June 15. 1911 



379 



ture is a boy or a girl; but suppose near his 

 home is a beer-shop, and that, sooner or la- 

 ter, some fiend in human form should, for 

 the sake of a few dirty nickels, coax that 

 boy or girl to take a drink, and finally ac- 

 quire a taste for intoxicating liquor. 



Right at the very entrance to the gate- 

 way to Yellowstone National Park is a little 

 town. I have forgotten its name. Jiut the 

 ticket agent at that place, when he saw my 

 name on my baggage, scraped up acquain- 

 tance, and finally volunteered the informa- 

 tion that the whole town — men, women, and 

 children — were going crazy over drinking 

 beer. He said the fathers and mothers both 

 drank beer, the children all drank beer, and 

 the habies were taught to like ))eer before 

 they could talk or walk; and yet Uncle Sam 

 has set apart a great extent of territory, and 

 em])loyed soldiers to watch over it and pro- 

 tect the wild animals and look after the 

 beauty of the landscape, to the extent of ar- 

 resting any camper who might throw an 

 empty tin can on the ground instead of dig- 

 ging a hole and burying it. Uncle Sam has 

 done all this, and I rejoice that he has rec- 

 ognized the fitness of things enough to pre- 

 serve the natural beauty and attractiveness 

 of this wonderful region; but right at the 

 very entrance of that park are these hell- 

 breeding saloons, and nothing is done by 

 the government to prevent the babies get- 

 ting a taste for liquor. This state of affairs 

 may not prevail there just now. I sincerely 

 hope a reform has come about; but at the 

 time of my visit, as you may remember, 

 drinks were sold all over the park; and one 

 of ovir party, a rich banker, was too drunk 

 most of the time to keep still. He even went 

 off fishing on one of those beautiful lakes, 

 and not only tried to get every one on the 

 boat to take a drink from some of his vari- 

 ous bottles, but he became so drunk himself 

 that he had to be carried back to the hotel. 

 One nice bright-looking chap, who had evi- 

 dently been considering me a sort of prohibi- 

 tion crank, came over to my side and said 

 he had had enough of loaded bankers who 

 paraded their money and their expensive 

 liquors at one and the same time. Let me 

 digress a little right here. 



Next Sunday, May 28, is to be "peace" 

 Sunday. Sermons on universal peace are 

 to be preached all over the world; and the 

 Sunday-schools are to have the second one 

 of my texts for their golden text. The peo- 

 ple of the whole wide world are to send up 

 ])etitions to God and to their rulers, among 

 all the nations of the earth, to resort to ar- 

 bitration instead of war for settling their 

 mutual diflferences. I have before mention- 

 ed the fact that the almost countless mil- 

 lions that the world is spending for ships of 

 war and standing armies is worse than wast- 

 ed. Let me make a little extract from the 

 Sunday School Times: 



For foreign missions Christians spend about 822,- 

 000,000; for war, Gernaany alone spends ?160,000,000. 

 Lloyd George, British Chancellor of the Exchequer, 

 reports that the various countries of the world 

 spend annually .?2,2oO,000.000 for war— an increase of 

 §1,000,000,000 in twenty years, exclusive of.'pensions. 



Now let me digress still again: 



Some years ago there was a poor woman 

 living a little out of our town who had a 

 small piece of land. She made her living 

 by growing garden stuff and carrying it on 

 foot to the hotels. I think almost my first 

 acquaintance with her was in stopping to ad- 

 mire some beautiful cucumbers and other 

 garden stuff that she had succeeded in grow- 

 ing in advance of her neighbors. Mrs. Root 

 and I soon became i)retty well acquainted 

 with her. One day she came to town on 

 foot — a distance of about a mile and a half 

 — with a little money she had saved up to 

 pay the tax on her little jjlace. There had 

 been an advance in taxation that she did 

 not know about. I think she had saved for 

 taxes about ten dollars; and she had figured 

 that, after paying I he taxes, there would be 

 money enough left to buy some sheets for 

 bedding, of which she stood very much in 

 need; but on her way home she stopped at 

 our house and told Mrs. Root her troubles. 

 The taxes took almost every cent of her lit- 

 tle hoard, and she was forced to go home 

 without the sheeting. She felt so bad about 

 it that she cried; and she told Mrs. Root how 

 hard she had worked to support herself and 

 pay the taxes. Mrs. Root felt so sorry for 

 her that she made her a present of some 

 sheeting she had in the house. One reason 

 why she was so anxious about the sheets 

 was, the ones she had long been using were 

 getting to be so old and shabby that she 

 feared to have anybody see them in case she 

 might be sick. Poor as she was, she had a 

 commendable pride in having things "de- 

 cent and in order " when old age or sickness 

 should make it impossible for her any lon- 

 ger to keep up the garden and carry the pro- 

 duce to town. Now, there are thousands of 

 poor hard-working peoi)le, even to-day, like 

 this woman, who find it quite a burden to 

 pay their taxes. Well, then, where does 

 this money, the hard earnings of our hard- 

 working people, go to? What becomes of it? 

 I am sorry to say I feel sad to think that a 

 large proportion of it (I do not know just 

 how much) goes to build great war-ships 

 and keep up a standing army. Another 

 part goes into the hands of greedy grafters 

 who are sent to the different capitals of our 

 States to look after and protect (!) the mon- 

 ey that is collected by taxation. Some of 

 the money, thank God, goes to establish 

 sanitary measures for protecting the babies 

 like the one in the picture; but our own gov- 

 ernment is in partnershij) — at least if I have 

 made no mistake — with the liquor business, 

 and ^3/-o^ec^s' the traffic that furnishes beer 

 to the innocent babies. This same govern- 

 ment is making quite a stir, as I have men- 

 tioned in another column, about selling rot- 

 ten eggs to the bakers to make cake for the 

 children; and this traffic certainly ought to 

 be stopped, without question; but what is 

 an unwholesome cake for the children, when 

 compared with beer, that blasts their young 

 lives and sends them down to the ignominy 

 of a drunkard's grave? May God be prais- 

 ed, however, that a better time is coming. 



