Then upwards of one hundred women rose to their feet and indignantly rebuked the Kansas man for his misjudgment in starting this factional display. This provoked some radical leaders of the W. C. T. U. who chanced to be there as detectives or visitors. They also arose in defense of the Kansas man.
I saw the tumult rising. Disorder was pre-dominant. Hundreds tried to speak at once. Saloon-keepers, brewers, whiskey politicians, and the professors on the stage were smiling in ghoulish glee. They enjoyed it more than a prize fight, and the results were at once more disastrous and more deplorable.
As the conflict waxed hotter some men and women were screaming, and some fainting, and some resorted to blows. Others scrambled to get from the room. The elevators were put in quick service, and I saw Mr. World and Miss Church-Member, with thousands of others, running from the scene of the fight.
“Let us go to another building,” suggested Miss Church-Member.
A very short time after this I saw them enter the largest building of all the Temperance College. It stood centrally amongst the great group, and was devoted to “_Hygiene and Temperance._”
A Scene in the Devils Temperance College The fight between the temperence factions was greatly enjoyed by the saloon- keepers, brewers, and whisky politicians.
After learning that they came as visitors, a director advised them to pass the many medical wings on separate flats and go to the great auditorium on one of the higher floors. Proceeding, in obedience to the advice given, they soon beheld a room of greater size and magnificence than the one which they had just left, and as they were taking seats they fixed their attention on the lecturer who had already been speaking for an hour. He was discoursing on the relation of strong drink to the stomach.
“It must be remembered,” affirmed he, “that the stomach was made to serve man. The appetite is the true criterion by which he may know what his body needs. If he feels a thirst for alcoholic drink, it is akin to a hunger for any special class of foods. He is not to ask his servant, the stomach, whether it is willing to do the work of transformation. He is to give it the work to do. The stomach will do it, unless that particular digestive function is lost. It is claimed by some who know more about ditch-digging than about physiology, that alcoholic beverages ruin the lining of the stomach, creating ulcers, and other disorders. This kind of teaching reminds me of a conundrum. ‘Why is a scientific temperance man like a dead man in his coffin?’ Who can answer it?”
“Because each one ought to be buried,” guessed a liquor-merchant from Paris. (Laughter.)