The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation
"Could Jesus Christ have done more?" I had never heard of Spiritualism
that I knew of, up to this time. This colony brought mechanics, merchants
and musicians with them. I was in great confusion about this matter, not
knowing what to think, for she did some superhuman things. Up stairs
we had a large safe full of old books. I was looking over them one day,
came to a little book called "Spiritualism Exposed". I immediately went
to the orchard, sat under a tree, as my custom was, when I wished to read,
for there I could be quiet. I read the little book through, before I stopped.
This blessed lesson showed me to my entire satisfaction, that modern
spiritualism is witchcraft. The writer took the instances in the Bible.
God told Moses: "You must not suffer a witch to live;" see it at the
court of Pharoah, and that they have "superhuman power." There are
two kingdoms. One of darkness, and one of light. God rules in the latter;
The Devil in the former. Both have powers above the power of man.
The magicians at Pharoah's court were wizards; and the woman of Endor
was a witch. The Bible speaks of dealing with "familiar spirits." Manasseh,
Saul, and other Kings, were cursed for such. Gal. 5th has it as
one of the "mortal sins." The Devil can do lying miracles to deceive. He
will heal the body, or appear to do it, to damn the soul. I find this in
"Christian Science." This is the mark of the "Beast" or carnal mind. Man
is but a beast without the new birth, or spirit of God. Carnality always
seeks to elevate itself. Grace is humble, and sees nothing good outside of
God. The mark of the beast, is the number, or mark of a man; that is
carnality or the Beast. Rev. 13:18.
CHAPTER IV.
MY FIRST MARRIAGE.--A BITTER DISAPPOINTMENT.--MOTHER GLOYD.--MY
DRUGGED AND WHISKEY MURDERED HUSBAND.--LOSING MY POSITION AS
TEACHER.--SECOND MARRIAGE.--LOSS OF PROPERTY.--KEEPING HOTEL.--
STRUGGLES FOR DAILY FOOD.--THE AFFLICTIONS OF MY CHILD.--ANSWER
TO PRAYER.
In the fall of 1865, Dr. Gloyd, a young physician, called to see my
father to secure the country school, saying he wished to locate in our
section of the country, and wanted to take a school that winter, and then
he could decide where he would like to practice his profession.
This man was a thorough student, spoke, and read, several different
languages; he boarded with. I liked him, and stood in awe of him because
of his superior education, never thinking that he loved me, until he
astonished me one evening by kissing me. I had never had a gentleman
to take such a privilege and felt shocked, threw up my hands to my face,
saying several times: "I am ruined." My aunt and mother had instilled
great reserve in my actions, when in company of gentlemen, so much so
that I had never allowed one to sit near or hold my hand. This was not
because I did not like their society, but I had been taught that to inspire
respect or love from a man, you must keep him at a distance. This often
made me awkward and reserved, but it did me no harm. When I learned
that Dr. Gloyd loved me, I began to love him. He was an only child.
His parents had but a modest living. My mother was not pleased with
seeing a growing attachment between us, for there was another match she
had planned for me. When she saw this she would not allow me to sit
alone in the room with him, so our communication was mostly by writing
letters. I never knew Shakespeare until he read it to me, and I became
an ardent admirer of the greatest poet. The volume of Shakespeare on
his table was our postoffice. In the morning at breakfast he would manage
to call the name "Shakespeare;" then I would know there was a letter
for me in its leaves. After teaching three months he went to Holden,
Mo., and located; sent for his father and mother and in two years we
were married.
{illust. caption =
MRS. NATION IS SITTING WHERE SHE STOOD AT HER FIRST MARRIAGE IN THE PARLOR
OF HER OLD HOME IN CASS COUNTY, MISSOURI.}
My father and mother warned me that the doctor was addicted to
drink, but I had no idea of the curse of rum. I did not fear anything, for I
was in love, and doubted in him nothing. When Dr. Gloyd came up to
marry me the 21st of November, 1867, I noticed with pain, that his countenance
was not bright, he was changed. The day was one of the gloomiest
I ever saw, a mist fell, and not a ray of sunshine. I felt a foreboding
on the day I had looked forward to, as being one of the happiest. I did not
find Dr. Gloyd the lover I expected. He was kind but seemed to want to
be away from me; used to sit and read, when I was so hungry for his
caresses and love. I have heard that this is the experience of many other
young married women. They are so disappointed that their husbands
change so after marriage. With my observation and experience I believe
that men have it in their power to keep the love of ninety-nine women out
of a hundred. Why do women lose love for their husbands? I find it is
mostly due to indifference on the part of the husband. I often hear the
experience of those poor abandoned sisters. I ask, Why are you in this house
of sin and death? When I can get their confidence, many of them say: "I
married a man; he drank, and went with other women. I got discouraged
or spiteful, and went to the bad also." I find that drink causes so much
enmity between the sexes. Drinking men neglect their wives. Their wives
become jealous. Men often go with abandoned women under the influence
of that drink that animates the animal passions and asks not for the
association of love, but the gratification of lust. Men do not go to the
houses of ill-fame to meet women they love but oftener those they almost hate.
