, and that started it. Now liquor has got the better of me." How true the warning of Scripture, "At the last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder " ! All the brilliant and gener- ous words that have been used in connection with the social glass are false and deceptive. Amos R. Wells, with poetic insight, uncovers the delusion of these misplaced adjectives: — "A 'generous' liquor! Ah, if generous Let it return, of what it steals from us, At least one-tenth ! One soul for every ten In mercy let it render back again; One-tenth of all the homes, the land, the gold, The peace, the joy, its close-mouthed coffers hold 1 You sneer, you generous liquor ! Well you know All things to get, and nothing to let go. •Generous,' forsooth! *A royal bumper!' 'Royal*? Yes, a king Whose reign means serfdom. There's no sacred thing This * royal ' liquor fails to override And whelm in fiendish lust and hateful pride. His regnant scepter bends, and at the sign Men yield themselves the crawling slaves of wine. THE SOCIAL WINE-GLASS. WJ Ills throne is built of broken hearts, his crown Gleams red with stars from heaven fallen down. * Royal ' indeed ! • A sparkling goblet ! ' Yes, yes ! — all ablaze With horrid hell's most haggard, ghastly rays, — The light of happy eyes turned to despair, The flash of hate, the eating flame of care, The glitter of a madman's awful eyes, The dying light that stabs one as it dies, — Hence does the 'sparkling goblet' get the glow And radiant glances that delight men so. 'Sparkling,' forsooth! • Strong ' drink, ' strong ' drink ! Well may we call it strong That drags so many myriad men headlong Down wo's most awful path to dreadful death. That shatters happy households at a breath. And fastens with its hot and crooked hands On temple roof and spire that loftiest stands, While marts and studios and statesmen's halls It levels to the slime wherein it crawls. ' Strong ' drink, indeed I And * rare old spirits ! ' Ah, how many a prayer Beseeches God that they became more rare! Rare — till the widow's tears less common are ; Rare — till dismantled homes are fewer far ; Rare — till the children's sobs, the wives' despair. The drunkards' dreadful anguish, grow more rare! Brothers to work! to work with hand and will, And make ' these rare old spirits ' rarer still ! God for the right ! " w Il8 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. THE PRESENT STATUS AND OUT- LOOK OF THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT. The mariiicr finds it important to take frequent reckoning of his position, and find out just how far he has proceeded on his voyage, and calculate the probabilities of his arrival in port with his cargo. It is well for workers in a great reform movement like that which has for its purpose the over- throw of the dram-shop and the bringing about an age of sobriety, to every now and then take reckoning, and find out if they be advancing toward the haven of their hope. Let us take notice of certain signifi- cant landmarks which will tell us whether we are making progress or not. First of all, it is interesting to notice the position of the church at present as related to the past. And in that examination we shall find very much that is encouraging. TJIE OUTLOOA' OF lEMPERANCE. I I9 Dr. Danie] Steele of Boston, who is still with us, has related to me that when he was a boy his uncle took him with him on one occasion to a new Congregational church where the pews were to be auctioned off. Dr. Steele says that at first the bidding was very lively, and the seats were sold off at good prices, but after a while there came quite a lull in the proceedings ; and in order to arouse the animation of the people, a big demijohn of liquor was brought out, and the drinks passed round, and very soon the bid- ding was going on again at a lively rate. It is not possible to imagine the opening of a church on that line to-day. Anothei elderly New England minister re- lated to me, not long since, that when he was fourteen years of age his father went with him to their pastor with the purpose of having the pastor question him in regard to his knowledge of the Bible and of spirit- ual truth, with reference to his reception into the church as a member. After he had been duly examined, to the satisfaction of the pas- tor, that worthy old gentleman went to his I20 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. closet and brought out a bottle of liquor and three glasses, and poured out one for the father, one for the fourteen-year-old lad he had just been examining for reception into the church, and one for himself, and the three drank together. Such incidents, which could, of course, be multiplied many times out of the reminis- cences of multitudes of men and women who are still alive, show us more clearly than any argument the remarkable advancement in temperance sentiment in the church in the past sixty or seventy years. To-day it goes as a matter of course that the pas- tors of the Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Congregational, and most other Protestant churches everywhere through the land, can be depended upon as temperance helpers, and do really carry the great burden of the weight of the temperance reformation. Per- haps nothing is more significant along this line than the remarkable advancement of the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church, which is beginning to give the greatest promise of being in the future one of the THE OUTLOOK OF TEMPERANCE. 