n into a far blacker hell of destruction than the one under that
fated bridge, and the community is not horrified over it. How many
mass meetings have been held in this town within the last twenty-five
years over the losses of character, the death of purity, the
destruction of honesty? Yet they have outnumbered the victims of this
late physical disaster a thousandfold. And what does mere death do?
It releases the spirit from its house of earth. Aside from that,
death does nothing to the person. But what does life do? Life does
everything. It prepares for heaven or for hell. It starts impulses,
moulds character, fixes character. Death has no kingdom without end.
Death is only the last enemy of the many enemies that life knows.
Death is a second; life is an eternity. O men, brothers, if, as I
solemnly and truly believe, this is the last opportunity I shall have
to speak to you in such large numbers, I desire you to remember, when I
have vanished from your sight, that I spent nearly my last breath in an
appeal to you to make the most of daily life, to glorify God and save
men!

"The greatest enemy of man is not death; it is selfishness. It sits on
the throne of the entire world. This very disaster which has filled
the town with sorrow was due to selfishness. Let us see if that is not
so. It has been proved by investigation already made that the
drunkenness of a track inspector was the cause of the accident. What
was the cause of that drunkenness? The drinking habits of that
inspector. How did he acquire them? In a saloon which we taxpayers
allow to run on payment of a certain sum of money into our town
treasury. So, then, it was the greed or selfishness of the men of this
town which lies at the bottom of this dreadful disaster. Who was to
blame for the disaster? The track inspector? No. The saloon keeper
who sold him the liquor? No. Who, then? We ourselves, my brothers;
we who licensed the selling of the stuff which turned a man's brain
into liquid fire, and smote his judgment and reason with a brand from
out the burning pit. If I had stumbled upon the three corpses of my
own children night before last, I could have exclaimed in justice
before the face of God: 'I have murdered my own children,' for I was
one of the men of Barton to vote for the license which made possible
the drunkenness of the man in whose care were placed hundreds of lives.

"For what is the history of this case? Who was th