d to teach their sons to be worthy of the love and esteem of
good women by being as chaste in their conversation and as pure in their
lives as their young daughters who sat at their side sheltered in their
pleasant and peaceful homes. One of the first things that Frank Miller
did after he returned to A.P. was to open a large and elegantly
furnished saloon and restaurant. The license to keep such a place was
very high, and men said that to pay it he resorted to very questionable
means, that his place was a resort for gamblers, and that he employed a
young man to guard the entrance of his saloon from any sudden invasion
of the police by giving a signal without if he saw any of them
approaching, and other things were whispered of his saloon which showed
it to be a far more dangerous place for the tempted, unwary and
inexperienced feet of the young men of A.P., than any low groggery in
the whole city. Young men who would have scorned to enter the lowest
dens of vice, felt at home in his gilded palace of sin. Beautiful
pictures adorned the walls, light streamed into the room through finely
stained glass windows, women, not as God had made them, but as sin had
debased them, came there to spend the evening in the mazy dance, or to
sit with partners in sin and feast at luxurious tables. Politicians came
there to concoct their plans for coming campaigns, to fix their slates
and to devise means for grasping with eager hands the spoils of
government. Young men anxious for places in the gift of the government
found that winking at Frank Miller's vices and conforming to the
demoralizing customs of his place were passports to political favors,
and lacking moral stamina, hushed their consciences and became partakers
of his sins.[4] Men talked in private of his vices, and drank his
liquors and smoked his cigars in public. His place was a snare to their
souls. "The dead were there but they knew it not." He built a beautiful
home and furnished it magnificently, and some said that the woman who
married him would do well, as if it were possible for any woman to marry
well who linked her destinies to a wicked, selfish and base man, whose
business was a constant menace to the peace, the purity and progress of
society. I believe it was Milton who said that the purity of a man
should be more splendid than the purity of a woman, basing his idea upon
the declaration, "The head of the woman is the man, and the head of the
man is Jesus Christ." Sure