Crawfordsville Review, Crawfordsville, Montgomery County, 29 July 1899 — Page 4

The Review.

The Argus News is not a party organ-Argus News Tuesday, June 6, '99.

PETEft PORCUPINE.

SEQUirURQDE PATREM HAUD PASSIBUS /EQUIS.

The Grandson of His Grandfather

Finds the Old flan's Pen and Polishes it Up.

YCMO

me Impune Lacessit."

"Once there lived a man, a satirist, and in the natural course of time his friendy slew him and he died.

The people came and stood about his corpse.

lHe

treated the xchole round world as his football,' they said, 'and he kicked it."

The dead man opened his eyes. "But always toward the goal" he said.—Schwartz.

f)OBERT G. INGERSOLL is no L| more. Was he a pagan? The world with one universal voice will answer: "Yes, he was a destroyer of religion a man who blasted the hope of the world," and he will be held, up to universal execration. Upon the graveofCol. Ingersolwi'l be exploded all the bombs of wrath which can be fulminated by men. He said once in one of his lectures "Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dull calm of ignorance and faith. Banish me from Eden if you will, but first let me eat of the tree of knowledge," and in his life he carried out the idea expressed in the above sentence. Col. Ingersoll never shook my faith for an instant in God, and if ever he wrote a line I have not read and studied I do not know it. I studied Ingersoll believing that I could determine the creed of the man from what he emiJ, and I can say that as a result of that study of his utterances and of the character of the man as exhibited in his public and private life, I have come to the conclusion that Col. Ingersol was not an infidel that he recognized a God, a superior power, something which he could not explain. He pointed to Jesus Christ as the perfect man, and wished all men were like him. He said for Him he had the greatest respect, and the ground upon which the Nazarine died was holy ground. His attacks were aot made on the spirit of Christianity, nor upon the God-ordained church universal, but upon those things which have during the centuries fastened themselves upon the church, and weakened what would otherwise have been a giant. When he attacked creed and dogma, the cry went up that he was attacking the church. It was taken up and the cry repeated the world over. Ingersoll was silent to all criticism. His own peculiar moral philosophy satisfied him, and he allowed the world to misunderstand him. He never explained what his belief was and the world jumped at conclusions. His prominence as an anti-religionist was brought about by the church itself. The church (and by that word I mean denominationalism, not the great church of the living God) thought she had been attacked and rushed to the rescue. Her fulminations, thunderbolts though they were, could not stand before the ridicule of the man attacked in the mind of the unthinking crowd. The fact is the vast majority of the human race are unthinking. They go pell mell with the crowd, as passion or joy predominates. To-day they pour through the stretets of the city, with waving palms in their hands, shouting: "Hosanna, to the Son of

David! Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord!" and to-mor-row they sweep mad with hell-born passion, through those same streets, through the gates, and up Calvary with the awful cry upon their lips, of "Crucify Him!"" "Crucify Him!" We are no different now from those ancient men. The church herself is largely responsible for any ruin Col. IngersoU wrought—if he wrought any. The man who knows Christianity and its spirit was never harmed by the Pagan orator. Let alonehe could have reached but few. The church pointed him out railed against him. The Sunday before he was to lecture in any town every pulpit there launched philippics at his devoted head, and advertised him broadcast gave him the opportunity to reach many who would have passed him by had not the pulpit labeled him "Forbidden fruit," to touch which was to

die. The bitter fight was waged b^ him against the doctrines of John Calvin and Jonathan Edwards. Hideous doctrines over which angels weep and devils laugh, but against the spirit of Christianity divorced from creed he warred not. Churchianity is not Christianity, and the former he attacked. He sought to destroy the doctrines of election, foreordination, total depravity and particular redemption, and from the lips of the devotees of these things went up the cry of Mary at the sepulcher "They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him." Ingersoll was started wrong in childhood, and he went wrong all the way, or at least refused to see what was so plain to eyes not blinded by prejudice.

