GET ON THE WATER WAGON. 31 pray with, papa? He murdered mamma. Papa was good and kind, hut whisky did it, and I have to support my three little sisters. I sell newspapers and black boots. Will you go up and talk and pray with papa? And will you come home and be with us when they bring him back? The Governor says we can have his body after they hang him.” The preacher hurried to the jail and talked and prayed with the man. He had no knowledge of what he had done. He said: “I don’t blame the law, but it breaks my heart to thipjr that my children must be left in a cold and heartless world. Oh, sir, whisky, whisky did it.” The preacher was at the little hut when up drove the undertaker’s wagon and they carried out the pine coffin. They led the little boy up to the coffin, he leaned over and kissed his father and sobbed, and he said to his sisters: “Come on, sisters, kiss papa’s cheeks before they grow cold.” And the little hungry, ragged, whisky orphans hurried to the coffin shrieking in agony. Police, whose hearts were adamant, buried their face in their hands and rushed from the house, and the preacher fell on his knees and lifted his clenched fist and tear-stained face and took an oath before God, and before the whisky orphans, that he would fight the cussed business until the undertaker carried him out in his coffin. You men now have a chance to show your manhood. Then in the name of your pure mother, in the name of your manhood, in the name of your wife and the pure, innocent children that climb up in your lap and put their arms around your neck, in the name of all that is good and noble, fight the curse. Shall you men, who hold in youi hands the ballot, and in that ballot hold the destiny of womanhood and children and manhood, shall you, the sovereign power, refuse to rally in the name of defenseless men and women and native land? No. I want every man to say: “God, you can < ount on me to protect my wife, my home, my mother and my children and the manhood of America. By the mercy of God, which has given to you the unshaken
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=