This party, as is well known, has assumed to be "the party of moral and religious ideas." Now I have known, in cases not a few, men to be nominated for office by this party--men who were respectable and Christian men, and they have told me, and they have made the confession with shame and humiliation--that the party managers have come to them and said, "You are assessed so much for campaign expenses." The pretext was, that this was for legitimate campaign work; and yet they knew that the pretext was a lie, and that it was to constitute a corruption fund, to be put into the saloons.

And these men were thus made candidates, to give respectability to the saloonkeepers' party, and, though they did not go into the saloons themselves, they must pay toll to the devil all the same.
It was under such circumstances that this boy, who had been raised in our neighborhood, but had grown to be a man, and had entered upon public life, now became a center of attraction to the hale-fellows-well-met of the saloon and the caucus.

The reader need not be told that this gifted young lawyer was walking into the very jaws of death.

There were soon alarming rumors that he was becoming dangerously addicted to drink, and his friends entreated him to save himself while he could, and he made promise to his mother and wife to reform.

But, alas! it was too late! I was traveling home from Topeka, and on the railroad train I met a gentleman from Atchison--an intimate friend of this young lawyer--and I was congratulating him on the reformation of our mutual friend.