The Saloon According to the Saloon-Keeper.
ONE of the most highly respected inhabitants of this city, interested in the special religious meetings of the church on the lower West Side, felt it to be his duty to visit eight saloons. He desired, if possible, to secure, and was ready to pay for the use of, a saloon for the holding of a Christian meeting, and also to sow some seeds of truth in the hearts of those to whom he might obtain access. He is no ordinary volunteer missionary, but a man of culture, of wide experience, and who during the civil war obtained almost a national reputation by his efforts to provide libraries for the soldiers in camp. Happening to meet him, he gave us an account of his experiences with the proprietors and bartenders of saloons, which was of much interest and shed such light on the general spirit of the business that we asked him to write for us an accurate statement of his visits, of how he was received. He has complied, and we present the result: First I entered the saloon nearest the church. The following conversation, in these or nearly these words, occurred: “Are you the proprietor?” “Yes; what do you want?” “I want to get this room for a meeting to-morrow afternoon at four o’clock.” “What kind of a meeting?” “A Christian meeting.” “You can’t have it. Are you just off the island?” “You’d get some money.” “Don’t want your money. I’ve got so much money now I don’t know what to do with it. See that gold? See these bills?” “Will you come to a four o’clock meeting in the church and tell your experience, how you got into this business, what keeps you in it, and how it works?” “No; that church stands for getting people to heaven; this business gets people to hell.” “I have not taken any intoxicating liquors in sixty-two years.” “I haven’t taken any in forty-four.” In another saloon, the proprietor said: “A man can not follow this business and get to heaven.” In another, the proprietor, a Roman Catholic and member of — Church, said: “I wouldn’t be in this business if I could get anything else to do. Well, somebody will do it, and it brings in the heaviest revenue to the state.” In two other saloons, two young men selling, not proprietors, promised to attend the meeting the Sunday night following. The reference to “the island” needs some explanation to persons not familiar with this city. Blackwell’s Island contains a number of public institutions, including an asylum for the insane, and the proprietor expressed his surprise that anyone should wish to hold a religious meeting in his saloon by intimating that he thought the applicant a little out of his mind. The terrible frankness of his recognition of the nature of his business was accentuated by the fact that for forty-four years he had found it to be to his advantage to be a total abstainer. There was something pathetic in the responses of the others. It is such places that some clergymen and their parishioners and many politicians would like to have open on Sunday, except a few hours in the morning.—The Christian Advocate.