121 Strongest divisions of the great army which is to overthrow the saloon. It is also very interesting to note the ad- vance made in temperance sentiment in the position taken by temperance societies. To- day all our temperance work worthy of the name aims at total abstinence from all in- toxicating liquor as a beverage. Our organi- zations, whether they be secret lodges or open clubs, make that the fundamental basis of their operations. It did not use to be so. The first regularly organized temperance society, with a regular constitution, of which we have any record in the world, was organ- ized on the 30th day of April, 1808, in a village schoolhouse in this State of New York. Colonel Sydney Berry was its first president. A part of its constitution read as follows : — "Article IV. No member shall drink rum, gin, whisky, wine, or any distilled spirits, or compositions of the same, or any of them, except by adv'ce of a physician, or in case of actual disease; also except- ing wine at public dinners, under a penalty of 25 cents ; provided that this article shall not infringe on any re- ligious ordinance. 122 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. " Section II. No memb-ir shall be intoxicated, under a penalty of 50 cents. " Section III. No member shall offer any of said liquors to any other member, or urge other persons to drink thereof, under a penalty of 25 cents for each offence." Even this society brought upon its origi- nators great abuse, and cries of restraint of liberty. They only held meetings once a quarter, and during the few years of the society's existence not one woman was ever within its doors. Nowhere else can we note the advance in temperance sentiment more clearly than in society circles. During the early years of the present century social wine-drinking or the use of strong drink of some kind was the almost universal practice in American homes. The sale of liquor was as open, as common, and as unchallenged as the sale of tea, coffee, dry-goods, or groceries. It was not regarded as a disreputable business. The liquor-seller did not lose caste in society. On all social occasions, at funerals, amid the toils of daily labor, at meals, in entertaining ministers, liquor was freely used. Women and children THE OUTLOOK OF TEMPERANCE. 123 I drank almost as freely as men. A woman did not endanger her social position even by drinking to intoxication at a public dinner. Now we all know that this is marvellously changed for the better throughout the great respectable class of American citizenship. In the froth and the dregs of American civili- zation liquor is perhaps used as commonly now as it ever has been. If you will permit me to compare American citizenship to a pie, I will say that the upper crust is steeped in champagne, and the lower crust soaked in beer ; but the great middle of the pie was never so clean, so sober, so wholesome in every way, as it is in this year of our Lord 1896. Neither wine nor intoxicating liquors of any kind is expected on the tables of an overwhelming majority of the homes of America. It is the exception now, and not the rule. Let it be noted that in our modern temper- ance campaign against the liquor traffic we have driven it from its respectable, unchal- lenged position of a necessary food, to its ref- uge behind the licensed but disgraced screen i 124 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. of the saloon. In its use we have driven it from the table of the great controlling class of our citizenship into the closet and secret flask ; and, by the help of God, we will not stop until we drive it from the closet through the sewer and the penitentiary into the hell where it belongs ! Another most hopeful indication may be noted in the different training given to chil- dren at the present time as compared with that of a half-century or more ago. When our fathers were young, they drank at log-rollings, at barn-raisings, quilting-bees, weddings, funerals, and on every social occa- sion. The children of that generation were educated to believe that the moderate use of alcoholic liquors was necessary to health. One of the hardest things temperance people have had to contend with in the past forty years has been to meet these erroneous teachings that have solidified into the firm convictions of men and women past middle age. It is very hard to clear from the minds of people delusions which they have cherished from days of childhood. Indeed, it may be doubted if :< 1 THE OUTLOOK OF TEMPERANCE. 