CHARITY

speaks no ill of the

dead. Condemnation and calumny may follow with dogging step to the door of the sepulchre and then—silence! What human hand shall touch him upon whom is laid the hand of God The princely pagan best loved by those who knew him most, best hated by those who knew him least, smitten by the iron bolt of death has fallen by the way to rise no more. The God-like attribute of man, a brilliant intellect, scintillant with a myriad gems is dark, and never more shall flash the lightning of its ray the honeyed tongue, the music of whose eloquence could move to laughter or to tears as cunning brain might bid is hushed and mute the generous heart that throbbed in sympathy and melted to tender pity with those who mourned, and beat in generous impulse and noble thought at all that touched the sorrows or the hopes of his brother man, is stilled forever. The bonds of flesh that bound a great soul to earth are moldering back to unthinking dust. An intellectual giant endowed with the strength of primal man, he rejoiced in that strength, and winged thought took endless and unwearied flight around the circle of the known and finite, seeking an answer to the "why" of life and death, at last to cry "we cannot know!" So in love with life and light and beauty, whether in the storm and stress of life, where lightnings flashed and thunders rolled, treading winding ways on sunlit heights and in blossoming fields, or shaded paths of devious wanderings in dim forest aisles, beside the murmuring music of the Lethean stream, that lulled to dangerous, .dreamless sleep, and, marveling at the law, perchance forgot the Giver, and worshipping at Reason's shrine mistook her wandering fires for the beam of the mighty Sun himself till lost in tangled mazes, dark and wild, of unbelief. The champion still of liberty divine holding the name of womankind as something holy practicing a religion that he did not preach worshipping a God by the service of deed wnom he did not worship by the service of the lips, upon his life error left its stain, the common heritage of weakness and of flesh. He would have given liberty of limb and liberty of mind to all he would have seen the tears of orphans dried and hushed the sob of pain he would have banished want and woe and fear, and welcomed light and joy and plenty into all the world. He was a happy, healthful, gentle, joyous, human man and in the sum of human life the world is better, freer, nobler that this man lived and loved and erred and moved it with his words. A man, he lived and loved and dreamed, and dreaming lived and loved. No vulture of despair ever sunk poisoned beak into his heart, but brooding angels sang and took their flight— not roses without and ashes within— but the abiding place of celestial spirits. By what standard he shall be judged by God, God only knows. "He remembereth our frame. He knoweth we are but dust." So remembering the great and generous soul, hoping that still some flower of faith blossomed secretly in his heart shedding hope's bright perfume through its darkened chambers and mantling his errors in the divine robe of Christian charity, let us believe that, having turned anotherpage in the endless book of life, his eyes, unsealed, have opened on the orient splendors of an eternal morn.

CONSUMPTION

never stops because the westher warm.

i(

Then why stop taking

SCOTT'S EMULSION

1 simply because It's summer? Keep taking it. It will heal your lungs, and make them strong for another winter. |oc.aad|Looi aUdroigiid,

T^HERE is an old adage which says:

I

"It is 'a dirty bird that will foul its own nest." This is applicable to a'set of newspaper correspondents who seize on every opportunity to sensationalize the news reports sent to foreign papers. A little theft or an amateur burglary is written up as desperate affair, something which has baffled the police, and a dangerous gang of cutthroats flourish which makes life uneasy for the citizens. I always look over the foreign papers for the great sensations from Crawfordsville. When the little insignificant bit of news is touched by the magic wand 'of the correspondent it becomes "a thing of beauty and a joy forever." The home papers never find this so gory and gaudy, for the people here know better. This sort of business is giving Crawfordsville a very unenviable [reputation away from home. No man wants to come to a place which is advertised as the rendezvous of scoundrels, the home of the burglar, the paradise of the magdalen and delight of the gambler. He will stay away from such a place, where the newspapers inform him that danger lurks, and he will only be safe with one eye open, a pistol in each hand, and a brace of bull dogs chained to his bed post. He would rather go to Manila, Cheyenne, Tombstone, or some other quiet place to live. He will steer clear of Crawfordsville. These same correspondents would no doubt .abuse Tarkington for his puerile tommyrot, yet at the same time are damaging their home town in the worst possible manner, and all of it for a few cents. Men will say to you now, in different parts of the country, "Yes, Crawfordsville, that's a pretty good town but from what I see about it in the papers, it is a pretty hard place as well. Great place for gangs to congregate. Lots of trouble there." Correspondents of metropolitan papers, stop and see what you are doing for your town by untruthful and highly colored statements, which no home paper would dare to print. I read a great cock-and-bull story in a certain metropolitan journal the other day about the desperate gang that had robbed the second hand store here, and how the gang had been broken up by a jealous woman, and the desperate, bloody-hearted Fred Birchfield, leader of the bold bandits, had been captured, and the police and citizens breathed much easier, etc etc. Such stuff is now imposed on foreign papers as news, and injures Crawfordsville in the eyes of the pub/ic. Stop it, boys.

