Reminiscences of a. Wayfarer
Some o* the Important Events of the Pioneer Days
of Richardson County and Southeast Nebraska, as
remembered by the writer, who has spent fifty
one years here.
The Evolution of The Sober Life.
"If thou soetli the oppression of the
poor, and violent perverting vif Judg
ment and Justice In a province, mar
vel not ;tt ttie matter; for he that
is higher than the highest regardest;
and there be higher than they."
Solomon was not only a preacher,
but he was a philosopher as well,
and was evidently a strong believer (
in what the great of the earth, in all
times, have culled manifest destiny. (
That, nbmo the acts of men, whether j
in their individual or collective cap
acity, and whether good or bad, he,
tor something,) that is higher than
the highest, Is steadily regarding, and
in his own good time wlH right per
verted Justice in the provinces,
(nations), and relievo the oppressions
of the poor. This, According to my
interpretations of the foregoing ex
cerpt from a book of very great
authority, is what the author intended
should be understood, ir it was true
in that age, it is true in tills, and
lias been true In every other. In
this paper I propose to give the ordi
nary experience and observations of
an ordinary wayfarer on the one
Journey we are all taking through
the world, touching matter germane
to the philosiphleal proposition of
the Jewish savant.
it requires a long time for human
kind to get out of an old rut. We
are essentially a precedent loving
race, and perhaps It Is just us well.
The reforms in human society and
government that have been of great
est benefit,have been gradual in their
inauguration and development. it
must he remembered that the road
from tlic mental and moral midnight
of barbarism man's original and
first condition Inis been u long and
Weary one. It took every year of
the more than five thousand that his
tory tells of, to produce one Shakes
peare; and It took every hour of
that long period to evolve the con
ditions that ninde him possible. The
slow growth is the healthy and the
permanent one- the forced and un
natural, tin1 ephmeral and short-lived.
Common observation discloses the
fact that In plant life there are three
stages in its growth: first in the
root, second in the stem and third In
the flower mid fruit. The same is
true of man’s life.
His first growth is in statute, the
second in breadth, till the physical
house is built, and third, in mental
and moral flower and fruit; and out
of that flower and fruit has grown all
the civil, moral and intellectual excel
lence of the race. But to attain its
present high stage of development
some element of its original barbar
ous origin had to be discarded from
time to time, and with each slough
of the kind, u step forward was made
There is a good deal of the bar
barian, the troglodyte, the cave dwell
er, and the wild man of the woods,
lingering yet in the man civilized. In
these opening years of the twentieth
century; one tn>it In particular, the
drink habit. It is as old as man's
ability to produce an Intoxicant, but
sharp attention to Its pernicious ef
fects on men and society was not
directed till about one hundred years
ago. At that time, and for centuries
before, the habit or custom among
all classes of people of drinking liq
uor that would intoxicate, was as uni
versal as man himself, except in Mo
hammedan countries, where the use
of all Intoxicants were Inhibited by
edict or the Prophet that no one
dared disobey. L am discussing tills
question in Its historical and socio
logical aspects only. Beyond that 1
will leave “Billy" Sunday and the
press that favors the liquor traffic
to fight it out among themselves.
Within the space of my own life,
and the cycle is rapidly nearing com
pletion, 1 have hud occasion to know
and to observe the practical effects
of tlie liquor habit and traffic on in
dividuals and upon society generally
around me. My first recollection of
the matter is, that drinking was the
rule and total abstinence the excep
tion. 1 have lived long enough to see
that order reversed, and drinking be
come the exception, and soberiety
the rule.
Let me give a fact or two. When
I began the study of the law in the
decade of 1S30. I knew Vuit one mem
ber of the liar, resident at Beards
town.or attending from elsewhere,who
never had used intoxicating liquor as
a beverage, and that solitary except
ion was Abraham Lincoln. From
the judge on the bench to the lowest
tipstaff in the court, everybody drank,
and nobody seemed to think any
thing of it.
I am dealing with the phantoms
of a dead time, and from out the
shadows there comes before my men
tal vision pale ghosts of men I knew
In the morning of my life, and in the
heyday or their strong intellectual
manhood and high professional stand
ing at a bar second to none for abil
ity in tin* family of the states- such
as Robert S.Blackwell,Richurd Yates,
Jackson (Jrinshaw, Stephen A. Doug
lass, William A. Richardson (the man
for whom our county was named),
and many others of lesser note,—law
yers of the highest class—three of
them distinguished senators, illus
trious in history, another it law
writer on a pioneer subject peculiar
to the Ymerican states, and the fore
runner of a new and distinct branch
of our jurisprudence unknown to the
common law, all slain in the day of
their greatest usefulness by a social
custom universally tolerated, if not
entirely approved. Society can be as
cruel as Its members, but Its offenses
are those in which the whole body
shares, and hence individual respon
sibility is not felt. The mtirderttf
dies on the scnffold; a jury has said
he was guilty of taking human life,
and the law has declared that lie
must die. 1 am a member of the
community whose laws lie has violated
and being such have consented to the
lex lullcnis; nevertheless, 1 feel in no
way that I am responsible for his
death. Why? Because the whole
mass ♦*!' the people have likewise con
sented, and are therefore involved,
and responsibility thus diffused, be
comes nil. And so of the social ctis
tom mentioned. It came down to us
as an heritage from that far off race
of robbers, gluttons and drunkards
from whom we are descended.
