The white angel of the world, that foretells the freedom of the nations from the evils of strong drink

Preface

T S God alive ? Is Christ still the Saviour of the world ? ■*• Will this problem of evil among men ever be solved? Yea, verily; yet one, purblind through sin or lack of faith, might not unreasonably repeat these startling queries. When we consider the knowledge that human experience has spread before rulers and statesmen, and the unchanging commandments of God which are ever before his priests and people, the continued presence of the liquor traffic in the world is indeed (( a crime against man and a sin against God."

What we here have written and present to the intelligent, patriotic, and Christian reader has been written under the influence of such a burning conviction. The story speaks for itself. It has been our endeavor, in giving a brief history of the reign of intemperance and the modern movement in favor of temperance reform, to ' ' set down naught in malice, ' ' to avoid any spirit of partisanship, and to keep strictly within the limits of ascertained fact. The record of intemperance indeed needs no more than a bare presentation to make of it a story of startling significance. It is a tragedy of high dramatic intensity, full of the elements of the saddening and the terrible ; and the simplest statement of the saturnalia of crime to which alcohol has given rise, the

IV PREFACE.

misery and degradation into which it has cast millions of human beings, the horror of its whole sad history, should suffice to teach mankind the suicidal nature of the course which has been so long pursued.

We have no word of accusation for the victims of intemperance. Their yielding to the insidious temptation of the wine-cup is due to weakness, not to sin, and there should be held out to them the hand of charity for their fault and sympathy with their weakness, with heedful avoidance of the " I-am-better-than-thou" spirit, and of harshness and denunciation where appeal to the better nature of the erring is alone demanded. Nor do we write with any feeling of bitterness toward the advocates of strong drink. They are, as a rule, honest in their advocacy, and open to conviction if it can be shown to them that they are wrong in their views, and that the custom which they uphold is one that has been of the utmost injury to mankind. The verdict of recent science as to the seriously hurtful effects of alcohol on the body and mind of those who yield to its fascination is a lesson which all should study, the inebriate and the moderate drinker as well as the abstinent, and a knowledge of which cannot but add strength to the good resolutions of the weak and give a useful direction to the energies of the strong.

The temperance reform in America during the present century is the main topic of the following pages : it can scarcely fail to prove an instructive and interesting one. Not that its story is claimed to be told here with any special eloquence or wealth of illustration, but that the subject in itself is so full of absorbing interest that, however haltingly it be presented, it can scarcely fail to prove attractive.

We have but sought to tell u a plain, unvarnished tale," giving the successive steps of progress made by nineteenth-

PREFACE. V

century temperance and the measures adopted for its propagation, with such side-light of anecdotal illustration as may serve as a foil to the innate seriousness of the subject. The writer, in throwing his book upon the world, can onlyhope that it may serve to guide some of the weak and erring into the harbor of reform, and help to break the fetters of others who have long been bond-slaves to strong drink.

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

PRESIDENT OF UTAH UNIVERSITY,

Author of " The White Angel of the World," " Pleas for Prohibition," " Old Si's Sayings," Etc., Etc.

" O thou child of many prayers !

Life hath quicksands — life hath snares !"

Longfellow.

" Happy he With such a mother ! . . . . . . though he trip and fall, He shall not blind his soul with clay !"

Tennyson.

CONFESSIONS are crucifixions. They are seldom ^-^ voluntarily suffered, unless for expiation or the profit of posterity.

Having endured the unspeakable humiliations of such crucifixion of self at the foot of the Cross of Christ, and there found pardon for my sins, I may be borne with if, for the sake of those who may read and profit by my example, I give to the public some record of my sad misspendings and misdoings. I only ask that these revelations be read with the remembrance that they are the actual experiences of a living mortal man, and of whom it can be said that he came to

Christ, "and His Name, through faith in His name, hath made this man strong, whom ye see and know; yea, the faith which is by Him hath given him this present soundness in presence of you all."

