Why Don't You Join the Procession? by Mrs. L. D. Avery-Stuttle

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 1, 1914

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 41, No. 34.

Read the full edition

Why Don't You Join the Procession?

By Mrs. L. D. Avery-Stuttle

By MRS. L. D. AVERY-STUTTLE

Why Don't You Join the Procession?

A Sketch from Real Life

"WHAT makes you stand there? Why don't you join in the procession, mister?"

The man addressed turned his head. He was watching the long line of temperance people march down the street, with banners flying and drums beating.

Just before him stood a very little boy, his toes protruding from his shoes, his hands blue and bare, and his ragged coat flapping in the cold November wind.

"Why don't you join in the procession, mister?" again queried the child. "The 'drys' are doin' their best to help us out, don't you see? Why don't you join 'em?"

The man glanced curiously at the ragged mite of humanity before him, pulled his fur overcoat a little closer about his form, and replied carelessly: "Why, you see, kid, I don't join in the parade because the fact is I don't belong to the 'drys.' I vote the 'wet' ticket."

"You do?" questioned the shivering child, giving the man a glance of astonishment. "You don't look like it, one single bit," he continued, eying the warm, fur-lined overcoat and the spotless gloves.

"Why?" queried the gentleman, whose curiosity was becoming aroused. "Why?"

'Cause you don't look like my father. He votes 'wet,' too, and he wears rags. Mother says if he'd vote 'dry,' and stick to it, we could have warm clothes and good things to eat at our house. I wish he would," concluded the little preacher wistfully. "Don't you?"

"Why, of course I wish so, if it would help you any, my little man; but don't you see, sonny, that it would make hard times for everybody, if all the saloons were to shut up! Now you don't want any harder times than these, do you?"

"No, mister; but I don't believe the times would be any harder at our house, if father would only work, instead of stayin' at the saloon all day, and spendin' all he can get hold of on whisky. That's what I think," declared the child, turning his blue, pinched features a little more to the slanting light of the dim November afternoon.

"Yes, child, it may be so. But don't you see, if all the saloons were closed, there would be ever so many men out of employment, and then—"

"I don't know anything about the other men, but I know this much,—if the saloons was all closed, my father couldn't get in, and so maybe he would go to work. Mother thinks he would; and O, say, mister, she says, if the 'drys' beat this year, it won't be but a little while before she can get me a new suit of clothes! Don't you think I need 'em?"

The man brushed the back of his hand across his eyes, and remarked something about their being a little weak.

"Say, don't you think you'll vote 'dry' this year, mister, after all? 'Cause I want them new clothes so bad—do you see?"

"Yes, yes, I do see, my little man; and God helping me, I have cast my last vote in favor of the accursed traffic that takes the very clothes from the backs of helpless children, and food from the mouths of the hungry."