In this, as in
his religious conceptions, he was always in the advance, running new
lines and opening broad highways, and inviting fields for the less
sturdy but oncoming multitude. As he had battled to prevent this, his
adopted State, from being desecrated by the blot of human slavery,
so now he voted, preached, lectured, wrote, that it might be delivered
from the body and soul destroying curse of the rum power.
I have before me his temperance scrap-book, beginning with the
proposed amendment to the State Constitution, March 8, 1879, and
coming up to the time of his death, in which I find fifty-five
newspaper articles written by him, of from one to three columns in
length, presenting, in his own terse, humorous, glowing, vigorous,
convincing way, all sides of this chameleon-hued question; now
analyzing the amendment and the laws to enforce it, turning aside here
to answer the cavil of some carping critic, then to demolish and bury
some blatant political defender of the whisky element; arraigning the
Governor, Senate and House of Representatives for their gingerly
treatment of the great question, and sending a trumpet-call to the
honest, brave, and sincere temperance workers, both men and women,
urging them to greater vigilance and closer compact.
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