Many persons interested in temperance reform, undoubtedly desirous to see the great curse of the race effectually dealt with, are yet confident that it is an evil that will bear only ameliorative treatment. They are not yet convinced that it is a radical vice, parented in these days for each new generation by a system of traffic fostered by law, and sure to augment the number of its victims in proportion to the sanction and license it obtains. They will not admit that it has become a throat disease of the nation, as malignant and fatal to its subjects as was the epithelioma to the noble and lamented emperor Frederick of Germany, or the cancerous malady in the mouth of the heroic Ulysses S. Grant. They will not consent that the logical and legal method — general and absolute prohibition — which is the ultimatum of all ancient and modern polity concerning crying public evils, can be applied effectively to this national affliction.

Why this tremendous system of personal and public injury should not be denounced as malum prohibitum by general consent and governmental decree they are not able to conveniently and convincingly explain. To exhibit, by the indisputable record of a life-experience, that any other method of dealing with the curse than the stern criminalization of the traffic which breeds and bestrews it is irrational, ineffectual, and inharmonious with the principles of Christian charity and goodly government, is the prime motive to the making of these confessions.

The actual trials, the defeats or triumphs, of living men, subjects of the like passions and infirmities, have always been most highly esteemed. They are lessons and warnings; they are embodied truth and exemplified error; they are the heralds of hope or the prophets of despair. The human mind cannot be divorced from its large dependence upon exemplarism. Both the troubled man and the triumphing man have each his Fidus Achates in some fellow-spirit who had kindred harassments or similar hopes. It is only the odd man of the world — the non-compos, the Napoleon of his class — who will trust his special superstition, or his "star of destiny, ' ' to direct his energies and encourage his enthusiasm. No myth or fiction can exert a continuous force on human character. The forceful romance, when it has a great motive, is born out of the travail of a great emergency. Cervantes introduced to the disgusted common sense of Spain his whimsical knight "Don Quixote," and the people exalted the caricature with riotous delight and "laughed Spain's chivalry to scorn." The power of the work exhausted itself upon the emergency which produced it and in which it was victorious. Ever since it has been no more than an amusing literary curiosity — the enduring epitaph of a ridiculous and deceased institution. Mrs. Stowe wrote Uncle Torn* s Cabin, and out from its covers, as from a cave of winds, came mighty gusts of passionate protest that fanned a revolution into fury, brought to pass the emancipation of millions from bondage, and threw down forever the institution of slavery in this nation. The book expended its power upon its enemy. Now it is no more than an esteemed memorial; it has no more living purpose that the proclamations of Jefferson Davis, or the clauses of the Confederate Constitution.

The full gamut of human experience is set in every spirit of man. This is the key to the mystery of ' ' history repeating itself." History is but recorded human experience. Herein lies the infinite love, wisdom, and mercy of God's gift of His only-begotten Son. The living, humanized Christ, with a genealogy and a history, has a stronger, surer

IO AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF

power to save than the promised and prophesied Christ. If the book of Job was really the first of the canonical Scriptures published among men, we readily find the secret of its power in this, that it is the record of a man. Millions have been moved to fight the good fight and win the victory that •overcometh the world by the help of Job's example, because he was a kinsman after the flesh. Millions more have persevered and perfected holiness by the help of David, because he was human. Millions have profited by the proverbs and preaching of Solomon, because he was a fellow-spirit who sinned, suffered, and was saved by faith. So, likewise, when Christ came and lived among men, became Himself " a man •of sorrows acquainted with grief," gathered unto Himself the offences of the race, and as Sin, though not a sinner, received the end of the law in the blood-atonement of the Cross, he drew all men to Himself. "Though a Son, yet learned He obedience in the things which He suffered, and thereby became the Author of salvation to all them that believe upon Him." It is to the Son of man, therefore, that all men turn with faith who seek for truth, redemption, holiness, and eternal life. Away from Christ all is contention and confusion — chaos; with Christ all is peace, love, the power of righteousness and the hope of glory. This is the eternal apotheosis of Personality.

