第76章 CHAPTER XVIII.(6)

Let me tell your readers just two or three things about Kansas. Her educational exhibit at the Chicago World's Fair took the highest prize; her per cent of illiteracy is the lowest of all the States of the Union; her regiment, the 21st of Kansas, was the only regiment of the 65,000 men at Chickamauga Park during the late war with Spain in which every man could write his own name on the muster roll; and this same regiment voted unanimously not to have the infamous "canteen" in their regiment, and they would not have it. This is the result of the influence of twenty years of constitutional prohibition. Topeka has far better paved streets and more of them than most other cities of its size in the United States, its sidewalks are all brick, and this without a dollar coming from bleeding the saloon in the shape of a license! Prosperity without the saloon is seen on every hand. True, some people stay away from Kansas because of its stringent liquor laws. That, however, largely accounts for the general intelligence here. Let them stay away. The West is all right educationally and morally. Your readers may not know it, but the State which has the largest per cent of her population in her colleges is a western State.

The influence of the Nation crusade has spread all over our State, and as a result the joints have been suppressed on all sides. Our legislature, just adjourned, gave us the most drastic legislation against the liquor business in her history, and with tremendous majorities. The result of the movement started by this brave woman, who is roundly condemned in the East, is best summed up in the words of a Kansas wholesale liquor dealer, who said recently, "A few weeks ago we had a very fine trade in Kansas, shipping out many car-loads of liquor, but just now they are coming back as fast as they went out." Our city, Topeka, has had considerable notoriety all over the country as the center of the Nation temperance crusade, and because of the presence of Mrs.

Nation. However, we think your readers will quite agree with us when we say their eastern cities could well afford such notoriety if thereby they could be rid of their debauching and terribly corrupting saloons.--

Pastor, Topeka, Kansas.

TRIBUTE TO MRS. NATION.--CORRESPONDENT OF THE STATE JOURNAL GROWS ELOQUENT ABOUT HER.

A correspondent of the State Journal who is evidently an admirer of Mrs. Nation has written the following tribute the famous smasher of joints:

"Carry A. Nation, prophetess of God and prohibition, came suddenly like the furious driving Jehu. Her cyclonic joint smashing shook the rum power of the United States from apex to foundation-stone.

The great American god Bacchus turned pale on his throne. Gambrinus and his thirty thousand white-aproned priests of debauchery and licentiousness trembled in every saloon and bagnio throughout the union.

No whirlwind, tornado or simoon of the desert ever startled a nation as her volcanic career. From ocean to ocean, from Canada to Texas. she faced a storm of relentless criticism and bitter sarcasm from political curs, clerical hirelings and editorial henchmen of the murderous liquor traffic such as no mortal ever faced before. A star of hope to the one hundred thousand despairing drunkards, already in the death-grasp of this licensed Moloch of perdition; volunteer liberator of the hundreds of thousands of hapless slaves of this greater "curse of curses" and more than "sum of all villainies;" precursor of emancipation of the millions of sad-faced women and children whose lives are blasted and crushed beneath the wheels of this cruel Car of juggernaut; betrayed by false friends, imprisoned by the courts, and manacled; no martyr of old ever ran the gauntlet of hotter persecution, yet like Banquo's Ghost and the Man of Galilee she will not down. Denounce her as you may, she is such an one as heroines and world-wide characters are made of.

Every one will want a copy of her "Life," forthcoming publication.

The boys and girls will find the Old Kentucky Home plantation scenes, interesting as Uncle Tom's Cabin and well worth the price of the book.

The pictures and portraits of the noted Smasher of joints are more than worth the nominal sum. To every citizen, student and philanthropist the legal citations for reference are worth it. No temperance person or prohibitionist can afford to be without a copy.--RAY RAND.

WORDS PROPHETIC.

The liquor traffic will never see another hour of peace in this country. Mrs. Carrie Nation has sounded the alarm. There's a growing hatred of the saloon. The speaker has sworn hostility to an institution that feeds on the bodies and souls of men. I will pay my taxes like an honest man and not saddle by my vote, the burden on the tempted and weak, who will pay them over the bar and throw his wife and children on the charity of the public.

What shall the harvest be?

As a people for years we pressed to our hearts the evil of human slavery. It was profitable, we thought, but every drop of blood let by the slaver's lash, God made us pay back with blood of our own upon the altar. Many fortunes were built up by slave labor, but how many of them were left after the war? "Whatsoever a nation soweth that shall it also reap." What shall the harvest be from the wild sowing of the legalized saloon? Our own country is a partner in the business for the of revenue. I pray God that the liquor traffic may be abolished from America, without bloodshed, and yet who dares prophesy that it shall be so. Much blood has been let in these long years by drunken husbands and fathers. Many fortunes have been built up by the traffic. What shall the end be?

Right shall prevail--

"For right is right, as God is God;

And right the day will win.

To doubt would be disloyalty, To falter would be sin."

Listen to the voice of the 20th century prophet as it comes ringing down the grooves of change: "The saloon is going! Perhaps not by your political party or mine, your church or mine; but God reigns and his people will awake. And as it lies dying at last amongst its bags of gold, and we stand over it, as I pray we may, if it shall look up into our faces and whisper: "Another million of revenue for a single breath of life!" You will say, as I will: "NO! Down, down to hell and say I sent thee thither."