Page:The War on the Webfoot Saloon.djvu/4

 twentieth more than eleven hundred signatures had been obtained. "The women," Mrs. Victor wrote enthusiastically, "seems everywhere to be lifted up out of themselves, their little vanities and sectarianisms, and to be moved with a very powerful influence."

As stirring and inspiriting as were these events, they were no more than preliminaries to the meeting of March 23. On that day, after prayerful consideration and a certain amount of sharp debate, it was determined that the war must be carried into the camp of the enemy; that prayers and hymn-singing must be conducted in the saloons themselves. A few of the more conservative ladies withdrew in protest, but the remainder of the membership closed up the files. And so it was that the next afternoon a little band of twelve issued bravely forth from Taylor Street to do battle with Demon Rum.

It happens not infrequently in war that decisive battles are fought at points remote from the main current of the conflict. So it was to be in the Great Temperance Crusade. While the twelve wended their way to Thomas Shartle's, on First near Taylor, then back to the church, then out once more to a rum-shop dubbed the Evening Call, drawing in their wake a crowd of impressive proportions, other Leaguers were haring about the city in search of additional signatures for the Pledge. It was such a pair of outriders who trotted down Morrison Street to the corner of First, where they paused uncertainly before the swinging doors of Walter Moffett's Webfoot Saloon.

It was, as such places went, reasonably respectable. And Moffett himself was a man of solid reputation. He had followed the sea in his youth and acquired shipping interests, some of which he still retained. His wife was a Terwilliger. He was by way of being a man of property, for he owned not only the Webfoot, but also the Tom Thumb, on Front near Alder; and he was accounted honest, for it was said that his bartenders were instructed to give the customer full measure. But there were secrets he had hitherto nursed in his breast. He had an intense dislike for female do-gooders, he regarded