People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 April 1897 — WEBSTER STATUE DEFACED. [ARTICLE]

WEBSTER STATUE DEFACED.

Vlaltora to the Capitol Use It to Sttike Matches On. Daniel Webster’s statute at the Capitol is having a hard time of it, and the police are scurrying about in frantic endeavor to suppress a new form of desecrating the marble representation of the great orator, says the Pittsburg Dispatch. When it was put in position the representatives of his native state were delighted over the fact that although the statute is a small one, because Daniel himself was undersized, it was advantageously located at the very entrance to statuary hall, the large room which was once the house of representatives, which echoed to his eloquence prior to his senatorial days. Unfortunately for the friends of Daniel, the statute was altogether too conspicuous, and It became a favorite point of attack for straggling visitors with unlighted cigars. Not long ago some vandal scratched a match on the tail of Daniel’s coat, and later another mark of sulphur was discovered across his foot. Both of the offenders were arrested and released on payment of a small deposit, which they promptly forfeited, but the attention of the police has at last been diverted from the Pere Marquette statue, which now rests in all its marble loveliness free from attack by religious fanatics, and they give all their time to watching people with unligdited cigars as they pass Webster’s statue, and the man who incautiously draws a match from hie pocket at the critical moment is pretty certain to be pounced upon by one of the blue-coated guardians of the capitol and warned that it is forbidden to scratch a match on even the innermost recesses of the clothing or limbs of the great expounder of the constitution.