Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 April 1883 — The Slanderer. [ARTICLE]

The Slanderer.

Compared with the malicious person who never commits himself by a positive statement, but who simply insinuates, the open slanderer is an admirable person. You knoAv with what you have to deal. A direct falsehood can be met by as direct a denial, and a statement committed to dates is liable to destruction through counter proof; but an insinuation has no tangible basis for the struggle, just as no one can catch and pinion Proteus. We are all subjected to this kind of persecution, and some seem to be fatally open to victimization of this deadly character. If scoundrels who stab in the dark had a visible mark like the snake’s hood and rattle, so that there could be no mistaking the genus, what a blessing of warning to the community, if but a sorry kind of mark to the individual himself! Perhaps, though, if sure of detection, he'might reform, and take to truth and honesty of speech by way of h pleasant change from his present crooked mode of living. He would be welcomed if he did, and might find love more valuable than abhorrence, sympathy and companionship more valuable than estrangement and enmity. For such people are rarely loved; men instinctively shrink from them.