At length, on a Saturday night, several boys, coaxed by a scamp, drank freely of whiskey, and were taken home helplessly intoxicated; two of them came near dying. The good mothers were on fire. They had long since abandoned all hope for their husbands, but they would never, never consent that their boys should become drunkards. By a common impulse they gathered in the little church on the hill, and held a meeting for prayer and weeping. After three hours of passionate ejaculation, tears and heart-breaking agony, they resolved as follows:
"We will make a banner with our own hands. On one side it shall bear the figure of a child drinking from a bucket, that beverage, which God has prepared for his creatures. On the other side we will work this sentiment, 'Mothers will sacrifice all for their Children.' When it is done, we will go to these men with our banner for the rallying flag, pray with them, plead with them, and never give up till they stop."
In two weeks they were ready, and eighty-four women (all mothers but four) with their little silken banner at their head, marched down to the first of the "rum-holes," and were met by the landlord (curious misnomer) and told that they could pass on; that if they came in there, they would be sorry for it, &c. They had had no experience, did not know their power, were frightened, and hurried on. The second landlord was a younger man, not so hard, and said, after looking over the company:
"Why, is it possible that all the good women in town are after me in this way? Why, of course I will stop, if they all wish it; that is to say, I will stop if the rest will."
"Mr. Warner, here is our paper; put down your name and say exactly what you will do; we are here on no idle errand."
So he put down his name with the words:
"I will stop if the rest will."
"John Warner."
They went on to the next one, who kept a bowling and billiard saloon as well as a drinking "hole," and laid their case before him.
He was a young man, and enjoyed a prodigious reputation as a "ladies man," and of course put down his name under John Warner's, and was careful to prefix the words,