I d'no nor Josiah don't, whether it wuz right and best to influence the souls of the young till they burnt at white heat with the spirit that our Lord said his disciples must avoid, for said he: "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord." Well, it is a deep question, deeper than I've got a line to measure; and Josiah's line and mine both tied together don't begin to touch the bottom on't, for we've tried it time and agin. We've argyed aginst each other about it, and jined on and hitched our arguments together, and they didn't touch bottom then, nor begin to. As Mrs. Browning said (a woman I set store by, and always did, I've hearn Thomas J. read about her so much): "A country's a thing men should die for at need." Yes, to die for, if its safety is imperilled, that I believe and Josiah duz, but I have eppisoded about it a sight, I've had to. I methought how this nation wuz stirred to its deepest depths; how it seethed and boiled with indignation and wrath because three hundred of its sons wuz killed by ignorant and vicious means; how it breathed out vengeance on the cause that slew them; how it called To Arms! To Arms! Remember the _Maine_! But how cool and demute it stood, or ruther sot, and see every year sixty thousand of its best sons slain by the saloon, ten-fold more cruel deaths, too, since the soul and mind wuz slain before their bodies went. No cry for vengeance as the long procession of the dead wheeled by the doors of the law-makers of the land; no cry: "To arms! to arms! Remember the Saloon." And more mysterious still, I eppisoded to myself, it would have looked to see the Government rig out and sell to the Spaniards a million more bombs and underground mines to blow up the rest of our ships and kill thousands more of our young men. Wouldn't it have looked dog queer to the other nations of the world to have seen it done? But there they sot, our law-makers, and if they lifted their eyes at all to witness the long procession of the dead drift by, sixty thousand corpses yearly slain by the Saloon, if they lifted their eyes at all to look at the ghastly procession, they dropped 'em agin quick as they could so's not to delay their work of signin' licenses, makin' new laws, fixin' over old ones, and writin' permits to the murderers to go on with their butchery. Queer sight! queer in the sight of other nations, in the sight of men and angels, and of me and Josiah. Well, to stop eppisodin' and resoom backwards for a spell. Alan Thorne hearn that cry: "To arms! To arms!" And his very soul listened. His grandfathers on both sides wuz fighting men; at school and college he'd been trained in a soldier regiment, and had been steeped full of warlike idees, and they all waked up at his cry for vengeance. He had just got to go; it wuz to be. Heaven and Waitstill couldn't help it; he had to go; he went.