force was increased, and the liquor interest soon made to feel that the city was not under its control.  The mob never again tried its power.  For three months, with scarcely a day’s exception, the praying-bands, sometimes with twenty in each, working in various parts of the city; sometimes with five hundred, quietly and silently, two by two, forming a procession over a quarter of a mile in length, followed by scores in carriages, who could not bear the long walks, went from saloon to saloon, holding services where the proprietors were willing, and in warehouses which were thrown open to them, or in vacant lots near by, when they were unwilling.  Men took off their hats, and often wept as the long procession went by.  Little children gathered close to the singers, and catching the words, sang them months afterwards in their dingy hovels.  Haggard women bent their heads as they murmured with unutterable sadness, ’You’ve come too late to save my boy or my husband.’  Many saloon-keepers gave up their business and never resumed it.  Many who had lost all hope because of the appetite which bound them, heard from woman’s lips the glad tidings of freedom in Christ, and accepted the liberty of the Gospel.”

In many other places the crusaders met with violence from exasperated liquor-dealers and their brutish associates.  A pail of cold water was thrown into the face of a woman in Clyde, Ohio, as she knelt praying in front of a saloon.  Dirty water was thrown by pailfuls over the women at Norwalk.  At Columbus, a saloon-keeper assaulted one of the praying-band, injuring her seriously.  In Cincinnati, forty-three women were arrested by the authorities for praying in the street and lodged in jail.  In Bellefontaine, a large liquor-dealer declared that if the praying-band visited him he would use powder and lead; but the women, undeterred by his threat, sang and prayed in front of his saloon every day for a week, in spite of the insults and noisy interferences of himself and customers.  At the end of that time the man made his appearance at a mass-meeting and signed the pledge; and on the following Sunday attended church for the first time in five years.

DECLINE OF THE CRUSADING SPIRIT.

From Ohio the excitement soon spread to other Western States, and then passed east and south, until it was felt in nearly every State in the Union; but it did not gain force by extension.  To the sober, second-thought of those who had, in singleness of heart, self-consecration and trust in God, thrown themselves into this work because they believed that they were drawn of the Spirit, came the perception of other, better and more orderly ways of accomplishing the good they sought.  If God were, indeed, with them—­if it was His Divine work of saving human souls upon which they had entered, He would lead them into the right ways, if they were but willing to walk therein.  Of this there came to them a deep assurance; and in the great calm that fell after the rush and excitement and wild confusion of that first movement against the enemy, they heard the voice of God calling to them still.  And, as they hearkened, waiting to be led, and willing to obey, light came, and they saw more clearly.  Not by swift, impetuous impulse, but through organization and slow progression was the victory to be won.