second is backbone; the third is backbone." If the great statesman was with us today, in these our "piping times of peace," he might with propriety repeat his stern message. The cry of our age is for men of strength and women of truth. Young friends, you are not your own. You belong to the state, to society, to humanity. The future shall be largely what men and women of your station make it. Do your full duty, and liberty abides, progress is assured, and the state is safe. What constitutes a State? Not high raised battlement or labored mound, Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned; Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride; Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride. With powers as far above dull brutes endued In forest, brake or den, As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude- But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain, And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain: VI. THE SALOON AND THE STATE. CIVILIZATION'S GREATEST FOE. [ADDRESS TO SUNDAY EVENING AUDIENCE.] F Abraham Lincoln it has been said OF that he was the foremost convincer of his day-the one who could do his cause more good and less harm by a speech than any man before the people. To be frank with you, I would that I possessed that power tonight. It is perfectly legitimate for a speaker to seek at times to please, or even to amuse, an audience. Nor is this wrong in a church. When I reflect how careworn the majority of lives are, how much toil, and how little pleasure enters into the daily routine, I consider it a pious and commendable act, if with innocent mirth you are made for a little to forget the hard path in which your feet must walk. But tonight I seek not (111) to amuse, nor yet merely to instruct; I would convince and convert every man and woman in this large audience, by fair logic and fact undeniable, to certain convictions regarding the modern liquor traffic. For I believe with a strength of conviction I have been unable to attain upon most subjects, that the modern liquor traffic is civilization's greatest foe, and that our method of dealing with it is about the worst that could possibly be devised; that to continue our present policy is to multiply misery to country and city, to invite domestic and national disaster. Plainly and as fully as the limits of a single lecture will permit, the truth of this statement will be established. Our path lies along the rugged way of stern logic. We cannot turn aside to seek the beautiful in thought or expression. We are to deal with a dread disease, a fiendish foe to man, a cancer upon the body politic-with civ ilization's greatest curse. Words should be battles, and speech should be war when dealing with this common enemy of the hu man race. The licensed liquor traffic is society's deadly enemy, not alone, or mainly, because of its intrinsic evils, but because of the relation the traffic sustains to other giant evils that perplex and endanger our entire social fabric. It is not my intention to belittle the enormous injury directly resulting from the open and public sale of intoxicants. Surely it is of gravest concern to us all that in America, according to most careful and conservative statisticians, the direct cost of the liquor traffic to the people, after deducting every penny returned by the dealer to the public, amounts annually to $700,000,000. But this vast sum represents only one-half the financial loss resulting from the bad business, for to every dollar paid for drink another must be added to cover depreciation in property and increased cost of criminal surveillance occasioned by the saloon-$1,400,000,000 annually lost to all the higher uses of civilization |