Wit, humor, reason, rhetoric, prose, poetry and story woven into eight popular lectures

by George W. Bain

Then henceforth a diamond crowned

'Twill shine with lustrous light."

You can't tell what seed will grow.

After the Civil War I lived for two years in Richmond, Kentucky. During that time the Klu Klux movement broke out in fury. Men were hanged, others whipped and driven from the county. On my way to market one morning I saw a man hanging from a limb of a tree in the court-house yard. On his sleeve was pinned a piece of paper, on which was written, "Let no one touch this body until the sun goes down." All day that body hung there and not an officer of the law dared to cut the rope. Such was the reign of terror no one offered a protest. One Saturday night a young man named Byron was hanged in the same court-house yard. He was the only son of a widowed mother, and he begged the mob to let him live for his mother's sake. Sunday morning several empty bottles lay about the tree, indicating that the men were drinking who did the deed. The evening after the hanging I gave an address in the Methodist Church for the Good Templars. I had no thought of referring to the hanging of young Byron, but in showing up the evils of drink, those empty bottles came to my mind, and I could imagine the old mother then weeping over her dead boy. Without considering the consequences I denounced the Klu Klux and the cowardice that permitted such lawlessness. After the lecture a young man of influence advised me to leave at once and not dare spend the night in the town. I felt sure the Klan could not be called together that night, so I ventured to spend the night at home. About eleven o'clock that night the front gate was opened, and tramp, tramp, tramp, came the sound of feet toward the cottage, which was about forty feet from the street. It seemed as if all was over with me, when the "pluck" of a string introduced a serenade from the string band of the little city. Since the daughters of Judah hung their harps upon the willows, no sweeter music has ever fallen upon mortal ears than I heard that night from the string band of Richmond, Kentucky.

I do not know how much my speaking out against Klu Klux had to do with arresting the outlawry that made the roads rattle with the clatter of the hoofs of horses at midnight raids, but I do know young Byron was the last man hanged by the Klu Klux in Madison county, and may I not hope the unpremeditated protest made in that Sunday evening address, helped in some measure to bring about the transformation, and contribute a mite to the public sentiment that has made Richmond a saloonless place in which to live.

You cannot tell what seed will grow. Already out of the new woman movement has come a host led by such women as Frances E. Willard, Mary A. Livermore, Clara Hoffman, Dr. Anna Shaw, Jane Addams, Maude Ballington Booth, Susan B. Anthony, and in our own state, Frances E. Beauchamp. These and many more have been springing the bolts that have barred woman from spheres of great usefulness.

Allow me to say, I have no patience with the mannish woman (and about as little use for a feminine man); but if this old world is ever to be redeemed it is because He who sitteth on the throne has said: "Behold I make all things new."

Oh! for a new man, who will stop the waste of wealth and destruction of morals to which I have referred. Oh! for the day when "each sex will be the equal of the other in the average, each above the other in specialties; when each can see in the other a source of inspiration," and both worthy to have been created in the beginning a "little lower than the angels" and in the end to be crowned with glory and honor.