Democratic Sentinel, Volume 1, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 October 1877 — Tom Paine. [ARTICLE]

Tom Paine.

The gauntlet which Bob Ingersoll threw down to the entire Christian world when he offered to wager one and all SI,OOO that Tom Paine did not die a “drunken, cowardly, and beastly death,” has been taken up by the New York Observer, which publishes several columns of testimony substantiating its assertion that the last years of Paine were marred by his bestiality and drunkenness, and that on his death-bed he was stricken with remorse and faced death like a coward. The evidence is furnished by parties who were well acquainted with Paine, including Grant Thorburn, of New York, who gives a description of the personal appearance and habits of the great atheist that is far from flattering ; Rev. J. D. Wickam and Rev. Charles Hawley, D. D., who corroborate Mr. Thorbum’s account of the man’s depraved habits; and Stephen Grillet, a noted minister of the Society of Friends, and Mary Briscoe, another Friend, who was present at his deathbed, and from whose journals the Observer publishes the picture of its horrors. Having made out its case to its own satisfaction, the Observer now pauses for a reply from Co]. Ingersoll. It is said that the testimony will be submitted to the examination of a committee, one chosen by the Observer, another by Ingersoll, and the third conjointly, who will decide which party has the best of the argument.