Just so speakers are affected by conditions, by acoustics, atmosphere, size and temper of the audience, and the speaker's own mental and physical condition. Many a good sermon has been killed by a poor sexton. Many a grand thought has perished in foul air.

Charles Spurgeon was preaching to a large audience in a mission church in London, when want of ventilation affected speaker and audience. Mr. Spurgeon said to a member of the church: "Brother, lift that window near you."

"It won't lift," replied the brother.

"Then smash the glass and I'll pay the bill to-morrow," said Spurgeon.

Suppose the great horse Uhlan should be announced to trot against his record; suppose at the appointed time, with the grandstand crowded and every condition favorable, as the great trotting wonder reached the first quarter pole, some one were to run across the track just ahead of the horse, then another and another; what kind of a record would be made?

What management would allow a horse to be thus handicapped? Where is the man who would be so inconsiderate as to thus hinder a horse? Yet when a minister has worked while the world slept, that he not only might sustain his record but gather souls into the kingdom; when the opening exercises have given sufficient time for all to be present; when the text is announced and the preacher is reaching out after the attention and sympathy of his audience some one enters the door, walks nearly the full length of the aisle; then another and then two more, each one crossing the track of the preacher and yet he is expected to keep up his record and make good. If you are a friend of your pastor be present when he announces his text; give him your attention and thus cheer him on as you would your favorite horse.

An eminent minister said: "There, I had a good thought for you, but the creaking of the new boots of that brother coming down the aisle knocked it quite out of my head."

One who had heard me many times said: "Why do you do better at Ocean Grove than anywhere else I hear you?" My answer was: "Because of conditions. The great auditorium seats ten thousand, the atmosphere is invigorated by salt sea breezes; a choir of five hundred sing the audience into a receptive mood and the speaker is borne from climax to climax on wings of applause."

I would not have you infer from this that a large audience is always necessary to success. Indeed the most successful and satisfactory address I ever made was to an audience of one. If I can make as favorable an impression upon you as I did upon that young lady I shall be gratified.

In Pauling, New York, Chauncey M. Depew by his attention and applause inspired me more than the whole audience beside; while time and again have I been helped to do my best by the presence of that matchless queen of the platform, Frances E. Willard.

The very opposite of greatness has had the same effect upon me. At the Pontiac, Illinois, Chautauqua after lecturing to a great audience, I was invited by the superintendent of the State Reformatory to address the inmates of the prison. At the close of a thirty minutes' talk the superintendent said: "Your address to my boys exceeded the one you gave at the Chautauqua."

Why was it better? At the Chautauqua I was trying to entertain and instruct an intelligent audience. Within the grey walls of that prison I was reaching down to the very depths, endeavoring to lift up human beings, marred and scarred by sin and crime, but dear to the mothers who bore them and the Savior who died for them.

If I were a preacher in New York City and were announced to preach a sermon on home missionary work I would not go to the church by way of the mansions of the rich where children, shod in satin slippers dance and play over velvet tapestry, but by way of the slums where I would meet the children of misery, where,

"To stand at night 'mid the city's throng, And scan the faces that pass along, Is to read a book whose every leaf Is a history of woe and want and grief. As in tears of sorrow and sin and shame, You read a story of blight and blame, Your heart goes further than hand can reach And you feel a sermon you cannot preach."

Whoever would prove worthy of the platform must have a message and give to it the devotion of mind, heart and conscience, no matter whether his purpose is to convince by reasoning, convert by appeal, delight by rhetoric, or cure melancholy by humor. Each has its useful influence on the platform.

Some persons have an impression that the student deals in logic, while the orator simply starts his tongue to running, and goes off and leaves it to work automatically.

Bishop Robert McIntyre was one of the greatest pulpit orators of his age, yet I dare say this gifted man gave as much time and thought to his famous word painting of the Chicago fire, as Joseph Cook ever gave to mining any treasure of thought he laid upon the altar of education.

I know many teachers of oratory say: "Study your subject, analyze it well, and leave words to the inspiration of the occasion." But suppose when the occasion comes, instead of inspiration one has indigestion, then what?

While a speaker should not be so confined to composition that he cannot reach out after, and cage any passing bird of thought, yet as the leaf of the mulberry tree must go through the stomach of a silk-worm, before it can become silk, so climaxes should be warped and woofed into language before they can be forceful and beautiful.

At the Lincoln, Nebraska, Assembly some years ago a noted humorist gave an address on the "Philosophy of Wit." He called oratory a lost art, and to prove his contention he quoted from William Jennings Bryan's famous Chicago convention speech. He said: "What would a young woman think of her lover who would say 'My darling, the crown of thorns shall never be pressed down upon your fair brow?'" The humorist expected applause but it failed to materialize, for Mr. Bryan is highly respected in his state and his oratory is a charm wherever he is heard.

The speaker not only exhibited poor taste, but his wit was pointless, for when a man can go before a convention of fourteen hundred delegates and by one burst of eloquence capture the convention, secure the nomination for the presidency, and then with the press and the leaders of his party against him go up and down the country, and from the rear of a railroad train, almost capture the White House, the day of oratory is not gone by.

Schriner, the great animal painter, painted the picture of a bony mule eating a tuft of hay. That picture sold in Petersburg, Russia, for fifteen thousand dollars, while the original mule sold for one dollar and thirty cents. If the painting of Schriner made in the price of that mule, a difference of fourteen thousand, nine hundred, ninety-eight dollars and seventy cents why is not word painting worth something?

Listen, while I give you a short extract from the address of James G. Blaine at the memorial service of our martyr President Garfield. With the audience wrought up to the greatest sympathy by his tribute he said:

"Surely if happiness can come from robust health, ideal domestic life and honors of the world James A. Garfield was a happy man that July morning. One moment strong, erect with promise of peaceful, useful years of life before him: The next moment wounded, bleeding, helpless.

"Through the days and weeks of agony that followed, he saw his sun slowly sinking, the plans and purposes of his life broken and the sweetest of household ties soon to be severed.

"Masterful in mortal weakness he became the center of a nation's love, and enshrined in the prayers of the Christian world.

"As the end drew near, his youthful yearning for the sea returned. The White House palace of power became a hospital of pain. He begged to be taken from its prison walls and stifling air.

"Silently, tenderly the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to the longed-for healing of the sea. There with wan face lifted to the cooling breeze, he looked wistfully out upon the changing wonders of the ocean; its far-off sails white in the morning light; its restless waves rolling shoreward to break in the noon-day sun; the red clouds of evening arching low, kissing the blue lips of the sea, and above the serene, silent pathway to the stars.

"Let us believe his dying eyes read a mystic meaning only the parting soul can know; that he heard the waves of the ebbing tide of life breaking on the far-off shore, and felt already upon his wasted brow the calm, sweet breath of heaven's morning."

Place behind these utterances the rich voice and magnetic manner of the "Plumed Knight" of the platform, and you can realize what oratory means.

If you will here pardon me for going from the sublime to the ridiculous, I will show you how a bit of a school boy rhetoric may win its way over solid argument. In the country school I attended, there was a debating society. Parents as well as their sons were admitted to the society and the public was invited to the debates. On one occasion the question for debate was: "Which is the more attractive, the works of nature or the works of art?"

There had been an appeal from a general debate and this time one speaker was chosen from each side. My father was chosen to represent the negative and I the affirmative. My father was a good speaker but so fond of facts he had no use for rhetoric. I had the opening address of thirty minutes, my father had forty-five minutes and I had fifteen minutes to close the debate.

As father talked I wondered how he ever got hold of so many facts. He piled them up until my first address was swept away by the triumphs of art. The only hope I had for the affirmative was in the closing fifteen minutes. Fortunately for me, the judge was a bachelor and very much in love with a golden-haired, accomplished young woman who lived in a country home very near the schoolhouse, and was then in the audience. In closing the debate I referred to father's address in a complimentary manner, and then asked the judge to be seated in imagination on a knoll nearby. On one side of that knoll I placed all my father had claimed for art, withholding nothing. On the other side was the home of this Blue Grass belle. I began a description of her home and personality. I pictured "the orchard, the meadow, the deep tangled wild-wood and every loved spot" the judge well knew. I pictured the brook that ran through the meadow into the woodland and on down the valley, singing as it ran,

"I wind about and in and out, With here a blossom sailing; Here and there a lusty trout, And here and there a grey-ling."

When my time was half gone I felt I was gone too unless I could get a little nearer the heart of the judge. Opening the door art had made to shut in the flowers of a lovely family I brought out the golden-haired girl.

