How could these pityin’ sperits help weepin’ over it?  And the long, agonized procession follerin’ on—­pale, wretched mothers, once happy wives, now hungry, broken-hearted wrecks, with pinched, starved children clingin’ to their ragged skirts.  The idee of askin’ this pure heavenly Host to praise God for what brought all this to pass!

Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

Why, I believe that Satan himself, though he loved to see the work go on, would be ashamed to sing the Doxology there.  I don’t believe you’d ketch him at it, for he is so smart he would see in a minute how it would look to praise God for such a place as that when he had said plain: 

“Cursed is he that putteth the cup to his neighbor’s lips.”

And Satan knowed jest as well as Josiah and I and the world did, that saloons wuz made a purpose for this.

“And no drunkard hath eternal life.”  And that minister wuz ordained to help people attain that life, not to help ’em lose it.

I don’t see what he wuz thinkin’ on.  Of course, the top of the long slippery descent to ruin is quite cheerful lookin’, lit up with false lights, hollow mirth, false hopes and dreams lurin’ the victims on and down.  But he knowed how slippery it wuz, how impossible it wuz for ordinary men to stand up when they got to slidin’ down.  He knew that nothin’ but God’s grace wuz strong enough to reach down and haul ’em up agin to level ground.

A few men are so strong-footed they can grip on and stay ’round the top for some time, and I presoom this minister, bein’ a good-natered man would been glad to had ’em all hung on there, but he must have knowed they wouldn’t and couldn’t.  He’d seen ’em leggo thousands and thousands every year, he knowed what made ’em fall.  And he might jest as well made a prayer and sung a hymn over a murderer’s knife, because he wanted it to cut bread but knowed it would and did murder, as to done this.

For no matter what he wanted he knowed intemperance is evil and only evil.  And pattin’ a pizen viper and callin’ it “angel” and singin’ the Doxology over it hain’t goin’ to change its nater, its nater is to sting, and its bite is death.

And the God they dasted to invoke said of the drink the place wuz made to sell, “It biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder,” and the end thereof is death.

I don’t know what that good man could be thinkin’ on to dast.  But then as long as our Government opholds it, I spoze he thought he might.

But I wish I’d been there to told him how it wuz goin’ to look to me and Josiah and the world, and what slurs wuz goin’ to be cast onto the sacred cause of religion by it.

I couldn’t tell him what harm it wuz goin’ to do; no, eternity is none too soon to count that up.  Awful waves of influence sweepin’ along—­sweepin’ along clear from to-day to the Day of Judgment; I can’t bear to think on’t; I’m kinder sorry for him, and am glad enough it hain’t my Josiah that has got that ahead on him.  I wish he’d ondo now what he’s done as fur as he can, he’d feel better, I believe, I know that I and the meetin’ house would and Josiah.