The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. NationNation, Carry Amelia
History
The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation
Nation, Carry Amelia
Nation, Carry Amelia, 1846-1911; Social reformers -- United States -- Biography; Temperance -- United States
I went to Bangor, Maine, to lecture once. Stopped at the Bangor
House, run by one Chapman. Roosevelt had stopped there just two
weeks before. I heard this hotel had one of those traps, called "dives."
When I went into the dining-room I asked a young lady waiting on me,
if she could get me a bottle of beer? She said they kept it and that she
would ask the head waiter to get it for me. She spoke to him. He left the
dining-room and in a few minutes the man Chapman came out of the
winding way to his dive; the proprietor rushed up to me in a drunken
rage. He threw me against one of the pillars, then literally knocked me
out into the hall in the presence of the guests, perhaps a hundred; then
he kept knocking me down every time I rose to my feet. He would not
allow me to get my things. I was invited to go home with a prohibitionist,
Dr. Marshall. This Chapman was a noted dive-keeper, a rummy, and
ran a representative rum-soaked republican hotel. He was angry, because
I dared to expose him, in his sneaking way of drugging and robbing
his guests. It was marvelous what rages these law-breakers used
to have when I came around at first. It is not so now. Their bands
have been smashed and they are not as bold; and more marvelous that
I was not seriously hurt.
Once in Nebraska City, Neb., I was knocked in the temple by a
saloon-keeper. I reeled and fell and while I knew he struck me with his
clenched fists as hard as he could, so it seemed to me, I did not have a
bruise.
I always prayed to God to take care of me, but to lead me into these
tumults to rouse the people to think and to talk.
THE BEGINNING OF THE GRAVEYARD ASSOCIATION OF MEDICINE LODGE.
I never saw anything that needed a rebuke, or exhortation, or warning,
but that I felt it was my place to meddle with it. I have been called a
"meddler". Yes I say: "It is my place to meddle with the devil's
business. Jesus meddled with the law-breakers in the temple."
I will give you a few facts to prove what I mean and hope it will
inspire my readers to do likewise. What injures one is the interest of
all. We are personally responsible for all wrong that we neglect to make
right, when it is in our power to do it. If anything injures my neighbor
it injures me. If my neighbor is blessed so am I.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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