Taking off the sun-bonnet of art, that the good-night kisses of the sinking sun might enrich her rosy cheeks and golden tresses, I sent her strolling down the winding walk hedged in by hawthorn and hyacinth to the water's brink. Here I gave her a cushion of blue-grass, and with the rising moon pouring its shimmering sheen upon the ripples at her feet, I sent her voice floating away on the evening air singing: "Roll on silver moon, guide the traveler on his way." Here the audience cheered, the judge smiled and I felt encouraged.

With but two minutes left I had the shapely fingers of nature, take out the hair-pins of art and the golden tresses fall about the snowy neck of nature. Then came the untying of the shoe-strings of art; off came the shoes and stockings of art, and the pretty feet of nature were dipping in the limpid stream. I said, "Judge, the question is, which is the more attractive, the works of nature or the works of art? With my father's picture of steam engines, stage coaches, reapers, binders, mowing machines and every known triumph of art on one side; on the other the highest type of the world's creation, a beautiful woman, the stars of nature stooping to kiss her brow, and laughing waters of nature leaping to kiss her feet; where your eyes would rest there let your decision be given."

After the debate a friend said to me: "It was that last home picture that saved you." My father who heard the remark said, "Yes, a picture of a red-headed girl washing her feet in a goose branch." I may add, I was careful after the contest not to get very near the young lady with whom I had taken such platform liberty.

Reason, rhetoric, pathos, poetry, diction, gesture, wit and humor, each has its place on the platform. While logic sounds the depths of thought, humor ripples its surface with laughing wavelets. While reason cultivates the cornfields of the mind, rhetoric beautifies the pleasure gardens.

John B. Gough was the most popular platform orator of his day. He began lecturing at from two to five dollars an evening. He grew in popularity until he was in demand at five hundred dollars a lecture, and no one before or since more successfully used all the arts of the platform, from the comic that drew the very rabble of the streets, to flights of eloquence that captured college culture. It has been well said: "While Gough was a great preacher of righteousness, he was a whole theatre in dramatic delivery." Lecturers, like preachers, are fishers of men, and there are as many kinds of people in an average audience as there are kinds of fish in the sea. It requires variety of bait for humanity as well as for fish.

Sam Jones used slang as one kind of bait and he used to say: "It beats all how it draws." I saw this verified at Ottawa, Kansas, Chautauqua. Giving a Saturday evening lecture he baited the platform with slang, satire and humor. Sunday afternoon an hour before time for his lecture the people were hurrying to the auditorium. When presented to the great audience he said: "Record! Record! Record!" I remember the sermon as one of the sweetest and most powerful I ever heard. Its influence will not cease this side the eternal morning.

Rowland Hill, the popular London preacher, used quaint humor to draw the people, and powerful appeal to sweep them into the kingdom.

It is said the fountain of laughter and fountain of tears lie very close together. My experience has been, that often the best way to the fountain of tears is by the way of the fountain of laughter. Some years ago at Ocean Grove, New Jersey, I was to lecture on the subject, "Boys and Girls, Nice and Naughty." A wealthy widow and her only son were there from New York, where the young boy had been leading a "gay life." Ocean Grove with its quiet, moral atmosphere was a dull place for this young man. He happened to read the subject for the lecture on the bulletin board, and thinking it suggestive of humor he went to hear the lecture. He had what he went for, as the lecture did deal with the fountain of laughter, but it also dealt with the fountain of tears. It swung the red lantern of danger athwart the pathway of the wayward young man. Following a story of mother love, I said: "Young man, let the cares and burdens of life press you down to the very earth, let the great waves of sorrow roll over your soul, but let no act of yours ever roll a clod upon the coffin of her, whose image, enshrined upon the inner walls of your memory, white winters and long bright summers can never wash away."

A minister told me after, that in a young people's meeting this young man arose and said: "I attended a lecture at Ocean Grove, thinking I would have a humorous entertainment. I left the auditorium the saddest soul in the great audience. Going down to the beach I tried to drive away the spell, but it grew upon me. I could see how I had grieved my mother, and the past came rolling up like the waves of the ocean. I shuddered as they broke on my awakened conscience and quickened memory. Behind me was an unhallowed past, and before me the brink of an awful eternity. There and then I resolved to change my course. Alone under the stars I made my resolve and then started to my mother. She was waiting for me, and said: 'My son, I wished for you at the lecture this evening. I think you would have enjoyed it.' I then told her I was determined to lead a new life and had come to seal my vow with her kiss."

That young man went to the lecture to laugh, he left to walk alone with God under the stars by the ocean deep, there to decide to lead a righteous life, and seal the vow with a loving mother's kiss.

So while in my humble way I have endeavored to use the arts that entertain I have cherished the purpose to better human lives.

I have referred to the platform as being baited for humanity. Have you ever considered how it is baited to resist the forces of evil?

The day was when Satan had an attraction trust that controlled about the whole output of entertainment. The platform now is a picture gallery where is to be had all beauty in nature, from our own land to the land of the midnight sun.

In moving pictures it presents to those who never saw ship, sail or sea, the landing of a great steamer, with splashing of spray as real as if seen from the dock. To those who enjoy music it furnishes band concerts, orchestra, bell-ringing, quartettes, solos, plantation melodies, rag-time tunes and women whistlers.

The platform today beats the devil in output of entertainment. It has scoured field and forest, trained birds and dogs to round out the program of a chautauqua.

Its breadth takes in all creeds and kinds. While it greets with waving lilies Bishop Vincent, leader of the great chautauqua movement, it cordially welcomes the priest, the Jew, the Chinaman, the negro, republican, democrat, progressive, prohibitionist, socialist and suffragist.

The platform has grown to be a great university, a musical festival, a zoological garden, an art institute, an agricultural college and a domestic science school.

Do you ask has the platform any blemishes? I answer yes. All enterprises have their blemishes. The press is a potent power for good and yet many bad things get into print. Sometimes from the platform come voices without the ring of sincerity, entertainments without uplifting influence and anecdotes without respect to public decency. When attending platform entertainments one should discriminate as when eating fish, enjoy the meat and discard the bones. With good taste in selection one rarely ever need go away hungry.

I am often asked: "Where do you find the most appreciative audiences?"

First, I would reply, in rural communities where the people are not surfeited with entertainment. Second, I would say, applause does not always mean appreciation. It is said "still water runs deep." In Chickering Hall, New York, one Sunday afternoon a lady sat before me whose diamonds and dress indicated wealth. A lad sat by her side. My subject was, "The Safe Side of Life for Young Men." It was a temperance address and the thought came to me; that lady is a wine drinker and she is disappointed that I am to talk temperance. She did not cheer with the audience, nor did she give any expression of face that would indicate her interest, except that she kept her eyes fixed upon the speaker. At the close she came to the platform and said: "I brought my son with me and you said what I wanted him to hear; I thank you," and with this she took my hand saying, "Again I thank you," and turning away, left a coin in my hand.

I put it in my pocket, and on returning to the hotel found she had given me a twenty dollar gold piece. That was gold standard appreciation.

I am frequently asked: "What do you recall as the best introduction you ever had?"

I have had all kinds, some amusing, but the one I cherish most was given by Ferd Schumacher, the deceased oatmeal king of Akron, Ohio. He came to this country from Germany. By industry and economy he accumulated enough money to engage in making oatmeal. When he had rounded up more than a million of dollars in wealth, the insurance ran out on his great "Jumbo Mills" in Akron. The insurance company raised the rate and while he was dickering with the company, the great plant was swept away in a midnight fire. Mr. Schumacher was a very earnest temperance man and was to introduce me for the W.C.T.U. in the large armory the Sunday after the fire. It was supposed he would not be present because of the severe strain and his great loss. But prompt to the minute he entered the door, and 'mid the applause of sympathetic friends he took the platform.

In presenting the speaker he said: "Ladies and schentlemen, I must be personal for a moment while I thank the people of Akron for their sympathy. I did not know I had so many good friends. But the mill vot vos burned vos made of stone and vood and nails and paint. We come to talk to you about a fire vot is burning up the homes, the hopes, the peace of vimen and children and the immortal souls of men; vill you please take your sympathy off of Ferd Schumacher and give it to Mr. Bain while he talks about the great fire of intemperance."

I am opposed to indiscriminate immigration to this country, but if the old world has any more Ferd Schumachers desiring to come to America, may He who rules winds and waves, fill with harmless pressure the billows on which they ride and give them safe entrance into our country's haven.