12$ the impressions made upon the brain in child- hood are ever effaced. If you teach a child that a lie is the truth, he may discover, after he has grown up, that he has been wrongly taught ; but the influence of that early teach- ing will have more or less effect upon him as long as he lives. John B. Finch used to relate these two very interesting and pertinent experiences : He once visited an old lady in New York city. He was sitting chatting with her when, interrupting him, she said, " I want to tell you something." And then she told him of a wedding that had occurred fifty-seven years before. She described how the parties were dressed, told who was there, gave their names readily, and the details of the affair as minutely and accurately as though she had been read- ing from a book. When she had finished her story, Mr. Finch said to her, " Mother Stuart, will you tell me what you had for dinner yes- terday } " Putting her hand up to her head, she studied and looked perplexed, and finally said, "Well, now isn't it strange how we for- get ? " She could remember accurately, dis- 126 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. tinctly, what had occurred fifty-seven years before, but what had occurred twenty-four hours before had left no impression on the brain. The other incident was of an occasion when he visited an insane asylum in New England, and asked the superintendent to see a certain minister. He had known the minister in his home as one of the best and truest of men, who, by mental overwork, had wrecked him- self and become a raving maniac. The super- intendent of the asylum said, " You will not want to see him." But Finch said, *• Yes ; " and he was taken to the ward in the asylum known as the bed- lam ward, and into a cell where the inmate was locked up in a machine called the " strait- jacket," to prevent him from injuring himself. As they entered the room, oaths as vile and vulgar and terrible as ever fell on a human ear issued from the insane man's lips. The visitor touched the superintendent on the shoulder, and said he did not wish to stay longer. Going down the corridor, he turned to the superintendent and inquired, ** What THE OUTLOOK OF TEMPERANCE. 1 27 can this mean? When I knew that man he was one of the grandest Christians — true, noble, and good in every respect — and now to hear such vile language coming from him shocks me." Said the superintendent, " He learned to swear when a boy. The impressions were made upon the brain at that period of his life when the brain most readily receives im- pressions. When reason was dethroned, these impressions became the governing ones." What a fearful illustration of the power of training! Now, in the past we have had this almost omnipotent force against us. But as I look abroad over the land, and study the lessons to be gleaned from observation, I thank God that I plainly read in the faces of the child- hood of America that in the new generation a large proportion of this mighty force shall work for sobriety and righteousness. Already in all the Territories, by Congressional en- actment, and in a great majority of the States, and soon in all of them, our children are to be taught in the public schools the poisonous 128 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. and deadly effect of alcohol on the body and brain of humanity. Our forefathers were taught in their youth that alcohol was a food ; our children shall be taught that it is a de- structive enemy. And while the public school is doing this, there gather in the churches of America every Sunday from twelve to fifteen millions of Sunday-school children who are be- ing taught by nearly two millions of Chris- tian men and women ; and in nine schools out of ten they are taught that drunkenness is a most damning sin, and that alcohol is not only the enemy of nerve and brain, but the de- stroyer of the soul as well. If the saloon- keeper will put his ear to the ground, he may hear not only the stumbling tread of a million drunkards staggering to their doom from under his hand, but the deeper tramp, tramp, tramp of these millions of boys and girls who are coming to manhood and womanhood with a vow deep and sacred m their hearts of un- dying hatred to rum ! And marching at the head of that procession of American childhood is the army of Chris- tian mothers of America, marshalled under THE OUTLOOK OF TEMTERAXCE. 1 29 the banner of the Woman's Christian Tcnv pcrancc Union, roused to all the energy of a mother's love, to cL. battle for "God, and Home, and every Land." We now come to note the attitude of the law to the liquor traffic. And in the very nature of things this is the last point to show advancement. The final crystallization of thought and sentiment and conscience and conviction is to be found in the law. A few years ago we had a very rapid advance in the way of gaining prohibitory law, and the liquor traffic greatly feared that they were on the eve of a complete overthrow in the United States. Many shrewd political ex- perts considered it very likely that the pres- ent generation might see national prohibition of the saloon. Some distinguished political journals, notable among which was the New York Tribune y began to show a decided drift in favor of making national prohibition the battle-cry of the Republican Party. But the liquor traffic, availing itself of its great wealth, began to disgorge enormous corruption funds to break down the enforcement of prohibitory 130 SEVEN TIMES AROUND JERICHO. laws where they had been enacted, and to keep constitutional amendments from being carried in other States. The result has been a lull in aggressive prohibition effort. And yet, in spite of all this — a reaction which ought to have been expected by temperance people, and which does not for a moment indicate that prohibitory laws are outworn — there is to-day a larger population living under laws where the dram-shop is prohibited, and where the open licensed saloon is un- known, than at any time in our history. Not only is this so, but we are having constant