Mississippi leader. (Jackson, Miss.) 1892-1895, 1894-11-20
WOOLLEY'S WORDS.
MORE OF HIS lNclslvE AND POINTED
LOGIC.

Word Painting That Cannot but Interest
and Instruct-Logic That No Man Can
Carries Conviction.
In recent public address John G..
Woolley said:
| The saloon hates me too. Every time
| my precious wife smiles the saloon dew
il snoers. Every time my sons start to
school the drink fiend turks in their
way and watches chance to trip their
happy feet. Every time leave my door
to go preaching the gospel of the grace
of God to tempted men and fallen men
200, 900 dramshops breathe upon me
and yearn for my soul
If should fall tomorrow in this city,
cruelty my Saviour afresh, break my
wife's heart again and put to shame
the whole Christian world that has
trusted me and helped me on my way,
might thy bottle be the cause? "a thou
sand times no!' you say. Amen! But
wait!
Here is saloon, gilded, glazed, en-
bossed, polished and fairly phosphores-
cent i'll your eyes and mine with hell
light. Whose is it? Let us enter and in
quire. You hesitate? Come in.
LET the drink alone, and it will not
hurt you, they say. 1t did not work
SO with my mother. She let it alone,
but it whipped the last years of her life
into one great wave Of pain. My wife
was an exception too. She never touch
ed it, but in the very flush and pride of
her young womanhood it crushed her
to the very dust with everlasting heart.
aches. Still that's the rule.
Come in. Beautiful, isn't it? Plate
glass, cut glass, electric light, silver,
ivory, mahogany and gold 1t ought to
be beautiful; free competition is prohib-
tied by law, so that it may be beautiful,
and the bulk of sentiment is that it
shall be mado to grow in beauty year by
year until it perishes of its own perfec-
! tion.
Two busy men, clean looking, bright
young men i'll snowy aprons, fit from
end to end of the long bar like Swiss
bell ringers, playing with deft fingers
all the scales of bacchanalian music,
from tho whisper of beaded bubbles
moving themselves Alright at the brim
of champagne glasses to the hiss of ad-
ders in the last cheap whisky.
A woman on her knees creeps on the
tessellated floor. wringing out, with par
boiled fingers, soft cloths, with which
she wipes up ashes and spittle to keep
the tiles from stain.
A party of happy men enter just now.
Let us watch them a minute. How
adroit the bartender is! He makes the
bits of ice, the spoon, the shaker, tbs
strainer, the glasses, fairly play a tune.
Then he lets the finished cocktails pour
from the large to the small glasses sc
cleverly it seems as if he had flushed a
covey of little rainbows. A strawberry.
bit of something fragrant, and he
stands like an artist, as he is, as if his
work were done and his responsibility
at an end
The men raise their glasses-crystal
was never clearer-and the drink CLEANS
like nest of thousand adders, invisi-
BILE, except their flashing, fascinating
eyes. They look into the great mirror
over the bar. Would to God that saloon
mirrors could be so sensitized as to show
men the background of drink! We
cannot hear what they say-something
pleasant certainly, probably this: "Gen-
tlemen, let us drink to my mother!'
My drinking friend, try that some time.
"Whose is this saloon?" we ask bar
tender. He looks us over shrewdly-fino
Judges of human nature these men-
knows at a glance that we mean mis-
chief, and his eyes wander without a
word to two engravings on the wall.
One is diploma from the city govern
ment showing John Smith to have been
graduated from the college of restric-
ton and expressly authorizing him fol-
that reason to put the bottle to his
neighbours lips. The other is similar
instrument under the seal of the fed
eral government.
So, it seems, John Smith conducts
the place. He actually or by his agents
puts the bottle. But why are these Ii
censes so carefully provided? Why, dc
you not see? 1t is the theory of our gov
ernment, both state and national, that
the only right to put the bottle to cit
izen's lips inheres in the sovereignty,
and the state has delegated its alcoholic
sovereignty to the city, and it, in turn,
to John Smith, for without leave of the
city to do this thing John Smith would
be plain John Smith and of no more
consequence than a clergyman or q mer'
chant of honest wares.
Meantime, however, the federal pow
er has been seizing every drop of alco'
holic drink as it is distilled or brewed
and holding it confscated as contra
band, the property for the time of the
great, careful, central government, be-
cause unfit to be at large with Other
merchandise. And SO John Smith, the
city's licensee, finds that while he has
the freedom of the city 5 conscience pre-
sapted I'm n bottle he has no alcohol