CARRY NATION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 450, 6 February 1909, Page 4

CARRY NATION.

in Dundee. Carry Nation is on a to Britain. She comlast month at Dundee with telegram to the Briper the London Press: find that Britain has no name tor public houses. give them the. same name in America : ‘Hell Holes’ Houses.’ They are cerworks of the Devil. The hopeful indication in Engat this time is the suffragist which is being waged in of freedom. We must tree mothers before we can free sous. The moral inof woman must be put in box.---Your loving home Carry A. Nation.” made a characteristic speech opening of a bazaar held at under the auspices of the Prohibition Parly. Her to the nation was “Down the Liquor Saloon.” Mrs is a white haired old lady, a firm mouth that shows undetermination. She is of a typical American and her remarks were eloand fervid. She had been if she had brought her hatchet with her, but aloft an open Bible, she that was the best hatchet had ever used. The Bible up everything that was and built up everything that good. She had no. patience, said, with temperance orThe temperance parin Britain and America proto abolish the evil, but in they were hindering the work. W hen she started out was told she was wild and because she would have to do with these temperparties. Her battle cry is; A. Nation, for the home, .for the mother, for the babe, for America, for Scotland, for Heaven, Hat the ballot box, by means of the prohibition paity.” No suffragist H was ever so reckless in the pursuit her mission, and that Mrs Nation does not shirk the conHl'Sequences is proved by the fact Htbat she had been thirty-three H- times in prison—a record that ■ quite overshadows that of the I most militant suffragist. Asked B_wbat she thought of the theory I that our alcoholic drinks would I f justify their existence if they were I' diluted, say, to the strength of E‘ light French wines, she replied : If “If you are going to dilute them I so far, substitute water and be I. done with it. Every other drink ■ ' sets up thirst, but water quenches E thirst once for all. We all come Wt back to water.” “But,” it was I objected, “ you can’t get everyp body to believe in the wholesomeness of pure water.” “Can’t get i them,” scornfully retorted Mrs Nation, “I don’t belong to the I can’t crowd. It wasn’t for nothing that I was given' the name and initials, “Carry A. Nation.” ! ■ She did not go in for “saloon j» smashing” in Dundee ; but visited a number, lecturing to customers, publicans and barmaids. She was followed by a huge crowd. She was hustled out of the public i houses ; but not violently. On her way from Dumfermline to Kircaldy, Mrs Nation had to wait at Thornton Junction. She improved the occasion by addresi sing the passengers on the evils of I smoking, and terrified one' man f- by telling him that if the Almighty \ had intended him to smoke he would have been built with his nose upside down to serve as a chimney. She also remarked that '. some smokers would continue their evil ways until they reached the region of everlasting smoke. Mrs Nation met a clergyman in the street, in Dundee, smoking a cigarette. “Take that vile thing' out of your mouth !” she exclaimed, but the minister passed on with a smile. ' "What right bad be to have the dirty thing in his month?” she said. “Besides be is setting a bad example to the youth of the city.” Some boys smoking cigar-

ettes also came under the notice erf Mrs Nation. The lads tried to bide the cigarettes, but she lectured them sharply. Mrs Carry made one mistake, She entered a temperance restaurant, acrid,;; addressing the pro> prietor, asked : “Young man, do you sell drink her ?” “No,” was the reply, “but you can get what you want next door.”

Mrs Nation began her saloon smashing career in Kansas. “I smashed five saloons with rocks before ever I took a hatchet,” she says. Nor were weapons difficult to find. On one occasion she threw a brick at a mirror. The glass remained unbroken, and she looked round for some other missile. “I saw a billiard ball,” she says, “picked it up, and made a hole in the mirror.” Then followed a crusade with a rod of iron and a stout cane, which ended in —prison. Mrs Nation’s description of her experiences in an American gaol is graphic: —“I tiied to be brave, but the tears were running down my face. I took hold of the iron bars of my door and tried to shake them and said, “you put me in here a cub, but I will go out a roaring lion, aud I will make all hell howl.”

The origin of the notorious “hatchet” is curious. Mrs Nation was speaking in Topeka, Kansas, when a man ran out of a “candy store/’ and, handing her some little pewter hatchets suggested that she should sell them and pay costs aud fines with the proceeds. “This gave me an idea,” says Mrs Nation. “Since that time the little hatchets have been my faithful little defenders. . . They cause people to talk, to think, to act. God had blessed the mission of the hatchet.

The anger Indignation which Mrs Nation aroused is indicated by an incident which occurred in Enterprise, Dickinson Country, Kansas. She “broke up a dive and smashed up twelve cases of beer.” The proprietor thereupon held her, while a crowd of woman “heat her with their fists, whipped her with a raw hide, pulled her hair, and kicked her into the gutter.”. In a book which she has just published Mrs Nation relates how Dr Gloyd astonished her one evening by kissing her. “ I felt shocked ” she says “ and threw up my hands to ray face, saying several times, “I am ruined,” She eventually married Dr Gloyd, who became a confirmed inebriate. These are the Carryisms evolved from the experience : Drinking men neglect their wives.

The drink habit destroys in men their appreciation of a home life.

A woman loses love for a husband through his indifference. Drinking men are drugged and diseased men.

Equally unhappy was her life with Mr Nation. “I found out he deceived me in many things,” she declares. Here, again, the reader is overwhelmed by more Cany isms:-

I hated lying because I loved the trv.tb.

I loved, therefore I bated. Had I married a man I could have loved, God could never have used me.

SOME MORE CARRYISMS. Preparations for war is inhuman, Angels wept; and devils yelled with diabolical glee. It ought to be a crime to manufacture or give away tobacco in any form. A man has no more right to poison the air I breathe than the water 1 drink.

Cigars are like snakes —they are all bad.

If it is manly to smoke why isn’t it womanly to smoke ?

It is my place to meddle with the devil’s business. The nation is what its homes ate.