328 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



May, 192^ 



uninvited, and certainly not wanted, and 

 make trouble between me and my wife. 

 What sort of Christianity do you call that?" 



Of course no separation followed. When 

 the husband asked me what he was to do, I 

 told him to send his stock of liquors back, 

 with the explanation that his wife objected 

 to his going iiito the business, adding that 

 there would be no trouble. 



By the way, friends, I got a glimpse from 

 this incident of years ago of what might 

 happen when the motJicru of our laud have 

 something to say about making and enforc- 

 ing our laws, especially those laws pertain- 

 ing to the protection of our little ones. I 

 have seen in my day many women that the 

 world would call handsome; but I do not 

 remember any other woman who impressed 

 me as did that slender young wife as she 

 with tears in her eyes raised her hand and 

 issued what we might call an "emancipa- 

 tion proclamation" from the saloon busi- 

 ness. 



How about my skeptical friend who boast- 

 ed that infidels go to work and do things 

 without praying or singing hymns? Just as 

 we got out of the door he was fairly bub- 

 bling over with enthusiasm at vti/ method of 

 doing missionary work. He said, almost in 

 the language of my good old friend Daniel 

 Wells, who had the jewelry store, some- 

 thing like this: 



"Mr. Eoot, if th.is is religion, I will take 

 stock in it, and I have not a word to say 

 against it."* 



Eight along in line with this, as illustrat- 

 ing what prayer may do when everything 

 else fails, the following comes in well here. 

 Some seven miles from my home there was 

 a market gardener who worked hard and 

 raised beautiful fruit and vegetables. But 

 he was an intemperate man. Again and 

 again he would load up a great wagon-rack 

 of stuff and go to some town to sell it; and 

 when the money was all in his pocket he 

 would go into a saloon where the inmates 

 would succeed in getting every dollar that 

 his poor family needed for the necessaries 

 of life. Why is it that a man will toil early 

 and late for weeks and months, and then let 

 the saloon keepers rob him of his hard earn- 

 ings? I happened to know that this man had 

 gone to Medina with a load of stuff, includ- 

 ing choice grapes, peaches and apples that 



* My good friends, let us stop and consider the 

 above a little. In perhaps less than one hour of 

 strenuous work I stopped the opeiiing of saloons 

 in that little town. There had never been one 

 there before, and there has never been one there 

 since. Not only the two or three children belong- 

 ing to this man and wife, but the whole commun- 

 ity for miles around, were saved from — who can 

 tell what? Just that one little short prayer did 

 it all. And what is to hinder doing this sort of 

 prohibition work right here in our. own land? And 

 then consider my skeptical friend. I do not know 

 whether ho turned over a new leaf or not; but I 

 was able to give him a demonstration of the power 

 of prayer, which he had been ridiculing all his 

 life, and I am sure it made him a better man if 

 nothing more. 



The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man 

 availeth much.- — ^James 5:16, 



he had worked hard to produce, and that 

 once more he Avas obliged to confess to his 

 wife and children that drink had taken it 

 all. One of my mission Sunday schools was 

 only a few miles from his home. I think I 

 owned a horse and buggy of my own abotit 

 that time, and so I drove over after Sunday 

 school. As soon as I made known my errand 

 the whole family resented it. They felt 

 humiliated to have one who was almost an 

 entire stranger call on them to get particu- 

 lars in regard to it. The wife especially 

 seemed pained and hurt, and I could get 

 scarcely a word from lier. As a last resort 

 I asked if they would kneel with me in pray- 

 er. My prayer was something like the other 

 one, and I asked the dear Lord to bless the 

 outcome of my visit, even tliougli it might 

 have been ill-timed. To tell the truth, I had 

 so little faith that I felt a great deal dis- 

 couraged, and resolved I would not undertake 

 such a task again. But it was one of my 

 happy surprises, as I arose from my knees, 

 to find both man and wife had been crying. 

 The good woman broke down, and amid sobs 

 told me of her troubles. Oh, what a woeful 

 story it was! He had usually taken his 

 crops to Cleveland; but the saloon-keepers 

 had plucked him there so much that she 

 persuaded him to go to Medina, but there 

 the result seemed to be even worse. He 

 finally began to confess; and before he fin- 

 ished he told me the whole story. After 

 our four or five saloons in Medina had got 

 him well "loaded" up they began borrow- 

 ing money of him, and he lent it right and 

 left, without taking a scrap of paper nor 

 even knowing where it went. Finally, as he 

 talked it over, he said something as fpl- 

 lows: 



"Mr. Eoot, the grand jury is now in ses- 

 sion in Medina. I will go down bright and 

 early tomorrow morning, and tell the story 

 as I have told it to you. ' ' 



He kept this promise. In the mean time 

 one of the saloon-keepers who had taken 

 the greater part of the forty or fifty dollars 

 the man had received for his crop came 

 forward; and after I had talked with him 

 he owned up, but explained it by saying 

 that he knew the poor man would lose every 

 cent he had, and so he took it. He said he 

 had planned to return it the next time he 

 met him when he was sober. The result of 

 that brief prayer was the breaking up of 

 the saloon business in our town. Mr. Bar- 

 ber had caught every one of them red- 

 handed, so to speak. It was not long be- 

 fore I received an intimation that, when I 

 was starting Sunday schools and sticking to 

 the Sunday school business, I was probably 

 all right; but when I started out to make 

 raids like the one mentioned above, on Sun- 

 day nights, I was away off, and I would get 

 into a lot of trouble unless I "attended to 

 my own business" and stopped meddling 

 with things outside my province. The man 

 who gave me the warning died only a short 

 time ago; but before he died he came to 



