[Paul Denton, a celebrated itinerant Methodist preacher and
missionary, in the early days of Texas, when the State,
then a Mexican province, was the outlaw's home, collected
a large crowd at a barbecue where he promised there should
be plenty to drink of the best of liquors. Denton did this
to collect a crowd that he might preach to them. After the
barbecue was over, one of the boldest told Paul that he
lied. "Where is your liquor?" said he. Drawing himself up
to his full height, Paul thus broke forth in a strain that
remains unsurpassed:]
"There--there is the liquor which God, the Eternal, brews for his
children.
"Not in the simmering still, over smoking fires choked with poisonous
gases, and surrounded with stench of sickening odors and rank
corruption doth your Father in Heaven prepare that precious essence of
life, pure cold water. Both in the green shade and grassy dell, where
the red deer wanders and the child loves to play, there God brews it;
and down, low down in the deepest valleys, where the fountains murmur
and the rills sing; and high up on the mountain tops, where the naked
granite glitters like gold in the sun; where hurricanes howl music;
where big waves roar the chorus, sweeping the march of God--there, he
brews it, that beverage of life, health-giving water.
"And everywhere it is a thing of beauty; gleaming in a dew-drop;
singing in the summer rain, shining in the ice-gem, till the trees
seem turning to living jewels, spreading a golden vail over the
setting sun; or white gauze round the midnight moon; sporting in the
glacier; dancing in the hail-shower; folding bright snowy curtains
softly above the wintry world, and weaving the many-colored iris,
that seraph's zone of the sky, whose warp is the rain of earth, whose
woof is the sunbeam of heaven, all checkered o'er with celestial
flowers by the mystic hand of refraction--still always beautiful; that
blessed cold water. No poison bubbles on its brink; its foam brings
not madness and murder; no blood stains its liquid glass; pale widows
and starving orphans weep not burning tears in its clear depths; no
drunkard's shrieking from the grave curses it in words of despair!
Speak out, my friends, would you exchange it for the demon's drink,
alcohol?"