fined society, and I don't
think that in saying so I shall run the risk of being contradicted. I
have often been a guest at the Union Club, the Union League Club, the
Manhattan, the Century, the Players, and many other good clubs. I have
dined in the best houses of the great American cities, and nowhere have
I met teetotalers in those circles of society. Refined, intelligent
people of good society, artists, literary men, are not teetotalers--that
will be granted by everybody. I don't mention politicians, even of the
best class, who have at times to be teetotalers to catch votes in a
democracy.

The smaller towns of America--and that is America proper--are ruled by
fussy, interfering faddists, fanatics of all sorts, old women of both
sexes, shrieking cockatoos, that will by-and-by make life well-nigh
intolerable to any man of self-respect, and make him wonder whether he
lives in a free country or not.

Take two lively illustrations. A few years ago I was in the town of
E---- (Kansas). There was a mayor who was married, and the happy pair
had a little boy. That little boy was a wicked little boy. One day he
was caught smoking a cigarette. Now, what should be done by sensible
parents to such a wicked little boy? Why, he should be turned over and
given a good hearty--you know. This is not at all what was done. The
mayor's wife called up a meeting of women, made a violent speech on the
pernicious habit of cigarette-smoking, and it was decided to petition
the mayor and ask him to forbid the sale of cigarettes within the
precincts of his jurisdiction. For the sake of peace and happiness at
home, the worthy mayor published an edict prohibiting the sale of
cigarettes in his district. However, cigarettes can be had in the town
of E----, but you have to walk nearly a mile, just outside the limits
of the mayor's jurisdiction, to find a store where a roaring trade in
cigarettes is done. All the same, you must admit that it is a nuisance
to be obliged to walk a mile in a free country to buy a little article
of luxury that you indulge in, without ever abusing it, because there
happens to be in the town a wicked little boy who once smoked a
cigarette.

When I was in the town of T----(Arkansas), I gave a lecture under the
auspices of 'temperance' ladies of the city. They called on me.

Being of a rather inquisitive turn of mind, I said to them: 'Now,
ladies, I understand I am in a prohibition State. How do you account
for your exis