USA > Ohio > Memories of the crusade a thrilling account of the great uprising of the women of Ohio in 1873, against the liquor crime > Part 18
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I suppose the proprietor had noticed the occurrence across the way ; at all events he was waiting to receive me with extended arms, ushered me in and treated me to the best the house afforded, which made me very comfort- able, and for which I paid value received.
But to return to our meetings. On Friday evening the Good Templars tendered me an open reception. The Worthy Chief, Dr. Frank Miessy, was one of our Ohio University boys, a grand, good fellow, and substantial supporter of the Crusaders. On Saturday morning I addressed a large meeting of the boys and girls, this being the third in the Crusade. Here, as everywhere, the children were greatly excited and interested in the Crusade. Ah, many of them knew what it meant to be a drunkard's child. Many had the inherited taint coursing through their veins, and if they did not surrender to the inborn craving they would only escape through a life-long battle. "Oh," said a lady as we entered the church that morning and looked into the faces
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of those hundreds of children, "if we can only save these dear children our labor will not be in vain."
Sitting just in front of me as I talked, was a little, shrinking, thinly-clad, pale-faced boy. I needed no one to tell me he was a drunkard's child. A few years later I was again in Chilli- cothe, and as my friend drove me out he was telling me of the wonderful Blue Ribbon work in the town. I asked about a dentist of whom I had heard a good deal, -he had married one of my students. "Oh," said he, "he has signed the pledge and is doing well, and here he comes now." Looking in the direction he indicated, I saw a gentleman of very respectable appear- ance approaching, leading a couple of bright, well-clad children. The boy's eyes were fairly dancing with glee as he came up. " Oh !" said he, "I know Mother Stewart !" This rosy, romping boy was my pale-faced boy of that Sat- urday morning.
Our wonderfully successful meetings greatly alarmed the liquor fraternity ; they began to see that their craft was in danger, and that some- thing must be done, so they advertised a meet- ing for Saturday night, to be addressed by Judge Safford, who had covered himself with glory of a certain sort by appearing as the prose- cuting lawyer for the renowned Dr. Dunn, against the ladies of Hillsboro. Mr. Beadle, after our McArthur meeting, returned expressly to report this very unique meeting, the only one
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of its kind in the annals of the press of that or any other time. Of his vivid and lengthened description I can only give place for a part, simply as testimony from an impartial source as to the grade or class of the two elements, the Crusaders and the saloons. Mr. Beadle says he could not think of giving a full report of that gathering to his readers. He says :
The meeting this evening in opposition to the women's movement, was a success as to numbers, but in nothing else. Soon after dark the crowd began to set towards the City Hall, and in a short time a tumultuous mass filled the room with the steam of beer and the fumes of vile tobacco. I saw a dozen or twenty women walk up to the door with escorts, then pause suddenly, and after a hurried consulta- tion, turn away with that peculiar look people have when they get into the wrong pew. But inside, a few feet from the reporter's table, sat Madame Mary Yeager, ex-keeper of a beer-garden. I was told there were three ladies in the back part of the house, but in a careful look I failed to find them. But the crowd-the masculine crowd! Descend, ye tuneful Nine, and Noah Webster, rise from the tomb to give me polysyllabic strength to describe them. Such an assemblage, in sad and sober truth, I never saw before since the days when the Chicago Tribune sent me to report an anti-war meeting in Wall street. Such fearful old mugs, such low-browed, stubby- haired sons of humanity as filled the front seats, it would be hard to equal anywhere outside of the large cities. I was particularly struck with the ap- pearance of one genius with a roaming red nose, pig eye and soap-fat chin, who held an enormous club-cane in his hand and started the applause. He possessed a horrible fascination for me, and his pres- ence so near seriously interfered with my duties. Beside him sat a nondescript, -I should have guessed him as a Corkorian, caught young and partly domes- ticated, or a Buckeye taken in infancy and reared on Irish whisky. These two fellows are fixed forever
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in my memory. They will haunt my happy hours ; they will lead the scenic march in more than one night-mare.
