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NASHVILLE’S FAIR NAME IS CLOUDED
The Tennesseean Tells of Speech Last Sunday by Editor of The Golden Age in the Blind Tiger “Athens of the South.”
(From the Nashville Tennesseean.)
F mental training alone made a full
rounded man and a regnant citizen,
then Boston, the great city of
learning, with the largest percent
age of crime of any city in New
England, would be an earthly para
dise. If it did, Nashville, the cul
tured city; Nashville, the proud,
complacent, self-satisfied Athens of
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the South, would not cloud her fair name and
debauch the civic and political life of Tennes
see by throwing her guardian arms around
more blind tigers than any city in the South
with the exception of poor, drinking, stagger
ing, wide open Memphis, and bacchanalian Sa
vannah.”
This statement was made during the course
of an address delivered by Will 1). Upshaw,
the Georgia Cyclone, at the Princess Theater,
Sunday afternoon, to an audience of nearly
two thousand men. The address of Mr. Up
shaw was made under the auspices of the Nash
ville Y. M. C. A., the members of which the
speaker characterized as the greatest bunch of
workers for good that he had seen since Co
lumbus discovered America. It was the first
of a series of Sunday afternoon meetings for
men, to be conducted in this city. The Geor
gia Cyclone, although small of stature and a
cripple, is one of the most forceful and con
vincing speakers who has appeared in Nash
ville in many a day. lie talks straight from
the shoulder, and every point that he makes
carries weight. He has a happy and original
vein of humor running through his address
that makes it all the more entertaining and im
pressive. He is that type of man who would
never compromise with wrong under what
ever attractive guise it might present itself.
“When that whiskey crowd,” he said in the
course of his speech, “tells you that the prohi
bition law is the cause of all this lawlessness
and blind tigers in your city, they tell what
soap is made of.
“I am not here to discuss politics,” he con
tinued, “but I am not afraid to tell how I feel
on a great moral question like the whiskey
tra__c. Boys, you have heard a lot about
booze-fighters, and I want to tell you that I
am one of the hardest booze-fighters you ever
saw, but I fight it in a different method from
the way some of you old rascals do.
“My friends,” he said, “don’t charge this
crime of nullification of law to prohibition. If
BROUGHTON “PESTERED” BY LONDON
FOG.
(Continued from Page 1.)
form, about forty responded, all of them for
eign missionaries. And when the time came
for them to state where they were from, and
where they were going, and what board they
served, the stir of stirs developed as one after
another rose and said, d 4 l am from America.”
Two-thirds of those present were from the
United States, and all but three of them were
under the appointment of the American Bap
tist Mission Board. You should have seen
me ! I almost embraced the whole bunch, men
and women. It was a good time, one of the
most inspiring meetings I have ever participat
ed in. and I am looking forward to every Mon
dav night with the greatest pleasure. All mis
sionaries attending are requested to sign a reg
ister, and we are to keep in correspondence
with them, and pray for them as they are to
pray for us. The attendance of the congrega
tion was large, in spite of the fact that there
was a dense fog hanging over the city, and it
was especially heavy about the Church'. The
people here do not mind these fogs, like you
The Golden Age for October 31, 1912.
there were real prohibition there would be
no blind tigers. The distilleries and the out
lawed barrooms are the daddies of blind tigers,
and sowed the seeds of appetite and devilment
from which your present lawlessness springs.
And you know and the world knows that the
prohibition law has been rendered largely in
effectual, not by the people who passed it, but
by the whiskey sympathizers who said that
prohibition would not prohibit, and who have
tried their best to prove their evil prophecy
true.
“ ‘Model’(Husband.
“Prohibition has failed to prohibit in Nash
ville, not because the law against whisky selling
is wrong, but because the women of Nashville
made a mistake when they got married. I knew
a young girl once who married, and the people
told her she had a model husband. She didn’t
know what the world model meant, and so she
went to the dictionary. She found that the
word model meant a ‘small imitation of the
real thing,’ and so I say that too many of the
good women of Nashville married ‘small imi
tations’ insteads of the ‘real things.’ And this
lack of manhood which shows itself in Atlanta
as well as Nashville, makes men on the juries
and grand juries lie to their conscience, to the
world and to God.
