The San Francisco call., 1897-03-08
BALLOTS WILL END ALL.
Fates Of Candidates and Saloons
Will Be Known Before
Midnight.
Many Pastors Make a Final Plea on
Behaf of S Closing-The
Polling Places.
OAKLAND OFFICE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, |
Q08 Broad WAY March I

90o Broadway, March I.
The campaign is over and the final but
tonholing and combining closed tonight.
In nearly all the churches the pastors
made earnest exhortations to the congre-
cations to do all in their power to further
the saloon closing proposition.
At the First Free ptist Church Rev.
Philip Graft spoke as follows:
History teaches with no uncertain
sound that the saloon is one of the peril
Gus edges down whose sharp steep descent
are ghastly, indescriba BILE things of poverty
and disgrace, disease and infamv. Perhaps
the gilded and frescoed drinking place
does not look at first blush hideuus and
appalling, but a long keen glance behind
is merry screens and bright veneer re-
yeals tropic spider which spread itself
out on its web like a flower OF gorgeous
garb Turing the unweary by its fsined
beauty and sweetness to pain and death
Indeed, often worse than asp's sung or
hempen moose, or bullet in the brain, is the
smoke of torment and the pangs of re-
morse, the fret and the fever that come to
those who tread the primrose path OF
dalliance. Alas, 1t is only too well known
that 10 SOW saloon means harvest OF
feuds and drunken bouts, blasted names
and broken homes, weIl-filled iails and
expensive gallows.
Try 10 invent as many euphuistic
uhrases as we will, the saloon is potent
baneful shadow on our civilization; yea
it wastes like the moth and blights like
the mlldew; it smites like the scythe and
gnaws like the undying worm. Talk
about the horrors and desolation OF war
or the stalking of pestilence from house
to house in the still night air What Is
that dread power which, though boldly
seen, Is yet cunningly concealed, and in
hut and palace alike IS menace TO our
peace and virtue, and swings It's ak and lifts
I its iconoclastic hammer over the objects
that are most endeared to our affections,
so that year in and year out it seems as If
our land were draped in a black pail and
plague or battle were evermore IN
progress? Ah, gloss and whitewash and
e1tenuate as we may, the saloon In lis best
ASPECT is more like dynamite bonn b
than any thing else.
Surely 1t goes without saying that if it
we're a school OF patriotism and high
ideals every r1ghi-minded itiZen would
hail its open doors and bless its brewed or
distilled wares, but as rule its life is the
deadllest polson-its breath of perfume
fills one with shivers of agony its atmos-
phere shrlve!s and withers everything
good, true or beautiful, its kiss robs health
of its vigor and youth of its comeliness
its. whisper sounds like hiss. aid its
steady influence means death and destruc.
ton.
1t is just as i'm BOSS ible to hatch canary
from a scorpion'8 egg or get a speckled
trout from devilish spawn as to evolve
noble manhood from Fagin's den or
liquor doggery. Yes, it is easier for
sklf TO outride the white pillows of
Nlagara's current and shoot down into
the boiling gulf of rock and foam unhurt
than it is for boy or girl, man or woman,
TO pass unscathed on the lurid and thun.
derOus stream of public drink.
1t is too painfully apparent that the
saloon makes right living difficult. if not
absolutely impossible. AS city We want
TO cultivate, not what stunts and paral-
Yves, but what feeds, enriches and en-
MOBILES the soul, and so long as the saloon
, rules our best civic life is handicapped
and thwarted. Just as tue marble group
OF LAGOON in the Vatican gallery at Rome
represents father and his two sons in
the tightening folds of a huge serpent,
which with every movement makes the
anguish of the victims all the sharper
and their helpless writings all the more
pathetic, so with every new strain OF the
saloon power the agony of its sufferers
has grown intenser and its remorseless
coil and grip more close and terrible.
The hour OF uttermost crisis has come,