Let me instance another fact of1
equal significance. My early recol
lection of the hospitable welcome ex
tended to preachers of the gospel, in
cluded a decanter of whiskey, a sugar
bowl and water, with which to com
pound what they called a toddy, and
which the reverend gentlemen took
with every demonstration of unctions
satisfaction. There was never a
word of condemnation of tin' practice,
and I have heard older people say
that they had seen more than one of
those laborers in the vineyard go
into the pulpit half seas over, which,
in sailor phrase, means comfortably
drunk, and preach the word with
great power. 1 have little doubt of
the power of one so situated, what
ever 1 may think of the propriety of
the performance.
l>r. Lyman Beecher signalized ltis
great work of reform In this partlc- (
ular, early in the ninteenth century, J
by sobering up the preachers, and it 1
was finally accomplished, but it took
some time.
Twenty-six years ago Bishop
Thomas Bowman of the Methodist
church came to our city to dedicate
the church building of that society,
and i had the pleasure of entertain
ing the eminent churchman during his
stay. Among many other experiences
of iiis long life as a preacher of the
gospel, he told me that when lie was
a boy hack in old Pennsylvania, he
had many a time seen the preacher
In charge pitch horseshoes (a pastiim
in which our Gov. Mickey was pre
eminently a leading expert), with
some of the lay members on Sunday
morning to see who would pay for
their morn'ng Brink of whiskey. ‘'Bil
ly" Sunday, when he was in the act
ive, sin commit ting business, could
hardly have done worse than that.
Tim world has moved since Bishop
Bowman was a boy, and is moving
now more rapidly titan ever, and no
man between the two great oceans is
doing more to make it move in the
right direction than this same “Billy"
Sunday, who so mortally offended cer
tain people of an uncertain moral
make-up the other day. His offen
se is not so much that lie reformed
in his younger days, as it is for tell
ing tales out of school, and for
preaching the gospel of sober right
eoue.ness. II was well enough that
ho es aped the maelstrom of death
and damnation himself, but he sins
against the fetich of Falls City's maj
ority. (the saloons) when ho sounds
the alarm to warn other fellows of
their danger, for it is those same
other fellows who are wanted for sac
rifice to the aforesaid fetich. It is
a fact tolerably well understood that
Mr. Sunday offended nobody in his
chautauqua address the other day but
the fellows who voted the whiskey
ticket at our city election last April.
Twenty-five hundred of the best
men and women of this city and sur
rounding country heard Mr. Sunday
lust week, and this is what one of
the papers in this city lias to say
about them. Mark well the language,
for it was deliberately written, and is
in no sense an accident or oversight:
“The crowd likes anything 'rare.'
They like to get as near the vulgar,
the obscene and forbidden as the
police or the Chautauqua manage
ment will stand for. This accounts
for the popularity of these nude per
formances. Nude—whether in man
ner of speech or from lack of drap
ery.”
This gratuitous insult to that vast
concourse of respectable men and
women who filled the auditorium in
tin' park and the grounds surrounding
It, to hear Mr. Sunday on Tuesday
of the cliautauqua week, was publish
ed last Saturday in a newspaper in
tliis city, it would be difficult to
put a lower estimate on the morals
of a people than the editor of that
paper has put on the people who
heard Mr. Sunday.
In the first place the statement, as
applied to that assemblage, Is a gross
slander, and as to Mr. Sunday, 1 as
sert what 1, and two thousand other
people know to be true, that Mr. Sun
day uttered not a single word In all
l.is nearly two hour address that
would, or could offend the most fas
tidious in the matter of polite ex
pression. What is said here is not
Intended as a defense of Mr. Sunday.
He needs none from anybody. His
place in this article is that of chief
among the Intellectual giants who for
long years have been fighting a so
cial monster, and fighting it to the
death. This young man has presum
ably twenty years of active vigorous
life before him. His effective work
lias just commenced. Hike another
reformed rake of eternal memory, the
Apostle Paul, the cohorts of evil will
do well to beware, for when the great
Ciod lets loose such men in this world,
mm, tiling is going to happen.
In the last but one of this series
I told the story of the Meek-Davis,
murders, in April 1860. That trag
edy was directly caused by liquor.
There was no necessity for a fight.
Had both men been sober, the ebulli
tion of the drunken fool who started
the row by firing his pistol reckless
ly on the street, would have attract
ed no attention and nobody would
have been hurt. Hut both Meek and
l)a\is were largely under the influ
ence of liquor themselves and it
took but small provocation to start
something, and their dance of death
was soon over.
