The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-06-24
E.. II. DILLON & co.

talk won't it?"
 We went to Hoke Smiths office, but that gentleman was too shrewd for Mrs. Nation. He recognized her when nounced and immediately threw his cigar into a cuspidor. Mrs. Nation was satisfied to give him a mild rep rtmand, and we left for more fertile fields.
 Down to the police station the little woman marched, followed by a crowd which jeered and laughed at her. When we went into the station the chief was seated at his desk smoking big black cigar. Mrs. Nation went up to him grasped the cigar and crushed 1t in her hand. Don't you know you are smoking yourself into hell?" she screamed. Then she lit in- to the chief and gave him the warm est ten minutes he had experienced for some time.
 Of course the newspapers were full of Mrs. Nations doings and none could be more pleased at the publicity than she. She would get out on the street at o'clock in the morning and work until the matinee. I asked her once why she did it. Its good advertis- ing, son. she smiled. Tt gets the people into the theater and we need the money"
 Mrs. Nation cleared nearly s15O,eeO from her lectures in churches and theaters. She would refuse, however, to go to church if a theater made her a better offer A minister once upbraided her for this. but she snapped him up with, When I fish, go where the fishes are.'
 It Is bitter commentary on her life that she died leaving an estate of only $1o,000. All the money she made went to support useless tracts and grating n cd papers. One paper, published in Wash ington, D. C., ate, up thousands of dol lars of he. money. She even mort gagged her home, she told me- to help keep this paper going. Her estate consisted of few houses and lots in ance policy and a bank account of $1, 060 in Alexandria, Va. Her only daughter. Mrs. Charlton A. McNab. re- ceived the estate The Woman's Chris tan Temperance Union of Kansas was left Mrs. Nations autobiography, Book of My Life"
 Mrs. Nation died of paresis, brought 'on by 8 nervous breakdown from wor- ry over a lawsuit to recover money due for her lectures. She died as she had lived after she found herself fa- nous. She was obsessed with the de- sire to get money. I have always been in doubt whether or not she was
 
 whether she saw in it a method for gain. She was either a shrewd, un- scrupilous business woman, or she was insane. I am more inclined to believe from the contradictions in her charac- ter, that she lost her mind before her first saloon smashing expedition.
 It was Carrie Nations boast that when she died the Lord would raise up other women to. ''carry the nation" The pity of her life shows the futility of a hopeless task. When she died her own Kansas, which she made dry was overrun with bootleggers and dives. She witnessed the pro- hibition wave she saw the reaction, and that the Southern states had be- gun to repeal the laws which they found impossible to enforce. It was these facts, 1t is said, that went far toward making her a. broken, disap- pointed old woman during her last years, when any one could lead her without resistance. The hopelessness of her efforts to establish a reform through fanaticism, the ceaseless de- mands of the blood-suckers who lived from her earnings, her lonely life and her death without friends to comfort her made the tragedy in Carrie Ma tion's life.