d
drew away its idol worshippers one by one, and besides the ministers,
many prominent business men helped him; my son, Thomas J., is forward
in helpin' it along. And they say that besides all the good they're
doing, they have good times too, and enjoy themselves first-rate
evenings. They don't stay out late--that's another thing Elder White
is trying to inculcate into their minds--right living in the way of
health as well as morals. Every little while he and somebody else who
is fitted for it gives short talks on subjects that will help the boys
and girls along in Temperance and all good things. The young folks
jest worship him, so they say, and I wuz glad to hear right from him.
Phila is a worker in his meetin' house, and a active member, and so is
her pa and ma, and she said that there wuz no tellin' how much good he
had done.

"When he come there," sez she, "there wuz twenty saloons goin' full
blast in a village of two thousand inhabitants and the mill operatives
wuz spendin' most all they earnt there, leavin' their families to
suffer and half starve; but when Elder White opened his Church of Love
week day evenin's as well as Sunday, you have no idee what a change
there is. There isn't a saloon in the place. He has made his church so
pleasant for the young folks that he has drawn away crowds that used
to fill the saloons."

"Yes," sez I, "Thomas J. is dretful interested in it; he has gin three
lectures there."

"Yes, most all the best citizens have joined the Help Union to
fight against the Whiskey Power, though," sez Phila, "there is one
or two ministers who are afraid of contaminating their religion by
politics. They had ruther stand up in their pulpits and preach to
a few wimmen about the old Jews and the patience of Job than take
holt and do a man's work in a man's way--the only practical way,
grapple with the monster Evil at its lair, where it breeds and
fattens--the ballot-box."

"Yes," sez I, "a good many ministers think that they can't descend
into the filthy pool of politics. But it hain't reasonable, for how
are you a goin' to clean out a filthy place if them that want it clean
stand on the bank and hold their noses with one hand, and jester with
the other, and quote scripter? And them that don't want it clean are
throwin' slime and dirt into it all the time, heapin' up the loathsome
filth. Somebody has got to take holt and work as well as pray, if
these plague spots and misery breeders are ever puri