Europe and elsewhere, by Mark Twain [pseud.] [with an appreciation by Brander Matthews and an introduction by Albert Bigelow Paine]

TEMPERANCE AND WOMAN'S RIGHTS

their strength and conquer another whisky shop
with their prayers and hymns and their staying
capacity (pardon the rudeness), and spread that
victory upon the battle flag of the powers above. In
this generous way the crusaders have parted with
the credit of not less than three thousand splendid
triumphs, which some carping people say they gained
their own selves, without assistance from any quarter.
If I am one of these, I am the humblest. If I seem to
doubt that prayer is the agent that conquers these
rum sellers, I do it honestly, and not in a flippant
spirit. If the crusaders were to stay at home and
pray for the rum seller and for his adoption of a better
way of life, or if the crusaders even assembled together in a church and offered up such a prayer with
a united voice, and it accomplished a victory, I
would then feel that it was the praying that moved
Heaven to do the miracle; for I believe that if the
prayer is the agent that brings about the desired
result, it cannot be necessary to pray the prayer in
any particular place in order to get the ear, or move
the grace, of the Deity. When the crusaders go and
invest a whisky shop and fall to praying, one suspects that they are praying rather less to the Deity
than at the rum man. So I cannot help feeling (after
carefully reading the details of the rum sieges) that
as much as nine tenths of the credit of each of the
3,000 victories achieved thus far belongs of right to
the crusaders themselves, and it grieves me to see
them give it away with such spendthrift generosity.
I will not afflict you with statistics, but I desire
to say just a word or two about the character of this
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