The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation
The nation welcomes her crusade;
All o'er the land, pure women charmed,
Are eager forming, each one armed
With glittering hatchets.
Talk of "defenders of the nation!"
Woman's slight arm sends consternation
'Mong its worst foes, on social fields,
Worse than the "Mauser," when she wields
The "smashing" hatchet.
Mahommed sought by arts refined,
To raise his standard o'er mankind;
But found success for aye denied,
Until at length he boldly tried
The battle-hatchet.
When soon his power imperial, shone
O'er countless tribes, in widening zone;
And wine was banished from the board
Of Moslem millions, by the sword
And victor's hatchet.
So may it be with this great nation,
When woman tests her high vocation;
Persuasion proves a futile power
To quell the joints, but quick they cower
At the whirling hatchets.
True chivalry must come again,
And men, more noble, but less vain,
Responding to its modern sense,
Guard woman, while in self-defense
She plies her hatchet.
When honor bright appeals to men
"The weak confounds the mighty," then
Side doors and slot-machines must close
And such games hide, when women pose
With sharpened hatchets.
'Else are men brutes, and all their pride
And gallant valor, they must hide
In coward shirking. This shameful end
They must accept, or else defend
The "home-guard" hatchet.
'Tis woman's crucial, fateful hour,
Her fine soul's test, 'gainst man's coarse power.
In war, she can not be man's peer,
But for home's weal, all men sincere
Bow to her hatchet.
Man's "Vigilance" is oft condoned,
When Vice and Crime has been enthroned.
Shall women then, be more to blame,
When she In Virtue's sacred name
Raises her hatchet?
'Tis she must grasp the nation's prize--
A pure, proud home, earth's paradise.
The joints must go, but, never till
Woman exerts her potent will
And holy hatchet.
As men, once slaves, their freedom gained
By force, and power at length attained;
So, cultured brains and force combined,
Shall mark the sphere of womankind
And surely reach it.
In valor, more Joan d'Arc's are needed,
Woman's high social power's conceded,
But she herself, must blaze the path
To public morals, by her own worth
And "Little Hatchet."
--C. BUTLER-ANDREWS.
Dr. Howard Russell told in his address at Kokomo, Sunday, March
24, how when Mrs. Nation was on her way from Topeka to Peoria
recently, a passenger on the same train came into the car where she
was and sang a song of his own composition. He was evidently a farmer
with a large stock of mother-wit. He was lame, and limped into the
car, and hopped up and down while he sang. A great deal of merry
enthusiasm was aroused, and the car, packed full of people, expressed
their appreciation by round after round of applause. It is evident that
Mrs. Nation is quite popular in that part of the country.
The song is as follows:
Hurrah, Samantha, Mrs. Nation is in town!
So get on your bonnet and your Sunday-meeting gown.
Oh, I am so blamed excited I am hopping up and down,
Hurrah, Samantha, Carrie Nation is in town!
Get you ready, we are going to the city,
Where the "Home Defenders" are all feeling gay,
And the mothers all exclaiming, "Its a pity
That Carrie Nation does not come here every day."
I want to hear that mirror-smashing music,
And to look in Mrs. Nation's blessed face,
And to see the saloon men all cavorting
With that hatchet bringing sadness to their face.
Hurrah, Samantha, Mrs. Nation is in town!
So wear your brightest bonnet and your alapaca gown.
Oh, I am so jubilated I'm a-hopping up and down,
Hurrah! hurrah! Samantha, Mrs. Nation is in town.
OUTCAST.
(Found in manuscript among the personal effects of a prostitute, 22
years of age, who died in the Commercial Hospital, Cincinnati, O.)
Once I was pure as the snow, but I fell,
Fell like the snowflakes from heaven to hell;
Fell to be trampled as filth on the street
Fell to be scoffed, to be spit on and beat;
Pleading--cursing--dreading to die,
Selling my soul to whoever would buy,
Dealing in shame for a morsel of bread,
Hating the living and fearing the dead.
Merciful God, have I fallen so low?
And yet I was once like the beautiful snow.
Once I was fair as the beautiful snow,
With an eye like a crystal, a heart like its glow,
Once I was loved for my innocent grace--
Flattered and sought for the charms of my face!
Fathers,--mothers,--sisters,--all,
God and myself have I lost by my fall;
The veriest wretch that goes shivering by,
Will make a wide sweep lest I wander too nigh;
For all that in on or above me I know,
There is nothing so pure as the beautiful snow.
How strange it should be that this beautiful snow
Should fall on a sinner with nowhere to go!
How strange it should be when the night comes again,
If the snow and the ice struck my desperate brain.
Fainting,--freezing,--dying alone,
Too wicked for prayer, too weak for a moan,
To be heard in the streets of the crazy town,
Gone mad in the joy of the snow coming down;
To be and to die in my terrible woe,
With a bed and shroud of the beautiful snow.
Helpless and foul as the trampled snow
Sinner, despair not! Christ stoopeth low
To rescue the soul that is lost in sin,
And raise it to life and enjoyment again.
Groaning--bleeding--dying for thee
The crucified hung on the cursed tree,
His accent of mercy fell soft on thine ear,
"Is there mercy for me? Will He heed my weak prayer?"
O, God! in the stream that for sinners did flow,
Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.
THE LIPS THAT TOUCH LIQUOR MUST
NEVER TOUCH MINE.
