Old Times in Dixie Land Part 12

Lathrop in the vigor and the statesmanlike majesty of her arguments for the dethronement of the liquor traffic. A distinguished judge, who was not in favor of our propaganda, said there were few men in Congress who had equalled her in logic and eloquence. We mourn yet that in her death the world has lost so much that time can never replace.

One of the greatest victories won for our cause was the pa.s.sage in 1888 of a Scientific Temperance Instruction bill, by the State Legislature, for the education of the youth in the public schools, on the nature of alcohol and its effect upon the human system. Mrs. Mary Hunt of Ma.s.sachusetts, the originator of this movement for the safeguard of health against the seductions and destructions of strong drink and narcotics, spent a month at our legislature as the guest of Mrs. Mary Reade Goodale.

Daily I went with these two indefatigable workers, watched and manuvered the progress of this bill, until one of the best statutes pa.s.sed on this subject by any State was secured. Such a work for the world's glory is enough for any mortal, but we trust it has also placed Mrs. Hunt among the immortals of earthly fame.

I visited the Capital at this time and was active in the lobby, interviewing members. I sent my card to a Senator Gage, and was more than surprised when in response a tall, dignified black man presented himself.

It was difficult for a moment to determine whether to make him stand during the interview, as is usual with his color, but I said: "Senator Gage: The people have put you in this respectable and responsible position, and as other senators have occupied this chair will you please be seated?" He sat down, and he afterward voted for our bill.

After this social intercourse with Mrs. Hunt and Mrs. Goodale great impetus was given to the work in Louisiana by the establishment of a W. C.

T. U. booth at the World's Exposition in New Orleans in the year 1885. It was artistically decorated and made as attractive as ingenuity could devise. Here the world's great lights in the temperance cause were to be heard daily--in pulpits and other public places in the city. In addition to Miss Willard, Mrs. Lathrop, Mrs. Matilda B. Ca.r.s.e, Mrs. Caroline Buel, Mary Allen West, Mrs. Josephine Nichols, Mrs. Mary A. Leavitt, Mrs. Sallie F. Chapin of the National Guard, there were present from State work, Mrs.

Lide Merriwether of Tennessee, Mrs. I. C. de Veiling of Ma.s.sachusetts, Mrs. J. B. Hobbs and Mrs. Lucian Hagans of Illinois, Mrs. M. M. Snell of Mississippi, and many others. Our Louisiana Prohibition militia were in force all the time, and we had the pleasure and a.s.sistance of such brotherly giants of the temperance reform as Geo. W. Bain, I. N. Stearn, president of National Temperance Society, Jno. P. St. Johns, Hon. R. H.

McDonald of California, Rev. C. H. Mead, A. A. Hopkins, and hosts of other loyal brethren who burnished our faith and fired our zeal.

Miss Willard in the _Union Signal_ of this date said: "Mrs. Merrick speaks of the W. C. T. U. Booth as a 'tabernacle.' I consult Webster and find that a tabernacle is 'a place in which some holy or precious thing is deposited.' Aye, the definition fits. Our hearts are there, our holy cause, our blessed bonds. Again, it is a 'reliquary,' says the redoubtable Noah, 'a place for the preservation of relics.' Yea, verily. The women of Israel never turned over their relics more keenly than have W. C. T. U.

women rifled their jewelry boxes for the 'Souvenir Fund,' which has gone into the Tabernacle. It is 'a niche' too 'for the image of a saint.'

Accurate to a nicety. Heaven keeps a niche to hold our treasures, and so does the World's Exposition. Our saints are there in person and in spirit--the right hand of our power."

Mrs. Julia Ward Howe had been called by the Exposition management to preside over the Woman's Department. There was much criticism of the authorities that this honor had not been given to a Southern woman; notwithstanding that this world-renowned Bostonian was not a stranger to our people--they fully appreciated the power of her "Battle Hymn of the Republic"--it seemed unnecessary to seek so far for a head of the Exhibit.

If Southern women could create it, some one of them was surely able to direct it. Mrs. Howe came and performed this duty with marked ability, and displayed a force of character which commanded respect though it did not always win for her acquiescence in her decisions or affectionate regard from all her colleagues. I myself had much expense to incur, and received nothing, and individually I had naught special to excite my grat.i.tude, though from the first I was willing to welcome this distinguished lady, and extend to her my co-operation and hospitality. My subsequent relations to her though transient have been pleasant, and doubtless her memory of her Exposition coadjutors matches our recollection of her own regal self.

Miss Isabel Greely was her secretary--a very useful and estimable woman.

