he gasped. "I'd be afraid to let you. Something might
happen!"

"If anything happens, it will be in a good cause," I reminded him. "Let
us go."

Down-town we found the streets so packed with men that the cars could
not get through, and with the greatest difficulty we reached the stand
which had been erected for the speaker. It was a gorgeous affair. There
were flaring torches all around it, and a "bull's-eye," taken from the
head of a locomotive, made an especially brilliant patch of light.
The stand had been erected at a point where the city's four principal
streets meet, and as far as I could see there were solid masses of
citizens extending into these streets. A glee-club was doing its best
to help things along, and the music of an organette, an instrument much
used at the time in campaign rallies, swelled the joyful tumult. As
I mounted the platform the crowd was singing "Vote for Betty and the
Baby," and I took that song for my text, speaking of the helplessness
of women and children in the face of intemperance, and telling the crowd
the only hope of the Coatesville women lay in the vote cast by their men
the next day.

Directly in front of me stood a huge and extraordinarily
repellent-looking negro. A glance at him almost made one shudder, but
before I had finished my first sentence he raised his right arm straight
above him and shouted, in a deep and wonderfully rich bass voice,
"Hallelujah to the Lamb!" From that point on he punctuated my speech
every few moments with good, old-fashioned exclamations of salvation
which helped to inspire the crowd. I spoke for almost an hour. Three
times in my life, and only three times, I have made speeches that have
satisfied me to the degree, that is, of making me feel that at least I
was giving the best that was in me. The speech at Coatesville was one
of those three. At the end of it the good-natured crowd cheered for ten
minutes. The next day Coatesville voted for prohibition, and, rightly or
wrongly, I have always believed that I helped to win that victory.

Here, by the way, I may add that of the two other speeches which
satisfied me one was made in Chicago, during the World's Fair, in 1893,
and the other in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1912. The International Council
of Women, it will be remembered, met in Chicago during the Fair, and
I was invited to preach the sermon at the Sunday-morning session. The
occasion was a very important one, bringing together at least five
th