The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 362 pages of information about The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation.

The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 362 pages of information about The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation.
protest when the time came, and it came when I was sentenced to jail for contempt of court, because I insisted on asking what kind of business these dive-keepers were carrying on, which the judge wanted to keep out of the witnesses mouths.  Dr. McFarland arose and said:  “I suppose you want to fine me judge.  I say this is an infernal outrage,” repeating it the second time.  Judge Magaw said:  “Yes I will fine you twenty-five dollars.”  “You may make it a hundred.”  “Well, I will make it a hundred,” said Judge Magaw.  I was taken to jail.  Dr. McFarland was not, but walked out and said it was worth a hundred dollars to tell them what he thought of such travesty on justice.  Dr. McFarland had plenty of friends who offered to pay the amount but I believe he paid it himself.  Then he began some investigation of the corruption at the police station.  He preached a sermon telling of this.  It was published.  I was in jail next door to the room in which the mayor, Parker, and the police gathered to discuss a suit for slander against Dr. McFarland, but it was only a bluff.  Before this all night long there was loud talking and swearing in the room under mine as if around a card table.  After Dr. McFarland’s sermon I heard no more of it.  There were several of these poor degraded girls in jail.  I knew of actions and words that were not decent between the officers and these girls.  This exposure of Dr. McFarland’s was very salutary.  Before that, officers would come into my room without knocking and address me in a rough manner.  After this they knocked at the door and were respectful and even kind.  The Reverend Doctor did a great work by that sermon which was to the point and effective.

I went to Bangor, Maine, to lecture once.  Stopped at the Bangor House, run by one Chapman.  Roosevelt had stopped there just two weeks before.  I heard this hotel had one of those traps, called “dives.”  When I went into the dining-room I asked a young lady waiting on me, if she could get me a bottle of beer?  She said they kept it and that she would ask the head waiter to get it for me.  She spoke to him.  He left the dining-room and in a few minutes the man Chapman came out of the winding way to his dive; the proprietor rushed up to me in a drunken rage.  He threw me against one of the pillars, then literally knocked me out into the hall in the presence of the guests, perhaps a hundred; then he kept knocking me down every time I rose to my feet.  He would not allow me to get my things.  I was invited to go home with a prohibitionist, Dr. Marshall.  This Chapman was a noted dive-keeper, a rummy, and ran a representative rum-soaked republican hotel.  He was angry, because I dared to expose him, in his sneaking way of drugging and robbing his guests.  It was marvelous what rages these law-breakers used to have when I came around at first.  It is not so now.  Their bands have been smashed and they are not as bold; and more marvelous that I was not seriously hurt.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.