Part 27

Woman has filled the world with war's alarms, and the bacchic revel has ended in the brawl. Troy flamed because Menelaus' wife was false, and Philip's all-conquering son surrendered to the brimming bowl. Ever is our dearest joy wedded to our direst woe. The same air that comes stealing round our pillow, laden with the sensuous perfume of a thousand flowers, rips our towns to pieces and turns our artesian wells inside out. The same rains that fructify the earth pour the destructive flood. The same intellectual power that bends nature's mighty forces to man's imperial will, enables him to trample upon his brethren. The same reckless courage that breaks the tyrant's chain ofttimes stains the hand with a brother's blood. The same longing for woman's sweet companionship that leads these to rear happy homes--sacred shrines from which incense mounts night and day to the throne of Omnipotent God--goads those to lawless love. The empurpled juice that warms the cold heart and stirs the sluggish blood that gives to the orator lips of gold, to the poet promethean fire abused doth breed the hasty quarrel and make the god a beast.

It was said of old that a middle course is safest and best, and the axiom still holds good. All the Utopias thus far inaugurated were greased at the wrong end. The fact that since the dawn of history--aye, so far back that legend itself is lost in the shadows of the centuries--the winecup has circulated about the social board, proves that it supplies a definite, an inherent human want--that it fills a niche in the world's economy. One of the first acts of a people after passing the pale of savagery is to supply itself with stimulants. Why this is so, I do not pretend to know; but so it is, and it argues that the Prohibition apostles have tackled about as big a contract as did Dame Partington--that they had best "pluck a few feathers from the wing of their fancy wherewith to supply the tail of their judgment."

The Prohibs declare that 999 out of every 1,000 crimes are caused by liquor. Suppose this to be true: Does it take the cussedness out of liquor to drive it from the front room into the back alley? Is it not a fact that the worst brand of "fighting booze" is dispensed at the illicit doggery? But the Prohibs are as badly at sea anent their criminal statistics as in the mortuary report. Comparatively few of the great criminals of this country ever drank liquor to excess. But a small per cent. of those in our penitentiaries were confirmed drunkards when accorded the hospitality of the state. When a man is convicted of crime he naturally seeks a scapegoat. Adam threw all the blame of that apple episode on Eve, simply because liquor had not then been invented and he could not plead an Edenic jag in extenuation. I was once interviewing a man who had just been sentenced to the penitentiary for horse-theft. I thought that perhaps a cocktail would cause him to talk freer, and had one smuggled to his cell. He declined it, saying that he had never taken but one drink of liquor in his life, and that made him sick.

"But," said I, "you told the court that you were crazy drunk when you committed the crime."

"Yes," he replied, "I'd rather be thought a drunkard than a natural born d----d thief."

That led me to investigate. I interviewed the recorder of Galveston, the chief of police, the sheriff of the county, the district attorney and several other officials. We went over the records, and the habits of each offender were carefully inquired into. As a matter of course the "drunks and disorderlies" made an imposing list; but we were unable to trace the influence of liquor in more than 3 per cent. of the serious crimes committed in Galveston city and county during five years.

The great cry of the Prohibs is, "Save the boys; remove temptation from their path." Well, that's all right, if you've got a putty boy; but if I had a boy who wanted to go on a whizz and wasn't smart enough to find the means despite all the Prohibs in Christendom, I'd send him to the insane asylum. I was reading the other day of some college youths who were watched so closely that they couldn't obtain liquor, and proceeded to fill up on illuminating gas. If the supply of gas holds out those youngsters are likely to develop into great Prohibition orators. If you want to keep your boy from filling a drunkard's grave, begin by getting a sure-enough boy-- one whose brain-pan lies above instead of below his ears. Then raise him right. Don't tell him that every man who sells liquor is an emissary of hell, and that every man who drinks it is a worthless sot. If you do, he'll soon find out that you are a liar without sufficient intelligence to build a dangerous falsehood, and he'll take off the muzzle. Tell him the truth and thereby retain his confidence. Tell him that liquor is a pretty good thing to let alone, but that millions of better men than his daddy have drank it and lived and died sober and useful citizens.

Prohibition was first tried in the Garden of Eden. It proved a failure there, and it has proven a failure ever since. It is not in accord with the Christian Bible, the fundamental law of the land or the lessons of history. Wine has been used in almost every religious rite except Mohammedanism and devil worship. St. Paul recommends it, Christ made and used it and God saved Noah while letting all the good Prohibitionists drown. The Saviour came eating and drinking. Abraham Lincoln declared Prohibition "a species of intemperance within itself" and "a blow at the very principles on which our government was founded." General Grant, Thomas Jefferson, Horatio Seymour and John Quincy Adams denounced it in unmeasured terms. Who's taking issue with these giants of the intellect? Redlicker Benson of Ingeanny, who has come all the way to Texas to tell us barbarians what to do to be saved--and incidentally pick up enough money to pay for another "jag"; Whoopee Kalamity Homan, the pretty man of Dallas, whose chief argument is that I abuse the churches--which is an infernal falsehood; and Jehovah Boanerges Cranfill, an ex-bum who aspires to the presidency of the United States, but couldn't be elected pound-master in his own precinct.