Many inquire of me about the lyceum platform as a profession. My answer is: "like the famed shield it has two sides." One who has a lovely home and rarely leaves it said to me: "I envy you your life-work. You get to see the country, visit the great cities, meet the best people and get fat fees for your lectures." How distance does lend enchantment to the view sometimes!

A few years ago we notified the bureaus not to make engagements away from the railroads in the northwest during the blizzard months. A letter came saying: "Enter Wessington College, outside of Woonsocket." We supposed outside meant adjacent. Arriving at Woonsocket in a blizzard I found Wessington seventeen miles away. Wrapped in robes I made the drive, arriving about six o'clock in the evening. On arrival I was informed that smallpox had broken out in the village. The hotel had been quarantined but a room had been engaged for me in a private home. While taking my supper my hostess said: "Would you know smallpox if you were to see the symptoms?"

"Know what? Why do you ask that?" I asked.

She called attention to the face of her daughter who was serving the supper. One glance and my appetite fled, as I said: "Excuse me, please. I must get ready for my lecture," and I left the room. One hour later I stood before a vaccinated audience with visions of smallpox floating before me, and for days after I imagined I could feel it coming.

Add to this experience midnight rides on freight trains, long drives in rain, mud and storm, ten minutes for lunch at sandwich counter, eight months of the year away from home—the only heaven one who loves his family has on earth, and you have a taste of the side my neighbor did not see.

There is, however, a bright side. Whoever can get the ear of the public from the platform, has an opportunity to sow seed, the fruit of which will be gathered by angels when he has gone to his reward. One so long on the platform as I have been, cannot fail in having experiences that gladden the heart, if he has done faithful service.

Out of hundreds I select one experience that should encourage all who labor in the Master's vineyard. I had traveled two hundred miles in a day to reach an engagement, and the last seven miles in a buggy over a miserable road. I did not reach the village until nine o'clock. Without supper and chilled by the ride, I threw off my wraps and wearily made my way through the lecture. A little later in my room at the hotel, while I was taking a lunch of bread and milk, a minister entered and said: "You seem to be very tired." When I answered, "Never more so," he replied: "I have a story to tell you which will perhaps rest you."

Continuing he said: "Some twenty years ago, you lectured in a village where there was a state normal school. It was Sunday evening. At the hotel were three young men, and to see the girls of the college, these young men went to the lecture. One was the only son of a wealthy widow. He had not seen his mother for months. She had begged him to come home, but he was sowing his wild oats and ashamed to face his mother. That evening you made an earnest appeal to young men in the name of home and mother. The arrow went to the heart of the wild young fellow. On returning to the hotel he said to his companions: 'Come up to my room, let's have a talk.' On entering the room he closed the door and said: 'Boys, I want to open my heart to you. I am overwhelmed with a sense of wrong-doing. I am done with the saloon, done with the gambling table, done with evil associations. I am going home to-morrow and make mother happy. Boys, let's join hands and swear off from drink and evil habits; let's honor our manhood and our mothers.'

"Now for the sequel that I think will rest you. That wild boy is now a wealthy man. I give you his name, though I would not have you call it in public. He is a Christian philanthropist, and has never broken his pledge. The second boy holds the highest office in the gift of this government in a western territory, and the third stands before you now, an humble minister of the gospel."

It did rest me. I would rather have been the humble instrument in turning those three young men to a righteous life, than to wear the brightest wreath that ever encircled a stateman's brow.

For such men as Sylvester Long, Roland A. Nichols, Robert Parker Miles and Bishop Robert McIntyre to tell me my lectures helped to shape their lives, fills my soul with joy as I face the setting sun.

Chance, the noted English engineer, built a thousand sea-lights, shore-lights and harbor-lights. When in old age he lay dying, a wild storm on the sea seemed to revive him by its association with his life-work. He said to the watchers: "Lift me up and let me see once more the ocean in a storm."

As he looked out, the red lightning ripped open the black wardrobe of the firmament, and he saw the salted sea driven by the fury of the hurricane into great billows of foam. Sinking back upon his pillows his last words were: "Thank God, I have been a lighthouse builder, and though the light of my life is fast fading, the beams of my lighthouse are brightening the darkness of many a sailor's night."

When my life-work closes, and my platform experiences are ended, I would ask no better name than that of an humble lighthouse builder, who here and there from the shore-points of life's ocean, has sent out a friendly beam, to brighten the darkness of some brother's night.



VII

THE DEFEAT OF THE NATION'S DRAGON.

Joseph Cook said in one of his Boston lectures: "Whenever the temperance cause has attempted to fly with one wing, whether moral suasion or legal suasion, its course has been a spiral one. It will never accomplish its mission in this world, until it strikes the air with equal vans, each wing keeping time with the other, both together winnowing the earth of the tempter and the tempted."

I congratulate the friends of temperance upon the progress both wings have made since the beginning of their flight.

The first temperance pledge we have any record of ran thus: "I solemnly promise upon my word of honor I will abstain from everything that will intoxicate, except at public dinners, on public holidays and other important occasions." The first prohibitory law was a local law in a village on Long Island and ran thus: "Any man engaged in the sale of intoxicating liquors, who sells more than one quart of rum, whiskey or brandy to four boys at one time shall be fined one dollar and two pence."

A sideboard without brandy or rum was an exception, while the jug was imperative at every log-raising and in the harvest field. It was said of even a Puritan community,

"Their only wish and only prayer, In the present world or world to come, Is a string of Eels and a jug of rum."

When Doctor Leonard Bacon was installed pastor of the First Congregational Church in New Haven, Conn., in 1825, free drinks were ordered at the bar of the hotel, for all visiting members, to be paid for by the church. Today all protestant churches declare against the drink habit and the drink sale. Pulpits are thundering away against the saloon. Children are studying the effects of alcohol upon the human system in nearly every state in the Union. Train loads of literature are pouring into the homes of the people. A mighty army of as godly women as ever espoused a cause is battling for the home, against the saloon. The business world is demanding total-abstainers, and fifty millions of people in the United States are living under prohibitory laws.

Not only in this but in every civilized land the cause of temperance is growing. Recently in France it was found there were more deaths than births, which meant France was dying. A commission was appointed to look into the causes. When the report was made, alcohol headed the list. Now by order of the government linen posters are put up in public buildings, and on these in blood red letters are these warnings: "Alcohol dangerous; alcohol chronic poison; alcohol leads to the following diseases; alcohol is the enemy of labor; alcohol disrupts the home!"

Who would have thought an Emperor of Germany would ever "go back" on beer? Emperor William in an address to the sailors recommended total-abstinence and forbid under penalty the giving of liquor to soldiers in the world's greatest war. The Czar of Russia has put an end to the government's connection with the manufacture of intoxicating liquors, and our Secretary of the Navy has banished it from the ships and navy yards. The New York Sun says: "The business world is getting to be one great temperance league." For many years it was confined to the realm of morals, but today it is recognized as a great economic question and the business world is joining the church world in solving the liquor problem.

While the temperance cause has been going up in character, the drink has been going down in quality. The old time distiller used to select his site along some crystal stream, that had its fountain-head in the mountains and ran over beds of limestone. With sound grain and pure water, he made several hundred barrels of whiskey a year, and after five to ten years of ripening, it was sent out with the makers' brand upon it. Now the North American of Philadelphia, one of our leading dailies says, rectifiers (and I would prefix one letter and make it w-r-e-c-k-t-i-f-i-e-r-s) take one barrel from the distillery and by a pernicious, poisonous process, make one hundred barrels from one barrel.

It is true the sting of the adder and the bite of the serpent were in the old-time whiskey, but it was as pure as it could be made. Doctor Wiley, Ex-Chief of the Bureau of Chemistry, says: "Eighty-five per cent. of all the whiskey sold in the saloons, hotels and club-rooms is not whiskey at all but a cheap base imitation." In the different concoctions made are found aconite, acquiamonia, angelica root, arsenic, alum, benzine, belladonna, beet-root juice, bitter almond, coculus-indicus, sulphuric acid, prussic acid, wood alcohol, boot soles and tobacco stems. No wonder we have more murders in this republic than in any civilized land beneath the sky in proportion to population.

Along with this adulteration of the drink has gone the degeneracy of the saloon and the seller. The day was when officers in churches could sell liquor and retain their membership. Today the saloonkeeper is barred from the protestant churches, barred from Masons, Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias, Red Men, Woodmen, Maccabees and nearly every other fraternal organization of the world.

