Jasper County Democrat, Volume 6, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 September 1903 — ODIOUS COMPARISON. [ARTICLE]

ODIOUS COMPARISON.

Contemporary Says Carnival Lined Up Favorably With the Methodist Conference. “There is considerable more noise now, and a good deal more hilarity, but so far as good order and general good and law abiding conduct goes, the carnival crowd so far lii\ps up very nicely with the Methodist conference of about a year ago."—Rensselaer Evening Republican, Aug. 29. (This item was omitted from the Semi-Weekly.) Well, did you ever? We wonder what those Methodist preachers who attended the conference here last year would say to this? Think of comparing the snakeeating woman, the hootchiecootchie dancers and some others of the carnival’s crowd and followers with the good, pure, modest Christian women who accompanied their husbands to the conference here last year! Think of lining up the show “barkers” with the eloquent and learned Bishop Vincent who delivered one of the finest addresses ever heard in Rensselaer, from the court house steps one afternoon of the conference! And then there was the “colored man” who stuck his head through a hole in a canvas and allowed eggs to be thrown at him for so much per throw, and “every time you hit the nigger’s head you get a cigar!” Imagine those dignified preachers tumbling over one another to purchase a ticket to “in the altogether” at the Turkish theatre! Then there was that Rensselaer citizen (white) who was caught in a compromising position with a colored lady in the court house yard Wednesday about midnight, when preachers are generally in bed sleeping the sleep of the just! Compare the amount of intoxicating liquors sold in Rensselaer last week, where about a score of able-bodied men were required to hand out the booze, and the quiet that prevailed on the levee during the conference last year! Notwithstanding this exalted opinion by Bro. Marshall, we still believe that from a moral standpoint Methodist conferences are better fora community than street carnivals.