1HAD

a talk with a man from Linden, the other day, or at least, the Linden man talked. I could only get a chance to listen, and that night I dreamed dreams and saw visions. Of course he talked cellulose. I saw Linden in my dream, not a village squatted on the dark prairie mud, but a city somewhat smaller than Chicago, and reaching from Clark's Hill on the east to New Richmond on the west, and from Lafayette on the north to Cherry Grove on the south. I saw skyscrapers sixtynine stories high spring up like magic, and immense factories, employing thousands of hands, stood on every side. The Linden Leader was now a daily four times larger than the Cincinnati Enquirer, and Harrigan & Slavens were wearing broadcloth and diamonds and riding in coaches with four horses and two flunkies in livery on the rear. Electric street cars were running everywhere costly mansions abounded everywhere. The dens of vice had multiplied instead of one dram dispensatory they had 4,000 instead of two churches they had 200, not having kept pace with the other side. Everything was rushing. The funeral processions tore through the streets like mad, hurrying to get the dead men out of the way. John S. Bennett was the head of a national organization called the Good Templars' Life and Casualty Company, which had for its purpose the insuring of lives against the effects of whiskey manufactured at Linden. There was a metropolitan police force of 3,000 men. Jolin Vyse was mayor of the city, his business giving him a pull in politics held by no other man, and his friends were talking him up for Governor. The Linden I saw ia that dream had dwarfed Lafayette, Crawfordsville, Lebanon, and Frankfort, and all through the cellulose factory. Lots were sky high in price, and men. women, and children were crowded for room. A large ship canal was being constructed from Lake Michigan to the Ohio to give her sewerage and save the lives of her people from the terrible and furious "mike." I got excited and awakened with a cry, and found that I had only dreamed the story which the enthusiastic man from Linden had dinned in my ears the

day before, and Linden was still in the same old place, had just as much mud as she ever had, but her prospects were bright. If every town had as much bustle and liberality according to size and wealth as Linden, they would all do better, Crawfordsville included.

AJOR BOATWRIGHT, of the Sherman House, .is alleged to have tackled a rat, the other day, which, no doubt, was the Sampson of the hostelry. His ratship ran into a hole but the Major was not to be headed off. He grasped the rodent by the tail, and wrapping it about his hand, the tug of warcommenced. It was a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull from both sides. At last something gave way and the gallant Major lay rolled in a ball in the further corner of the room. The story goes that the rat and tail had parted company where the tail begins to be called vertabrae, and he made his escape. The Major has fought Captain Jack, Geronomino and Sitting Bull, but the rat was too much for him. It outpulled his 200 pounds and escaped to prey upon the contents of the larder at will.

£3[EEING crowds of women visiting the back doors of saloons and drinikng in the alleys was a sight new to the women of Crawfordsville, as they saw it on the day of the Big Four picnic. Such things are never seen here when the city is in normal condition. These were not the railroad people, but the camp followers, of whom there was an army. By evening many of the brazen, shameless women were very drunk. Comment is not necessary. The fellow who cannot form an opinion of certain things from a bare statement of fact, and what his own eyes may see could not be convinced under any sort of pressure.

ONCE

upon a time, I am told, there lived a Yankee constable who was sent out to levy on a drove of ducks belonging to a widow. He chased the ducks round and round the house and caught them one at a time, and everytime he caught a duck he would sit down and charge mileage. These fellows are not all dead yet. The Almighty seems to spare them as monuments of warning to other men. They are fellows who hold fast all they get, and cast longing eyes at that which other people have. They want to sell their cake and eat it too. They sell out a business and then make desperate attempts to injure it so that they can get it back at half price. They make contracts and never fulfil them until forced to do so, and then roar as if with a mighty pain about how unfair and unjust it is. These are the fellows whom it would be folly to trust alcne in a room with a red hot stove, and whom the devil will keep under the eye of a policeman while they are repairing the streets of the Brimstone City, for fear they will run off with the picks and shovels. They are what in these latter days are called "knockers." Being of a low-down breed of human canines they are only allowed to associate'with human offal, where their "knocking" avails but little. They do not hesitate to lie, neither would they hesitate to do other things of which lying is the tap root. Their influence for anything is nil. When a fellow climbs upon the housetop and advertises himself as a "knocker," people know just where to classify him, and regard him only as a mangy cur, and scavenger. His nose is out of joint for the reason that somebody has discovered the fact that he is a scoundrel, and by his "knocking" he lets the fact be known to everybody. It is always safe to greet the. "knocker" with a No. 10 boot. You'll never miss doing a good thing by this act.