The saloon itself has become such a vicious resort, that when the police look for a murderer they go to the saloon. When any vile character is sought for, the saloon is searched. When anarchists meet to plan for a Hay-market murder in Chicago, they meet in the saloon. When an assassin plans to shoot down our President at an exposition, he goes from the saloon. When a fire breaks out in Chicago or Boston the first order is, close the saloons. Don't close any other business house, but close the saloon. If a mob threatens Pittsburg, Cincinnati, or Atlanta, close the saloons. If an earthquake strikes San Francisco, close the saloons. In our large cities gambling rooms are attached to the saloons with wine rooms above for women, and while our boys are being ruined downstairs, girls are destroyed upstairs.

There are many thousands of women in painted shame, who would now be safe inside life's Eden of purity but for the saloon. The South Side Club of Chicago said in 1914: "The back rooms of four hundred and forty-five saloons on only three streets of this city contribute to the delinquency of fourteen thousand girls every twenty-four hours." Is it any wonder the saloons hide behind green blinds or stained glass windows?

There is a fish in the sea known as the "Devil Fish." It lies on its back with open mouth and covers itself with sea moss. Over its open mouth is a bait. When an unsuspecting fish nibbles at the bait, with a quick snap it is caught and devoured. Do you see any analogy between this fish and a certain business that hides itself behind painted windows or green blinds and hangs out a bait of "free lunch" or "Turtle Soup"? A fish that sets a trap for its kind is called a "Devil Fish;" a business that does the like is recognized as a legitimate trade and permitted for the sake of revenue.

Every other recognized business has improved in quality with the years. The saloon has grown worse and worse, until it is bad and only bad; bad in the beginning, bad in the middle, bad in the end, bad inside, outside, upside, downside. It is so bad, the liquor dealers are the only business men who are ashamed to put on exhibition their finished products. In great expositions other trades present finished wares. They do not display the tools used in making what they present for exhibition but the finished goods. Not so with the liquor dealers; they put on exhibition the tools with which they work, but not a single specimen of the finished product of their trade do they present for inspection.

"That's a fine fit of clothes you have, sir." "Yes," says the tailor, "I put up that job; glad you like my work."

"That's a fine building across the way." "Yes," says the architect, "that's my job and I am quite proud of it."

"That's a handsome bonnet you wear, madam." "Yes," says the milliner, "that's my creation of style and I am rather proud of my work."

Yonder is a man intoxicated. He staggers and falls; his head strikes the curb-stone; the blood besmears his face; the police lift him up and start with him to the station house. Did you hear a saloon keeper say: "That's my creation; I put up that job and I'm proud of my work."

Some one said recently in defense of the business: "The saloon keeper deserves more consideration." This writer should know that consideration has been the source of its undoing. Lord Chesterfield considered it and said: "Drink sellers are artists in human slaughter." Senator Morrill, of Maine, considered and pronounced it "the gigantic crime of all crimes." Senator Long, of Massachusetts considered it and called it "the dynamite of modern civilization." Henry W. Grady, our brilliant southerner, considered it and said: "It is the destroyer of men, the terror of women and the shadow on the face of childhood. It has dug more graves and sent more souls to judgment than all the pestilences since Egypt's plague, or all the wars since Joshua stood before the walls of Jericho." The New York Tribune considered it and said: "It's the clog upon the wheels of American progress." The Bible considered it and compares its influence to the bite of serpents, the sting of adders, the poison of asps, and heaps the woes of God's will upon it.

Sam Jones said: "When the Bible says woe, you better stop," and as certain as seed time brings harvest it will stop, not because of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, or the Anti-Saloon League, or the Prohibition Party, but because afar back in the blue haze of the past the seed of prohibition was planted in the soil of Divine truth.

Ever since God declared woe against the evils of mankind, the batteries of the holy Bible have been trained upon the "wine that gives its color in the cup," and the man who "giveth his neighbor drink and maketh him drunken also."

It will stop, because error cannot stand agitation. Whoever espouses the cause of error must evade facts, falsify figures, libel logic, tangle his tongue or pen with contradictions and wind up in confusion.

The able editor of the Courier Journal of Kentucky came to the defense of this error, and with all his brilliancy and culture, he resorted to personal abuse of temperance workers, because he could not occupy a higher plane in defense of the saloon. He made up what he called an "ominum gatherum," of "bigots," "hay-seed politicians," "fake philosophers," "cranks," "scamps," "professional sharps," "mad caps of destruction," "preachers who would sell corner lots in heaven," "a riff-raff of moral idiots and red-nosed angels."

I could hardly believe my own eyes when I read this frantic phillipic from one I had esteemed so highly for his intellect; one whose element is up where eagles soar, and not down where baser birds feast upon rotten spots in a world of beauty. Only a few days before I had read his beautiful tribute to Lincoln, delivered at the unveiling in Hodgenville, in which he said of the great emancipator: "He never lost his balance or tore a passion to tatters," yet the finished orator who paid the tribute, when he espouses the cause of error, flies into a paroxysm of passion and tears the dignity of his own self-control into shreds.

Knowing as I do the culture, refinement and polished manners of the great journalist, I wondered what aggravating force could have so unbalanced his mental scales and led him to so bitterly denounce those, whose only offense is, trying to do what Lincoln did, abolish an evil. If this resourceful writer were only converted to the truth on this question, what an "ominum gatherum" he could make from the work of the saloon curse.

The clergymen, called "canting, diabolical preachers," deserve more respectful consideration from one who well knows their sincerity. They are men of brains, heart and conscience; men who believe that righteousness rather than revenue exalts a nation, and that sin, no matter how much money invested in it, is a reproach to any people. These ministers believe it to be morally wrong to convert God's golden grain into what debases mankind. They preach that what is morally wrong can never be made politically right. With them it is a matter of deep, permanent conviction. Such attacks are made to divert attention from the accused at the bar of public opinion.

It is the saloon that is on trial, not cranks, or moral idiots, or ministers. The saloon is charged with being the enemy of every virtue and ally of every vice, that it injures public health, public peace and public morals. The Supreme Court says: "No legislature has the right to barter away public health, public peace or the public morals; the people themselves cannot do so, much less their servants."

In face of this declaration of the Supreme Court, legislators do barter away public health, public peace and public morals to the organized liquor traffic. All along the cruel career of this enemy of peace, health and morals, it has been pampered and petted by politicians who have been as much charmed by its promise of votes, as was Eve in the Garden of Eden by the serpent's assurance. Deceived by the serpent of the still, they have not only disregarded the decision of the Supreme Court but defied God's plan of dealing with sin. They have persisted in trying to regulate an irregularity in morals by licensing the greatest sin of the century, and have done so to their shame and failure in any regulation effort ever made. The only way to cure chills is to kill the malaria. The only way to cure the cursed liquor traffic is to cast it out of our civilization by a universal, everlasting prohibition of the manufacture, importation and sale of intoxicating liquor.

Rev. Howard Crosby, of New York, in advocating high license as a means of reducing the number of saloons, said in an address: "Suppose a tiger were to get loose in the city, would you not confine him to a few blocks rather than let him roam the city at large?" Some one in the audience answered aloud: "No Doctor, we would kill the tiger."

How does regulation regulate? Take the city of Louisville, Ky., where I resided a number of years, and where I observed the practical working of the license system. Go there any Monday morning and you will see from twenty to forty men and women in the cage next to the Police Court room. A marshal stands at the door of the cage and takes them out one at a time. You will hear the judge say: "ten dollars and cost," which means thirty days in the workhouse. Forty days pass and here is the same man in the Police Court: thirty days to serve his time, ten days to get a little money and then another drunk. Some do not know how many times they have been before the court. I was there one day when an Irishman was arraigned. The Judge said: "Pat, how many times have you been before this court?"

"Faith, and your books will tell ye," replied the Irishman. Judge Price, the police judge at the time, said to me: "There are a number of men, and several women I know in this city, who pass through the courtroom on their way to the workhouse so regularly, I can guess within a few days of the time they will appear." They pass like buckets at a fire, going up full and returning empty.

