In these different immurments, she had time to write her friends and even published a paper, called, “The Smasher’s Mail.”  She told how she came to do this work:  it was, she claimed, by the direct command of God.  She had promised Him that if He would forgive her many sins, she would work for Him in ways no one else would; and He took her at her word—­ordering her to go and smash saloons.  This, of course, provokes a smile, among most people, but Mrs. Nation is not the first one that has worked under God’s command—­whether real or supposed.

At last, so many fines were heaped up against her, which must be paid before she could be liberated, that it seemed to her as if she would never get free; but in this dark hour, a lecture agent appeared, and said he would pay the amount if she would give him some “dates.”  She laughingly says now, that she did not know what she meant:  and actually wondered if he thought she was a fruit dealer.  But when he explained what he meant by “dates,” a chance to go on the platform and give the people a reason for the hatchet that was in her hand, she saw the gates were opened; and enthusiastically went from jail to the lecture platform.

She became immediately a drawing card—­in assembly halls in some churches, and even at county fairs.  She often made “big money” by selling miniature hatchets as souvenirs.  She worked, tirelessly and industriously, to pay back the lecture agent for the sums he had advanced; and after a time found surplus amounts on hand.

She did not hesitate very long as to the purposes for which they were to be applied.  Her personal expenses were very small; she dresses plainly; and believes that God is entitled to her financial gains.

“A home for drunkards’ wives,” was her first thought, after paying the fine money, and she set about it, and is working for it now.

After her platform work had proceeded for a time, it was decided that she should star in the play, “Ten Nights in a Bar-room.”  As all know, who have witnessed this simple but powerful drama, every act of it is a prohibition lecture, and Mrs. Nation’s part, that of the mother of the murdered boy, was a lecture of itself.  In one scene, she was represented as smashing a saloon, most thoroughly; and this business was the most popular of anything in the play—­even at theatres that drew most of their patronage from habitues of saloons.

Mrs. Nation’s reasons for stepping from the churches to the footlights, is not without its logic, in these days.  “People go to the theatres more than they do the churches,” she says, “and I want to go where there are plenty of people to hear me, and where they need me.”

From the regular theatre she passed, and for the same reasons, to the vaudeville, and did her regular “stunts” along with the singers, the dancers, the harlequin’s, acrobats, and the burnt cork humorists.  The writer of this has seen her in one of these performances, and considers it entirely unique and unmistakably commendable.