* * * Taken as a whole, I never could have believed that the fine, old, respectable city of Chilli- . cothe could have vomited forth such a crowd. If any unprejudiced visitor could have seen both and compared this with that at the meeting on Thursday evening, I think he must per force have come out convinced that the wildest vagaries of the praying women's movement were simple, cold indifference compared with what the situation called for.
After some detail of the speech, which was a conglomerate of slang, profanity, blasphemy and abuse of the Christian ladies and clergy, the reporter proceeds :
I trust I am not easily excited to anger or disgust, I know I am not given to cant, and I am persuaded that those who have read these letters will not accuse me of too great reverence for religion or temperance, but I know I but speak the simple truth when I say that this night's performance has been, in all its par- ticulars, a deep and damning disgrace to Chillicothe. The last seven weeks comprise nearly all my knowl- edge of the moral society of this eastern country, but in five years in the far West I never attended a meeting half so disgraceful. I have heard Brigham Young swear like a pirate in the pulpit, but that was in a rude country, with a rude religion, and he did not profess anything better.
But that such a meeting as this could have been held, or such a speech made by a Judge in a Chris- tian country, is something I never would have believed on another's evidence In one respect only is this better than the territories; if such a speech had been made in any of the Western towns in reference to their women, the men would have snatched the speaker out of the stand and hanged him to the nearest tree. It was at once the most indecent, profane and shameful harrangue I ever listened to.
I have given this strange report at the risk of
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criticism for inserting such an account in a nar- rative of the work of Christian women, but I have a purpose in it. This is simply an intima- tion of the vile and indecent spirit that was manifested by the low creatures who were insti- gated and set on by the liquor men, often developing in mobs, with acts of violence towards the humble, Christian women.
I may be repeating, but I must reiterate over and again in these pages, that peradventure the Christian men of the nation may be led to pause, ponder, and promptly act ere it is too late. This same spirit of mad misrule and resistance to the restraints, both of moral and legal influences, fostered by the liquor power, is as strong, yes, far stronger at the present, than in any previous period of our history. These defiers of the law have grown more bold by their successes. It is this class that controls the political parties, and to whom the demagogue and the office-seeker pander. The riots in Cin- cinnati and Chicago are examples of what they may do upon any pretext. And yet, for their services in helping to " save the party," men in the highest places in the gift of the people, Christian men, join in demonstrations of grati- tude, in banquets, where "wine and speeches were both good," in gifts of gold-headed canes, "magnificent gold watches," to the leaders of this class. Priest and people joined hand and glove with them.
Monday, March 16th, found me at McArthur,
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my old home in the days of my teaching. The meeting was held in the Court-house, a "thou- sand people," says my companion duvoyage. The ladies had already done a noble work, and all the drinking places but one were closed. In the audience that night I noticed old Sister S-, now over the four-score line, sitting patiently on a hard, backless seat through all the long service. When I expressed my wonder that she was able to endure such fatigue, she answered, "Oh, it seemed as though I could sit there all night !" she was so glad and thankful for the blessed work. Her youngest son, who had been keeping a saloon and had been a hard case, had been persuaded to give up the busi- ness. No wonder the poor old heart was full of joy and gratitude.
The next morning I met the ladies in the morning meeting. It was their custom after their daily prayer meeting, to visit the one remaining place and hold their services on the pavement at the head of the stairs leading down into his saloon, -he did not permit them to enter his place. On this morning I requested the ladies to allow me to precede them a few minutes. I walked in and introduced myself to Mr. O'Keif, the proprietor, who received me very cordially and was quite willing to talk, but not to promise to give up his business. I learned afterwards that he taunted the ladies by telling them that if they had "kept Mother Stewart a little longer he thought he would have surrendered ;- he came
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pretty near it while she talked to him," which I have little doubt was simply a new way of annoy- ing them. Some months after this I was on a train from Athens to Logan, when a man entered the coach and throwing his overcoat on the seat in front of me, addressed me very familiarly, and asked if I did not remember him-he was O'Keif, of McArthur. He seemed anxious to talk-told me of losing his wife, and of his little daughter that he was then going to see ; said he wanted to put her into a school of his church. I tried to reach him by telling him how much better it would be for his church if he would give up selling and drinking liquor. He seemed quite delighted with my apparent interest in his church, saying, "Why, Mother Stewart, you would make a first-rate Catholic," which I sup- pose was the highest compliment he knew how to pay me. But·I doubt if he has ever given up either selling or drinking, unless the latter has cut short his life.