So when Christ hath proven Himself to be "the power of God and the wisdom of God " in a redeemed man — a sinner saved from his sins — the witness of that new life in Christ Jesus must have force with and bring conviction upon other sinful men. May the Spirit of God so use these' recorded experiences to bring all who read them to the peace of Salvation and the power of the Truth!

Since God made of one blood all the races of men, it seems a foolish fiction to account a special excellency to what is known as "blue blood" in the social order. That

REV. SAMUEL WHITE SMALL, A.M.,. D. D. II

is a vagrant idea in this age. It has floated down to us from the days of the Moorish invasion of Spain and amalgamation with its people, but with changed signincaucy. Instead of standing for racial purity, it has come to represent a so-called heredity of moral graces and social aristocratisms. This alleged "blue blood," however, is -no index »f character; it is scarcely more than an expectation attached to environment. Men who were accredited with tk blue blood" have supplied a large percentage of the records of immoralities, crimes, and ignominies in every generation. They have pulled oars in galleys and pulled hemp on gallows around the globe. Almost every good name of America, however synonymous of virtue, patriotism, and moral grandeur, has been besmirched by some of its unworthy scions. Heredity as a doctrine of mental and physiological philosophy is undoubtedly well supported. It is too often used, however, on but one side of the problem of human life. Evil idiosyncrasies and deeds are explained by it far more frequently than good impulses and actions. This is a wrong if the doctrine of heredity be all that is claimed for it. Adam and Eve brought forth two sons, Cain and Abel; one was wicked and the other righteous. The bad son slew the good son, but he did not put an end to the reproduction of righteousness by the force of heredity. Seth came, even as Eve declared : " For God hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew." My thought is that the strain of Seth in the human family is as likely to turn toward righteousness as the strain of Cain to turn toward evil. As for myself, heredity may have had some influence upon my notions. How much I do not seek to determine, nor in which direction. The data I have in memory is general and insufficient for such a discussion. At any rate, I charge nothing of my evil-doing upon my ancestry — not even upon Father Adam.

I 2 A UTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF

While no stickler for the "blue blood " notion, I may claim, without offence, to have sprung of good stock. My father's line ran back certainly to a stronghold in the Highlands of Scotland. He was a strong, nervy, and indomitable representative of clansmen to whom loyalty was a religion and love of their rights a living consecration. Traced back over the vicissitudes of centuries, the line of excellent manhood and virtuous womanhood was broken by no fall toward crime or debauchery. My father himself was of singularly pure and abstemious habits from his youth. He was a man of affairs, but as a soldier of the Mexican War, a public printer, editor, and afterward managing official of a vast corporation, he abstained wholly from liquors, wines, beers, tobacco, coffee, and tea. Certainly not from him, as far back as I can trace, could I have inherited an appetite for any one of those things. My mother came by a direct line from the ancient Pontefracts, afterward the Pomfrets, of English history. The other side of her house was century old in the unadulterated faith of Scotch-Irish Presbyterianism. No Nazarite of old or ' c cranky ' ' Prohibitionist of to-day ever held strong drink in holier horror than did the men and women of her family. So I can discover no hereditary blight descending to me along that branch of my family tree. Whatever else I may have inherited, I do not believe I thus came by any fleshly appetite from the intemperance of which I have been a sufferer.

My birthplace was in the now beautiful and, thrifty city of Knoxville, in East Tennessee, on the banks of the sinuous and picturesque Holston River. When I was born (July 3, 1 851) my father was the editor of a newspaper of considerable note and influence. He took great interest in the development of my youthful faculties, and I early gave evidence of precocious powers. I learned my alphabet before other children usually have their attention centred upon it^

REV. SAMUEL WHITE SMALL, A.M., D. D. I 3

and learned it mostly from the headings of the newspapers which my father brought home in the evenings from his editorial rooms. I learned to read his handwriting, as he prepared ' ' copy ' ' for the printers, and learned to read it 14 upside-down" before I could read it when held in the usual and proper position. I was an eager and observant lad, and picked up a wonderful store of information early, which made me somewhat a popular prodigy. I mention these things, not for their novelty, but because they explain how, at that early date, I became eager for reputation and valued my powers and labors by the measure of popularity and applause they won for me. Thus early was implanted that love of praise which in after years proved so false a mentor to my fitter powers and stronger ambitions.

