"I hereby tender my resignation as a member of the executive committee and also desire my name stricken from the roll of the society" was the resignation read to the Grasshopper Falls Temperance League by the Hon. Rufus H. Crosby April 13, 1874, following the election of M. P. Hillyer, of the league's conservative party as mayor of Grasshopper Falls.
Published in its entirety by the April 16, 1874, New Era, excerpts from Mr. Crosby's resolution follow: "Fearing to trust myself to express to you orally my reasons for this course of action, lest I might be aggravated into intemperance of speech, in the quiet of my home, I have, as briefly as thoroughness would permit, written out the result of my cool and sober reflection.
"1st. There is an 'irrepressible conflict' now going on in this organization.
"2nd. It is the evident design of the leaders of the conservative wing to dilute and render immaculate the temperance basis in order to make it acceptable to all respectable rum drinkers and rum sellers. . . I hold that rum and anti-rum cannot run together on the same ticket. Rum and water will mix but oil and water never; so with rum and anti-rum. . .
"My idea of justice and right would hold the well dressed and fine conditioned keeper of a fashionable corner drug store, who sold liquor as a beverage, to certainly as strict account as his less comely and refined but more honest neighbor, the saloon keeper. None more than I have been made to feel the shameful fact that the powerful enginery of the most influential church in this place is at the back of the wretched compromise policy.
"A leading divine, and the pastor of said church, has dwelt long and loud on love and charity, and made his boast that he has not an enemy in the whole world. Now I have to confess I have not a particle of charity for a rum-seller...It is all exhausted in the demands made upon my heart and my purse by its victims.
"With these tart criticisms on the conservative wing of the society, I still have the charity to believe its leaders have the best of motives and the most benevolent designs; but believing as I do that the effect of their policy, had it full sway, would be to make this league farce, and play into the hands of the enemy, I have deemed it best to retire and give those eminent liberals a chance to cheat the rum power, if possible, into submission.
"I desire no better epitaph when the good fight comes to an end with me 'always through life this man was bitterly hated by the rum power' in bidding you all an affectionate good-bye, and God speed, pardon me for offering as your future motto 'To thine own self prove true, and it doth follow as the day the night, thou cans't not then prove false to any man.' "
The society museum will be open at 10 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 20. Admission is free.
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