The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-11-15
SEATTLE. SUNDAY. NOV. 10.
THE DIRTY WORK OF TEMPER
ANCE REFORM.

The dirty work of the temperance cause
does not get half as many helpers as the
easy ornamental work. To talk on the
platform; to lash legislatures; to hold
temperance reviyals, is rather enjoyable
work for people with turn for melo-
dramatic speech and a relish for the noto-
riety of reform agitation. But there is
another kind of temperance work in whose
vineyard the laborers are always few: it is
the dirty, disagreeabie work of philan-
thropy and charity; the kind of work
that compels the worker to come into per-
sonal, private contact with the fallen
brother or soiled sister; it is the kind
of work that requires q great heart,
rather than u loud voice; the heart that
made Elizabeth Fry tuck up her gown and
go down into the ditch to drag a drown
ing fellowcreature to dry land; the heart
that beats in the bosom of that rare man
or woman
Who dares to go in
To the prison, the slave hut; the alleys OF sin;
Aud to bring into each, or to find there some
line
OF the never completely out-trampled divine.
While the eloquent tinkerers of statutes
are busy with the liquor laws. the Eliza
beth Frys and the John Towards are
trying to give the world lift by helping
the deformed unreformed to their feet.
They do not dodge the drunkard in the
ditch or the felon in his cell or mount a
platform and mouth about the people in
the puddle; they went down into the pool
and became its healing angels.
The best workers for temperance are
those who have warm hand of help for
the weak when the drowning man is will
ing to swim for his life; who do not urge
every man who needs reformation to dub
himself a recent drunkard by hanging the
hospital dag of a blue string in his button
hole, because they know that it is not good
for some men to stand up in public meet
ings of all kinds and degrees of intelligence
and tell the story OF his sin, his shame
: and his suffering. There is always danger
that such man will gradually come to
use his eloquent tale of past infamy to feed
his love of notorety and really lose rather
than gain in moral strength and self
respect.
A man can pray to God, or he can con-
fde his story of shameful sorrow to the
private ear of an able and compassionate
friend without becoming melodramatic
temperance charlatan, but the experiences
of public meeting are always trying to
those who consent to illuminate the occa-
sion by the skilltully told tale of their
past degradation. A few men have done
it and not deteriorated, but it is danger.
Gus experiment. Many gifted fellow,
who has honestly reformed, has been
spoiled by being encouraged to irradate a
public meeting with his eIoquence rather
than urged to take back seat and go to
work.
If the past is bitter it is better to put 1t
behind you; to look forward and not back,
and lend your hand to some honest work
and leave the ceaseless iteration of your
infamy TO some other tongue, who can
tell it without danger of Generalization
through an incessant utterance that
makes man at last as indifferent to sin
as he has become indifferent to the story
of his own shame. Don't bank on the
story of your shame, no matter how well
you tell it, lest you come to regard your
own story not as a shame but as stock in
trade, just as an actor, from constantly
making interconyertible ducks and
brakes OF virtue and vice on the stage.
comes to take q very cynical, not to say
unprincipled, view of life of the stage.
Work, not eloquence: private help, rather
than public whoop, are the best tonics for
men that need to reform
Never refuse man chance to reform
who is willing TO reform; never dismiss a
drunkafd, anxious 10 reform, with a tenn
perance address; what such men want
most is work, not words. 1t Is the men
and women who do the dirty work of the
temperance cause that are the salt of its
salvation. Butfor these rare reformers, who
believe in reforming the man as the only
effective ob.iteration of the saloon, many
man, once a filthy drunkard, dirty and
ragged beyond description. who has died a
redeemed soul, would have retreated back
Ia his old haunts ful of despair and ugly
hate for the world and died the death OF a
dog, starved and hunted into hydrophobia
Give him lift: don't kneel ia prayer,
Nor morallSe with his despair;
The man Is down, AMI his great need
aeNEtE hafV FtFaaK