Then some of us
waited on these "conscript fathers" at Topeka, and entreated them, and
supplicated them, and almost got down on our knees to them, beseeching-
them to use a little courage and common sense. The House of
Representatives was largely made up of farmers and men from the country,
and was overwhelmingly in favor of an honest temperance law; but the
Senate was largely made up of lawyers and men from the city, and was
full of treachery and open and secret enmity. And so the Senate took the
lead in making the law, and got up a bill that they purposely made as
full of imperfections as a sieve is full of holes, and sent it down to
the lower house. It was manifestly the duty of the House of
Representatives to amend the bill, but now a great scare was got up. The
cry was raised: "There is treachery! treachery! You must adopt this
Senate bill without amending it, to the extent of changing the dot of an
_i_ or the crossing of a _t_; for if it goes back to the Senate it will
certainly be killed.
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