My mother was a woman with intense religious principles. She had been reared in the most orthodox discipline of Presbyterianism, and retained always the impress of its doctrines. When converted, however, she had united with the Methodist Church, and therefore joined to her faith the practice of the daily duties which experimental religion dictates and which so tangibly "make for righteousness.*

She was always deeply concerned for my spiritual development, and early began my indoctrination in the knowledge of the word of God and in the duties of the Christian faith. My earliest recollections of her teachings are associated with the Bible and the " Shorter Catechism." My grandfather, a grand old Presbyterian saint, had taken me largely unto himself, and had me go with him to the Sabbath-school of his church. In this way my Sabbath-school training for many years was after the fashion of the Presbyterians. In that day we had none of the modern helps, no

International Lessons, ' ' or learned expositions of the historical, ethical, and theological values involved in the lessons. The Bible and the Catechisms, Long and Short, were the text-books, and the teaching from them was simple, pure y and unquestioned in authority. I have had much reason since my conversion to praise God for the excellency of those early teachings.

In schooling I was given the best of teachers, and early displayed an eagerness and aptitude for the acquirements of the school-room. I was ambitious to excel, and seldom failed to reach the rank and honors I coveted. A favorite with my teachers and popular with my schoolmates, my advancements were always rapid and stimulating to greater zeal.

Because of these things my early youth is remembered as a season of pleasure and profit, filled with good promises for the future and often commended in my presence as the forerunner of a brilliant and honorable career. And thus, in some degree, I was led to regard myself as "an elect child ' ' whose lines were predestined to every success and to a future fruitful of honors, fame, and fortune.

I remember- my college-days with pleasure. They were days of enjoyment in many respects, and of incidents and experiences that might have been better in motive and more pleasant in recollection. My Alma Mater was that historic and excellent old Methodist institution in South-west Virginia, Emory and Henry College. It combined in its title, as it did in its training, both the piety which is breathed in the name of Bishop Emory and the patriotism which is inseparable from the name of Patrick Henry There I had surroundings favorable to the fullest cultivation of my mind in knowledge of the literature of the world, the arts, the sciences of civilization, together with opportunities in plenty and examples most noble to help me learn lessons of goodliness and experience the power of a life consecrated to the faith and service of the Lord Jesus Christ. It was a place that had been especially selected on account of its remote-

REV. SAMUEL WHITE SMALL, A.M., D. D. I $

ness from any town to which the students might resort for the purpose of finding means and places of dissipation. It was so advertised to the world as possessing these advantages of isolation from temptation and advantages for moral discipline as to induce many parents to send thither such of their sons as they feared might be falling into habits of an immoral character. Thus were gathered together in the college many young men who fouud frequent pleasure in exercising their fertile ingenuity to avoid the rigid college rules and indulge themselves in periodical dissipation.

Unfortunately for me, I found many of these to be congenial spirits, and joined them in their exploits, and thus on frequent occasions laid myself open to fair charges of insubordination and moral laxness. More than once my escapades came near sending me away in disgrace, but the kindness of the good men in charge was greater than I deserved, and they let me remain. Once only was I moved to seek a better way. During a meeting among the students I sought conversion, and was led to believe I had experienced it ; but my struggle against the old life was brief. The power I exerted appeared purely mechanical instead of spiritual, and soon I fell away again, and became almost hopelessly disgusted with what I deemed to be my futile efforts against the bent which I had given to my life.