I have been asked why, if as much liquor is sold under Prohibition as under high license, the saloonists insist upon contributing to the public revenues. The answer's dead easy. The men who engineer blind tigers vote the Prohibition ticket. They contribute to the campaign fund. They help pay the fees of the cold water spouters and sputers. More liquor is sold under local option than under high license, because of man's natural hankering for forbidden fruits; but it is sold by a different class of men and is a different kind of booze. It is sold by chronic law- breakers, by men who have little to lose, by toughs for whom the bat-cage hath no terrors. The man who is capable of straddling an unlicensed keg of bug-juice in a back-room and ladling out liquid hell to little boys, is quite naturally in favor of Prohibition. A man of respectability, and who is financially responsible for offenses, desires to keep within the limits of the law. That's the reason that respectable saloon men are the enemies of Prohibition.

Legalize the sale of liquor and you will have some crime, no doubt. You will have paupers and criminals to provide for, but you'll have a revenue to help bear the burdens. Prohibit it and you'll have the burdens without the revenue. Permit its sale and you will have law-abiding citizens engaged in the traffic, men who will try to make it decent, who will take a pride in the purity of their wares and the orderliness of their places; prohibit it, and you will have a lot of law-breakers on the one hand selling slumgullion made of cheap chemicals and general cussedness, and a gang of spies and informers on the other stirring up strife and entailing costly litigation.

When driven to the wall; when it is clearly demonstrated that their doctrine does not accord with the genius of this government; when it is amply proven that wherever tried it has proven an expensive failure, an arrant fraud, the Prohibs fall back upon the Bible. You may prove five hundred different religious dogmas by the Bible, but Prohibition is not one of them. Bro. Homan declares that the Old Testament prohibits the drinking of wine. It does not; but it does not make circumcision obligatory, and a sin of omission is as bad as a sin of commission. If Bro. Homan proposes to be guided by the Old Testament I beg to suggest that he is overlooking a very important bit. The Old Testament commands no class of people to abstain from wine, except the Jewish priesthood, and they ONLY WHILE PERFORMING THEIR SACRED OFFICES. An angel of the Lord did command the barren Manoah to stay sober awhile and she should conceive and bear a son; and I imagine that something equally as miraculous might happen to Luther Benson under similar circumstances. David recounts as one of God's mercies that he giveth water to the wild ass and wine to make glad the heart of man. Solomon sings to the wine cup with all the ardor of Anacreon, while the prophets kept the morals of Israel toned up by threats that a lapse from virtue would prove disastrous to the vineyards. St. Paul advised bishops and old women to take but little wine. He also suggested to the first that they should not fly into a passion, and to the latter that spreading false reports about their neighbors was not considered good form. The Prohibs, as a last resort, insist that the wine of Biblical days was very different from our own--a kind of circus lemonade; but it seems to have gotten in its graft on old Noah in most elegant shape. If the wine of Biblical times was so harmless why did the sacred writers consider it necessary to caution people against drunkenness, bid them be temperate in all things--while avoiding teetotalism? The only beverage I can find mentioned in the Bible that affected a man like a Prohibition drink, was that given Col. Lot in the cave by his two daughters. It accomplished what medical men assure me was a miracle--and the Prohibs run largely to the miraculous.

* * * OLD GLORY.

(Address at San Antonio, July 4, 1893.)

FELLOW CITIZENS--I have done pretty much everything that a man may do and dodge the penitentiary, except run for office and make Fourth of July speeches. Eulogizing the Goddess of Liberty were much like adding splendor to the sunrise or fragrance to the breath of morn. She needs no encomiast, star-crowned she stands, the glory of America, the admiration of the world.

I shall make a bid for your gratitude by being brief. In July weather the song of an electric fan and the small voice of the soda fount were more grateful to the soul than the grandest eloquence that ever burned on a Grady's lips of gold. It is customary, I believe on July 4th, to "make the eagle scream,"--to fight o'er again all the gory battles of the Republic, from Lexington's defeat to the glorious victory of the last election; but I am no Gov. Waite, and blood to horses' bridles delights me not. I would rather at any time talk of love's encounters than of war's alarums --rather bask in the smiles of beauty than mount barbed steeds to fright the souls of fearful adversaries. I have ever had a sneaking respect for Grover Cleveland for sending a substitute to remonstrate with the Southern Confederacy while he played progressive euchre with the pretty girls. His patriotism may not have soared above par, but there were no picnic ants on his judgment. Much as I love my country, I would rather be a living president than a dead hero.