UP

in the county of Tippecanoe they do business in peculiar ways sometimes. The latest fad seems to be, when a justice of the peace needs a little money, to call in his palls and hold an insanity inquest on some poor devil who may be miles away at the time, and in blissful ignorance of what is being done to him. He may never know what has happened, should he not read the papers. Yet the sel f-constituted court may revel in its fee3 jerked from the county treasury. It seems that the latest victim is Michael Gallagher, at one time a prominent citizen of Lafayette. Michael came home the other evening, and picking up the paper, discovered the awful fact that he was crazy as a bed bug that two impecuneous Dogberrys and a couple of sawbones had met that day and decided that he was crazy, dangerously daffy, and a fit subject for the asylum. No one else knew it, for Mike, that day, was out painting two miles away,

A

HHJj-Hg

Is Now In Progress At

WARNERS

Everybody in Immediate or Prospective want of Clothing of any description for Man or Boy should make it a point to take advantage of our Great Mid-Summer Sale.

Lies in halving Garments that leave this store correct in Style, Trimmings, General Workmanship and Fit. We fully realize this and govern ourselves accordingly.

We Want Your Trade.

One Price Glothier and Hatter.

all unconscious that the sword was hanging over his head which severed him from liberty when it fell. Mike is now judicially insane, pronounced so by a court of jurisdiction, which, I suppose, is regarded as competent in that county. That being the case, the ancient Hibernian could have taken his shillalahvand pounded the "court of competent jurisdiction" into a state of coma, and he could not have been prosecuted for it, because per se, he was insane. Great is the county of Tippecanoe, where schemers weave webs for the feet of the unwary where the political parasite lives on the fat of the land, and men grow insane by proxy. Again I say, great is the county of Tippecanoe, through which roll the waves of the wimpling Wabash, and where grow the Haggards and the Hanleys of political commerce-—with her half million dollar court house on which stands with poised balances the stately figure of the blind goddess, and all indications of late declare that she is as blind as a bat in some cases which get a hearing on Dogberry Row.

I'V

jOW comes the news from the capital city that the seat has been 11| worn out of the big arm chair of A Governor Mount by the Epworth Leaguers, during the few days of the convention. They all wanted to sit in the seat of the great, and so many of them sat there while our Jim was not sitting that the bottom is worn out. I have heard of kissing the toe of the Pope, his big toe, but this has the effect, ws are told, of making a fellow feel as though a great burden had been lifted from his heart, but just what would be lifted from a fellow who sat in Gov. Mount's chair, I do not pretend to say. It may be possible that it is a sort of hokeybo, like the graveyard rabbit's foot, or tail feather from a peewee and brings good luck to the sitter. His cows may never die with murrain, nor sheep with ticks. His calves may not have warbles, nor his chickens lice after sitting in the chair of the farmer governor of Injlany. It no doubt has a mighty spell of some sort. If the

Knock Down Midsummer Sale.

Lm

Leaguers did not get to spread their tent on the lawn, theirdisappointment has been drowned by the luck which sitting in the Governor's chair will bring them. In the meantime the State will repair the chair.

LAIvDIS,

our Landis, has gotten

himself interviewed at Washington, and tells the world how it does the heart good to ride through Indiana in these days of "McKinley prosperity," where new roofs appear on houses, new paint on barns, new pumps in wells, new rails on the fences. He alleges that all the spokes have been knocked out of the Democratic chariot wheels, and there is demoralization in the camp. Mr. Landis has certainly been reading the late drivel of that consummate ass of the capital city, Booth Tarkington, or the "Hoosier Schoolmaster" lately, when he talks about rails on fences in Indiana. Rails are a relic, found only in benighted backwoods places—new rails—the Republican trust furnishes barbed wire now, and the rail has fallen into innocuous desuetude. Possibly our Congressman is thinking of Carroll county, and judged by its production of Republican statesmen, one would naturally expect to find the farms fenced with elm rails and sumach patches in the corners of the fence. He may have referred to the new rails he had put on his political fences. If so he knows more about buying them than I do. Our Landis advises his party to put a gold standard plan'v in the n"Xt platform, and assures tha bosses that all Iudiana will fbllo-v the tinkle of the bell that nine out of len farmers in this state are

expansionists

and are ready to wade in "blood to the horses' bridles" to get possession of what does not beloug to them. This is a slander on the farmers. The: farmers of this state are notr Republican statesmen they have not the desire to lay hands on everything in sight that comes to a man as soon as he taHtes the pap of olHce. Mr. Landis is a mistaken creature of power, and the way the people will go after his hair in 1900 will be awful.

Yours Observantly.

1 Peteb Poboupine, Jb-