Jasper County Democrat, Volume 3, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 July 1900 — A WRATHY APOLOGIST. [ARTICLE]

A WRATHY APOLOGIST.

Bro. Marshall Attempts to Pick Street Brawl With “The Democrat' ’ Editor and is Arrested. When The Democrat editor entered the postoffice Tuesday morning he was followed by the “decent editor” of that “decent paper” generally known as the Official Apologist, but which its editor pleases to term the “official organ.” Bro. M., had come in unnoticed and we spoke to Uncle Jared Benjamin, who sat in a chair inside the office, and passed on and got our mail, closed the box and started out examining the headlines in the morning paper when a hullaballo arose on our left and on glancing up we saw the Apologist editor swinging his arms in a wild manner, cursing and shouting and pointing at Uncle Jared. He seemed to want to call our attention to Mr. Benjamin, and finally we were able to distinguish from his wild tirade the words, “ask ! him, ask him who changed that I letter.” Mr. Marshall appeared to be very much perturbed and -excited, and badly out of fix over something. Thinking perhaps the old gentleman had written so much , on insanity lately that his mind , had become a little more unbal- ’ anced than usual, and having read | that the best way to get along with | a lunatic was to humor him, we | smiled indulgently and passed out. of the door. The Apologist man. 1 utterly beside himself with rage,■ followed out and became quite personal in his remarks, using language more expressive than elegant, and thoroughly out of place for such a good Christian man. In fact one would hardly have expected such oaths and blasphemy in the vocabulary of one so angelic as he himself says he is. We stopped for a moment and informed him that such language was against the peace and dignity of the State of Indiana, and that we preferred to not soil his clothes and our hands with so filthy a mess, in fact we had long ago solemnly promised El Bringham of Goodland, to let him have this job. and passed on to our office. When the daily edition of the Apologist appeared we found that he was wroth about our comments on the omission of some words in the Gifford railroad letter, which letter had been sent to Mr. Benja-, min, read publicly by Mr. Marshall and given him to publish,] which he did, but omitted two! very important words. He made an “explanation” of the omission which was very weak but which might to some extent excuse him for the error with some people, so far as the letter itself was concerned. Letters of a character so important as this are always read over in proof by copy, and an error so glaring as this would of course have been noticed. But the most damning evidence of guilt is found in the following editorial comment which appeared in the same paper as the letter: ' Should these electionscarry I will proceed to survey the line and put the same under construction at once." This is Mr. Gifford's plain, unequivocal statement, over his own name. It is plain enough and definite enough. Let us take him at his word and set him to ; building it. The in quotations are i given as Mr. Gifford’s precise language, but it will be observed that I the two important words after line, “if practicable,” are omitted here as well as in the published letter. Marshall is supposed to have got this “plain,'unequivocal statement” from Mr. Gifford’s letter, and it is very strange indeed that he should have missed those two words. Also, Marshall knew that the opposition to the tax were using this very thing for electioneering, that Mr. Gifford had never made any direct statement that he would build the road even though the tax carried, and in reading over the letter those two words must have stuck in his crop so forcibly that he could not have passed them over twice without noticing their omission. This letter and the alxjve comment went out over the county on the Friday preceding the election. The “correction” paper did not get out in time for the “correction” to be read outside of Rensselaer ] before the election, hence the damage was done. So far ns the letter being published in the Journal, with the same omission, is con-' I cerned, we understand that it was so published in the daily edition, but not in the weekly. The Daily Journal like the Daily Republican, is only read by a very few people in town, and a copy never gets i outside the city limits, heijce it could do but little harm. We do not receive the Daily Journal and 1 have probably never seen a half dozen copies of that publication, ' therefore we could not say what had or had not appeared in the same. We are pained to note that Bro. Marshall so far forgot himself as to lose his temper over being

called down on this omission, and will say that if he really wants to “scrap” we will try and get that Wheatfield lady tb come down and lead him about by the whiskers again. We think, to use this honest’ (?) gentleman’s own words of a few months ago, when he was instituting libel suits galore against us, that the “courts are the proper agencies” to employ “against such people” as himself, and that to punish him ‘by a personal castigation would simply bring us into the same disrepute with him, hence a warrant was issued for his arrest for provoke and his case will come up at the September term of the circuit couift.