I address you as "fellow Americans," for in this land no man of Celtic or of Saxon blood can be an alien. Whether he was born on the banks of the blue Danube or by Killarney's lovely lakes, 'mid Scotia's rugged hills or on the sunny vales of France, he is bound to us with ties of blood; he hath a claim upon our country, countersigned by those brave souls who, in the western wilds, gave to Liberty a habitation and a name--who declared that Columbia should ever be the refuge of the world's oppressed,--that all men, in whatever country born, should be equal before the law wherever falls the shadow of our flag. There has of late arisen a strange new doctrine that we should close our ports against the peoples of other lands, however worthy they may be; but I say unto you that such a policy were to betray a sacred trust confided to us by our fathers,--that every honest man beneath high heaven, every worshipper at Liberty's dear shrine hath an inheritance here, and when, with uplifted hand he pledges his life, his fortune and his sacred honor to the defense of freedom's flag he becomes as much an American as though to the manner born.

On occasions such as this we of America are apt to glorify ourselves too much,--to overlook the origin of those elements that made us great. When exulting over our victories in war and our still more glorious triumphs in peace, our progress and our prosperity, we should not forget that had there been no Europe there would be no great American nation; that all the courage that beats in the blood of Columbia's imperial sons, and all the wondrous beauty with which her daughters are dowered; that all the tireless energy of which she proudly boasts, and all the genius that gilds her name with glory were nurtured for a thousand years at white bosoms beyond the ocean's brine.

The American nation is the fair flower of European civilization, the petted child of the world's old age. Princes may be jealous of her progress and tyrants read in her rise their own downfall; but the great heart of the people of every land and clime is hers; to her they turn their faces as the helianthus to the rising sun,--she is their beacon light, their star of hope, guiding them to the glories of a grander day.

It is natural, it is right that on the nation's natal day we should felicitate ourselves on the sacred privileges we enjoy--should pay the tribute of our respect to those whose courage crowned us with sovereignty and made us masters of our fate; but we should not, as too often happens, make it the occasion for senseless bravado and foolish bluster. We should rather employ it to promote good will among the nations of the earth, to link together in a kindlier brotherhood the various families of the great Caucasian race, to beat the barbarous sword into peaceful plowshares and forever banish strife.

I sometimes dream that God has, in his mercy, raised this nation up unto the world's salvation,--the immediate instrument of His grace to usher in that age of gold,

"When the war-drum throbs no longer and the battle-flags are furled, In the parliament of man, the federation of the world."

I delight to trace in the rise and fall of nations the finger of God, and strive to read the Almighty's plan in the historic page. In the farthest east appeared the first faint light of civilization's dawn, and westward ever since the star of empire hath ta'en its way, while each succeeding nation that rose in its luminous paths like flowers in the footsteps of our dear Lord, has reached a higher plane and wrought out a grander destiny. The cycle is complete-- the star now blazes in the world's extreme west and by the law of progress which has preserved for forty centuries, here if anywhere, must we look for that millennial dawn of which poets have fondly dreamed and for which philanthropists have prayed.

The awful responsibility of leadership rests upon us. We have shattered the scepter of the tyrant and broken the shackles of the slave; we have torn the diadem from the prince's brow and placed the fasces of authority in the hands of the people; we have undertaken to lead the human race from the Slough of Despond to the Delectable Mountains, where Justice reigns supreme and every son of Adam may find life worth living. Can we make good our glorious promises? Are we equal to the task to which we have given our hand? Ten thousand times the world has asked this question, but there is neither Dodona Oak nor Delphic Oracle to make reply--the future alone can answer. All eyes are upon us, in hope or fear, in prayer or protest. The fierce light that beats upon a throne were as the firefly's dull flame to the lightning's flash compared with that which illumes the every act of this champion of human progress, this knight par excellence, this Moses of the nations.

It is an important role which God hath assigned to us in the great drama of life, yet into a part so pregnant with fate we too often inject the levity of the farce. While preaching equal rights to all and special privileges to none, we pass laws that divide the people of this land into princes and paupers, into masters and slaves. On July 4th we shout for the old flag, and all the rest of the year we clamor for an appropriation. While boasting that we are sovereigns by right divine and equal unto kings, we hasten to lay our hair beneath the feet of every scorbutic dude who hither drifts,

"Stuck o'er with titles and hung around with strings."

The soldier who serves the state demands a pension, and every burning patriot wants an office. We boast that the people rule, and office-holders are but public servants; yet more than a moiety of us would hang our crowns on a hickory limb and swim a river to break into official bondage. Here in Texas seven distinguished citizens are already chasing the governorship like a pack of hungry wolves after a wounded fawn, while the woods are full of brunette equines who have taken for their motto,

"They also serve who only stand and wait."

Yes, our office-holders are indeed our public servants-- and my experience with servants has been that they usually run the whole shebang.