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
The jury brought in a verdict of guilty; but the damages to the character
of this republican county attorney was one dollar, and of course
I sent him the dollar, but the cost which was, including all, about two
hundred dollars was assessed to me and a judgement put on a piece of
property, which I paid off, by the sale of my little hatchets, and lectures.
Strange these trials never caused me to become discouraged,
rather the reverse. I knew I was right, and God in his own time would
come to my help. The more injustice I suffered, the more cause I had
to resent the wrongs. I always felt that I was keeping others out of
trouble, when I was in. I had resolved that at the first opportunity I
would go to Wichita and break up some of the bold outlawed murder
mills there. I thought perhaps it was God's will to make me a sacrifice
as he did John Brown, and I knew this was a defiance of the national
intrigue of both republican and democratic parties, when I destroyed this
malicious property, which afforded them a means of enslaving the people,
taxing them to gather a revenue they could squander, and giving them
political jobs, thus creating a force to manage the interest and take care
of the results of a business where the advantage was in the graft it gave
to them and the brewers and distillers.
In two weeks from the close of this trial, on the 27th of December,
1900, I went to Wichita, almost seven months after the raid in Kiowa.
Mr. Nation went to see his brother, Mr. Seth Nation, in eastern Kansas
and I was free to leave home. Monday was the 26th, the day I started.
The Sunday before, the 25th, I went to the Baptist Sunday school then to
the Presbyterian for preaching, and at the close walked over to the Methodist
church for class meeting. I could not keep from weeping, but I
controlled myself the best I could. I did not know but that it would
be the last time I would ever see my dear friends again, and could not
tell them why. I gave my testimony at the class meeting; spoke particularly
to members of the choir about their extravagant dress; told them
that a poor sinner coming there for relief would be driven away, to see
such a vanity fair in front. I begged them to dress neither in gold, silver
or costly array, and spoke of the sin of wearing the corpses of dead birds
and plumage of birds, and closed by saying: "These may be my dying
words." At the close Sister Shell, a W. C. T. U. said to me: "What
do you mean by 'my dying words?' for you never looked better in your
life." I said: "You will know later." I never told anyone then of my
intention of smashing saloons in Wichita.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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