[Memorial Day oration at National Prohibition Convention, 1888.]

Here, side by side, sit

Blue and gray,
Because 'tis Greatest Party's

Decoration Day. I speak the words of truth and soberness. No other party ever dared to be so great as to ordain a scene like this. What a circle we have here! Sweep the compasses of thought through its circumference. Prohibition, first of all, the fixed point whence we calculate all others; the blue and gray, the working-men, the women; at the centre of this circle is the home that goes without the saying; and beyond its shining curve is the saloon, outmatched, outwitted and outvoted, which, in a republic, is best of all. For the fiat of the greatest party has gone forth, and we are here simply to set our seals to it. No saloon in politics or law, no sectionalism in law or politics, no sex in citizenship, but liberty, equality, fraternity in politics and law, now and forevermore.

This is our platform in a nutshell, and it is a platform of four ideas at least. When, in all history, were such match. less issues espoused by such magnanimous men?

There are two other parties; big but not great; multitu dinous, not masterful. Their tissue is adipose, not muscular The issues of the one are made literally "out of whole cloth,' of all-wool tariff “ warranted to wash” in one more campaign, and the ensanguined shirt warranted never to be washed at all. Those of the other are spoils and Bourbonisin. They will soon rally their respective clans to their stereotyped, oldfashioned conventions, prepared to fight, bleed and die for their country and its offices once more. Not a woman will be in their delegations. Oh, no! They might displace some

man.

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Not a word about the home any more than if, like Topsy, “they 'spected they wasn't made at all, but growed.

Meanwhile, as if to set before these brethren a loftier example, the greatest party welcomes here the home-folks to equal opportunities and honors, and rallies here a remnant of the noble veterans who have learned that it is good to forgive, best to forget,” attesting, by this splendid and fraternal object-lesson, that our party spells “nation” with the tallest kind of a capital “N'-one that indeed includes the people of thiese United States,”—and that the blue and the gray are to us emblems of nothing less than the blue sky that bends its tender arch above us all and the gray ocean that enfolds one country and one flag.

Angels look downward from the skies

Upon no holier ground,
Than where defeated valor lies

By generous foeman crowned." How Grant would have rejoiced to look upon a scene like this -he whose memorable words were, “Let us have peace!" besides whose sick-bed sat Gen. Buckner of the Confederate army, and to whose recent birthday celebration rallied Fitz Hugh Lee and other Southern braves.

The women who uniformed their sons in Southern gray, and said, like the Spartan mother of old, “Come ye as conquerors or come no more, are here to-night with those other women who belted Northern swords upon their boys in blue, with words as pitiless and brave. The women who embroidered stars and stripes upon the blessed flag that symbolized their love and faith, to-day have only gentle words for those who decked their “ bonny flag of stars and bars” with tenderness as true and faith as fervent. The greatest party seats these women side by side to-night, and we all wear our snowy badge of peace above the hearts that hate no more, while we clasp hands in a compact never to be broken, and solemnly declare, before high heaven, our equal hatred of the rum power and our equal loyalty to God and home and native land.

WHY WOMAN WANTS THE BALLOT.

MARIE C. BREHM.

WH

HEN Chicago wished to impress her greatness and her

determination upon the millions who came within her, borders during the great World's Exposition, she used for her symbol a young woman and the significant motto, “I will.” Every coin that leaves the United States mint has a woman's head upon it, a man's head being used only when the coin is copper or brass. Columbia and the Goddess of Liberty are always women. Therefore, it ought not to strike anyone that women should ask that what has so long been accepted as ideal should, in the progress of the race, become real.

Woman desires to bring love into law, justice into institutions, honesty into politics. The great rum traffic is a mighty engine of destruction. It goes along crushing its victims by hundreds of thousands every year.

It seems to me sometimes to be like one of our great, heavy engines that are pulling the lightning express trains. It claims the right of way and has it. Its whistle is sounded, “Get out of the way or suffer the consequences.

Now, you have seen these great express-trains rushing along at lightning speed, and nothing seems able to stop them. But sometimes they meet something which causes them to stop. The winds begin to blow; snowflakes begin to fall.

You pick up one of the tiny, star-shaped crystals. It is such an insignificant-looking little thing, and the warmth of

your hand causes it to vanish as you look at it. But let the snowflakes fall steady and fast and a few hours, and you will see the great, powerful engine with its cowcatcher stuck in the snow-bank, its wheels quiet. It stands powerless and silent, stopped by an accumulation of these little snowflakes.

What we need in this country is a snow-storm of pure

Christian prohibition ballots, which will make lifeless and powerless the great, organized, legalized rum system, and the women are asking for the ballot that we may help you men to bring about a snow-storm which shall accomplish this purpose.

THE VERDICT,

MRS. J. P. BALLARD.

T

HIRSTY, I walked beside a brook

That had been pearly clear,
When, lo! a yellow, floating scum-

The brook was running beer!
I hastened to a crystal spring,

And held its chain-bound tin
To catch my wonted cooling draught-

The cup was filled with gin!
The spring is crazed, the brook is mad,

But here's a river handy;
The river, in its rocky bed,

Swept on, bankful of brandy!
Ah, but I know a living well;

Quickly to that I'll come.
I came and let the bucket down-

And drew it full of rum !

The cows grew dizzy by the brook

And tumbled in the stream;
The floating fishes on its top

Shone with a sickening gleam.

I threw me down upon the bank,

Wild with a new despair;

Death! death was written on the streanı

And death in all the air. "O God !” I cried, “why shouldst Thou blast

What erst has been so fair?”

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“Look thou to man and charge not God,

Who sent each rippling brook
Clear as a diamond from His hand,

Till man His gift forsook

"Man who has tried at each

pure

stream
To put the poison in;
Now let him have it his own way—

AU brandy, whiskey, gin!”
1 shuddered, shrieked with mortal fear

That woke me from my dream;
Then cooled my thirst with water clear

From out the old, bright stream,

And looked to man, and charged not God

Man throws the poison round !
And in the end, for each one dead,

Man shall be guilty found.

WHAT INTEMPERANCE DOES.

,

EEV. H. M. SCUDDER, D.D. NTEMPERANCE creates in man an ungovernable appe

tite. Men who have fallen have told us it is not a desire, not an appetite not a passion; these ordinary words fail to express the thing. It is more like a raging storm that pervades the entire being; it is a madness that paralyzes the brain; it is a corrosion that gnaws the stomach; it is a stormfire that courses through the veins; it transgresses every boundary, it fiercely casts aside every barrier, it regards no