on the cause that slew them; how it called To Arms! To Arms!
Remember the _Maine_! But how cool and demute it stood, or ruther sot,
and see every year sixty thousand of its best sons slain by the
saloon, ten-fold more cruel deaths, too, since the soul and mind wuz
slain before their bodies went. No cry for vengeance as the long
procession of the dead wheeled by the doors of the law-makers of the
land; no cry: "To arms! to arms! Remember the Saloon." And more
mysterious still, I eppisoded to myself, it would have looked to see
the Government rig out and sell to the Spaniards a million more bombs
and underground mines to blow up the rest of our ships and kill
thousands more of our young men. Wouldn't it have looked dog queer to
the other nations of the world to have seen it done?

But there they sot, our law-makers, and if they lifted their eyes at
all to witness the long procession of the dead drift by, sixty
thousand corpses yearly slain by the Saloon, if they lifted their eyes
at all to look at the ghastly procession, they dropped 'em agin quick
as they could so's not to delay their work of signin' licenses, makin'
new laws, fixin' over old ones, and writin' permits to the murderers
to go on with their butchery. Queer sight! queer in the sight of other
nations, in the sight of men and angels, and of me and Josiah.

Well, to stop eppisodin' and resoom backwards for a spell. Alan Thorne
hearn that cry: "To arms! To arms!" And his very soul listened. His
grandfathers on both sides wuz fighting men; at school and college
he'd been trained in a soldier regiment, and had been steeped full of
warlike idees, and they all waked up at his cry for vengeance. He had
just got to go; it wuz to be. Heaven and Waitstill couldn't help it;
he had to go; he went.

Well, Waitstill read his letters as well as she could through her
blindin' tears; letters at first full of love--the very passion of
love and tenderness for his sweetheart, and deathless patriotism and
love for his country.

But bime-by the letters changed a little in their tones--they wuzn't
so full of love for his country. "The country," so he writ, "wuz
shamefully neglecting its sons, neglecting their comfort." He writ
they wuz herded together in quarters not fit for a dog, with
insufficient food; putrid, dretful food, that no dog would or could
eat. No care taken of their health--and as for the health of their
souls, no matter where they wuz, if half starved or half cla