The ladies took me to visit the Union schools, where I addressed the children from the steps of the building while they stood on the green in front, many of their mothers-who had been my students in the days of other years-stand- ing near me. Not a few tears were shed as we remembered, ah ! so many, that in their youth- ful school-days were as happy and full of hope as these, but now gone, never to return.
My next point was Marietta, where, when a young lady, I had attended Seminary. Here,
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too, were the evidences of time's relentless work. So many gone, so few remaining. Hon. George Woodbridge, so well remembered in those long- gone days as an active, earnest Christian, was still here, and, as was to be expected, a strong supporter of the Crusade. Soon after my arrival my hostess, Mrs. W., told me there was a gen- tleman living near that she wished me to see. He was of one of the best families; had a gentle, cultured wife and two interesting children. But his appetite for the intoxicating cup was getting the mastery of him, and if he could not be reached soon his friends feared it would be too late. I felt my own weakness, and my faith seemed almost to have forsaken me. I said to myself, "It is of no use; I cannot reach the case !" But I did not dare to confess it, so I went with my friend, crying in my heart to the Lord for help. The gentleman received us very kindly, and we were able at once to enter into conversation with him. The result was, that after a season of prayer he gave me his hand that he would quit his cups then and there, and he did.
It was the Lord's strength and mercy made manifest in human weakness. Dear, brave boy ; he had a desperate battle before him, but his last words when I went to bid him good-bye before leaving the city, were: "I will make the fight, and I mean to stand." How my heart was drawn out to him. There is a feeling, I am sure, akin to motherhood in my heart for those dear boys that the Lord hath given me.
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Here in this old "Mound City," the oldest town in the State, we had a two-days county meeting, with the usual crowd of people.
I visited the saloons with the ladies, and found one man who had been dealing out the deadly stuff for eleven years, though he was now only twenty-one. But he did not taste it him- self, and was so well aware of its deleterious effect that he was careful to turn his head away while drawing or handling it for others, lest he might be affected by the scent of it.
The sisters were full of hope that this man would soon surrender. I told them he was the hardest, and would be the last man in the city to surrender. I really felt sorry when I saw their disappointment and surprise, but tried to explain to them that a man, knowing so well the con- sequences, and yet deliberately dealing it out to others, was devoid of either heart or conscience through which to be reached. That is the kind of man that will cut his fellow's throat for the money he will find in his pocket. He did not surrender.
I was driven out to visit the Washington County Orphan's Home, the model institution of the kind in the State. I hope to find space elsewhere to give the history of its origin as told me by my class-mate of our Seminary days, Miss Catharine Fay. Nine-tenths of these little ones, so carefully sheltered there, were subjects of the public charity because their fathers, and some, because their mothers too, were drunkards.
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The children here had, with everybody else, become greatly excited over the Crusade, that they hoped was going to shut up all the saloons and stop all the drinking.
Mrs. Hart, the matron and a real mother to the little ones, as they loved to call her, told me that the children one day asked her if they too might have a prayer-meeting. She said they might; they gathered in the play-room, and as they knelt, she said, now we will first have a sea- son of silent prayer. In a few moments, she said, a little girl eleven or twelve years old, broke out in supplication, stifled with sobs and tears, for her father, that the Lord would save and make a sober man of him. Then there was silence again, and next a little colored boy eight years old broke forth for his father ; he would choke and break down, then go on again. And so the Orphan's Crusade prayer-meeting went on. It was not long till a man came to the Home to take away two of the little ones. He had been a very in- temperate man, so much so that his wife had been obliged to bring her children to the Home and seek employment for herself as a servant, to obtain food and shelter. But the dear Crusaders had got hold of the man and induced him to sign the pledge. And when he came to him- self, he sought out his wife and besought her to live with him again. Dr. Hart, with whom she was living, in order to encourage the man and to keep watchful guard over him, gave them rooms in his own house. There they again set up their
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household gods, brought their little ones home, and were once more a united, happy family. About the same time a poor inebriate, whose wife was dead and his five children in the Home, came to see them. His children gathered about him and began to plead, "Father, sign the pledge," "father, sign the pledge," "Oh, father, please sign the pledge." The youngest was not able to talk, but it joined the rest, clapping its little hands, and with pleading, inarticulate sounds besought father to sign the pledge. It was more than the poor, broken father could stand, but he made excuse that he could not write his name. "Oh," they cried, " Mother Hart will write your name. Mother Hart will write your name," and she did.
