Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 February 1892 — Could Steal, but Couldn't Lie. [ARTICLE]

Could Steal, but Couldn't Lie.

“We don’t think our conductors are turning in all the fares they collect,” said the manager of a streetcar line to one of his oldest employes. “You don’t knock down, do you?” “Yes, sir.” “You do! Why didn’t you deny it?” “Why, sir, my mother always tought me to despise a liar.”—Epoch. James Parton used to tell how, early in his career, he was itemizing for a weekly paper; and he noticed that a large share of the news was devoted to exposing human frailties. Thereupon he resolved to make a reform In journalism. He began to collect matter for a new feature in his paper: “Good Deeds Done Lately.” During the first week he picked up only a few paragraphs for it, but he wrote a flourishing introduction, and gave good earnest of the future. But the next week the stock was still smaller. Nobody rescued anybody else from a watery grave; no legacy was left to Harvard by a rich deceased Bostonian; and nobody lost a wallet and rewarded the ragamuffin who picked it up; and so that new department perished of inanition.

IN a New Jersey town a courageous band of men dragged a woman out of bed in the night time and taking her to an unfrequented spot tarred and feathered her. If a few such regulators of morals should make the acquaintance of the interior of a jail—or of the contents of a shotgun—it would be a great gain for the communities they infest.

may see the Grant monument in New York unveiled; it is a treat not in store for us. Meanwhile New York can amuse itself by poking fun at Chicago’s enterprise in getting ahead of the metropolis.