. Time
and again my life was threatened. On one occasion twelve armed men
guarded me from a mob, and once my wife placed herself between my body
and a desperate mountaineer. Those were perilous times for an advocate
of temperance in my native state. Now out of one hundred and twenty
counties, one hundred and seven are dry. In Georgia the licensed
saloon is gone; in North Carolina the saloon is gone; in West
Virginia, Old Virginia, Mississippi and Tennessee the saloon is gone,
while Oklahoma was born sober.

"That which made Milwaukee famous
Doesn't foam in Tennessee;
The Sunday lid in old Missouri
Was Governor Folk's decree.
Brewers, distillers and their cronies
Well may sigh;
The saloon is panic-stricken,
And the South's going dry.

"Soon the hill-side by the rill-side
Of Kentucky will be still;
Men will take their toddies
From the ripples of the rill;
Boys will grow up sober,
Mothers cease to cry;
Glory hallelujah!
The South's going dry."

Already seventeen states are dry, and there are many arid spots in the
wet states. While I cannot hope to live to see the final triumph, I
have faith to believe my children and my children's children will live
in a saloonless land, a land redeemed from a curse that has soaked its
social life in more blood and tears than all other sources of sorrow;
a land where liberty will no longer be shorn of its locks of strength
by licensed Delilahs; where manhood will no more be stripped of its
possibilities by the claws of the demon drink; where fore-doomed
generations will not reach the dawning of life's morning, to be bound
like Mazeppa to the wild, mad steed of passion and borne down the
blood lines of inheritance to the awful abuse of drunkenness.

To this end I appeal to every minister of the gospel, stir the
consciences of your hearers on this question. I appeal to the press,
that potent power for the enlightenment of the people.

"Pulpit and press with tongue and pen,
Set to new music this message to men:
Let the great work of destruction begin,
And rid our loved land of this shelter to sin.
As before the sun's brightness, the darkness must fly,
So by power of the ballot the rum curse must die,
Then cover the earth as the wide waves the sea,
With the sound of the axe at the root of the tree!"

VIII

IF I COULD LIVE LIFE OVER.

Now and then I hear an old man or an old woman say, "Even if I could