Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 December 1881 — Mason & Hamlin Organ Company. [ARTICLE]

Mason & Hamlin Organ Company.

At tlie great Italian Industrial Exhibition just closing in Milan, Italy, the highest awards for musical instruments, a silver medal and diploma, were taken by an American manufacturer, the Mason & Hamlin Organ Company, whose cabinet organs were judged to be so superior that they were the only reed organs of any manufacture, European or American, which were awarded a medal. It is a great honor to these makers that in Italy itself, the very home of music, their organs should receive such distinction. They excited much interest among musicians, and were by special order repeatedly exhibited to the royal court by Carlo Ducci, the distinguished artist of Romo. The Advent Preacher and the Balloon. There occasionally occurs an incident in this world that will make a person laugh though the laughing may border on the sacriiigious. For instance, there is not a Christian but will smile at the ignorance of the Advent preacher up in J ackson County who, when he saw the balloon of King, the balloonist, going through the air, thought it was the second coming of Christ, and got down on his knees and shouted to King, who was throwing out a sand bag, while his companion Mas opening a bottle of export beer, “O, Jesus, do not pass me by.” And yet, it is wrong to laugh at the poor man, who took an advertising agent for a Chicago olothing store for the Savior, who ho supposed was making his second farewell tour. The minister had been preaching the second coming of Christ until lie looked for Him every minute. He would have been as apt to think, living as he did in the back woods, that a fellow riding a bicycle, with his hair and legs parted in themiddle, along the country road, was the object of his search. We should pity the poor man for his ignorance, we who believe that when Christ does come he will come in the old fashioned way, and not in a palace car, or straddle of the basket of a balloon. Bnt we can’t help wondering what the Adventist must have thought, when he appealed to his Savior, as he supposed, and the balloonist slued a sand bag at him and the other fellow in the basket threw out a beer bottle and asked, ‘‘ Where in are we?” The Adventist must have thought that the Savior of mankind was traveling in mighty queer company, or that he had taken the other fellow along as a frightful example. And what could the Adventist have thought when he saw a message thrown out of the balloon, and went with trembling limbs and beating heart to pick it up, believing that it was a command from on high to sinners, and found that it was nothing but a hand bill for a Chicago hand-me-down clothing store. He must have come to the conclusion that the Son of Man had got pretty low down to take a job of bill posting lor a reversible ulster and paper collar bazar. It must have been food for reflection for the Advent preacher, as he picked up the empty beer bottle, shied at him from the chariot that he supposed carried to earth the redeemer of man. He must have wondered if some Milwaukee brewer had not gone to heaven and opened a brewery. Of course we who are intelligent, and who. would know a balloon if we saw it, would not have had any sucli thoughts, but we must remember that this poor Advent preacher thought that the day had come that had been promised so long, and that Christ was going to make a landing in a strong Republican county. We may laugh at the Adventist’s disappointment that the balloon did not tie up to a stump and take him on. board, but it was a serious matter to him. He had been waiting for the wagon, full of hope, and when it oame, and he Baw the helmet on King’s head and thought it was a crown of glory, his heart beat with joy, and he plead in piteous accents not to be passed by, and the confounded gas bag went on and landed in a cranberry marsh, and the poor, foolish, weak, short-sighted man had to get in his work mighty lively to dodge the sand bags, beer bottles, and rolls of clothing store posters. The Adventist would have been justified in renouncing his religion. It is sad, indeed.— Peck’s Sun.