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while each state is a regiment, and the National itself is womanhood's "Grand Army of the Republic."

"Committees" are

2. Individual responsibility is everywhere urged. obsolete with us, and each distinct line of work has one person, called a superintendent, who is responsible for its success in the local, and another in the state, and a third in the National union. She may secure such lieutenants as she likes, but the union looks to her for results and holds her accountable for failures.

3. The quick and cordial recognition of talent is another secret of W. C. T. U. success. Women, young or old, who can speak, write, conduct meetings, organize, keep accounts, interest children, talk with the drinking man, get up entertainments, or carry flowers to the sick or imprisoned, are all pressed into the service.

There has been also in our work an immense amount of digging in the earth to find one's own buried talent, to rub off the rust and to put it out at interest. Perhaps that is, after all, its most significant feature, considered

as a movement.

4. Subordination of the financial phase has helped, not hindered us. Lack of funds has not barred out even the poorest from our sisterhood. A penny per week is our basis of membership, of which a fraction goes to the state, and ten cents to the National W. C. T. U.

Money has been, and I hope may be, a consideration altogether secondary. Of wealth we have had incomputable stores; indeed, I question if America has a richer corporation to-day than ours: wealth of faith, of enthusiasm, of experience, of brain, of speech, of common sense-this is a capital stock that can never depreciate, needs no insurance, requires no combination lock or bonded custodian, and puts us under no temptation to tack our course or trim our sails.

5. Nothing has helped us more than the entire freedom of our society from the influence or dictation of capitalists, politicians, or corporations of any sort whatever. This can not be too strongly emphasized as one of the best elements of power. Indeed, it may be truly said that this vast and systematic work has been in nowise guided, moulded or controlled by men. It has not even occurred to them to offer advice until within a year! and to accept advice has never occurred to us, and I hope never will. While a great many noble men are "honorary members," and in one or two sporadic instances men have acted temporarily as presidents of local unions at the South, I am confident our grand constituency of temperance brothers rejoice almost as much as we do in the fact that we women have from the beginning gone our own gait and acted according to our own sweet will. They would bear witness, I am sure, to the fact that we have never done this flippantly or in a spirit of bravado, but with great seriousness, asking the help of God. I can say, personally, what I believe our leaders would also state as their experience, that so strongly do good men seem to be impressed that the call coming to Christian women in the Crusade was of God, and not of man, that in the eleven years of my almost uninterrupted connection with the National W. C. T. U., I have hardly received a letter of advice or a ver

"Comradeship Among Women."

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bal exhortation from minister or layman, and I would mildly but firmly say that I have not sought their counsel. The hierarchies of the land will be ransacked in vain for the letter-heads of the W. C. T. U. We have sought, it is true, the help of almost every influential society in the nation, both religious and secular; we have realized how greatly this help was needed by us, and grandly has it been accorded, but what we asked for was an indorsement of plans already made and work already done. Thus may we always be a society "of the women, by the women," but for humanity.

6. The freedom from red-tape and the keeping out of ruts is another element of power. We practice a certain amount of parliamentary usage, and strongly urge the study of it as a part of the routine of local unions. We have good, strong "constitutions" and by-laws to match; blanks for reports; rolls for membership; pledges in various styles of art; badges, ribbons and banners, and hand-books of our work are all to be had at “national headquarters,” but we will not come under a yoke of bondage to the paraphernalia of the movement. We are always moving on. "Time can not dull nor custom stale our infinite variety." We are exceedingly apt to break out in a new phase. Here we lop off an old department and there we add two new ones. Our "new departures" are frequent and oftentimes most unexpected. Indeed, we exhibit the characteristics of an army on the march, rather than an army in camp or hospital.

The marked esprit de corps is to be included among the secrets of success. The W. C. T. U. has invented a phrase to express this, and it is "comradeship among women." So generous and so cherished has this comradeship become, that ours is often called a "mutual admiration society." We believe in each other, stand by each other, and have plenty of emulation without envy. Sometimes a state or an individual says to another, "The laurels of Miltiades will not suffer me to sleep," but there is no staying awake to belittle success; we do not detract from any worker's rightful meed of praise. So much for the "hidings of power" in the

W. C. T. U.

There are two indirect results of this organized work among women, concerning which I wish to speak :

First. It is a strong nationalizing influence. Its method and spirit differ very little, whether you study them on the border of Puget Sound or the Gulf of Mexico. In San Francisco and Baltimore white ribbon women speak the same vernacular; tell of their gospel meetings and petitions; discuss The Union Signal editorials, and wonder "what will be the action of our next national convention."

