She did not hesitate very long as to the purposes for which they were to be applied. Her personal expenses were very small; she dresses plainly; and believes that God is entitled to her financial gains.
"A home for drunkards' wives," was her first thought, after paying the fine money, and she set about it, and is working for it now.
After her platform work had proceeded for a time, it was decided that she should star in the play, "Ten Nights in a Bar-room." As all know, who have witnessed this simple but powerful drama, every act of it is a prohibition lecture, and Mrs. Nation's part, that of the mother of the murdered boy, was a lecture of itself. In one scene, she was represented as smashing a saloon, most thoroughly; and this business was the most popular of anything in the play--even at theatres that drew most of their patronage from habitues of saloons.
Mrs. Nation's reasons for stepping from the churches to the footlights, is not without its logic, in these days. "People go to the theatres more than they do the churches," she says, "and I want to go where there are plenty of people to hear me, and where they need me."
From the regular theatre she passed, and for the same reasons, to the vaudeville, and did her regular "stunts" along with the singers, the dancers, the harlequin's, acrobats, and the burnt cork humorists. The writer of this has seen her in one of these performances, and considers it entirely unique and unmistakably commendable.
It was in one of the most "free and easy" vaudeville shows in Greater New York, and the audience, composed of men and boys, was a hilarious one, and could have even become a turbulent one, if anything had occured that did not please them. Many were half drunk, or nearly so.
"Smoke, if you want to," was lettered on a conspicuous sign, and most of this audience wanted to. In the midst of the exercises, an interlude occurred, in which the audience was invited to a saloon down stairs, where they could proceed still farther in the liquid burning out of their bodies.
On the same stage of this same vaudeville theatre, John L. Sullivan, the retired prize fighter, had, only a week before, appeared "in monologue," and had sometimes been so drunk that he could not go through with his part.
In the midst of all this, Carry Nation was announced, and she stepped upon the stage, unattended by any glare of colored lights or fanfare of music. A quiet, motherly looking woman, plainly dressed, with a Bible in her hand, she commanded almost immediately the respect of that large crowd--from the men in the orchestra stalls to the gallery gods. One half intoxicated fellow began to scoff at her, but was almost immediately hushed by the scarcely less drunken ones around him. It was a sight that hushed them all into respectful silence, for a respectable, earnest woman, with the Holy Book in her hand, will have a subduing effect upon almost any company of people.
Mrs. Nation announced her text, and preached a sermon, and delivered a temperance lecture, both within the half-hour. (The latter she calls a "prohibition lecture"--hating the word temperance, as applied to drink.)
She said words, such as had probably not been heard by most of those there, for a great many years. She told them what sots they were making of themselves, and made her points so emphatic that they cheered her --almost in spite of themselves. She commenced her speech as an experiment, so far as that day's audience was concerned; she closed a heroine. She did not remain idle during the time between her appearances on the stage, but cultivated the acquaintances of the actors and actresses, and, it is said, to their good.
That is what Mrs. Nation is doing now, on what is called the eastern vaudeville circuit; and it would be hard to see how one woman could do more good in half an hour, than she does; and that among those that need it most.
Mrs. Nation's whole name is Carrie Amelia Nation, but having noticed from old records that her father wrote the first name "Carry," she now does the same, and considers the name portentous as concerns what she is trying and means to do. She believes, she says, that it is her mission to "carry a nation" from the darkness of drunken bestiality into the light of purity and sobriety; and if she can do this, or in any great measure contribute to it, there are millions of people in the world, that will bid her Good speed.
