of the choir about their extravagant dress; told them that a poor sinner coming there for relief would be driven away, to see such a vanity fair in front.  I begged them to dress neither in gold, silver or costly array, and spoke of the sin of wearing the corpses of dead birds and plumage of birds, and closed by saying:  “These may be my dying words.”  At the close Sister Shell, a W. C. T. U. said to me:  “What do you mean by ‘my dying words?’ for you never looked better in your life.”  I said:  “You will know later.”  I never told anyone then of my intention of smashing saloons in Wichita.

I took a valise with me, and in that valise I put a rod of iron, perhaps a foot long, and as large around as my thumb.  I also took a cane with me.  I found out by smashing in Kiowa that I could use a rock but once, so I took the cane with me.  I got down to Wichita about seven o’clock in the evening, that day, and went to the hotel near the Santa Fe depot and left my valise.  I went up town to select the place I would begin at first.  I went into about fourteen places, where men were drinking at bars, the same as they do in licensed places.  The police standing with the others.  This outrage of law and decency was in violation of the oaths taken by every city officer, including mayor and councilmen, and they were as much bound to destroy these joints as they would be to arrest a murderer, or break up a den of thieves, but many of these so-called officers encouraged the violation of the law and patronized these places.  I have often explained that this was the scheme of politicians and brewers to make prohibition a failure, by encouraging in every way the violation of the constitution.  I felt the outrage deeply, and would gladly have given my life to redress the wrongs of the people.  As Esther said:  “How can I see the desolation of my people?  If I perish.”  As Patrick Henry said:  “Give me liberty or give me death.”

I finally came to the “Carey Hotel,” next to which was called the Carey Annex or Bar.  The first thing that struck me was the life-size picture of a naked woman, opposite the mirror.  This was an oil painting with a glass over it, and was a very fine painting hired from the artist who painted it, to be put in that place for a vile purpose.  I called to the bartender; told him he was insulting his own mother by having her form stripped naked and hung up in a place where it was not even decent for a woman to be in when she had her clothes on.  I told him he was a law-breaker and that he should be behind prison bars, instead of saloon bars.  He said nothing to me but walked to the back of his saloon.  It is very significant that the picture of naked women are in saloons.  Women are stripped of everything by them.  Her husband is torn from her, she is robbed of her sons, her home, her food and her virtue, and then they strip her clothes off and hang her up bare in these dens of robbery and murder.  Well does a saloon make a woman bare of all things!  The motive for doing this is to suggest vice, animating the animal in man and degrading the respect he should have for the sex to whom he owes his being, yes, his Savior also.