illustrations, as in the late Roosevelt cam- paign for the closing of the liquor-saloons on Sunday in New York city, of the increasing hatred of the liquor traffic among the people. During that campaign, newspapers of every type, high and low, have not failed to ex- press in most scathing language the utter vileness of the liquor saloon, and to depre- cate the tide of misery and crime that flows from it. True, there never was a time, perhaps, when the liquor traffic was so intrenched in I 1-^ T/ll-: OUTLOOK OF TJiMPEKAiVCi:. I3I wealth, and so thoroughly intrenched in gov- ernment and in political intrigue, as it is to-day; but the history of our country shows us that there is no necessity for discourage- ment to temperance men \\\ that fact ; for the same was true of slavery on the very eve of its destruction. Five years before the day when there was not a slave under the flag, slavery was more intrenched in wealth, in government, in p- «ul- —i'lttsburg Christian Advocate, CHRIST AND HIS FRIENDS. A Series of 31 Revival Sermons from St. John's Gospel. De- livered m Hanson Place M. E. Church, Brooklyn, N. Y., January, 1895. i2mo. Cloth, 382 pp., gilt top, $1.50. I have e.-Mnined the copy of" Christ and His Friends" with great inr iS'r^n'lt^'" '^fi'Shted to i(nd the fresh and original style in which th^ author portrays the great awakening truths of the Gospel. That John's Gospel should be so rich m material for revival sermons haS never occurred to ^.D^!lLD " * ^"^ ^'^^^ circulation.-.ffM>i<;/ John F. Hurst, THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. A Scries of Temperance Revival Discourses. Introduction by Theodore L. Cuyler, D.D. i2mo, Cloth, 129 pp., 75 cents. CoNTEN-s: Item No. i.-The Saloon Debtor to Disease. Item No 2 _ The Saloon Debtor to Private and Social Immorality. Item No. q —The Saloon Debtor to Ruined Homes. Item No. 4.-The Saloon Debtor^o Pau! perized Labor Item No. s.-The Saloon Debtor to Lawlessness and Crime Saloo^Acc^Jt *° Political Corruption. How to Settle the THE CHRIST DREAM. i2mo, Cloth, 275 pp., $1.20. n,» f^,^^"^^ °^ twenty-four sermons in which illustrations of the Christ ideal rU.n nh^" T" '"l^ ^*"''","' '"^"^'"S ^^''^ «"'» ^^"'^ individuals who have risen above the selfish and measure up to the Christ dream. In tone it is optimistic and sees the bright side of life. lone it is WHITE SLAVES ; or, The Oppression of the Worthy Poor. Fifty Illustrations. i2mo, Cloth, 327 pp., I1.50. j^f^T^'^^i.^^''" ^r.u^"''^ ^"^^ J^^^^ * personal and searching investigation mto the homes of the poorer classes and in the «' White .Slaves" the resuTts are given. 1 he work is illustrated from photographs taken by the author • and the story told by pen and camera is startling. aumor, THE HONEYCOMBS OP LIFE. A Series of Sermons. i2mo, Cloth, 397 pp., $1.50. Most of the discourses are spiritual honeycombs, means of refreshment and illumination by the way. " The Soul's Resources." " Cure for Anxiety," "At the Beautiful Gate,"^"The Pilgrimage of Faith," and " Wells in the Valley of Baca," are among his themes. The volume is well laden with evangelical truth and breathes a holy inspiration. This volume also includes Dr. Banks's Memorial tribute to Lucy Stone and his powerful sermon in re- gard to the Chinese in America, entitled " Our Brother in Yellow." REVIVAL QUIVER. A Pastor's Record of Four Revival Campaigns. 1 2mo, Cloth 254 pp., $1.50. This book is, in some sense, a record of personal experiences in revival worlc. It begins with " Planning for a Revival," followed by " Methods in Revival Work." This is followed by brief outlines of some hundred or more sermons. They have points to them, and one can readily see that they were adapted to the purpose designed. The volume closes with " A Scheme of City Evangelization." It seems to of many a preacher and pastor. to us a valuable bocl:, adapted to the wants COMMON FOLKS* RELIGION. i2mo, Cloth, 343 pp., $1.50. Dr. Banks presents Christ to the "common people," and preaches to every-day folk the glorious every-day truths of the Scripture. The sermons are original, terse, and timely, full of reference to current topics, and have that earnest quality which is particularly needed to move the i^eople for whom they were spoken. — Boston Journal. THE PEOPLE'S CHRIST. A Volume of Sermons and Other Addresses and Papers. i2mo, Cloth, 220 pp., $1.25. These sermons are excellent specimens of discourses adapted to reach the masses. Their manner of presenting Christian truth is striking. They abound in all kinds of illustration, and are distinguished by a bright, cheerful tone and style, which admirably fit them for making permanent impression. — New York Observer. HEAVENLY TRADE-WINDS. i2mo, Cloth, 351 pp., $1.25. From author's preface : "The sermons included in this volume have rll been delivered in the regular course of my ministry in the Hanson Place Methodist Episcopal Church, Brooklyn. They have been blessed of God in comforting the weary, giving courage to the faint, arousing the indifferent, and awakening the sinful. They are given to the printer with an earnest prayer that, wherever they go, they may indeed be Heavenly Trade-winds, bringing bcaedictions of spiritual help and blessing." FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, 44 Fleet Street, LONDON. 11 Richmond Street, W., TORONTO. 30 Lafayette Place, NEW YORK. f U '