Glimpses of Fifty Years (V. 43); The Autobiography of an American Woman

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1889 Excerpt: ...the Crusade movement as is sufficiently proved by the fact that, going East immediately, I sought the leaders of the newly formed societies of temperance women, Dr. and Mrs. W. H. Boole, Mrs. Helen E. Brown, Mrs. Rebecca Collins, Mrs. M. F. Hascall and others of New York, Mrs. Mary C. Johnson, Mrs. Mary E. Hartt, H. W. Adams, and others of Brooklyn, and these were the first persons who befriended and advised me in the unknown field of Gospel temperance. With them I went to Jerry McAuley's Mission, and to Kit Burns's Rat-Pit, and saw the great unwashed, unkempt, ungospeled and sin-scarred multitude for the first time in my life as they gathered in a dingy down-town square to hear Dr. Boole preach on Sabbath afternoon. With several of these new friends I went to Old Orchard Beach, Me., where Francis Murphy, a drinking man and saloonkeeper recently reformed, had called the first Gospel Temperance Camp Meeting' known to our annals. Here I met JSeal Dow and heard the story of Prohibitory Law. Here I saw that strong, sweet woman, Mrs. E-M. N. Stevens, our white ribbon leader in Maine, almost from then till now; and here in a Portland hotel, where I stayed with Mary Hartt, of Brooklyn, and wondered where the money was to come from as I had none, and had mother's expenses and my own to meet, I opened the Bible lying on the hotel bureau and lighted on this memorable verse: Psalm 37:3, Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. That was a turning-point in life with me. Great spiritual illumination, unequaled in all my history before, had been vouchsafed me in the sorrowful last days at Evanston, but here came clinching faith for what was to me a most difficult e...