One day a man came to my store with a paper in his hand and said: 'I
want to set up a saloon on the next block and I am getting signers to
my petition. I am one of your customers; you know me and know I will
keep an orderly place.' I said to myself, 'if he doesn't sell others
will and we need the revenue anyway,' so I signed the petition. A few
months later I chanced to see my youngest boy and one of my clerks
coming out of the door of that saloon. Soon after when they entered
the store I called them into my office and said: 'Young men, did I see
you coming out of a saloon, and had you been taking a drink in there?'
When they admitted they had, I said to my son: 'Did I ever set such an
example for you to follow?' He answered: 'No, father, but you signed
that man's petition to set up the saloon; whom did you expect him to
sell to? Did you sign it for him to sell to other fathers' sons and
not yours?' I realized as never before the wrong I had done, not only
to my own son, but to every father's son to whom that saloon-keeper
would sell if they had the money to pay for liquor. I said: "Forgive
me, my boy. Promise me you will never enter a saloon again and I
promise never to sign a petition or vote to have a saloon-keeper sell
to anybody's boy!"
But it was too late; that boy went to ruin and carried his old father
to financial ruin with him. The store was sold and the father went on
to a little farm in Missouri, where he died a disappointed,
grief-stricken man.
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