There is an asylum in this country where, I am told, they test a man's insanity in this way. They have a trough which holds one hundred gallons of water. Above is an open tap through which the water pours constantly, and of course the trough keeps on running over. The patient is brought to the trough, given a bucket and told to dip out the water. If he dips all day and has not mind enough to turn off the tap, he is considered a very serious case. If this test were put to our license lawmakers, I fear they would have to go to the incurable ward. They have for many years been picking up drunkards from the gutters and opening taps for them to keep on pouring into the streets. Under this system the saloon keepers are playing ten-pins. You know in playing ten-pins there is a long alley, at one end of which stand the pins, while at the other stands the player with a ball in his hand. He rolls the ball down the alley and knocks down the pins. Some one sets them up, and to that some one, who is often a boy, the player will toss a dime and say: "set them up quick." Does he let them stand? No! he rolls the ball down the alley and down go the pins. The saloon keeper has the ball of law in his hands. No matter whether a high or low license ball, he paid the price for the use of the ball. When temperance workers set up drunkards and they get a little money in their pockets away goes the ball and they are down again. When a church revival picks up a few drunkards the saloon keeper will say: "Here's a dollar to help in your meeting." Then in his mind he says: "Set up the drunkards who are out of employment and money, get them positions, and when they can earn money again, again I'll bowl them down." Under the license system the saloon is playing ten-pins with temperance associations, ten-pins with the church and ten-pins with society. I have faith to believe the time is drawing near when the balls will be confiscated and the pins can stand when we do set them up.

I know many have not this faith because they believe prohibitory laws are failures. They base their belief on the violation of the law. By that rule everything is a failure. Married life is a failure; its laws are grossly violated. Home life is a failure; there are many miserable homes. The school is a failure; many a father has put thousands of dollars into the education of his son and found it wasted in riotous living. The church is a failure; many of its members are Christians only in name and not a few are hypocrites. But we know by the loyal, loving husbands and wives of every community that married life is not a failure. We know by the happy homes about us, with sweetest of household ties binding the family circle, that home life is not a failure. We know by the education that has refined our civilization, that the school is not a failure. We know by the redeemed of earth and saved in heaven the church is not a failure, and we are convinced by the organized opposition to prohibitory laws by distillers, brewers, saloon keepers, gamblers and harlots that prohibition is not a failure.

If prohibition is a failure in Kansas as license advocates charge, then governors, ex-governors, attorney generals, jailers, mayors and judges of Kansas are falsifiers. If prohibition is a failure in Kansas why has the state grown to be the richest per capita in the Union, why are so many jails empty, so many counties without a pauper and why, according to the brewers' year book of 1910, was the consumption of liquor in Kansas one dollar and sixty cent per capita and in a neighbor license state twenty-two dollars per capita?

Along with the absurd statement that prohibition is a failure, comes the warning of the president of the Model License League to the business men of the country, that unless the tide of prohibition is arrested it will "kill our cities." "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord."

In a local option contest a prominent business man said to me: "I do not use liquor but I am in doubt about how I should vote on the question." When I asked; "What's your trouble?" he answered: "We have six saloons in this little city and the license fee is one thousand dollars; how are we to run the city without the six thousand dollars?" When I informed him that the six saloons took from the people eighty thousand dollars a year, he agreed it was a reasonable estimate. I said: "Don't you know those who spend their money for drink, if they did not spend it over the saloon bars, would spend it over the counters of merchants who sell clothing, food, fuel and furniture?" If you merchants could take in eighty thousand dollars, couldn't you pay out six thousand and not get hurt? If you can't see that you are no better business man than was Horace Greeley a farmer. He purchased a pig for one dollar, kept it two years, fed it forty dollars worth of corn and sold it for nine dollars. He said: "I lost money on the corn but made money on the hog." So, many business men see the revenue from the license fee but can't see the cost.

Suppose on one side of a street the business houses are all bad, in that they consume money and give worse than nothing in return; and on the other side they are all good, in that they give an honest equivalent for the money they receive; can't you see if the bad side is closed, the money that went to the bad side goes to the good, and can you not see only good can come of such a change?

There are three things prohibition of the saloon does that are illustrated by the story told of an Irishman who said: "I did three good things today."

"What did you do, Pat?"

"I saw a woman crying in front of a cathedral. She had a baby in her arms, and I said: 'Madam, what are you crying about?'

"She said: 'I had two dollars in me handkerchief and came to have me baby christened but I lost the money.'

"I said: 'Don't cry, Madam, here is a ten dollar bill; go get the baby christened and bring me the change.' She went, and soon after returned and handed me eight silver dollars."

"Well," said the friend, "I don't see any three good things in that."

"Ye don't! Didn't I dry the woman's tears, didn't I save the baby's soul, and didn't I get rid of a ten dollar counterfeit bill and get eight good silver dollars in return?"

That is what prohibition of the saloon does for a community. It dries woman's tears, saves human souls, gets rid of a counterfeit business and puts good business instead.

Is it a counterfeit business? It has been well said, "Go into the butcher stall and you get meat for money, into the shoe store and you get shoes for money, but go into the saloon and the bargain is all on one side. It's bar-gain on one side and bar-loss on the other; ill-gotten gains on one side, mis-spent wages on the other, a mess of pottage on one side and the birthright of some mother's boy on the other."

A great wail is going up from the advocates of the liquor traffic that statewide prohibition means the destruction of immense vested interests and dire results will follow.

"This our craft is in danger," has ever been the cry against reforms or changes in civilization since the "Shrine Makers of Ephesus."

When slavery was abolished it was said: "This means ruin to the South! Such a confiscation of property, with every slave set free to beg at the white man's gate, crushes every vestige of hope, and five hundred years will not bring relief." Only fifty years have passed and the South is richer than ever in her history.

Justice Grier of the Supreme Court said: "If loss of revenue should accrue to the United States from a diminished consumption of ardent spirits, she will be the gainer a thousandfold in health, wealth and happiness of the people."

If this is true, then this question is not only a great moral question but also a tremendous economic problem.

If production should be for use and not for abuse, the existence of breweries and distilleries are without excuse.

If one should be rewarded on the basis of service, the saloon keeper has no claim for even tolerance, much less reward.

If labor is the basis of value, men who live by selling liquor to their fellowmen are leaches on the body politic, and Ishmaels in the commercial world.

The claim that the liquor business is a benefit to a community or to the country is in harmony with the assertion that war is a "biological necessity" and a "stimulating source of development."

General Sherman said: "War is hell." Certainly the one now raging between the leading nations of the old world is a hell of carnage. And yet intemperance has destroyed more lives than all the wars of the world since time began. It has added to the death of the body the eternal death of the soul and then the sum of its ravages is not complete until is added more broken hearts, more blasted hopes, desolate homes, more misery and shame than from any source of evil in the world. If what Sherman said of war is true, and the liquor curse is worse than war, how can this government hope to escape punishment for raising revenue from a business so abominable and wicked?

A heathen emperor when appealed to for a tax on opium as a source of revenue said: "I will not consent to raise the revenue of my country upon the vices of its people." Yet this Christian republic, claiming the noblest civilization of the earth, is found turning the dogs of appetite and avarice loose upon the home life of the republic that gold may clink in its treasury. The politician's excuse for this compromise with earth's greatest destroyer is, it can never be prohibited and therefore regulation and revenue is the best policy.

I can well remember when the same was said of slavery. With billions of dollars invested in slaves, with a united South behind it and the North divided, it could never be abolished. At that time the prospect for the overthrow of slavery was far less than the prospect of national prohibition today. I own I was among those who said "slavery cannot be destroyed." Now I am one of the reconstructed. I'm like the pig I used to read of, "When I lived I lived in clover, and when I died I died all over."

During the Civil War Union soldiers arrested several of my neighbors and took them to a northern prison. My southern blood was aroused. I said: "Let a Yankee soldier come to take me and he will never take another Kentuckian." Then my mother was alarmed. She knew how brave her boy was. A few days later I met a squad of Yankee cavalry on the road near our home. They said "Halt!" and I halted. They said "Surrender!" I did so, and mother did not hear of any blood being shed.

Again a half-drunk Union soldier rode up to our gate and said: "Who lives here?" When I answered, he asked: "Can your mother get supper for fourteen soldiers in thirty minutes?" "No, sir, she cannot," I replied. Drawing a pistol, the mouth of which looked like a cannon's mouth to me, he said: "Maybe you have changed your mind." I had, and that supper was ready with several minutes to spare. We can, and we will stop the liquor business. I am amazed, however, to find so many intelligent men of the North advocating the same policy on this liquor problem the South adopted on the slavery question, which cost her so severely. I find the same effect revenue in slaves had upon the consciences of the tax-payers of the South, high-license revenue from saloons is having upon the consciences of tax-payers in the North.

