A Basket of Chips: An Autobiography

Basket of Chips, page 114

A Basket of Chips mother and told her I was dying. The sympathy I received was, "1 know what is the matter with you. Go away." I went out to the barn yard to die but had no such good fortune to relieve my suffering. It would have soon been over had my stomach rejected the poison but it did not and the lesson had a good time to soak in. The question puzzled me for a long time, -how did my mother know what was the matter with me and why did she not show her usual love and attention ? I also went through the smoking sickness which might have had fatal results had not some kind providence intervened. It was a cigar this time and I was old enough to know better. I was with two friends in their room in a San Francisco lodging house playing a game of cards. They were smoking and in sort of a bluff offered me a cigar. To their surprise I took it and began to smoke. By the time the thing was half consumed, that well remem- bered feeling was coming on again. I said, "I guess I'll go to my room." The lighting was gas in those days and I just man- aged to reach the gas burner with a lighted match, then fell across my bed morning. Then and knew no more until two o'clock in the I awoke and found myself fully dressed and the gas burning. The realization came to me strongly that I was far better off if I remained true to my home training.*' 22 Harwood's father wrote the following in regard to his children's "home training." "On the temperance question we {James and Sarah Jane] have both been agreed as well as religion and politics and have found great benefit. Intoxi- cating drinks have never been used as a beverage in our home. None of the chil- dren know anything of the taste of it only as a medicine when prescribed by the doctor and to them it has been like all other medicines - very nasty to the taste and those who are married and have families are teaching their children the same temperance doctrine. That is one thing I find fault with the Mormon doctrine for they do not enforce the temperance doctrine amongst their members more than they do. It is something that is hardly ever taught. I am in a position to know who are the ones that drink with two saloons a few feet from my shop and I also see what countenance is given to it by men and fathers away up in the priest- hood . . . . This community if they had started when first they came here and established a temperance community and taught it in the homes and church, both by precept and example, this might have been a state where a saloon could not 114