Almost all other groups of women workers who dot the continent, are circumscribed by denominational lines and act largely under the advice of ecclesiastical leaders. The W. C. T. U. feels no such limitation. North and South are strictly separate in the women's missionary work of the churches, but Mississippi and Maine, Texas and Oregon, Massachusetts and Georgia, sit side by side around the yearly camp-fires of the W. C. T. U. The Southern women have learned to love us of the North and our hearts are true to them; while to us all who fight in peaceful ranks unbroken, "For God and

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Our Aim-The Regnancy of Christ.

Home and Native Land," the Nation is a sacred name spelled with a capital N.

Second. Our W. C. T. U. is a school, not founded in that thought, or for that purpose, but sure to fit us for the sacred duties of patriots in the realm that lies just beyond the horizon of the coming century.

Here we try our wings that yonder our flight may be strong and steady. Here we prove our capacity for great deeds; there we shall perform them. Here we make our experience and pass our novitiate that yonder we may calmly take our places and prove to the world that what it needed most was "two heads in counsel," as well as "two beside the hearth." When that day comes, the nation shall no longer miss as now the influence of half its wisdom, more than half its purity and nearly all its gentleness, in courts of justice and halls of legislation. Then shall one code of moralsand that the highest-govern both men and women, then shall the Sabbath be respected, the rights of the poor be recognized, the liquor traffic banished, and the home protected from all its foes.

Born of such a visitation of God's Spirit as the world has not known since tongues of fire sat upon the wondering group at Pentecost, cradled in a faith high as the hope of a saint, and deep as the depths of a drunkard's despair, and baptized in the beauty of holiness, the Crusade determined the ultimate goal of its teachable child, the W. C. T. U., which has one steadfast aim, and that none other than the regnancy of Christ, not in form, but in fact; not in substance, but in essence; not ecclesiastically, but truly in the hearts of men. To this end its methods are varied, changing, manifold, but its unwavering faith, these words express: "Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts."

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CHAPTER X.

MISCELLANEOUS INCIDENTS OF TEMPERANCE WORK.

How threadbare, because so frequent, is the reiteration of the excuse among moderate drinkers, "I can take a glass of beer, or I can let it alone." A stalwart young Scotchman came to Evanston. He was of good family, fine, athletic figure, handsome face expressive of strength and resolution. He took the University course with credit to himself, afterward graduated from the Law Department and began to practice in Evanston. Years passed by, twelve of them, I think, when this man entered the Gospel Temperance meeting addressed by me one Sunday afternoon in Evanston, and when the speech was over came to the front, and turning toward the audience, largely made up that day of University students, he raised his trembling hand, and with a face more marred and marked by dissipation than any language can depict, he cried out in his deep voice, full of tears, 'Boys, don't drink, don't drink! I was a student just as you are, with prospects just as bright; held my own well in the University all through the scholastic and professional courses, but said from time to time as I took a glass of beer, 'This can never master a man so masterful as I.' And here I stand to-day and you see how it is. I am the slave of that little glass of beer. Let me say it once again and don't forget it while you live, 'Boys, don't drink, don't drink!'"

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Another man in the same town, a blacksmith, a Scotchman by birth, or at least by heritage, after having been known in Evanston as a pronounced inebriate, resolved one Thanksgiving Day, nine years or more ago, that he would never touch liquor again.

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He has faithfully kept his word, is a pillar in the temperance work in Evanston, no man being more respected or relied upon. I am glad to count him among the friends of our family, and to invite him with his family whenever we have a reception. What pride he takes on these occasions, going to the railroad magnates, getting them to lend great engine head-lights to make the grounds bright, both in front and on the lawn behind the house. He trims up the place with festoons of evergreens, and is our chief standby throughout the enterprise. I remember when he was going away after mother's eightieth birthday festival, when four hundred guests had passed through our home, from the Governor of the state to the humblest of our reformed men, with their families, and every clergyman, including the pastor of the colored church, so that our own pastor said that if ever he saw a gospel feast this was the one-this good man said to me as he left our door, nearly all the guests having gone, "I suppose it did n't mean so very much to most of them that live in nice houses and have everything they want, but I tell you it was a mighty epoch in my life, and will make me a better man." It was this same kind friend who placed in front of Rest Cottage, and of my sister's annex adjoining it, a beautiful standing vase which he fills every year with flowers. It is to him and his family that we are glad to send remembrances from time to time, and to him that the ladies of our society gave a nice arm-chair one Christmas, in token of their appreciation of all that he had done, suffered and survived.

At one well-remembered meeting in the town of S., Mr. Cwho was from an excellent family, and had been a leading merchant, but was now a confirmed drunkard, came forward to sign the pledge. Something in his face interested me, the more so as I noticed a look of positive distress on the faces of some of the white ribbon women. This was so contrary to the usual cordial reception given by our workers to any one-no matter how degraded-who wishes to enter on a new life, that I asked an explanation afterward and they said, "He has signed it so many times and broken it so often that he is bringing the pledge into positive disrepute. Some saloon-keeper will offer him a drink if he will let him have his pledge card and

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