Are Rumsellers Worth Saving?
By Editor
SEVEN years ago, Francis Murphy kept a saloon in the city of Portland. Two or three years later his home was the damp cell of a prison. To-day he is one of the foremost men in the “Reformed Men’s Clubs” of America, and the originator of the first “Temperance Camp-meeting,” which has just closed in triumphant success its session at Orchard Beach, Maine. Francis Murphy is to-day the peer of John B. Gough as a temperance orator. God has given him a tongue of silver and a heart big with sympathy and tenderness, so that men should be struck with amazement at the grandeur of the diamond clutched by human fingers out of the sewers. There is a plank in the platform of this journal upon which is inscribed the legend, “There is no man or woman too low or wretched to be reached by the love of the Son of God.” Capt. Sturdevant, of Allen Mission, Portland (God bless him), had these words cut deep in his own heart, four years ago, as he kneeled on the cold stone prison floor and poured into Frank Murphy’s aching heart, “We will help you, and God will help you.” It has been often said, “For the rum-drinker, the velvet hand of love; for the rum-seller, the iron hand of law.” We would say rather, Let law be used only as the last resort when love has been hopelessly spurned.