I wonder if there be any occult logical connection between the want of water and the prohibition agitation? However that may be, Texas is stirred to its centre by this temperance movement.
Next August a prohibitory amendment to the State constitution is to be voted upon by the citizens. Churches, public halls and school houses are filled almost nightly with interested and excited audiences listening to the discussion of their political duties concerning this great moral question. The leading temperance advocates have confident hopes that this coming election will wheel the Lone Star State into line with the goodly number of prohibitory States. In the hotels, on the streets, in railway carriages, everywhere, prohibition is the absorbing question.
In the cars, as I journeyed from Paris to Dallas, two gentlemen sat just behind me. They were, of course, discussing this perplexing question of prohibition, although from their arguments I learned that they were both opposed to temperance legislation. One was a Georgian, the other a Texan. They both freely admitted that they “liked their bitters,” and neither believed in prohibition, “because, you see, it wouldn’t prohibit!” Said the Texan: “There always have been, and there always will be, certain besetting sins, and you cannot abolish them by law. People have kept getting drunk ever since Eve got drunk in the Garden of Eden, and I reckon they always will, and you can’t prohibit it by law.”
Poor old mother Eve! The apple must have had hard cider in it. This was the argument of a lawyer, and fairly averages the arguments urged throughout the State against prohibition. Agitation and fair discussion are all that are needed to convince every man that the thing to do with crime is to prohibit it. Every A. M. A. preacher and teacher was pronounced and energetic in his advocacy of this sound temperance principle. The influence of these Christian workers will be felt in the coming election. The colored vote is an important factor in the settlement of this question, and our A. M. A. workers will do their utmost to make it solid for prohibition.
The Sunday laws in Texas are strict and well enforced. Even at the news counter at the hotels, cigars and tobacco are not sold. Congregational leaven, or some other moral force, has agitated society most healthfully. Texas is a worthy example to many of our older States in respect to Sunday observance. There is now before the Legislature a law prohibiting hunting on Sunday, and there is every reason to believe that it will pass.