I graduated with some promise and went away to nrf home, which was in the city of New Orleans at the time. To recuperate my health, which was somewhat broken, I took a position as an express messenger on the short and pleasant route between New Orleans and Mobile. The run between these cities was accomplished in six hours, occupying the middle portion of the day, and leaving me open every night, in one or the other city, to find my pleasure as I chose. I soon fell into visiting places and engaging in dissipations that were anything but pleasing to my parents or helpful to my reputation and prospects for the future. I found in both cities young men of social position, means, and evil knowledge who received me gladly into their companies and generously inducted me into all of the arts and devices of dissipation. I soon learned the lesson of the power of evil association, and had wit enough to appreciate that much further pursuit of these reckless proceedings would fix these vicious and degrading habits upon me for the indeterminate period of my future.

Leaving this employment after a while, I went away to Nashville, Tennessee, and prosecuted my studies for admission to the profession of the law. I was admitted by the Supreme Court of the State, and practised the profession with considerable prospects of distinguished success.

While I was thus engaged I had ample opportunity in the gay and fashionable society of that city to acquire a fuller taste for the pleasures of the world and for the ways of those who look little to the moral quality of their enjoyments and habits. The appetite for liquors grew upon me, until I became aware of my danger by the inexorable penalties which ever and anon my dissipations would exact from me in pains, sickness, and humiliations. I resolved to mend my life and seek some more constant employment than the law then immediately promised me. I was offered and accepted a position upon the reportorial staff of the Nashville Banner, a noted afternoon journal of the Tennessee capital. It was then under the editorship of Hon. Albert Roberts, one of the ablest and most cultured men I have ever known in connection with daily journalism. He was exceedingly kind and helpful to me, and had I been as ambitious then to advance in the journalistic profession as he was willing to encourage me, the entire lines of my life might then have been happily changed into a sober and useful current. But the associations which reportorial work made

REV. SAMUEL WHITE SMALL, A.M., D.D. I 7

for me, the indulgences of my besetting appetite to which men invited me in order to secure for themselves the favors I might be able to do for them through the columns of the press, the places of news deposit into which I had the entree, such as police circles, the resorts of gamblers, of horsemen, and lewd assemblies — the slums in general of a city — were all of them such as offered reasons for the time being and opportunities abundant for drinking and the exploiting of other social vices. At last I became aware that I could not advance myself rapidly in the ranks of journalism in the city, because of these habits, which had grown upon me and beyond my ability to completely control. I made a determined effort to break away from them and renew my endeavors under more favorable circumstances. I withdrew from that environment and took myself off into the quiet village of Greenville, Tennessee. There I obtained the aid and friendship of ex-President Andrew Johnson, of whom my father had in times past been a personal friend and political supporter. He took me kindly under his patronage, and assisted me to establish myself in the newspaper business in his own home-town; and for nearly two years I had a most excellent opportunity to make a name and place for myself in my chosen field of enterprise. I enjoyed exceptional advantages for political information of the most interesting period of our history — that which preceded, included, and followed the great Civil War — getting the data directly from the lips, correspondence, and papers of this great and muchmisunderstood patriot and statesman. He was very considerate toward me, permitted me to question him with freedom, aud seemed pleased to make me a repository of many interesting facts concerning that great and thrilling period of national history in the making of which he had been a conspicuous and potent factor.

While living in Greenville, on the 2 2d of February, 1873,

I was married to Miss Annie Isabelle Arnold, daughter of General Thomas D. Arnold, a noted member of the bar and ex-Congressman. I found in her a cultured, Christian, and courageous helpmeet. In all the years of my trials, moral aberrations, and vicissitudes of fortune she has proven her supreme loyalty and the incalculable value of her native instincts and woman's wisdom. I feel that I can never repay her in sufficient measure for the persistence with which she sought my redemption and the strong support she affords me in the new life.

