One of his old neighbors, named Jones, rode
into De Kalb one day, and was accosted by on e of the returned Border
Ruffians with "We've got Caleb May this time; got his head on a
ten-foot pole."
"Anybody killed?" queried Mr. Jones.
"Oh, no."
"Anybody hurt?"
"No."
"Then it's a lie!" responded Mr. Jones. "I know Caleb May well enough
to know that when you get him somebody 's going to get hurt."
Mr. May had for years been a temperance man, in the midst of a
drinking population of the frontiers of Arkansas and Missouri, and
made the first temperance speech ever made in De Kalb. His oldest son,
when fifteen, had never tasted whisky. One day, when Mr. May had gone
on a journey, the boy was in town, and loafers, seeing him pass a
saloon, shouted, "Cale May's gone; let's have some fun with his boy."
So they dragged him into the saloon, and poured whisky down his
throat, and sent him home drunk to his mother. When Mr. May returned
home they told him what had happened.
At that time there was a local option temperance law in Missouri,
under which a majority of the people in a township, by signing a
petition to the court, could have the saloons abolished as public
nuisances.
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