He came over and whispered in my ear, first looking about him--as we are all doing nowadays, the while we laugh at Russia and Prussia: “Say, if you’ll drop a quarter on the floor, I’ll pick it up; and there’ll be a package of cigarettes under your napkin in a minute.” Thus was another holy law disobeyed. And it is done every day, O proud fanatics, who think you are cleaning us up. And it always will be done. For poor old frail human nature is just what it is; and spiritual reformation can never come, as you would have it, from without, in. We must all work out our own destinies, from within, out. Somehow we like the little battles with our souls. They add a piquancy to life. They give a spice and zest to the level days. Our appetites are our own affairs. The moderate drinker is not a drunkard; and to place restrictions upon him, in order to cure the ne’er-do-well is as unjust as it would be to put the petit larceny prisoner in the death chair along with the murderer. Gertrude Atherton, who is wise and broad-minded, once wrote an article against Prohibition, which began with these sharp, incisive sentences: “I am a woman. I never drink. But I am against Prohibition.” My own sentiments, exactly. Temperance--yes; but never absolute restrictions. And if we continue to place them upon the people, we shall have nothing but broken, shattered laws all down the line; and finally something else will be broken and shattered. I mean the dream of this great Republic. I mean the illusion which all of us had that we were not to live under despots. I mean the hope of a race which believed in democracy, and finds itself suddenly in the grasp and under the domination of bitter tyrants, who seek to chain us, and imprison not only our bodies, but our very souls. CHAPTER IV TOO MUCH “VERBOTEN”