The cholera epidemic of 1873 brought me financial disaster, and in the fall of that year I removed to Texas, where my father was president of the Texas Express Company. Locating in Houston, I became the city editor of the Houston Mercury, then the leading journal of the city. Here I achieved a considerable and more than local reputation for the quality of my work on the press. Much of it was of a humorous turn, and my pseudonym of ' ' Merk ' ' became familiar throughout the State. I afterward passed to the staff of the Daily Telegraph, and thence to a brief ownership of the Daily Age. But journalism was a very precarious pursuit in those changing times of Texas, and I soon tired of the weekly plaints of the printers and the semi-frequent descents of the sheriff. Suddenly, one day in the spring of 1875, I closed out my interest in Texas and returned to Georgia.

Obtaining employment on the Atlanta Constitution at starvation figures, I set myself diligently to make a new start for newspaper fame. I worked steadily and with more than ordinary results. I soon acquired credit for excellent journalistic abilities, and also for my humorous work. It was here that I created "Old Si," the quaint negro commentator whose supposed discourses upon current topics obtained an immediate and widespread vogue in the newspapers of America and England. I remember my first

Mrs. Annie I. Small.

distinct sensation of having ' ' arrived somewhere ' ' in the pursuit of reputation was when my portrait appeared in the New York Graphic in 1876, in company with about a dozen more of the then popular press wits, such as u M. Quad, ' ' Bailey of the Danbury News, Bob Burdette, and u P. J. Man" Goldsmith of the New York Herald. It was this ' ' Old Si ' ' matter that first gave the Constitution its exchange value, and caused it to become a generally popular paper.

In the mean while, in 1876, I was appointed official reporter of the Superior Courts of the Atlanta Circuit, and thus arrived at an income which softened somewhat the natural poverties of a press- writer. I held this important and profitable position for ten consecutive years, only resigning after my conversion in the fall of 1885, and when I had determined to enter upon a ministerial life. This position was of exceeding profit to me in more ways than in money. It gave me an almost daily familiarity with the law, the procedure of courts, the character and courses of litigation, the curiosities of criminal histories, and the general philosophy of the jurisprudence side of popular government. The knowledge of these things is now of inestimable value to me.

At the same time that I occupied this position in the courts, and was also a constant attache of the press in Atlanta, I also, by the courtesy and help of friends, had other privileges and advantages.

In 1876, I was appointed by Governor Smith to represent the State of Georgia in the Southern Immigration Convention at New Orleans and in the Mississippi Valley Commercial Convention at Memphis.

In 1877, I was the reporter of the proceedings and debates of the Georgia Constitutional Convention, one of the ablest bodies ever convened in the State, and from which issued the present admirable constitution of the Commonwealth. In doing the work of this convention for the Constitution I worked an average of twenty-four hours per day for fifty days, reporting in short-hand throughout every session, and transcribing the proceedings for daily reproduction in the paper. This terrible task gave me a physical poverty which largely increased my reliance upon stimulants to supply wasted strength.

In 1878, I obtained, through the personal kindness of Secretary of State Evarts, an appointment as an attache of the United States Commission to the Universal Exposition at Paris in France. I had made a speech on u The New South" at the banquet tendered by the citizens of Atlanta to President Hayes and his party of Cabinet officers in their famous Southern tour in 1877. Both the President and Secretary Evarts considered it a significant speech, because it was, .in fact, about the first notable demand for a new departure by the younger men of the South from the stubborn Bourbonism of the war-time political survivors. It was due to this speech that I was given the long-coveted opportunity to go abroad and see other lands and peoples. I greatly enjoyed the privileges accorded me as an official, and improved them to the fullest possible profit for sightseeing and useful acquaintanceship. It was not, however, a very good arrangement for me, viewed particularly from the moral standpoint. It opened to me so extensive a range of novel experiences in the gay life of the godless city that I could not resist the impulses of my adventurous and self-indulgent nature. Suffice it to say here, that I familiarized myself all too abundantly with the "mysteries of Paris," and when the time for my withdrawal from those scenes arrived, it was much of a providential deliverance in the eyes of my wife and friends.