The clergy, as one man, came to the front. Business men left their
stores and shops, ministers their studies, and a thousand manly men went
out to defend the praying women. The military companies were ordered to
be in readiness, resting on their arms; the police 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