It was a proud moment for Josiah Allen and me, to hear Thomas J. go on; and to have the hull house so still, while he was makin’ his eloquent speech, that you could hear a clothes-pin drop in any part of the room. And though my companion, perfectly carried away by his glad emotions, hunched me several time harder than he had any idee of, and almost gored my ribs with his elbo, I didn’t, as you may say, seem to sense it at all. And though in hunchin’ and bein’ hunched, I dropped more’n 20 stitches in Josiah’s socks, I didn’t care for that a mite; I had plenty of time to pick ’em up durin’ the next speech, which was the Editor of the Auger’es, (he has got over the zebra, so’s to be out.) I have said, and I say still, that I never see a man that would spread a idee out thinner than he will,—cover more ground with it. Talk about Ingy Rubber stretchin’,—why that man will take one small thought and pull it out and string on enough big words to sink it, seemin’ly. Howsumever, his talk did jest about as much good on Thomas J’s side, as on hisen, for he didn’t seem to pay any attention to the subject, but give his hull mind to stringin’ big words onto his idees, and then stretchin’ ’em out as fur as human strength can go. That, truly, was his strong pint. But jest as he bent his knees and begun to set down, he kinder straightened up again and said the only thing that amounted to a thing. He said,—“Keepin’ folks from sellin’ likker, is takin’ away their rights.” [Illustration: NOT THE RIGHT KIND OF HORNS.] “Rights!” says Thomas Jefferson, jumpin’ upon his feet the minute he set down. “Rights! The first right and law of our nature, is self-preservation, and what safety has any man while the streets are filled with men turned into crazed brutes by this traffic you are upholdin’? Every one knows that a drunken man entirely loses for the time his reasoning faculties, his morality and his conscience, and is made ripe for any crime. That he is jest as ready to rob and murder innocent citizens as to smoke his pipe. So if you and I lend our influence and our votes to make intemperance legal, we make arson, burglary, rape, robbery, murder, legal. Tell me a man has a right to thus plant the seeds of crime and murder in a man’s soul, and imperil the safety of the whole community. Why, the Bible says, that if a man let loose a wild ox, and it gored men with its horns and killed them, the men that let it go loose should surely be put to death.” Here Simon Slimpsey got up, kinder hangin’ on to the bench, and made a dretful simple sort of a wink with one eye, and says he: “Them haint the kind o’ horns we are a talkin’ about, we are talkin’ about takin’ a horn of whisky now and then.” “Yes,” said Thomas J. “there was never a more appropriate name; for if there ever were horns that gored, and stabbed, and killed, it is these.” Elder Easy spoke out, and says he,—“The Bible says: ‘take a little wine for the stomach sake.’”