and manufacturing criminals, but pay for it." I appeal to any intelligent judgment if that is not bad citizenship and bad morals. PROHIBITION'S MIGHT. R. L. BRUCE. Na hovel dark and drear bends a mother, pale with fear, O'er her children cold and ragged on the floor; For the rum fiend's cursed blight all her day has turned to night, And the wolf with hungry mouth is at the door. Tramp, tramp, tramp, she hears Starvation, sees his face so gaunt and white; God of mercy! Hear her cry Rising to Thy throne on high, Stir the hearts of men to battle for the right! In a breathing-hole of hell, where accursed vipers dwell, To his terror-gleaming eyes Seem in serried ranks to rise, While before him yawns eternal, hopeless doom. In a bright and cheery place, full of dignity and grace, Take the drunkard by the hand, give him courage, help him stand, Lead him upward, cheer him onward into light. Tramp, tramp, tramp, the saved are marching; hearts are light and hopes are strong; And there's joy in earth and heaven O'er the wanderer forgiven, And the home is full of light and love and song. But alas! the fatal snare dashes hope and baffles prayer, Rise ye, men of heart and sense, drive the cursed monster hence, Tramp, tramp, tramp, we give no quarter, marching on the lost to save, Sacan's minions we defy, And we'll shout it over rum's dishonored grave. PROHIBITION IN KANSAS. HON. JOHN J. INGALLS. KANSAS has abolished the saloon. The open dramshop traffic is as extinct as the sale of the indulgences. A drunkard is a phenomenon. The barkeeper has joined the troubadour, the crusader and the mound-builder. The brewer, the distiller and the bonded warehouse are known only to the archæologist. Since the adoption of the amendment four general elections have been held, and at each of them the people have repeated their adhesion to the principle by the election of legislatures pledged to prohibition. The result is generally accepted as an accomplished fact. Hostility has practically been subdued. Prohibition prohibits. The prediction of its opponents has not been verified; immigration has not been repelled, nor has capital been diverted from the State. The period has been one of unexampled growth and development. From comparison of the results in Kansas with conditions existing elsewhere, the conclusion is irresistibly in favor of prohibition. It can be efficiently and successfully enforced. It does not retard the growth nor injure the resources of the people. Its operations practically cease with the closing of the saloons, leaving personal liberty unimpaired. It exonerates the State from complicity and participation in the most formidable agency of its own destruction. THE UNION OF NORTH AND SOUTH, I FRANCES E. WILLARD. NEVER expected to speak with pride about the "solid South," as such, but surely I may do this now that it is becoming solid for the "dry ticket," and you who dwell there may be glad that the Northern heart is fired once more, this time with the same war-cry as that which fires the Southern, and it is "protection for our homes." That is the "spell to conjure by." That is the rallying call of North and South, of Protestant and Catholic, of white and black, of men and women equally. Bourbon Democrat and radical Republican will seek in vain to stifle this swift-swelling chorus, that "chorus of the union," for which great Lincoln vainly prayed in his first inaugural. Do you not recall his marvelous concluding sentence: "The mystic chords of memory, stretching from many a sacred hearth and patriot's grave, all over this broad land, shall once more swell the chorus of the union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angel of our nature." That angel is the temperance reform, and the fulfilment of that prophecy we have lived to see. The greater party stands for nationalism as against sectionalism; it stands for the noblest aims and aspirations of the wage-workers as against monopolies that dare to profane that holy word, "trust; " it stands for the future in politics as against the past, the home vote with an educational test as against the saloon vote with a beer-breath as its credentials; and, best of all, it stands for the everlasting and absolute prohibition of sin as against any alliance between sin and the Government. For while the greatest party will never hesitate to be the champion of these causes good and great, so closely linked with its own central purposes, neither must it fail to put prohibition by law and prohibition by politics so far in the lead that no candid man can for a moment question the august supremacy of these overmastering issues. For we are firmly persuaded that the separation of the people into two distinct armies, one voting for men who will outlaw the poison curse and the other for men who will legalize it, must come, and that such separation can not come too soon. We are not here to speak harsh words of armies rallied under other ensigns, but simply to declare that in this great emergency we can not depend upon them. Party machinery and the ambition of party leaders to-day stand between the people and their opportunity. We would clear the track for prohibition. We are bound to do it. For this were we born, and for this cause came we into the world. When I think of Lexington and Paul Revere; when I think of Bunker Hill and the dark redoubt where Gen. Warren died; when I think of Washington, that greatest of Southerners, upon his knees in prayer at Valley Forge; when I think of Stonewall Jackson praying before he fought; of Robert Lee's and Sidney Johnston's stainless shields; when I remember Sheridan's ride, and Sherman's march to the sea with the boys in blue behind him, and Grant fighting the battle out and on to the glorious triumph of our Northern arms, then my heart prophesies with all a patriot's gratitude, America will win as against the awful tyranny of King Alcohol and King Gambrinus, and proud am I to have a part in it, for, thank God, I-I, too, am an American! In the spring of '62 two great armies were encamped on either side of the Rappahannock river, one uniformed in blue and one in gray. As twilight fell, the bands of music on the Union side began to play the martial strain, "The StarSpangled Banner," and "Rally Round the Flag," and that musical challenge was taken up by those on the other side, who responded with the "Bonnie Blue Flag," and "Away Down South in Dixie.” After a while it was borne in upon the soul of a single soldier in one of those bands of music to begin a sweeter and more tender air, and slowly as he played it they joined with all the instruments on the Union side until finally a great and mighty chorus swelled up and down When they had finished our army, "Home, Sweet Home.” there was no challenge over yonder, for every Confederate band had taken up that lovely air, so attuned to all that is holiest and dearest, and one great chorus of the two great hosts went up to God; and when they had finished came from the boys in gray a challenge, "Three cheers for home," and as they went resounding through the skies from both sides of the river, "Something upon the soldier's cheek washed off the stains of powder. Fellow-soldiers in the fight for a clear brain, I am proud to belong to an army which makes kindred of those who once stood in arms against each other. Let us cherish North Carolina's motto from Isaiah's words: "Fear not, I am with thee; I will bring thy seed from the east and gather them from the west; I will say to the north give up, and to the south keep not back, bring my sons from afar, and my daughters from the ends of the earth." I am glad of these good times, and to think we women are in them, equal mcmbers of the greatest party, as we have been since the day of its birth. It shall shine more and more Till its glory like noontide shall be; It shall shine more and more Till the home from the dramshop is free. Till the nation Christ's glory shall see. THE WATER-DRINKER. EDWARD JOHNSON. H, water for me! bright water for me! |