“Yes,” sez I, “Thomas J. is dretful interested in it; he has gin three lectures there.”
“Yes, most all the best citizens have joined the Help Union to fight against the Whiskey Power, though,” sez Phila, “there is one or two ministers who are afraid of contaminating their religion by politics. They had ruther stand up in their pulpits and preach to a few wimmen about the old Jews and the patience of Job than take holt and do a man’s work in a man’s way––the only practical way, grapple 41 with the monster Evil at its lair, where it breeds and fattens––the ballot-box.”
“Yes,” sez I, “a good many ministers think that they can’t descend into the filthy pool of politics. But it hain’t reasonable, for how are you a goin’ to clean out a filthy place if them that want it clean stand on the bank and hold their noses with one hand, and jester with the other, and quote scripter? And them that don’t want it clean are throwin’ slime and dirt into it all the time, heapin’ up the loathsome filth. Somebody has got to take holt and work as well as pray, if these plague spots and misery breeders are ever purified.”
“Well, Elder White is doin’ all he can,” sez Phila. “He went right to the polls ’lection day and worked all day; for the Whiskey Power wuz all riz up and watchin’ and workin’ for its life, as you may say, bound to draw back into its clutches some of the men that Elder White, with the Lord’s help, had saved. They exerted all their influence, liquor run free all day and all the night before, tryin’ to brutalize and craze the men into votin’ as the Liquor Power dictated. But Elder White knew what they wuz about, and he and all the earnest helpers he could muster used all their power and influence, and the election wuz a triumph for the Right. East Loontown went no-license, and not a saloon curses its streets to-day. North Loontown, where the minister felt that he wuz too good to touch the political pole, went license, and five more filthy pools wuz opened there for his flock to fall into, to breed vile influences that will overpower all the good influence he can possibly bring to bear on the souls committed to his care.”
“But,” sez I, “he is writin’ his book, ‘Commentaries on Ancient Sins,’ so he won’t sense it so much. He’s jest carried away with his work.”
Sez Phila, “He had better be actin’ out a commentary on modern sins. What business has he to be rakin’ over the old ashes of Sodom and Gomorrah for bones of antediluvian 42 sinners, and leave his livin’ flock to be burnt and choked by the fire and flames of the present volcano of crime, the Liquor System, that belches forth all the time.”
“Well, he wuz made so,” sez I.
“Well, he had better git down out of the pulpit,” sez Phila, “and let some one git up there who can see a sinner right under his nose, and try to drag him out of danger and ruin, and not have to look over a dozen centuries to find him.”
“Well, I am thankful for Ernest White, and I have felt that he and Waitstill Webb wuz jest made for each other. He thinks his eyes of her I know. When she went and nursed the factory hands when the typhoid fever broke out he said ‘she wuz like a angel of Mercy.’”
“They said he looked like a angel of Wrath ’lection day,” sez Phila. “You know how fair his face is, and how his clear gray eyes seem to look right through you, and through shams and shames of every kind. Well, that day they said his face fairly shone and he did the work of ten men.”