Some interesting exercises took place during one afternoon of the Exposition. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe addressed the colored people in a gallery devoted to their exhibit. There was a satisfactory audience, chiefly of the better cla.s.ses of the race. Mrs. Howe had asked me to accompany her, and when I a.s.sented some one said: "Well, you are probably the only Southern woman here who would risk public censure by speaking to a negro a.s.sembly." Mrs. Howe told them how their Northern friends had labored to put the colored people on a higher plane of civilization, and how Garrison had been dragged about the streets of Boston for their sake, and urged that they show themselves worthy of the great anti-slavery leaders who had fought their battles. Her address was extremely well received. I was then invited to speak. I told them: "The first kindly face I ever looked into was one of this race who called forth the sympathy of the world in their days of bondage. Among the people you once called masters you have still as warm, appreciative friends as any in the world. Some of us were nurtured at your b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and most of us when weaned took the first willing spoonful of food from your gentle, persuasive hands; and when our natural protectors cast us off for a fault, for reproof, for punishment, you always took us up and comforted us. Can we ever forget it?

"Have you not borne the burdens of our lives through many a long year?

When troubles came did you not take always a full share? Well do I remember, as a little child, when I saw my beloved mother die at the old plantation home. The faithful hands from the fields a.s.sembled around the door, and at her request Uncle Caleb Harris knelt by her bedside and prayed for her recovery--if it was G.o.d's will. How the men and women and children wept! And after she was laid in the earth my infant brother, six months old, was given entirely to the care of Aunt Rachel, who loved him as her own life even into his young manhood, and to the day of her death.

And who can measure your faithfulness during the late war when all our men had gone to the front to fight for their country? Your protection of the women and children of the South in those years of privation and desolation; your cultivation of our fields that fed us and our army; your care of our soldier boys on the field of battle, in camp and hospital, and the tender loyalty with which you--often alone--brought home their dead bodies so that they might be laid to sleep with their fathers, has bound to you the hearts of those who once owned you, in undying remembrance and love.

"I do not ask you to withhold any regard you may have for those who labored to make you free. Be as grateful as you can to the descendants of the people who first brought you from Africa--and then sold you 'down South' when your labor was no longer profitable to themselves. But remember, now you are free, whenever you count up your friends never to count out the women of the South. They too rejoice in your emanc.i.p.ation and have no grudges about it; and would help you to march with the world in education and true progress. As we have together mourned our dead on earth let us rejoice together in all the great resurrections now and hereafter." At the close, many colored people with tearful eyes extended a friendly hand, and Mrs. Howe too did the same.

Hon. R. H. McDonald, the California philanthropist, had been my guest during Exposition days and had won our hearts by a face that reflected the n.o.bility of his deeds. In 1890 he sent me $150 to be used for prizes offered in the public schools of New Orleans for the best essays written on temperance. The school board and Mr. Easton, the able superintendent, accepted the offer, and the presentation of the prizes was made a great public occasion in an a.s.semblage at Grunewald Hall.

There was a small contingent of Southern women whose platform services were invaluable to me, and whose loving sympathy helped me over many otherwise rough places. The first of these was Mrs. Sallie F. Chapin of South Carolina. Both in appearance and speech she was intense, tragic, and pathetic.--Her fiery eloquence captured the imagination and dragooned convictions in battalions. She did splendid pioneer platform services as superintendent of Southern Work, which place she filled until it was abolished by the National Convention of 1889, at the request of the Southern States, because the existence of that office misrepresented them in their organic relations to the National W. C. T. U. and had a trend toward violation of a platform principle against sectionalism. Mrs. Chapin lived and died an "unreconstructed Rebel." The bogey of secession of the Southern States from the National seemed to haunt her brain; but I have never been able to discover any other woman who believed that such a phantom existed; it must have been but a queer instance of reflex action from her over-stimulated Southern sentiment. Mrs. Chapin had extraordinary ability and was a marvel of endurance when her temperament is taken into the reckoning. Her heroic service deserves a lasting place in our annals.

Another Southern woman of large brain and larger heart who helped me in my days of inexperience was Mrs. Mary McGee Snell (now Hall) of Mississippi.

Like the war-horse of Scripture she scented battle afar off and gloried in combat. She was never so happy as in the heat of struggle. Her impetuous nature took her into all sorts of unusual situations, and she did not seem to be out of place--as did many other delegates--when, during a National W. C. T. U. convention, she was seen in the streets of Chicago parading at the head of a Salvation Army procession. She is essentially "a soldier of the Cross," and has carried her gifts of eloquence and the most vibrant, persuasive of voices into the Evangelistic department of our National organization. Her love of rescuing souls has kept her exclusively in evangelistic work; in her power as a gospel worker she is a Sam Jones and D. L. Moody boiled down.

