WHAT CLOSED THE SALOON

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 22, 1880

WHAT CLOSED THE SALOON

never forgotten.

WHAT CLOSED THE SALOON.

At last they reached the establishment whose proprietor had so persistently refused to yield; the saloon was brilliantly lighted, but Brannan himself stood in the door. As the ladies paused, he spoke to them very politely, and they commenced their meeting. It continued for half an hour, and then in the interval between a prayer and hymn, he told them he had listened to them very patiently, and now thought it only civil that they should hear what he had to say. Brannan began by complimenting their music, telling them how much he and his customers had enjoyed it; he said he hoped it had amused them to come there day after day, and that he had no objection to their doing so, for a few days, but it was now assuming the shape of a nuisance, and if they did not discontinue their visits, he would appeal to the law. He said he had as good a right to make a living for his family as any man in the city, and if he chose to do it by selling liquor, it was nobody's business. He closed by an emphatic declaration that he had never harmed any one by his saloon, and again told the ladies if they annoyed him any more, he would have them arrested.

Just then the great clock in the court house struck nine. It was near the hour for closing their meeting, and while Brannan and his party congratulated themselves upon a victory, the women prepared, oh, so sadly, to go away. Their faith had been so strong, they had believed that God would complete his wonderful work that night, and now they must go, leaving it still unfinished.

Suddenly they paused, for a childish voice, which had the depth of a woman's anguish, wailed out, "Oh, don't give it up; it's to save my father!"

Then they parted right and left, before the bent and twisted figure of Nannie Burke who passed in front of the crowd. As she stood there, with her tattered shawl thrown off, the light from one of the colored lamps falling full on the poor little form, on the floating hair and pale face with solemn eyes, there was something so weird and strange in her appearance, as though she was a messenger from another world.

"Ben Brannan," she said, and the weak little voice grew firm and stern as an accusing angel's, "my father, George Burke, is a kind and tender man when he lets whisky alone; he earns two dollars a day, and you know that's enough to keep us well. We live in a miserable little garret on Vine street; there is hardly enough fire to keep me from freezing, sometimes, and I have had nothing to eat to-day but a piece of dry bread; the money my father ought to spend on his home goes for whisky which makes a brute of him, and you stand there, Ben Brannan, and say you do no harm.

"It was whisky that made my father give me the kick down stairs that left me like this; it is that that sends him home at night to beat me with that crutch till I cry out for God to let me die; it was your whisky that made him abuse my mother till she died of a broken heart, and it was you that got him to break the promise he had made at her grave, that he would meet her in Heaven, Ben Brannan!" cried the childish voice, breaking into wild sobs at last; "and O, if your whisky kills him, body and soul, and he's parted from her forever and ever, will you dare to tell my mother, when you meet her at the Judgment, that you never did any harm?"

The unnatural strength which had upheld the child gave way at last; she tottered and would have fallen, had not a tall, powerful looking man pushed his way out from the saloon and caught her away from the kind, womanly hand stretched out for her. Holding the poor, brave little girl in his arms, while the great tears rolled over his rough, brown face, he said:—

"It's all true, every word of it. I am her father, poor lamb, and I've been just such a brute as she's told you; but I'm ready to sign the pledge to-night, ladies, and by the help of God I'll try to keep it. And now, Ben," turning toward him as he spoke "for the sake of the poor fellows like me who are so easily tempted, for the sake of their wives and children, for the sake of your own wife and baby, who is no prettier than my Nannie once was, I ask you to give up this miserable business."

Brannan had grown very pale while Nannie and her father were speaking; his pretty little wife was sobbing bitterly as she clung to his arm, and the innocent face of his baby girl looked wonderingingly up into his. There was a fearful struggle in the man's soul; how could he yield when he had boasted that he never would? But then, how could he sell the maddening poison which could make a man crush and mangle the delicate form of his own little child? Then as the idea which Nannie had suggested came back to him, and he thought of the possibility of such women as poor Mary Burke requiring their husband's blood at his hands, he hesitated no longer.

"I'll give in," he said, huskily. "I thought I could hold out against an angel from Heaven, but I couldn't stand that poor lame child."—Sel.