Only a few months before, two men
from up on South fork west of Sa
leni, had been to that town on some
errand of business, and like many
others before and since, filled up on
whiskey and started home. On the
road they got into a dispute about
some trifling matter, and from the
dispute they got into a quarrel and
finally into a fight, in which one
named Moran stabbed the other
named Hudgins, and killed him.
This was the work of liquor. They
were friends and neighbors, but craz
ed by liquor they were savages, and
murder was done.
livery murder done in this county
for fifty years, except perhaps the
Cllf ford -Me Wliort e r killing, was whol
ly or in part, the result of intoxica
tion. The same is said to be true of
the country everywhere, but it is
gratifying to know that changes for
the better are constantly going on.
Pusiness lias done more for sober
citizenship than any other factor.
Sobertety is the one first important
qualification for any responsible bus
iness station. Public service corpora
tion set the pace, and like a circle in
the water, it grows wider as it goes.
There are people in the world who J
are said to be better than their re- 1
ligion. and the French are mention-j
cd as being among them. I do not J
vouch for the truth of the assertion;
on the contrary, 1 am free to say 1
do not believe it, yet a very distin
guished writer of the last century,
Henry Thomas Buckle, is authority
for the statement. However that
may be, I am very certain that some
people—ours among them—are better
than their laws, especially their fun
damental law.
i
Our constitution is more like an
act of legislation than anything else,
for there is scarcely a provision in
it that is not self executing, without
legislative aid. For instance, it de
votes all the money that arises from
tiie saloon licenses to the support of
the common schools in the district
where the traffic is carried on. That
is a direct bribe to every voter, as
it tends to lessen—-or he thinks it
does—the burden of his taxes. While
that provision remains in the consti
tution, it will always be difficult in
any populous town or city to entire
ly eradicate the liquor business. The
legislature cannot repeal it, and it
is next to impossible to amend the
constitution without violating it.
If the people could be polled, un
trammeled by that constitutional
bribe, there is little doubt but what
the sale of liquor by authority of law
would cease in this state,—I mean
the whole people of the state.
In towns like our own, where they
have an iron-clad whiskey majority,
the hope of getting rid of the traffic
is small indeed, hut if the people
outside, who are compelled to* should
er tlie burdens—or most of them—
made necessary by it, were allowed
a \oice in saying whether the Ifhsi
ness should be licensed or not, there
is every reason to believe that it
would stop suddenly. That is the
solution of the whole matter. When
will our laws be so framed as to per
mit the practical test? Forty years
pgo last winter I helped to enact a
law that closed the saloons in this
state on every election day since, and
no legislator has ever attempted its
repeal. Another step was taken last
winter, and saloons must now let up
for eleven out of every twenty-four
hours; and, that they will close some
evening in the near fa I lire and never
-
open any more, 's just as certain as
it :s, tin' “lie Hint is higher titan
tlie highest regaidest,” and that“ther
be higher than they.”
If your liver is sluggish and out of
tone, and you feel dull, bilious, coa
st ipated. take a dose of Chamberlain’s
Stomach and Liver Tablets tonight
before retiring and you will feel all
right in the morning. Sold by all
druggists.
‘ JRoojE®-.
. Wilbur D. Nesbit. .
A yjnrrr of2
It drifts In on (lie breezes from
somewhere far away,
A scent of soothing savor that glad
dens- half the day—
A faint, elusive odor, a shadowy per
fume;
There drifts In on the breezes a whiff
of alder bloom.
And through Its silent mugie out of
the past arise
The songs of olden summers, the blue
of olden skies,
The dawns that broke In silver upon
tile distant heights,
The star-strewn depths of glory that
made the olden nights.
With eyes half-closed I fancy I hear
the little stream
Go leaping on ami laughing with
Jewel-llash and gleam,
While over it the alders their snowy
blooms have hung,
As though they caught In armfuls the
pearly foam upflung.
The snowy alder blossoms 1 As deli
cate as lace,
And cool with scented comfort when
pressed against the face!
A honey tag as heavy us Oriental
musk
Swept from them through the
shadows that crept in with the
dusk.
And so I sit and fancy the old days
have returned—
The olden golden summers for which
my heart has yearned,
And memory is weaving upon her rest
less loom
A warp and woof of sweetness—a
whiff of alder bloom.
When the digestion is all right, the
action of the bowels regular, tlxere is
a natural craving and relish for food.
When this is lacking you may know
that you need a dose of Chmberlaiii’s
Stomach and Liver Tablets. ' They
strengthen the digestive organs, im
prove the appetite and regulate the>
1 bowels. Sold by all druggists
Uneeda Biscuit
are made from the finest flour and the best
materials obtainable— mm
That Makes them an ideal B 00£f
Uneeda Biscuit
are baked in surroundings where cleanliness
and precision are supreme—
That Makes them
Uneeda Biscuit
are touched only once by human hands—
when the pretty girls pack them— m
That Makes them
Uneeda Biscuit
arc sealed in a moisture proof package—
That Keeps them
'
w •
