Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1883 — Manly Rebel and Unmanly Copperhead. [ARTICLE]

Manly Rebel and Unmanly Copperhead.

What’sthe matter with our Town Council that they permit so many pitfalls, and mantraps, step-ups, and tumble-downs and leg breaking im perfections of all kinds, to exist in the side-walks of the town? Are they in “cahoots” with the doctors and wish to furnish them with lots of broken bones, or have they a contract with the devil for a big supply of profanity?

A Disgraceful Performance took place at the Fair Grounds last Sunday, m the shape of a game of base ball, between a couple of picked nines. Two or three kegs of beer, it is stated, figured among the prominent features of the occasion. The people and the press of this place have been called upon many times to encourage base ball playing here, and have always generously responded. It will be but a poor return for their kindness, if the good name of our town is to be disgraced, and the morals of our boys be depraved by such practices as that above spoken of. We have not heard that any member of the Comets’ Club took part in the shameful proceedings of Sunday, and hope and believe that none of them did. They owe it as a duty, however, to the people of this place to exert themselves in preventing a repetition of last Sunday’s drunken desecrations.

Our Town Dads are somewhat prone to hide their lights under a bushel, (or, if they prefer, we will make the measure a bushel and a half, or even two bushels, there being nothing small about us,-except our receipts from de* linquent subscribers), and when they pass an order, or an ordinance, usually allow the people to remain ignorant of its provisions or find them out in the best way they can. They have economical propensities, too, and will rather pay the . town Marshal three days wages for giving the people notice of their orders, than to squander a couple of dollars upon either of the newspapers of the town for doing the same work, twice as effectually. These retiarks are suggested by the fact that The Republican made a standing offer, long ago, to publish all the ordinances of the Town Board for two dollars each. ’ A sum which would little more than pay our printers’ wages while setting up and distributing the. type; but two dollars looks like a large sum to pay to an editor, and, as before remarked, the board allows the people to find out what they do, if they can, or remain ig. norant, if they must.

Henry Watterson, editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal, perhaps the most influential democratic paper published, was a native of the South. He sympathized with secession ideas, and went into the Confederate army and fought brffcely against the Union c§,nse. The editor of the Democratic Sentinel remained at home during the war, and inflicted cowardly blows Upon the same cause from the safe seclusion of his newspaper office. The war is long since over. Watterson accepts its results in good faith. He acknowledges the valor and the virtues of his conquerors, and knows that the world moves. Couqare his frank and

manly .utterances in regard to President Arthur, in a late number of the Courier-Journal, with the mean, fajse and malicious flings in the last two numbers of the Democratic Sentinel. We quote from the Courier*Journal: - /TiiEre is a popular impression that we have in the White House a thorough American and a thorough gentleman. Whatever differences of opinion we may have with the. party leader upon questions of policy, we believe Mr. Arthur to be an honest man, who fills the presidential office in a manner to make us proud of him, both as the chief of the State and as a fellow-citizen. It is more than likely that our paths of political interest and duty will diveige hence to come together next year in close and sharp antagonism, for there are many likelihoods that he will bethe nominee of his party to succeed himself in the great place to which he was called by the providence of God. If so, neither withdftwing or qualifying any part of our present good opinion, we shall oppose his election, precisely as we should oppose that of any member of"a party which, to say the best for it, has been over lon<f in power. In the meantime, however, letuseat, drink andbe merry.’