The most original of our National staff-workers who came to my rescue was another full-blooded Southerner--Miss Frances E. Griffin of Alabama. She is gifted with an inimitable humor. An audience room is quickly filled when it is known that she is to be the speaker of an occasion. Though a woman of presence and dignity and a manner that befits the best, her appearance as soon as she speaks a word is a promise of fun, and her audience has begun to laugh before the time. Wit of tongue is rare with women, but Miss Griffin's equals in quality or rank the best of our American humorists. At the same time that she enlivens the seriousness of the public work which women have in hand, she is an intelligent reformer and also a true woman of the home--having for many years been the responsible bread-winner of her family, and has reared orphan children.

Miss Belle Kearney was too young during my term of office to be cla.s.sed with the workers already mentioned, for she had just begun to consecrate her life to the service of humanity. At my request she brought her fresh enthusiasm and great gifts to organize the Young Woman's Temperance Union of Louisiana. Repeated and most effective work in this State has made Louisianians feel that they have an endearing right in this Dixie-born-and-reared young woman; nor have they less pride than her native Mississippi in her present national fame as a first-cla.s.s platform speaker and progressive reformer.

Hindrances and heartaches, however, were sandwiched between our helps and happiness liberally enough to cause us to realize that she--as well as he--who wins must fight. We were not strong swimmers accustomed to breast the waves of an uneducated public disapproval; but we knew we must encounter it and nerve ourselves for the shock, putting ourselves at war against the liquor traffic and its political allies. Everywhere we found the W. C. T. U. the underpinning (not one would have dared to think of herself as a "pillar") of the church. Very many of them had in tow the whole church structure--missionary societies, pastor's salary, the choir, the parsonage, and the debt on the church. Most of them were mothers too; some, G.o.d help them! sad-eyed and broken-hearted because of the ravage of their own firesides which the open saloon had caused. We read our Bibles and prayed, and the word of the Lord came to us that the mother-heart in Christ's people must protest against further slaying of the innocents at the open doorways of the dram shops!

We went to our brethren in the church (to whom else should we go?) with the Lord's message. Some of them--not the dignitaries usually, but the humble-minded, prayerful men, G.o.d bless them! who went about their work unheralded--believed our report: but it was too hard a saying for the many that G.o.d ever spake except by the word of mouth of a man. They forgot Anna and Deborah, and practically sided with the "higher criticism" respecting the errancy of the Scripture in its statement about woman's relation to the church. And so, after a while, I said at one of our conventions that I could count upon one hand all the ministers in New Orleans who had come forward to pray over one of our meetings.

We had to defend ourselves on the charge of being Sabbath-breakers, because after doing the Lord's work six days in the week, a W. C. T. U.

woman was said to have slept--"rested," according to the commandment--on Sunday. On this charge, and because a speaker in returning to my house after a Sunday address took a ride in the last half hour of the day in a street-car, a resolution of endors.e.m.e.nt of the W. C. T. U. failed to pa.s.s in a Louisiana Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, and we were cruelly hurt by the tone of the discussion.

General Conference lifted us out of despair by n.o.ble resolutions against licensing the liquor traffic, and thereafter clerical dignitaries broke our hearts by a masterly inactivity--or took a scourge of small cords and proceeded, as it were, to drive us out with the hue and cry of "women's rights," lest, should a woman vote, her natural function should cease, and the sound of the lullaby and sewing machine be no longer heard in the land. It was comical sometimes to see how the bishops and politicians moved on the same line and for the same reason. But like some of our good bishops of slaveholding times, these certainly will not shine with l.u.s.tre in the sky of history. Humbler ministerial brethren endured reproach with us and fought our battles; then we had sometimes the sorrow of seeing them removed from places of influence to obscure points in the service of the church. At last we and they tacitly understood that a preacher who wrought valiantly for prohibition jeoparded his "prospects." So it came that some who had led us "went back" in the holy cause, and "standing afar off,"

justified themselves, saying, "I'm as good a prohibitionist as you are, but I'm more practical." Desperation seizes the soul of women in reform work when a preacher or politician uses the word "practical"; we know we shall get his "sympathy" but never his influence or his vote. And the diplomatic brother who has to _explain_ that he is a temperance man, may hold clear qualifications for a citizenship in heaven, but is of no account whatever as a citizen of the militant kingdom Of G.o.d on earth, that must fight against "princ.i.p.alities and powers" if it would win the world to the principles of Christ.