Who would like to persuade those little ones that they were mistaken, that God does not hear even the cry of a little child ? Those children learned a lesson of faith in prayer that will never be forgotten.
I reached home on Friday evening, March 2Ist, and hastened up on Saturday morning to learn what news of the battle. On Market street a gentleman came hurrying along and asked me if I wasn't going to the "liquor pouring." "Is there a surrender?" "Yes, around on Main street." I fell into line on "double quick." When I arrived upon the scene, the sisters and everybody else were there. Mrs. Kinney, Mrs. Mast, and others were making lively work in that saloon. And amid great rejoicing the bot-
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tles, flasks, jugs and casks were brought out and hurled into the ditch. One bottle, however, my brother Spring rescued from destruction, and presented me as a souvenir. There it is in my collection of trophies of "the war." The street was full of people, and how the anthem swelled up,
" All hail the power of Jesus' name."
My pulpit, an empty beer-cask, being just in place, I was helped up onto it and proceeded to address the crowd. (I met a gentleman in Nash- ville, Tenn., the other day, who said he was in our city at the time, and present at the liquor- pouring, and reminded me that as I stepped onto the cask I remarked, " We had the enemy under our feet," but he added, "he is not yet quite under." Sad is the pity.) As I stood there, I looked down and saw the little, timid minister's wife I have spoken of before, standing near, sing- ing and clapping her hands, apparently oblivious to all earthly surroundings, while her face shone like that of an angel. Sister Hamma has long since become an active and very efficient laborer in the missionary and other benevolent works of her church. That holy baptism of the Christian women is still bearing fruit in all the churches ; and the healing streams from that Crusade fountain are flowing around the world. It is proper to say, be- fore leaving the subject, that the woman who had surrendered was liberally helped to bear the loss of her liquors by a large contribution.
I have frequently spoken of the interest the
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children everywhere took in the Crusade. In our city this was especially the case. The boys were always on hand, often acting as volunteer scouts to go forward and explore, and bring back information of the situation. I called them my body-guard, and I believe if the saloon-keepers had attempted to molest me-of which I was in no fear-the boys would have fought my battle for me.
Some of the young ladies had organized a band of little girls and taught them to sing appropriate pieces, and would lead them out to visit the saloons on Saturday afternoons. On this Satur- day I led them ; we visited several places, and it was a touching sight to the throng of people gathered to see and hear them. The people from all over the county were in the habit of coming in on Saturdays to witness the Crusade. What wonder that many a stalwart farmer, as he looked upon the women kneeling on the curb- stone, praying to God to soften and change the saloon-keeper's heart and make him give up his business, were often wrought up to a high degree of excitement. And seeing those little things standing there, more than one knowing from bitter experience what it meant, sing
" Father, dear father, come home," or,
" Pray, mister saloon-keeper, has father been here?"
was it surprising that as he furtively brushed away the tears he would exclaim: "Seems to
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me it would relieve a fellow's feelings a good deal to go in and clean 'em out !"
A little later on, a Children's Association was formed under the leadership of Mrs. Guy, our Secretary, the more to interest the children and teach them to hate and shun the drink as their deadliest enemy. They met on Saturday morn- ings. To one of these meetings came a wee bit of a boy, in dress and long curls-Forest Lehman -with a penny to give to Mother Stewart, and with a little speech, expressing his idea of the cruelty of the saloon-keepers, that made it neces" sary for such aged women as Mother Stewart to go out against them. A gentleman held him up in his arms as he made his little speech.
