Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/213

 *low could not speak at all, and when, with roars of awful laughter they unfurled some ribald banner fresh from the paint shop of their establishment, advising him to go to hell where he was always consigning so many of his fellow human beings, he went away quite broken-hearted. It was in that mood and perhaps a little chastened by his experience that he came to see me. I could agree with him, of course, that the men had acted like the perfect barbarians they could be at times, but there was nothing I could do for him, nothing I could tell him. I learned long ago that you cannot tell a man anything unless he knows it already!

And yet that preacher's case was perfectly simple. He had come to the city not long before, and of course, had come from the country. His training and his experience had all been rural, he knew nothing whatever of the life of our cities or of their problems; he thought only in agrarian sequences. He had a little code of conduct consisting of a few perfectly simple negatives, namely, men should not use tobacco, or liquor, or attend theaters or circuses, or play with colored cards, or violate (that is, do anything pleasant on) the Sabbath day. And whenever he saw people doing any of these things it was his duty to dissuade them from doing them, and if he could not dissuade them, then it was the duty of the authorities to force the people to stop doing these things by sending policemen after them. Poverty was caused either by drink, or by idleness, though usually by drink, and if the saloons were closed, drinking would cease!