In the early days of slavery, when wealth in the institution was very limited, the conscience of the South was against slavery. Old Virginia, when a colony, appealed to King George to remove the threatening danger from her borders. It was the voice of a General Lee of Virginia that was lifted against slavery in the House of Burgesses. But with the passing of time slaves grew in value, until a slave in the South reached about the price of a saloon license now in the North. Then the conscience of the South quieted and slavery was justified by press, politics and pulpit. There is a remarkable analogy between the effect of a thousand dollar slave upon the conscience of South Carolina and a thousand dollar saloon upon the conscience of Massachusetts. The South paid the penalty of her mistaken policy; the North will reap its reward in retribution, if it persists in making the price of a saloon in the North the same as the price of a slave in the South. When the value of a world is profitless compared with the worth of a soul then even if every saloon were a Klondyke of gold this republic could not afford to legalize the liquor business for revenue.

I believe my northern friends will permit me to press home a little further the lesson of southern slavery. The phase I would impress is that any question that has a great moral principle involved is never settled until it is settled right. We tried to regulate slavery but it wouldn't regulate. First it was decided that the importation of slaves should cease in twenty years. Did that settle it? Next came the Missouri compromise, "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther." Politicians said: "Now it's settled." But a fanatic in Boston name Garrison said: "It is not settled." Daniel Webster, as intellectual as some of our high license advocates of today said to Lloyd Garrison: "Stop the agitation of this question or you will bring trouble on the country; the compromise is made and the question is settled." Lloyd Garrison replied: "I don't care what compromise you've made; you may pull down my office, pitch my type into the sea, and hound me through the streets of Boston, but you will never settle the slavery question until you settle it right."

It kept breaking out despite all legislative restrictions. At last Columbia with one hand on her head, and the other on her heart, began to reel on her throne, and Abraham Lincoln seized his pen and signed the proclamation, "Universal Emancipation." Then the whole world said: "It's forever settled." So the liquor question will be settled as was the slavery question, by the universal, everlasting abolition of the manufacture, sale and importation of intoxicating liquor in this country.

High license is another Missouri Compromise. If you have the drink you'll have the drunkenness. If you have the cause you will have the effect. If you have the positive you will have the superlative: Positive drink, comparative drinking, superlative drunkenness. You may try high-tax and low-tax but all the time you will have sin-tax and more sin than tax.

You do not change the nature of the drink by the price of a license, the kind of a place in which it is sold or the character of the man who sells it. Put a pig in a parlor; feed him on the best the marflet affords, give him a feather bed in which to sleep, keep him there till he's grown and he'll be a hog. You don't change the nature of the pig by the elegant surroundings; you may change the condition of the parlor.

There is but one solution of the liquor problem and that is a nation-wide prohibitory law and behind the law a political power in sympathy with the law and pledged to its enforcement.

Many admit the principle is correct but insist we should wait until public sentiment is powerful enough to enforce the law. If grand ideas had waited for public sentiment Moses would never have given the commandments to the world. If grand ideas had waited for public sentiment, we would still be back in the realm of the dark ages, instead of in the light of our present civilization; back in the dim twilight of the tallow-dip instead of the brightness of the electric light; back with the ox team instead of the speed of the steam engine, automobile and aeroplane; and on the temperance question back to where a liquor dealer could advertise his business on gravestones. On a tomb in England are these words:

"Here lies below in hope of Zion, The landlord of the Golden Lion, His son keeps up the business still, Obedient to his country's will."

Years ago a friend said to me: "I admire your zeal, but I wonder at your faith when you are in such a miserable minority." My reply was: "Are minorities always wrong or hopeless? How would you have enjoyed being with the majority at the time of the flood? It seems to me you would have been safer with Noah in the ark."

As to license and prohibition, that has always been the question since man was created. It was the question in the Garden of Eden when the devil stood for license, "go eat," and God stood for prohibition, "thou shalt not." That is the question today and I am quite sure God and the devil stand now as then, and while the Adams are divided, the Eves are nearly all on one side.

Another said: "After all the work done for temperance the people drink as much or more than ever." My answer is: how much more would they drink if we had not done what has been done?

Yonder on the ocean a vessel springs a leak and soon the water stands thirty inches deep in the hold. The captain says: "To the pumps!" and the sailors leap to their places. At the end of one hour the captain measures and says: "Thirty inches; you are holding it down." Hour after hour the pumping goes on, with changing hands at the pumps, and hour after hour the captain says: "You are doing well; she can't go down at thirty inches. Hold it there and we'll make the harbor." Twenty hours and the captain shouts: "Thirty inches; and land is in sight. Pump on, my boys, you'll save the ship." Suppose one of our croakers who says, "Prohibition won't prohibit," had been on board. He would have said: "Don't you see you are doing no good; there's just as much water as when you began." What would have become of the ship?

At the close of the Civil War intemperance was pouring in upon the Ship of State. Men returned from war enthralled in chains worse than African slavery, for rum slavery means ruin to body and soul. Men, women and children ran to the pumps, and thank God, state after state is going dry. Soon we'll see the land of promise, and the Ship of State will be saved from a leak as dangerous as ever sprung in a vessel, and from as cruel a crew of buccaneers as ever scuttled a ship.

When I began the work as a "Good Templar" forty years ago, Kentucky was soaked in rum. Bourbon county, where I was reared, had twenty-three distilleries, and a dead wall lifted itself against my hopes of ever seeing the sky clear of distillery smoke above old Bourbon county, a name on more barrels and bottles, on more bar-room windows, and on the memories of more drunkards in ruin than any other county in the world. Yet I have lived to see the last distillery fire go out, and Bourbon county dry. While I had faith in the ultimate triumph of the Cause I never dreamt it would come to Bourbon county in my lifetime.

When I began saloons were at almost every crossroads village, and the bottle on sideboards was the rule in thousands of leading homes. Time and again my life was threatened. On one occasion twelve armed men guarded me from a mob, and once my wife placed herself between my body and a desperate mountaineer. Those were perilous times for an advocate of temperance in my native state. Now out of one hundred and twenty counties, one hundred and seven are dry. In Georgia the licensed saloon is gone; in North Carolina the saloon is gone; in West Virginia, Old Virginia, Mississippi and Tennessee the saloon is gone, while Oklahoma was born sober.

"That which made Milwaukee famous Doesn't foam in Tennessee; The Sunday lid in old Missouri Was Governor Folk's decree. Brewers, distillers and their cronies Well may sigh; The saloon is panic-stricken, And the South's going dry.

"Soon the hill-side by the rill-side Of Kentucky will be still; Men will take their toddies From the ripples of the rill; Boys will grow up sober, Mothers cease to cry; Glory hallelujah! The South's going dry."

Already seventeen states are dry, and there are many arid spots in the wet states. While I cannot hope to live to see the final triumph, I have faith to believe my children and my children's children will live in a saloonless land, a land redeemed from a curse that has soaked its social life in more blood and tears than all other sources of sorrow; a land where liberty will no longer be shorn of its locks of strength by licensed Delilahs; where manhood will no more be stripped of its possibilities by the claws of the demon drink; where fore-doomed generations will not reach the dawning of life's morning, to be bound like Mazeppa to the wild, mad steed of passion and borne down the blood lines of inheritance to the awful abuse of drunkenness.

To this end I appeal to every minister of the gospel, stir the consciences of your hearers on this question. I appeal to the press, that potent power for the enlightenment of the people.

"Pulpit and press with tongue and pen, Set to new music this message to men: Let the great work of destruction begin, And rid our loved land of this shelter to sin. As before the sun's brightness, the darkness must fly, So by power of the ballot the rum curse must die, Then cover the earth as the wide waves the sea, With the sound of the axe at the root of the tree!"



VIII

IF I COULD LIVE LIFE OVER.

Now and then I hear an old man or an old woman say, "Even if I could I would not live life over." Well, I own I would, provided I could begin the journey with the knowledge I now have of what it means to live.

While mistakes have been many there are some things I would not change. I would be brought up in the country as I was. I would play over the same blue-grass carpet, along the same turnpike aisle, swing on the branches of the same old trees and listen to the concert chorus of the same song birds.

Indeed I sympathize with the boy who exchanges the music of birds, melody of streams, lowing of herds, driving of teams, diamond dew on bending blade, morning sun and evening shade, with all other sweet associations of country life for a lodging room in a city, where church doors and home doors are closed against him in the evening hours of the week, and all evil places wide open for his ruin. It has been well said: "The street fair of evil associations in our large cities begins with the night shadows and grows with the darkness." I dare say if I could draw aside the veil that will shut in the night scenes of this city, the revelation would make some godly fathers tremble for their boys, and pious mothers long to gather their children about them when the sun goes down, as moor birds gather their helpless young when hawks are screaming in the sky.