That penny is among my richest treasures, and that baby boy is growing up to a sober young manhood.
It was becoming apparent that most of the liquor-sellers who could be reached by persuasion and prayer, had now yielded. The next thing to be done was to prevent all we could from going into the saloon, and save as many who were drinking as possible, and so the form of work called "picketing " was inaugurated, and women all over the State were seen in twos, or possibly more, standing or sitting, or more likely pacing to and fro in the bleak wind or rain or snow, with paper and pencil in hand, soliciting signers to the pledge, or taking the names of any who had the hardihood to pass them into the saloon for their drinks. It took a man of a
RESTAURANT DOWN STAIRS.
PR
PICKET SCENE IN MOUNT VERNON.
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good deal of courage, if he had any self-respect, to pass those ladies and get his drink. Many a man was persuaded to sign the pledge, and turned away henceforth to live a sober life. Often the pickets would be out by the early dawn, and many a thirsty fellow who hastened as soon as he was up to wet his parched throat was greatly astonished to find the picket guards quietly waiting for him. One such in our city scurried off to a rather small concern near the Market street bridge, thinking to get his morn- ing glass unobserved. Great was his astonish- ment upon coming up to the back door to find himself face to face with the ladies, who were personal acquaintances. There was no retreat for him. He burst into a laugh, drew out a dollar from his pocket, handed it to the ladies "for the cause," and left with quite as quick a step as he came. The sentinels would keep their posts until relieved by a relay. Often men, touched by the sight of such patient endurance, would hasten away and bring warm boards or bricks for their feet, or lay down bits of carpet, or bring shawls and robes to wrap them in, and in the rain or snow stand and hold an umbrella over them. Some good lady would send them a cup of coffee and a hot roll. It was not uncommon for several to go out together in the evening and remain quite late, guarding places where young men were accustomed to meet for their nightly drink- ing, billiards, or card-playing. From a lady in one town I received a note saying, "It is night ;
(19)
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I am sitting here in front of -'s saloon, the last in the town," and as she finished her letter she wrote, "There, it is midnight, and I have for the first time seen -'s saloon closed."
A good many have criticised our picket work rather severely, saying it exasperated the saloon men, but as I have said, it was becoming mani- fest that about all whose hearts had not been made impervious by their business had yielded. Now the question was to save as many of their victims as possible. It required even more self- sacrifice to keep guard by the door of one of these places alone, or with one or two com- panions, than to march with the band; there was also more exposure and weariness in remain- ing at their post one, two, or may be three hours at a time, than in the band visiting.
My Sister Phillips has just given me this : She and another sister were on duty before a saloon for the noon hour, when a company of near a dozen men came hurrying up to get their mug of beer on their way from the shop, but halted when they saw the ladies. Mrs. Phillips opened her Bible and commenced reading. Some of the more thirsty concluded they would just have to slip past her and get their drinks; but as she read she slowly paced to and fro before the door. One became interested in the reading and insisted upon the others coming near to hear it. And thus she promenaded and read chapter after chapter till the men discovered they had only time to get their dinners, and hurried away.
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Considering the wonderful results of the prayer method, it was not surprising that many were growing a little fanatical and disposed to treat with contempt anything in the line of law. But without the abatement of a jot of the power of prayer and the influence of the Crusade in awakening and enlisting thousands in the cause, yet withall there was need of constant watchful- ness, the soundest of judgment, and the appliance of all methods to insure a victory over such a wily foe.
I had foreseen that while the brethren were all absorbed and expectant of a victory through our prayers, the saloon men would, by their political intrigue, get their friends into office and defy us. This had caused me much anxiety, and as I came and went I rang the changes on the notes of warning to the brethren at home and elsewhere, urging them to prepare in time, and watch with vigilance, or the liquor men would beat them at the polls. At length our Advisory Committee at home passed a resolu- tion requesting me to remain at home and help them work up the public sentiment for the com- ing election. I accordingly recalled a series of engagements and went to work.
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