You are coming to woo me, but not as of yore,
For I hastened to welcome your ring at the door,
For I trusted that he, who stood waiting for me then,
Was the brightest, the noblest, the truest of men.
Your lips on my own when they printed "Farewell,"
Had never been soiled by the "Beverage of Hell,"
But they come to me now with the bacchanal sign,
And the lips that touch liquor must never touch mine.
I think of that night, in the garden alone,
When whispering you told me your heart was my own,
That your love in the future should faithfully be,
Unshared by another, kept only for me.
Oh sweet to my soul is the memory still,
Of the lips that met mine when they murmured "I will,"
But now to their pleasure no more I incline,
For the lips that touch liquor must never touch mine.
O, John! How it crushed me when first in your face,
The pen of the "Rum Fiend" had written "Disgrace,"
And turned me in silence and tears from that breath,
All poisoned and foul from the chalice of death.
It shattered the hopes I had cherished to last,
It darkened the future and clouded the past,
It shattered my Idol and ruined the shrine,
For the lips that touch liquor must never touch mine.
I loved you, O! dearer than language can tell,
And you saw it, you proved it, you knew it too well;
But the man of my love was far other than he
Who now from the "tap room" came reeling to me.
In manhood and honor, so noble and right,
His heart was so true and his genius so bright,
And his Soul was unstained, unpolluted by wine,
But the lips that touch liquor must never touch mine.
You promised reform; but I trusted in vain;
Your pledge was but made to be broken again,
And the lover so false to his promises now,
Will not as a husband be true to his vow.
The word must be spoken that bids you depart,
Though the effort to speak it would shatter my heart,
Though in silence with blighted affections I pine,
Yet the lips that touch liquor must never touch mine.
If one spark in your bosom of virtue remain,
Go fan it with prayer, till it kindle again,
Resolved, "God helping," in future to be
From wine and its follies unshackled and free.
And when you have conquered this foe of your Soul,
In manhood and honor beyond its control,
This heart will again beat responsive to thine,
And the lips that touch liquor must never touch mine.
--Unknown.
WAR AMONG THE POETS.
From the Royal Arch News, the warhorse of the booze hoodlums,
the snapdragon of the jungle, the siren of Hades.
"The Lips that Touch Liquor Shall Never Touch Mine," so sings--
Miss Cora Vere, who writes jingle for the Anti-Saloon press, and this is
the reply that the R. A. News would make:
The lips that touch liquor don't hanker to touch
The lips of a maiden like you--not much!
If a man--not a milksop--should happened to wed
A creature like you, he had better be dead;
For never a moment of peace would he see
Unless he would bow to your every decree,
If he smoked a cigar, or drank beer, you would make
A hell of his home, and perhaps you would break
Into court and denounce him, in search of divorce,
And fools would uphold you, as matter of course.
Perhaps, like the Nation, a hatchet you'd take
And his bottles of beer and cigar-boxes break,
And get your name blazoned in all of the papers,
By your rowdydow talk and unwomanly capers,
No! the lips that touch liquor don't hanker to touch
The lips of a female like you are--not much!
I am not a poet myself but I am fortunate in having a friend that
is, so I called on him to meet this antagonist with a nobler steel, and
behold the defeat of this champion of a dying cause:
AN AMERICAN COUNTESS, OR LADY VERE.
"The lips that touch liquor, shall never touch mine;"
The meaning is clear, the sense is divine,
Bespeaks a clear head, an unsullied heart--
A fortune from which no sane man would part.
O, God! give us more of such women, we pray,
Then slop-pots of whisky we'd urge to the fray.
The hatchets of "Carrie," and Cora Vere,
Would knock out the spigots and bungs of whisky.
An army like those would drive them pell-mell;
For safety they'd Hazen, and think they did well
To escape from the jury of women turned loose
Who have drank to its dregs the damnation of booze.
The idea that women would "hanker" to touch,
The lips of a demijohn; I guess not--"not much;"
A forty-rod pole should line up between,
No nearer than that a fair lady be seen.
So now, "Indiana, of Royal Arch News,"
You've taken great pains to give us your views;
I take up the gauntlet, and venture reply;
I stop not to argue, but simply defy.
You say in one case one had better be dead
Than with a good woman in wedlock be wed:
But somewhere I've read your kind do not die;
But passing from earth, 'are hung up to dry."
Besotted with whiskey,--unfitting to tell,
Even Satan himself avoiding the "smell;"
Before then we part, I would bid you adieu,
Reform while you may--begin life anew.
If you have a surplus--like Lady Vere,
Please pass them around, turn them over to me;
"A la Hobson"--I'd venture to sample the store,
And look o'er the field--yes! and "hanker" for more.
Sparta, Mo. D. E. GRAYSTON.
"GOD BLESS OUR CARRIE NATION."
May she live to see the day,
When the liquor traffic will be no more,
When the traffic of the devil
Will all be swept away
And God's peace remain supreme from shore to shore.
God bless the hatchet wielder,
May it never cease to strike,
Till it drives the cursed intemperance from our land
Let us stand for God and duty,
Till we gain the Eden of beauty
And be what God designed for us,
A happy union band.
God bless our Carrie Nation,
Give her courage, strength, and might,
To go forth in former battlements arrayed.
Till this cursed intemperance,