THE LITTLE BIT OF BLUE.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume III, Issue 128, 26 March 1901, Page 1

THE LITTLE BIT OF BLUE.

Among fhe passengers to Sydney by the last San Francisco steamer was the founder of the “ blue ribbon ” movement. Most o.f us can recollect without much difficulty the time when this movement swept like a wave over the world, and the bit of blue ribbon in the buttonhole or on the dress became so common. The custom of thus publicly signifying one’s views on the liquor question died away, and nowadays a blue ribbon badge is a rarity. The arrival in Ausrtalia of Mr Francis Murphy, bent on a temperance tour, and proposing to stay “as long ss he can be of use in doing good work,” may revive the use of the badge. When Mr Murphy speaks of the injury done by overindulgence in strong drink, he speaks with authority, for he himself, as he says, “ was wrecked at the ago of thirty-four,” through drunkenness. When, he was saved through the exertions of a friend, he drew up a pledge for his former companions in dissipation to sign. He managed to get about 200 of them to do so r and then he was invited to give an address in the City Hall of Portland, Maine, It was an ordeal, for Mr Murphy says he did not know how to begin or how to end, and his address lasted only two minutes. “ Then,” he says, “ everything I had thought of went from my mind. I became dizzy, and every thing was a blank. I was humiliated beyond expression. I declared I felt that 1 had disgraced every friend I ever had, and that I would never be seen on the streets .of that city again. Going home I locked myself in, but friends came and assured me that I was mistaken, that I had done magnificently, and that soma thirty applications had been received for me to go and talk temperance.” So he continued his addresses, the burden of which was the story of his own redemption from ruin, and he has been at it now for thirty years. He induced 45,500 people to sign the pledge at Pittsburg, in Philadelphia 95,000 signed it, in New York 125,000. He declares that altogether thirteen million people in the United States signed the pledge, while all over the country men gave up the sale of liquor, over a hundred doing this in Pittsburg alone. Mr Murphy does not apparently believe in forcibly legislating total abstinence into the people. His plans and methods of work he described to an Australian interviewer as “ the gospel of persuasion,” ‘‘Temperance,” he added, “is a matter of education. We have got to keep working and waiting, and to appeal to the young men that their safety lies in letting Jtha drink alone.” Later on he expressed himself quaintly as follows :— *' The remedy for this drink traffic is when men quit buying, and close their own public houses between the nose and the chin.”