CHAPTER V.
SALOON MEETINGS.
A young man, of splendid physique, of bright and formidable eye, the very picture of strength and courage, who became an admirer of Mr. Bryan during the late campaign, and, after careful and extensive reading forsook the Republican party, embraced the New Democracy and enlisted the week following the election as a Volunteer Speaker and worker. He is an active member of the Young Men's Christian Association and of the Christian Endeavor Society.
The first meeting he was asked to attend was held over a saloon. This image of youthful power and courage walked through the bar-room of the saloon with a disparaging air, sat down at a table beside the writer, answered a few questions in a gloomy and dissatisfied manner and said diplomatically that he had an engagement at another end of the city and could not remain. He had promised to help arrange another meeting a few blocks away and the next day partly fulfilled that promise by carrying a bundle of circulars from the printing office to two men who were to distribute them. He then suddenly dropped out of sight and has never, so far as the movement is concerned, shown up since.
It has been learned that to a fellow churchman he remarked that he had been attracted by the high and noble ideals of Mr. Bryan, had expected to work for the cause, but that his attendance at a meeting in a saloon was so offensive to him that he lost all heart and had given up participation in the movement in consequence.
This man is only the type of a considerable class who would like to have their fellow beings clean but would never help wash them, who would dearly love to have them good but are too narrow to help save them; who admire the poetry of patriotism but who cowardly shrink from those sterner duties of which patriotism consists.
Think of a follower of Jesus Christ refusing to preach patriotism to men because they are gathered in or over a saloon, after having been denied the opportunity of meeting in a church or even a church yard. If Jesus Christ had been so squeamish and "gentlemanly" as to have confined his services to the respectable people, the early church would have died before it was born. In no age has there been sufficient vitality in the classes that call themselves respectable to give permanent form to any social or religious movement. Those who wish to do great things only in a respectable manner never do great things. A man cannot at the same time be both great and respectable.
In order to be respectable, he must stifle genius and cover with the ashes of artificiality all the deepest passions of the soul. He must destroy his individuality and trim his sympathies as he does his beard, like the barbarous Northmen when they entered Rome.
Love for humanity that can be checked or dissipated by inartistic surroundings, contact with vice or the coarse companionship of intemperate men is not love at all, it is a mere fad, a fitful remnant of a religious instinct long since eaten out from within.
Imagine a mother talking about how she loves to have her baby clean and sweet and wholesome, and then picture her refusing to undergo the hardship required in making her child sweet and clean and wholesome. Such a mother would be no mother at all, unless, perchance, a stepmother or mother-in-law.