The Bar-Room Verdict

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Feb 20, 1879

The Bar-Room Verdict.

A PROMISCUOUS crowd of gentlemen and loafers were seated in the bar-room of Smith’s Hotel, in Attica, busily engaged in discussing the temperance question. They had about conned over all the stereotyped phrases of the day in regard to it. One said that as long as it was made it would be drank. Another, that he could either drink it or let it alone. And another, that whisky was a good thing in its place. One self-important individual stepped up to the bar to take a light drink, as he called it, prefacing the action with the remark that whisky didn’t hurt anybody who didn’t drink it. The words were scarcely uttered when a stout, burly-looking man, who had been an attentive listener all the evening, arose to his feet, and said:—

“That’s a lie!”

All eyes were turned on the speaker, for, in saloon parlance, they “expected a muss.” The burly man paid no attention to the warlike demonstrations of the man he had given the lie, but waved his hand as if to command attention, and said:—

“Listen. Twenty years ago, when the packets were running on the ‘ditch’ that skirts the town, my father moved from a distant state and settled in a village on the canal forty miles east of Attica. He was a hard-working, honest mechanic, a devoted member of the Baptist church, and had never drank a drop of liquor in his life.

“Those were the halcyon days that my friend with the glass likes to talk about, ‘when whisky was pure.’ All the difference between then and now is—then whisky ruled the hour; now it rules the day.

“My father being a temperance man, a thing very unusual in the good old days of ‘pure whisky,’ became the object of hatred to all the whiskyites in the town, more especially for his being instrumental in saving many misguided men from drunkards’ graves.

“When spring election day came round, it was the gala day of the year for drinking, showing horses, gouging out eyes, gnawing ears, and biting out noses. The day ended in being taken home by the best knockers in that ‘neck of the woods.’

“About 4 o’clock on that memorable day for me, when the sport was about over, and several poor fellows were hanging round with gouged eyes, scratched faces, and bloody noses, regretting, perhaps, that they had come to O----, the saloon-keeper, wishing to have the sport continue as long as possible, suggested that it would be a good time for the boys to ‘tune up the old Baptist.’

“‘Glorious thought!’ ‘Bully boy!’ was chimed by the drunken brutes. There was an old bruiser in the crowd who had four noble sons, whom the old man liked to tell about when warmed up by pure old juice. They had ‘never taken the lie from any man,’ was his proud boast. They called my father out of his shop, which stood close to the canal lock, pretending to show him some work to be done. He had just gone as far as the balance beam of the lock, when he was attacked by them. My father being a stout man and no coward, grasped the old one by the collar and shoved him across the beam, when the sons tripped my father and his leg slipped into a muskrat hole. He fell backwards, breaking his leg at the ankle, with the bone protruding through the flesh. While lying there in that condition, the old man and his sons got in their work, kicking my father until coaxed to desist by the saloon-keeper, who said he guessed that would be enough for him for that time. I was standing in that crowd, a little barefoot boy, crying for my dear father, my feet trampled and bleeding by those demons who had drank ‘pure’ whisky.

“My father’s leg was set wrong by a drunken doctor. He lay on his back for nearly a year; has hobbled all his life, and will go to his grave a crippled, morose, unforgiving man. He was the oldest son and only support of a worse than widowed mother and six small children.

“The gentle red men who murder ladies are angels when compared with that saloon-keeper and his victims. That man, gentlemen, who was on the point of taking a ‘light drink’ is one of the sons who crippled my father. That man made the remark that whisky never hurt anybody who didn’t drink it. You all heard me give the lie. Was it right?”

“Yes! yes!” was echoed all around the room.

He pushed through the crowd that gathered around him, to find the subject of his remarks. He was gone! His glass of whisky was standing on the counter untouched.—Monitor.