All hail to the Young Men's Christian Association, with its open doors for young men in the evening hours! All hail to its gymnasium, its swimming pool, basketball and other sports that develop strength and furnish entertainment! Away with the idea that all the pleasures of the world belong to the devil.

A distinguished divine was brought up in New England by a staid old aunt, who never let him go anywhere except to church, Sunday school and prayer meeting. When quite a lad she let him go to New York City to visit a cousin. That cousin took him to see Barnum's circus. It was his first circus, and the wild animals, the bareback riding, trapeze performance, clowns and chariot races bewildered the country boy. Next morning he wrote his aunt, saying: "Dear Aunt, if you'll go to one circus you'll never go to another prayer meeting as long as you live." But he did go to prayer meeting and became a grand good man. There are many innocent springs of pleasure, where youth can drink and not be harmed.

It may surprise some for me to say, if I could live life over I would be brought up in the same old state of Kentucky. "With all her faults I love her still," but not her stills. It has been my privilege to visit every state in the union and I find all the good is not in any one state, nor all the bad. While Kentucky has had her night riders, Missouri has had her boodlers, California her grafters, Illinois her anarchists, Pennsylvania her machine politics, New York her Tammany tiger, and Washington City her blizzards on inauguration days. God doesn't grow all the daisies in one field nor confine thorns to one thicket.

It's been my lot this land to roam, O'er every state twixt ocean's foam, But still my heart clings to its home, Kentucky.

I've traveled the prairies of the west, I've seen each section at its best, There's nothing like my native nest, Kentucky.

No matter through what state I pass, No matter how the people class, To me there's only one Blue Grass, Kentucky.

When my wanderings here are o'er, And my spirit seeks the golden shore, Then keep my dust for evermore, Kentucky.

Not only would I be brought up in Kentucky and in the country, but I would go to the same Yankee schoolmaster, have the same sweethearts and marry the same girl, provided she would consent to make another journey with the same companion. By the way, we were married in Bourbon County, Kentucky, when she was nineteen and I twenty. About four years ago we celebrated our golden wedding, and the morning after the celebration,

She put on "her old grey bonnet, With the blue ribbon on it." We didn't "hitch Dobbin to the Shay" But along the interurban We rode down to Bourbon, Where we started for our golden wedding day.

If I could live life over surely I could ask no better age than the one in which I have lived. We no longer toil over a mountain, but glide through it on ribbons of steel; telegraphy dives the deep and brings us the news of the old world every morning before breakfast; we talk with tongues of lightning through telephones and send messages on ether waves over the sea; we ride horse-cycles that run, never walk and live without eating; we travel in carriages drawn by electric steeds that never tire; the signal service gives us a geography of the weather, so the farmer may know whether or not to prepare to plow, and the Sunday school whether to arrange or to postpone its picnic tomorrow; airships mount the heavens, steamships plough the ocean's bosom, submarine torpedo boats undermine the deep with missiles of death, while photography turns one inside out, and doctors no longer guess at the location of a bullet. All these things have come to pass within my life-time. What may the young before me expect in the next fifty years?

Recently I read an imaginary letter, supposed to have been written by a Wellsley College girl. It was dated one hundred years in the future. She wrote:

"Father gave me a new airship a few weeks ago. I leave my home in Baltimore every morning after breakfast and reach Wellsley in time for classes. We have only thirty minutes in school in the morning and fifteen in the afternoon. Our teachers are in telepathic touch with all knowledge and we get it in condensed form. A few days ago, just after lunch at noon I took a spin up into Canada; the machine got a little out of fix, so I jumped on a gyroscope and returned in time for dinner at six.

"Yesterday I sailed over to New York City and took dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria; had two capsules for dinner and they were delicious. I read how the people used to sit around tables and eat all kinds of things. It must have been funny to see their mouths all going at one time. Then they had stomach trouble—indigestion they called it. Now we have everything necessary for the human system put up in capsules; we get up a thousand feet above the earth where the air is pure, so we ought to live to be two hundred years old.

"Last week my classmate and I took a flying trip to see the Panama Canal, and while there we decided to take in the Exposition at San Francisco next day. There we saw many antiquated machines called automobiles; they used to run around the streets in rubber stockings, honking horns to warn the poor, then turning turtle they killed or maimed the rich. In one department we saw an animal with long tail, and a mane on its neck. They called it a horse and told us that years ago horses were harnessed and driven about the streets, while the fast ones were raced for money."

That young woman may be all right about her capsule dinners and condensed instruction, but one hundred years from now, when on her way from the west to Wellsley if she will stop in Lexington, Ky., she will see a horse sale in progress; horses selling from five hundred to ten thousand dollars that will trot or pace a mile in less than two minutes, while slow ones will be hitched to dead wagons, used to gather up those who have fallen from airships and gyroscopes. It may be that one hundred years in the future airships will be seen soaring over the cities, delivering packages in parachutes at the back doors of residences, but the day will never dawn when there will be an airship, gyroscope, or an automobile that will supplant the fleet-footed, sleek-coated, handsome Kentucky horse.

Now I come to the more practical, for I do not bring you this talk, challenging your criticism or inviting your praise of it as a literary production, but with the purpose of helping some one live as I would wish to live if I had my life to live over.

First, to the boys before me. If I had life to live over one of my first purposes would be to seek my calling in life. Do you know half the failures of life come from misfits of occupation? There are lawyers starving for want of clients, doctors with patients under monuments, and preachers talking to empty pews, who might have been successful in factories or furrows. Cowper was a failure as a lawyer, he was a success as a poet; Goldsmith was a bungling surgeon, he was a power with his pen; Horace Greely was a success in the Tribune office, he was a failure as a farmer and a slow candidate for president.

When U.S. Grant was a very young man his father sent him to sell a horse to a buyer and instructed him to ask one hundred dollars, but if he could not get that amount to take eighty-five. The buyer looked the horse over and said: "Young man, what is your price?" Young Grant replied: "Father told me to ask you one hundred dollars, but if you would not give that to take eighty-five." It is needless to say the calling of U.S. Grant was not horse trading. This same young man afterwards tried the grocery business and bought potatoes far and wide to corner the market, but the price went down, the potatoes rotted in Grant's bins and his grocery effort was on a par with his horse trading. He then tried the ice market but that became watered stock on his hands and again he was a failure. Later on in life 'mid roar of cannon and rattle of musketry the misfit found his element. Here he was so sure of his calling he made his motto, "I'll fight it out on this line if it takes all summer," and to the general, who could not drive a horse trade, or corner the potato market, or deal in ice, one of the greatest generals the world ever knew surrendered his sword, and from the highest military position Grant was called to be President of the United States.

If it is true that "ever since creation shot its first shuttle through chaos design has marked the course of every golden thread," then every human being is designed to fill a certain place in life. There are young women teaching school, getting to be old maids, who should be the wives of good husbands, and there are some wives who ought to be old maid "schoolmarms."

We have born architects, born orators, born bookkeepers, born musicians, born poets, born preachers, born teachers, born surgeons, born bankers, born blacksmiths, born merchants, born farmers.

Two farmers live side by side; one doesn't seem to work hard, yet everything is neatness from one end of the farm to the other; his neighbor works hard, yet the cattle are in his corn, the fences are broken, gates off the hinges and everything seems out of order. That man was not made to be a farmer. He should rent out, or sell out, and go to the legislature, or find some other place he can fill.

Matthew Arnold said: "Better be a Napoleon of book-blacks, or an Alexander of chimney-sweeps, than an attorney, who, like necessity, knows no law." There are born shoemakers cobbling in Congress, while statesmen are pegging away on a shoe-last because their brains have not been capitalized by education and opportunity. There are born preachers at work in machine shops, and born mechanics rattling around in pulpits like a mustard seed in an empty gourd; born surgeons are carving beef in butcher stalls, while here and there butchers are operating for appendicitis.

God planted the hardy pine on the hills of New England, and the magnolia down in the sunny South-land. Let some horticulturist compel the magnolia to climb the cold hills of New England, and the northern tree to come down and take its place in the "land of cotton, cinnamon seed and sandy bottom," and everything in both will protest against the mistake.

