THE WOMAN ORATOR OF AMERICA.

White Ribbon, Volume 27, Issue 316, 19 October 1921, Page 1

THE WOMAN ORATOR OF AMERICA.

MARY HARRIS ARMOR, LL.P. (A Biographical Sketch by Mrs August Burghard.) Or. Mary Harris Armor lues aston’ i*hed multitudes by the inexhaustible supply of accurate information on the tip of her tongue. Under all circumstances she can easily clinch any avowed truth, or refute any fallacious argument, with a "Thus saith the Lord,” or a thus saith nature; with an historical incident, or with the latest scientific announcement; with a passage from the classics or from a recent speech by a statesman; with a tender human experience story or a ludicrous anecdote; with the declarattion of an archaeologist or today's newspaper with reference to a current magazine article or verse lrom a poet of the Renaissance. All her life she has been a lover of books, of humanity, a student of the times, ever adding to her faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience, and to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity, that she "neither be barren not unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” He" tenacious memory makes her equally conversant with History. Poetry. Biography, Science, Romance, Hymn ology. Philosophy, Economics, Politics, the Press, Reform and Religious Literature, and beyond all and above all, the Bible.

In June, 1918. Wesleyan Collegt, in Macon, (la., the oldest college for women in America, and the first in the world to confer degrees on women, conferred on Mrs Armor the honorary degree of LL.D. When only four years of age she had read the fourth reader, for her father hex! taught her to read as soon as she could talk. Long before was ab'e to lift the encyclopaedia or dictionary, little Mary would pull them to the floor and lie for hours studying them. Even as a child the biographies of heroes and heroines deeply appealed to her. She almost worshipped Joan of Arc to whom she has so frequently been com pared. Before she w'as thirteen she had read Scott's novels and memorised much of his poetry. But it is not for scholarly attainments. not merely for what she knows, that Dr. Armor is distinguished through out civilisation. Her fame rests in her incomparable ability to tell "/hat she knows about the liquor traffic, the drink habit; w’ha* alcohol is, and what it does; to tell of tne blessings of temperance. prohibition, and law enforcement. While she is a power in the Church, Sunday School, and missionary movement, she is pre-eminent as a Temperance speaker, an eloquent champion of Igtw Enforcement, an E/angeltst of World Prohibition. Dr. Armor was annointed of God for His service In the Temperance cause, and she has received a new dedication of her brilliant mind, loving heart, and wondrous talents, to perfecting and enforcing the prohibition law for His glory and humanity’s good.

The success of her great luiw Enforcement meetings, held from coast to coast, proves the efficacy of her life motto: "God always blesses earnest ef fort when prefaced by earnest prayer.” The number of complimentary offers she has received to go on the platform for otlur organisations strengthens her (Uvotion to the Womens Christian Temperance Union and to her life work, prohibition and its observance for all peoples. Mary Harris was born in ti university town of Penfleld, in Geoijis. Jn this State she was educated, and has always made it her home. Georgians are proud to refer to her as a "Georgia Product.” No visiting lecturer attracts such large and enthusiastic audiences in her State as our "Matchless Mary." She inherited the rich mental and moral fortune accumulated b a long line of worthy ancestors. She has added thereto the interest of her own individuality. One of her grandfathers. two uncles, and four brothers were ministers of the Gospel. Her father, an honorary graduate of Mercer University and the Augusta (Ga.) Medical College, was successful first as a teacher, then as a physician. Th« women of the family possess those virtues and accomplishments w’hich grace their sex. Like many other notable people. Dr. Armor’s first public appearance was that of teacher and school principal. In 1883 she married Mr Walter F. Armor, a graduate of Emory College, and a Christian business man. son of a Confederate colonel, who. with their two sons and two daughters, strong

Christian characters, and college graduates, are in sympathy with her potential efforts to terminate the liquor evil. During Mrs Armor’s term as I ‘resident of the Georgia W.C.T.U., 1905* 1909. with her initiative and leadership, largely through her inspiration and plans. Georgia outlawed the liquor traffic, has twice strengthened the prohibition law. and in 1918 ratified the Federal Amendment ns the first business of the opening legislative session Hr. Armor resigned the State I’residency for the broader field of National W.C.T.U. Lecturer and Organiser. She 1* also Field Secretary for Georgia. Sh“ has travelled extensively in this and other countries. Although she has never sought an invltntion to speak, it is a physical impossibility for her to fill all the dates requested. She has delivi red addresses In forty-five States, in hundreds of cities and towns, with victory following in her wake as a prohibition campaigner. Her lecture itineraries include Canada and several Kuropean countries. New Zealand is persistent in endeavours to secure her platform service. It is probable that she will go there and to Japan next year. She has been one cf the principal speakers at the National W.C.T.U. Conventions for years, and at the World’s W.C.T.U. Conventions in Boston, U.S.A., in 1906. Glasgow, Scotland, 1910, Brooklyn, U.8.A., 1918, and in London, England. in 1920. She addressed many notable gatherings in the British Isles the month following the great London meeting. l>r. Armor has spoken to City Councils, State Legislatures, Congrtssional Committees, in moving and military camps, on street corners, at Chatauquas, religious, patriotic, civic, educational, and social meetings, young people’s conventions. schools, colleges, and universities; to Grand Army m* n and Confederate veterans; to negro congregations in the South and in the North; to women’s clubs, to men’s cluhs, and to foreigners through interpreters; in churches of various denominations; in theatres, groves, courthouses, city halls, in some of the largest auditoriums, laterally thousands of lectures, swaying immense audiences with her indisputable logic, refreshing originality, everrecurring wit, delightful humour, melt-

ing pathos, stinging sarcasm- all ip perfect diction. One minute her word pictures flash a truth on the canvas of the mind as clear, concentrated, intense us the light which shines in Ilembrandt’s pictures; the next she chooses such chromatic words with which to paint that an < lithe subject is presented to view with an illumination like to the all-compre-hending light in the pictures of Raphael. Those who have heard I)r. Armor speak once, six, or a dozen times are eager to repeat the experience. Het eloquence is unexcelled by man or woman. • To a vision of a world redeemed from the blight of strong drink she adds common-sense as to methods. The plans she outlines are practicable, workable, and resultant. She has been the inspiration for social courtesies of charm and distinction. Songs have been sung about her, poems have been penned, innumerable tributes spoken and written. A few sentences from some of the countless laudatory press notices and from members of the Georgia W.C.T.U. Official Board, her long time .issociates, will be printed in next issue. Dr. Mary Harris Armor is recognised to-day and will be known in history n> one of America’s greatest women. Hear her, and change from a passive to an active attitude in regard to the enforcement of the Prohibition law in America and the “Consummation devoutly to be wished”- a world free from the curse of alcohol. M. Frances Meadows liurgliard. Recording Sec. Georgia W.C.T.U. Macon. Ga.. March 19, 1921.