It should be clearly understood that the legitimate work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union is to close the open saloon, and not, as many mistake, to interfere with personal liberty by forcing total abstinence upon the individual. The members of the organization in the interests of consistency must be total abstainers; and because science p.r.o.nounces alcohol a poison and an active peril in the human body, a vigorous educational propaganda is kept up in order that future generations may be protected by knowledge against the dangers of alcoholic drinks. The main point at issue is that the State has no right to license an inst.i.tution which is a corrupter of public morals and a menace to social life. The Supreme Court of the United States has so interpreted. It is the sole duty of the State to protect and develop citizens; to protect their lives, their property, their morals and their rights; to develop the highest type of citizen that education by law and schoolhouse can produce. The saloon hazards the well-being of every citizen that is born to a State; it annuls the work of the church and the college; it disintegrates, degrades and destroys family life--the unit of the State; it impoverishes the home, pauperizes the child and debases manhood; it fills almshouses, jails and insane asylums; it lays the burden of the support of these inst.i.tutions on the State; the taxes which all the people have paid for their mutual protection and development are unrighteously diverted to the sustenance of the victims of the saloon; the State protects a small cla.s.s of citizens in doing injury to the interests of all other cla.s.ses. For revenue, and for revenue only, it gives a right and a power to the saloon to make an unending army of criminals, paupers and lunatics out of the sons and daughters which every mother has gone down into the shadow of death to deliver into the keeping of her country.

The motherhood of the enlightened world is arousing against this treachery of the commonwealth to her sacred trust. The State has no right to sell her sons even unto righteousness; still less to deliver them into the bonds of iniquity for a price. It is incredible that the mother's revolt did not begin long ago, for even the brute will fight for its young. But now they have begun to understand their duty and their power, and "so long as boys are ruined and mothers weep; so long as homes are wrecked and the sob of unsheltered children finds the ear of G.o.d; so long as the Gospel lets in the light for the lost, and Christ is King, there will be a contest on the temperance question until victory. So long as this Christian nation sanctions the destruction of its sons for revenue, and sets on a legalized throne 'that sum of all villainies,' the saloon; so long as 'the wicked are justified for reward' and cities are built with blood, there will be a prohibition issue, and one day the right will triumph."

CHAPTER XVII.

NERVOUS PROSTRATION AND A VENERABLE COUSIN.

I once heard a woman say that she had lived half a lifetime before she realized that the commandments were written for her. In a vague sort of way she had appropriated, "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not bear false witness;" but she did not intend to do these things--the commandments must be for those who did. Her dumb amazement may be imagined on hearing a venerable and saintly soul state that she was so grateful to G.o.d that in her long life she had had no temptation to be a Magdalen. It was unthinkable that she should have had.

But the stress of life grew to agony; disappointments and wrongs heaped upon my friend; and one day she stood bare-souled and alone before G.o.d, confronting the commandment: "_Thou_ shalt not kill!" In her struggle back to the Divine she learned that all of the commandments were written for her. Ever since, her heart has been pierced with tenderest sympathy for every man or woman who has fallen before temptation, and the despair of the suicide seems her own.

Unvarying good health and steady nerves were my inheritance, and my husband's fine, calm judgment helped to increase my nervous vigor. I am afraid I had once a quiet disdain for nervous women, and was supercilious towards what I deemed a lack of moral fiber, believing that with it health conditions would not have become "all at loose ends." But a time came when I too was going from sofa to easy chair, and dropping back into bed limp and trembling; when the banging of a door or the rustling of a paper "set me wild;" when I was being a means of grace to all my family through giving them an opportunity to "let patience have its perfect work"--and all with no justifying cause, except that the iron of sorrow had entered my soul, the color had been taken from my life, and I had not yet found my readjustments. Nevertheless I denied my condition, and so one day the doctor tried to explain it to me. "A person," he began, "is said to be nervous when presenting a special susceptibility to pain, or exhibiting an undue mobility of the nervous system, as when one starts, or shakes on the occasion of abrupt or intense sensorial impressions, thus showing an exalted emotional susceptibility. The heart itself under the influence of nervous stimulation may in a moment change its customary order and rate of action, and in extreme cases cease to beat. The whole mental processes, as well as the functions of organic life, may be seriously involved. Now in your case, madam----"

"Stop, doctor. I take in the fact," said I, "which is evident in your high-sounding phrases, that nervous prostration is a killing complaint and you are going to treat me for it."

