Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 January 1874 — TEMPERANCE REVIVAL. [ARTICLE]

TEMPERANCE REVIVAL.

4l«w tlm Ladles Dltunned of the Liquor Traffic la Washington, Ohio— Tlic Saloons Surrender, and the Liquors aie Emptied into the Streets—The “Good Time Coming” Already Come. Washington, the county seat of Fayette county, Ohio, is a busy, thriving town of some 3,000 inhabitants, situated on tbe Cincinnati & Muskingum Railroad, about seventy miles northeast of Cincinnati. For several years an effort has been made to dispense entirely with the sale of intoxicating liquors in the town, but with indifferent success. The good temperance folk were grieved at the increase of intemperance but had about resolved to make no further efforts to stay it progress. Last Christmas Eve Dr. Dio Lewis, of Boston, lectured bes ore tbe Literary Society of the place on the subject of “Our Girls,” at the close of which he offered to deliver a free lecture on temperence at one of the churches on the following day, and in that address he would give his hearers a plan by which the women of the town, themselves alone, could abolish the liquor traffic from their midst, and forever keep it out. At the appointed hour on Christmas morning the citizens assembled at the church, eager to hear and see what was to be done. The meeting opened with 6inging and prayer. An appeal to present to the liquor-sellers wag drawn up, read and adopted, and the meeting adjbUrned to meet the following morning at the same place; and then and there the women were to start out upon their ' errand of mercy. The hour having arrived, the women —from the families of the leading-citizens of the place—met and formed iu procession, fifty or sixty of them —and the march commenced. Drug-6tores aud saloons were visited each day, and singing and prayers were held i them, until the drug-stores all signed t pledge, and the saloons were broken up. When a saloon-keeper surrendered, the fact was made known by the ringing of all the bells in town; people would gather at tbe scene of action to the number of several hundred, to witness tiie destruction of King Alcohol. Women whose Busbands, soils, or brothers had suffered most were selected as the ones to demolish the whisky-barrels, which deed was done with axes; and they never worked harder in a more noble cause. One man, who had suffered much from tlic evil effects of intemperance, while assisting in getting tbe barrels of whisky in the street, mounted the top of one aud remarked that lie had often been under the stuff contained in the barrel, but now he was on top of it, and he intended to keep on top. His wife broke in the head of the barrel, and let the whisky Hood the gutter. During the entire time that the women were praying and singing in the satoons, the Christian men of the place held a protracted prayermeeting at the church; and that the women might better judge of the earnestness and sincerity they felt in their behalf, they caused the bell of the church to be tolled at the close of each prayer. The work done there created quite a sensation throughout that part of the State, and the ministers and several of the leading women in the work received letters from neigh boring towns, urgingthem to come and start the ball rolling iu those towns; and they have consented to go, and set the time for the meetings.