Lowell said: "Every baby boy is born with a calling." With some this calling is very definite. It was definite with George Stevenson when in childhood he made engines of mud with sticks for smoke-stacks. It was definite with Thomas A. Edison, who, instead of selling newspapers, went to experimenting with acids, and charged a steel stirrup that lifted him into the electric saddle of the world. With others it is very indefinite. Patrick Henry failed at everything he undertook until he began talking, when he soon became the golden mouthed orator of his age. Peter Cooper failed until he took to making glue, then his business "stuck" to everybody and he made a fortune out of which he built Cooper Union for the education of poor boys.

I have a grandson whose calling was indefinite. He was named for his grandfather, to whom fishing is a fad. During my rest season I go fishing almost every day. While I make an exception of Sunday I can appreciate the minister who was a great fisherman. On his way to an appointment Sunday morning he came upon a lad fishing in a wayside stream. Halting he said: "My boy, this is the Sabbath day and the good Book says you should remember to keep it holy." Just then a fish seized the boy's bait and drew the float under, when the good minister excitedly said: "Pull, pull. Ah! that's a good one. I'll try that place myself some other day."

Fishing is my favorite sport. My grandson was a baseball fiend and a football player. He was hurt in a football game and I wrote him, warning him against his recklessness, and to the admonition I added: "Twenty-five boys have been killed already this season playing football; it's a brutal game anyway."

He replied: "Dear Grandfather, I am sorry so many boys have been killed playing football, but I read recently that last summer two hundred and fifty men were drowned while out fishing; would it not be well for you to keep off Lake Ellerslie? You say football is a brutal game; I submit to you, Grandpa, that the man who takes an innocent worm or a minnow, strings it on a steel hook, and sinking it into the water, jerks the gills out of an innocent fish, is more cruel than the boy who kicks another around for exercise. I need a pair of baseball shoes, number six and a half; send them by express." He got the shoes, and I decided he was called to be a lawyer.

Young man, if you get to be a preacher and cannot put force into your sermon, the world doesn't want to hear you preach, but if you are a good cobbler it will wear your shoes, if a good baker it will eat your bread, or if a good barber it will let you put your razor to its throat. Remember in making your choice,

"Honor and fame from no condition rise, Act well your part; there the honor lies."

If I could live life over, I would not be content with a common school education. In my youth circumstances lifted a dead wall against my hopes, but if given another chance I would somehow press my way to where higher education scatters its trophies at the feet of youth, for while it is true some of the most successful men of our country graduated from the high school of "hard knocks" and universities of adversity, yet the humblest toil is more easily accomplished and better done where college education guides.

To college education, however, I would add the education which comes from rubbing against the world. Some one has said: "For every ounce of book knowledge one needs a half dozen ounces of common sense with which to apply it." Douglas Jerrold said: "I have a friend who can speak fluently a dozen different languages but has not a practical idea to express in any one of them."

An old woman suffering from rheumatism was asked by a friend: "Did you ever try electricity?"

She answered: "Yes, I was struck by lightning once but it didn't do me any good."

In this many sided age one needs to educate muscle, nerves, heart and conscience as well as brain. That man who is all brain and no heart, goes through the world with his intellect shining above his bosom like an electric light over a graveyard.

Young people, do you know you live in a testing world, a world in which all buds and blossoms are tested? The bud that stands the test of wind and frost goes on to flower and fruitage; the bud that can't stand the test goes with the dust to be trampled under foot. Every cannon made by the government is tested; the cannon that can stand the test goes into battleship or land fort, the cannon that can't stand the test goes into the junk pile.

Yonder in Virginia a few years ago, there was a young man who had everything an indulgent father could give him, but in school his character could not stand the test, and he exchanged his books for wine and cards. He married a beautiful young woman, shot her to death in his automobile and died himself in the electric chair, leaving his old father in a desolate home with harrowing memories tearing his heart; while over the life of an innocent babe he hung a cloud as dark as was ever woven out of the world's misfortune, and sent another life to wander in painted shame outside life's eden of purity, the barb of conscious guilt to be driven deeper and deeper into her soul by the scorn of a pitiless world. All because young Beatty could not stand the test!

Harry Thaw had everything wealth and refinement could bring into a young life, but he sacrificed all upon unhallowed altars, and with the brand of Cain upon his brow, he was cast into a madman's cell. He could not stand the test.

Lord Byron was Britain's brilliant bard. He could have lived in England's glory and then slept with England's buried greatness in Westminster Abbey, if he had stood the test; but at the age of thirty-seven, when he should have been on an upward flight to greater fame, he drew the "strings of his discordant harp" about him and over them sent the bitter wail:

"My days are in the yellow leaf; The flowers and fruits of love are gone; The worm, the canker, and the grief Are mine alone!"

Younder in a cabin a babe was born. When eleven years of age he helped his mother clear out a patch and raise a garden. Later on he lay in front of a wood fire, studying lessons for the morrow. Later in life he went to college, with only a few cents in his pocket. He went to church and there gave part of his little all in a collection for missionary work. The next Saturday he earned a dollar with a jack-plane; at the end of his college term he had paid his way and had seven dollars left. At twenty-eight this young man was in the senate of his state, at thirty-six he was in Congress, and twenty-seven years from the time James A. Garfield rang the bell of Hiram College for his board he went into the White House as President of the United States. He could stand the test. Boys, can you stand the test?

During the Spanish American war there was a regiment called the "Rough Riders." It was made up of picked young men from different states of the Union. It was this regiment that made the famous charge up San Juan Hill. At the close of the war, the regiment was mustered out of service. The Colonel, giving his farewell address, said: "You have made an honorable record in war, now go back to your homes and make honorable record in peace."

Sixteen years of that record is made. The Colonel has been President of the United States for seven years of that time. General Leonard Wood has gone to the front of the army, and others of the regiment have become successful professional and business men; but some have gone to jails and penitentiaries, one died not long since in the streets of New York City and was buried in a pauper's grave; some are fugitives from justice.

What is true of that regiment, is in some measure true of every body of young men and boys I meet. In my presence are boys who will be leaders of thought and action twenty years from now in whatever community they dwell. There is a boy before me who will be a successful merchant, there's one who will be a banker, another will be a lawyer, others will lead in other lines. But alas! in my presence now, looking me in the face this minute, there may be a boy, or boys, who will stain with blood the stony path to despair.

Do you say that no such ignominious possibility hangs over any boy in this audience? I tell you it is not always the first, but sometimes the fairest born. I know a man who in his youth drove his father's fine horses, romped and rested on the richest blue-grass lawn, ate from spotless linen and lived in luxury, who now eats from the bare tables of low saloons, and is often given shelter by an old colored "mammy," who was once his father's slave.

I have in mind a schoolmate, whose father lived in a fine country home two miles from the schoolhouse. The influence of my schoolmate's mother was pure as the diamond dew he brushed from the bending grass in barefoot days. But he left the country home and the last time I saw him he was a vagabond, begging bread from negro cabin doors. Ah! mother, you can't tell which boy.

In a large city a few years ago a man stood at the side door of a saloon at two o'clock in the morning. His clothes were worn and the matted hair hung about his face. He waited, hoping some one would come along and give him the price of a drink. Two young men, one of them a reporter on a leading daily, came down the street. As they neared the poor fellow, one said to the other: "Did you ever see such an appeal for a drink? Here, hobo, take this dime and buy you one."

Seizing his hand his friend said: "No, let's do the job like good Samaritans. Come in, tramp, and have a drink with us."

The three entered the saloon, the glasses were filled and the tramp took his and draining it, said: "Young men, I'm very thirsty, may I have another?"

"Yes, help yourself," was the reply, and the tramp took the second drink. Then lifting his hat he said:

"Young men, you call me a hobo, but I see in you a picture of my lost manhood. Once I had a face as fair as yours, and wore as good clothes as you have now. I had a home where love lit the flame on the altar, but I put out the fire and to-night I'm a wanderer without a home. I had a wife as beautiful as an artist's dream, but I took the pearl of her love, dropped it in the wine glass, Cleopatra-like I saw it dissolve and I quaffed it down. I had a sweet child I fondly loved, and still love, though I have not seen her for twelve years; a young woman now in her grandfather's home, she is deprived of the heritage of a father's good name. Young men, I once had aspirations and ambitions that soared as high as the morning star, but I clipped their wings, I strangled them and they died. Call me a tramp, do you? I'm a preacher without a charge, a lawyer without a brief, a husband without a wife, a father without a child, a man without a friend. I thank you for the drinks. Go to your homes and on soft beds may you sleep well; I'll go out and sleep on yonder bench in the night wind. A few more drinks, a few more drunkard's dreams, and I'll go out into the moonless, starless night of a hopeless forever."