“What shall we do? Why, in the name of
God and common sense, stand together and
keep fighting. You can fight an evil much
better when it is outlawed'than when the law
throws its protecting arms around it. There
would never be a good law on the statute books
if we were to wait until evil-doers give their
consent to laws against themselves and their
sins. Cowards will falter and turn aside; but
brave men, heroic men, ‘sun-crowned men who
live above the fog’ will close ranks and fight
for what they know is right, though the stars
tumble down and the cows come home. Ann
hauser-Busch-whacker and all their crowd
plead for what they term ‘conservatism’ and
hurl their thunderbolts at what they term fa
naticism, and then laugh in their sleeves and
inwardly despise every man who surrenders to
their siren song.
‘ ‘ Godless Learning and Bad Citizenship.
“This brand of insane citizenship springs
from two sources —impious ignorance and God
less learning—the wicked ignorance which
makes men in the country and in the city re
fuse to inform themselves and their families
through their Church papers about the activi-
would think. I suppose they have gotten used
to it. But there are some people—l would
not have to go very far to find them —that
are not yet quite at home in the midst of a
veritable sea of pea soup! It is so thick out
doors now I cannot see at all. I can just ob
serve what looks like trees at the back of
our garden. I suppose they are trees. They
were there before this fog came on, and I don’t
know if it has any tendency to remove trees,
though lam not so sure about that. It seems
really heavy enough to remove anything. But
it will do no good to have anything more to
say about them. Some of these days you may
be here at this season, and for that matter,
any time during the winter, and you can see
for yourself. It is an inspiring sight to a blind
man.
His Wednesday Night Bible Class.
I also began last Wednesday night my Bible
class work, which is to be kept up every
Wednesday night. We have nothing on at
the Church that night, but the Bible class, and
I am taking as a basis for Bible study, the
International Sunday School Lesson, giving an
analysis of it on the blackboard, and then
taking the essential teaching of it, and deliver-
ties of the Kingdom of God —yea, and alas, and
that Godless learning that more and more is
coming from institutions which put scholasti
cism above spirituality, and show that they
value the presence of a big endowment more
than the presence and help of Almighty God.”
The subject of Mr. Upshaw’s address was
“Principal and Interest.” He said that “prin
cipal,” in real life, was the talents that God
gives every man upon starting him out in life,
and that “interest” was that which the man
makes out of his talents and shows to his Mak
er at the end of life’s battle. He discussed
this subject from four standpoints. He said
that one reason why a man should be an up
right, godly citizen, was for the sake of his
Maker —for God’s sake; the second for his own
sake; the third for the sake of the people who
love him, and the fourth for the sake of the
people who need him.
Mr. Upshaw’s address made a deep impres
sion upon his audience, and the large crowd
present was considered an omen of good for
the remainder of the meetings that are to be
held every Sunday afternoon. Next Sunday
afternoon, it was announced, that Walt Hol
comb would be the speaker of the occasion.
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ing the lecture upon it, winding up by putting
on the blackboard a number of practical
points for teaching that have developed out of
the whole consideration. lam sure, had you
been present, you would have said that this
class itself is worthy of a man’s best efforts.
1 do not know what is going on in the States
save what I see in our London papers, and now
and then, an Atlanta paper comes in. I sup
pose everything at present is absorbed in poli
tics.
About the only paper I see regularly is
The Golden Age, and I must say I think you
are doing splendid work in your paper. You
have improved it in every way.
But 1 must stop this letter, and go to a staff
meeting at the Church, which is to be followed
by a meeting for inquirers, and for Church
membership, and then followed by a meeting
of the officers.
1 do not know if I am going to be able to
get to the Church easily for this fog! fog! fog!
is so dense here at my home, I’m wondering
how it will be when I get down into the city.
With love to The Golden Age family,
I am, fraternally yours,
LEN G. BROUGHTON.
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