"Perhaps so," said the doctor. "It often happens that an exaltation or diminution of activity in some one portion of the nervous system causes perverted action in another part, as when any unusual strain has been thrown upon you."

"For instance," said I, "when a friend came last Sunday and allowed me to carry up-stairs her grip-sack with books in it?"

"Politeness should never require you to do such a thing," said the doctor, "but the strain may not be any physical exertion or overwork; deficient sleep, any sudden shock of joy or fear, especially terror, might prove fatal."

"I was much frightened last summer," said I, "by a stroke of lightning which destroyed an immense oak tree in front of the door. It was a worse panic than that which seizes one on seeing one's husband bringing three gentlemen to dinner, when there is only one good little porter-house steak in the house."

"Allow me to say," continued the doctor, "nervousness characterizes women more than men. It sometimes comes on as a sequence of severe illness, some grave anxiety, some physical or moral shock, like the unexpected discovery of perfidy or disloyalty on the part of a friend. Then, too, nervous prostration is brought on by unremitting or monotonous duties, which keep the same paths of action from day to day."

"I was told," said I, "of a lawyer who entering his office the other day read upon his slate the statement that he would be back in half an hour; in a fit of absence of mind he took a seat and waited for himself, and it was some time before he realized that he was in his own office, and that he was not one of his own clients."

"That," replied the doctor, "was no worse than the case of the reverend gentleman who on going out one morning gathered up an ordinary business coat and carried it around the whole day, thinking it was his overcoat, and was more surprised than anybody else when informed of his mistake.

These examples are evidences and symptoms of nervous disorder. I never knew a man to hurt himself by mere bodily labor; but excessive mental toil is certainly capable of damaging the nervous tissues. Any calamity, misfortune, pecuniary loss, or accident is liable to bring on nervous prostration. What are the symptoms? Loss of sleeping power, incapacity and aversion to work, la.s.situde, headache, an anxious and cross expression of countenance, heart disturbance, cramp--all these may be indications of local nervous exhaustion."

"Doctor, how do you propose to exterminate this formidable enemy?"

"For the treatment of nervous diseases," said he, "we have at our disposal invaluable remedies whose action is more or less special. There is strychnine, bromide of pota.s.sium, possessing the opposite properties of increasing and diminishing the reflex excitability of the nervous system, in addition to other beneficial modes of action. Then we have chloral and morphine, acting directly and indirectly as hypnotics, thus allowing the curative action of rest to come into play. For pain, we have opium, Indian hemp, subcutaneous injections of morphia, and the galvanic current. We have any number of drugs for influencing, relaxing, mitigating pain, reinforcing the nutrition of wasted muscles. Then there are nervine tonics, preparations of zinc, a.r.s.enic, iron, quinine, phosphorus, cod-liver oil, to say nothing of cold or tepid douches, and the ma.s.sage treatment."

"Good gracious!" I exclaimed, "am I to swallow all these poisonous things?"

"There is no occasion for alarm, madam. I don't propose to prescribe all these things at once. The first thing I shall order is very important--it is a simple but nutritious diet. Eat plenty of ripe fruit; drink pure, distilled water; take plenty of gentle but regular exercise, and sleep as much as possible. You must be surrounded by agreeable society, have plenty of fresh air and excellent food, and with temperance, avoiding all excitement and mental exertion, I hope you will soon be well."

"But, doctor, suppose baby Laura falls down-stairs or the house takes fire?"

"You are to be kept ignorant of all such things. The medicine you need is perfect rest, for after all it is the most powerful therapeutic agent when you understand its nature and the indications for its use. You rest your body in sleep, you rest your mind by looking on beautiful things, hearing good music, and thinking of nothing. Sleep is a preventive of disease, and the want of it, if carried too far, causes death. Sleep is balm to the careworn mind and over-wrought brain. In these days of emulation and worry, the waste of nerve force must be repaired by sleeping and cessation from all work. Now is the time to stop, lest you come to the door of the insane asylum. I repeat, absolute rest," said the doctor, striking his cane on the floor, "and no stimulants to excite rapid circulation. The brain recovers slowly and resents too early demands on it after any injury. The general health must be maintained at the highest possible standard, and you must not worry. You must be a philosopher."

"Doctor," said I, "I can do better than that; I can be a Christian. I can say, 'Yes, Lord,' to whatever G.o.d sends. That is the philosophy of Hannah Whitall Smith, and I have tested its efficacy."

"Yes, madam, I too," said the doctor, "would recommend anything of a soothing, tranquilizing character. I shall call to-morrow; good morning."