National Republican., 1876-08-14
THE CRUSADE.
The Women Still at Work-Ths Sailors
Home and Mrs. Stevens.

The ladies' temperance meeting held at Lin
coin hall yesterday afternoon was opened with
singing and prayer.
DR.. Noble read the thirteenth chapter of
First Corinthians, and remarked Love to God
and love to men is the principle that lies at
the basis of all temperance work, and that
principle has actuated our friends in this work
ever since the "crusade" began. They have
gone forth, holding on to God and holding on
to man. Our sister from the Golden State has
just achieved great victory in the House of
Representatives and in the Senate and before
the President.
Mrs. Z. P. Stevens, of San Francisco, CAL,
was then introduced, and said it was love for
certain class of men-the sailors-that had
induced her to leave her home in the heat of
summer and come to this city to ask Congress,
in behalf of the temperance women Of her
place, to give them a rock in the sea and an
abandoned hospital for a
SAILORS TEMPERANCE HOME.
Size had become acquainted with many of the
sailors at that port during the last twenty-five
months, in which time 1900 of them had
signed the temperance pledge. The sailors in
that city are at the mercy of the eating houses,
all of which keep liquor. Often they are made
drunk and robbed of their money. The ladies
have long seen the need Of temperance home
for these sailors, where they might find COM
Portable lodging and meals free from the in
fuence of strong drink, and have worked for
it for many years, but have always been de-
feated before their State Legislature by the
boarding house interests. She was glad she
could return to them with the bill for this
purpose passed by Congress and signed by the
President, by whom she had been treated with
great kindness. She believed we might be a
happy people If it were not for
THE CURSE OF RUM,
and that it was sin to give glass of strong
drink to any one, and that the Churches were
doing wrong to use fermented wine for sacra.
ment.
She was glad that the Vice President was so
firm temperance man as not only to refuse
to drink on all occasions, but to say, "I do
not believe in the CUSTOM" 1t requires a
noble purpose to stand thus in a wine drinking
society, and she hoped her hearers would have
the courage to say, 81 don't drink, and
don't like I o see others drink" She told of a
young man who in his boyhood had been taught
to drink wine, brought home with the delirium
tremens, and his dying appeal was: "Save me,
mother: save me-" Who are the men that are
keeping up this traffic? They are men who
are doing it for money. Money is their God.
Our Creator has made US but one drink-pure
water-which he has sent coursing down the
mountain, sparkling in the rill, distilling in
the dew and treasured in the ocean. Ami
mated nature needs nothing else, and man
placed at the head is the only animal that
falls below his nature by degrading himself
by strong drink. She told of an English woman
who
PAwNED HER BABY FOR A GLASS OF BEER,
and also that England is arousing to the dam
ger she is in on account of this traffic, having
raised 990, 600 last year for the temperance
cause, which is gaining ground rapidly in Par
lament.
At an election on the local option question
in CALIFORNIA a man said to her: "Do YOU see
that fine residence over there! drank that
up and a hundred acres of ground, and am
now only a common drunkard, but will vote
your ticket against the liquor traffic."
We need inebriate asylums, and the rum
sellers ought to be taxed to support them.
They ought to take care of the victims of their
own trade. She was glad the ladies of this
city are trying to establish such "a institution
where these poor men, overcome by the
tempter, may be taken and cared for, but she
would rather have that other asylum; that is,
sweep out all the liquor traffic, close all the
manufactures and retail shops, and let the
men now engaged in it 60 out to till the soil
or earn All honest living.
She said this is probably the last time she
would speak to the Washington people;
thanked her audience and thanked the ladies
who mad shown her such kindness and sympa-
thy, and made an earnest appeal to all to join
the temperance army, and live so that she
might meet them in that other world, which
is free from the curse of the rum traffic.
Mrs. Stevens certainly takes with her the
good wishes and prayers of those who have
heard or met her during her sojourn In our
city.