The drink habit destroys in men the appreciation of a home life, and when a
woman leaves all others for one man, she does, and should, expect his
companionship, and is not satisfied without it. Libertines, taking advantage
of this, select women whose husbands are neglectful, and he wins victims
by his attentions, and poor woman, as at the first, is beguiled. Marriage,
while it is the blissful consummation of pure love, is the most serious of
all relations, and girls and boys should early be instructed about the secrets
of their own natures, the object of marriage, and the serious results of any
marriage where true love is not the object. I confess myself that I
was not fit to marry with the ignorance of its holy purpose. Sunday school
teachers, mothers, fathers, and ministers, look into God's word and see the
results of sin. God has written of this so as to force you to educate your
children. Talk freely. Truth will purify everything it comes in contact
with. Ignorance is not innocence, but is the promoter of crime: "My
people are destroyed for lack of knowledge."
About five days after we were married, Dr. Gloyd came in, threw
himself on the bed and fell asleep. I was in the next room and saw his
mother bow down over his face. She did not know I saw her. When
she left, I did the same thing, and the fumes of liquor came in my
face. I was terror stricken, and from that time on, I knew why he was
so changed. Not one happy moment did I see; I cried most all the time.
My husband seemed to understand that I knew his condition. Twice,
with tears in his eyes, he remarked: "Oh! Pet, I would give my right arm
to make you happy." He would be out until late every night. I never
closed my eyes. His sign in front of the door on the street would creak
in the wind, and I would sit by the window waiting to hear his footsteps.
I never saw him stagger. He would lock himself up in the
"Masonic Lodge" and allow no one to see him. People would call for
him in case of sickness, but he could not be found.
My anguish was unspeakable, I was comparatively a child. I wanted
some one to help me. He was a mason. I talked to a Mr. Hulitt, a
brother mason, I begged of him to help me save my precious husband.
I talked to a dear friend, Mrs. Clara Mize, a Christian, hoping to get
some help in that direction, but all they could say, was. "Oh, what a
pity, to see a man like Dr. Gloyd throw himself away!" The world was
all at once changed to me, it was like a place of torture. I thought
certainly, there must be a way to prevent this suicide and murder. I now
know, that the impulse was born in me then to combat to the death
this inhumanity to man.
I believe the masons were a great curse to Dr. Gloyd. These men
would drink with him. There is no society or business that separates
man and wife, or calls men from their homes at night, that produces
any good results. I believe that secret societies are unscriptural, and
that the Masonic Lodge has been the ruin of many a home and character.
I was so ignorant I did not know that I owed a duty to myself to
avoid gloomy thoughts; did not know that a mother could entail a curse
on her offspring before it was born. Oh, the curse that comes through
heredity, and this liquor evil, a disease that entails more depravity on
children unborn, than all else, unless it be tobacco. There is an object
lesson taught in the Bible. The mother of Samson was told by an angel to
"drink neither wine nor strong drink" before her child was born, and not
to allow him to do so after he was born. God shows by this, that these
things are injurious. Mothers often make drunkards of their own children,
before they are born. My parents heard that Dr. Gloyd was drinking.
My father came down to visit us, and I went home with him. My
mother told me I must never go back to my husband again. I knew the
time was near at hand, when I would be helpless, with a drunken husband,
and no means of support. What could I do? I kept writing to
"Charlie," as I called him. He came to see me once; my mother treated
him as a stranger. He expressed much anxiety about my confinement in
September; got a party to agree to come for him at the time; but
my mother would not allow it. In six weeks after my little girl was
born, my mother sent my brother with me to Holden to get my trunk and
other things to bring them home. Her words to me were: "If you stay
in Holden, never return home again." My husband begged me to stay with
him; he said: "Pet, if you leave me, I will be a dead man in six months."
I wanted to stay with him, but dared not disobey my mother and be
thrown out of shelter, for I saw I could not depend on my husband. I
did not know then that drinking men were drugged men, diseased men.
His mother told me that when he was growing up to manhood, his father,
Harry Gloyd, was Justice of the Peace in Newport, Ohio, twelve years, and
that Charlie was so disgusted with the drink cases, that he would go in
a room and lock himself in, to get out of their hearing; that he never
touched a drop until he went in the army, the 118th regiment, Thomas L.
Young being the Colonel. Dr. Gloyd was a captain. In the society of these
officers he, for the first time, began to drink intoxicants. He was fighting
to free others from slavery, and he became a worse slave than those he
fought to free. In a little less than six months from the day my child
was born, I got a telegram telling of his death. His father died a few
months before he did, and mother Gloyd was left entirely alone.
Mother Gloyd was a true type of a New England housewife, and I
had always lived in the south. I could not say at this time that I loved
her, although I respected her very highly. But I wanted to be with the
mother of the man I loved more than my own life; I wanted to supply his
place if possible. My father gave me several lots; by selling one of these
and Dr. Gloyd's library and instruments, I built a house of three rooms
on one of the lots and rented the house we lived in, which brought us in
a little income, but not sufficient to support us. I wanted to prepare myself