To counteract the influence of this sex Satan has plied his ingenuity ever since the beginning. In his Pharaoh fashion he has so manipulated the customs of the world that woman is trampled under foot in uncivilized lands, and in lands of light she is ostracized by sections of the Christian church and despised in the civil realm. And yet, with a faithful heart, she suffers this indignity and, looking up from underneath this weight, she offers to the powers that crush her down the holiest sacrifice that one can give.
O spirit of the age, like flowers of Heaven, Thy fragrance will not die, but live eternal; And woman shall, some holier, happier day, Attain her highest glory in the world.
Yet notwithstanding all these means wherewith Satan has made the path of woman so hard to travel, he has discovered that he can not disgrace her by any means so effectually as through the old temptation.
Consequently Satan has kept the seed of the central tree of the garden and still raises, on the broad uplands of Hell, _forbidden fruit_ which, through engrafting processes, has come to many varieties.
This mysterious product of the tree, so suited to the natural palate of womankind, is provided abundantly on each side of the King’s Highway along the whole length of the Valley of Temptation, and is offered, ostensibly, free of charge.
I watched, with chagrin and horror, the subtle influences of this fiendish work, seeing young women and those of riper experience go down alike under this intoxication of Hell.
As I looked again at the whole Valley, what sad sights of intemperance painfully greeted my eyes!
The intervening ground was a veritable bed of iniquity, for it swarmed with half-clothed inebriates who patronized the miserable and filthy hovels of lowest resort, while inebriates, in finer array, entered the apartments which were decorated and finished in all the beauty that wealth could afford, and supplied with alcoholic beverages under a fashionable bill of fare.
I could see the same Devil controlling all, and the same gutter or the same Hell receiving all who did not yield to the agencies of eternal life.
Among the many temperance organizations that operated throughout the valley I observed a band of women who threatened to overthrow the evil. They had, by long persistent effort, discovered the underground connections between the distillery and the saloons, and therefore they were endeavoring to kill the traffic at the head. This movement at first created laughter in the ranks of the foe, but the women have continued patiently and have built a thousand batteries from which they hurl projectiles of death into the camp of intemperance. Since then the agents of darkness have ceased their laughter and instead have set to building defences behind which they hope to carry on their business with impunity.