Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 October 1883 — MORE OR LESS STRANGE. [ARTICLE]

MORE OR LESS STRANGE.

A mammoth sea monster, supposed to be a turtle, weighing some 2,500 pounds, was captured off the coast of Nova Scotia by the schooner J. H. Higgins. George H. WILLETT, in jail in Caldwell, N. Y., made a miniature church and sent it to the Warren county fair for exhibition. But the managers would not exhibit it, as ■they feared it might create sympathy for him. He is supposed to be a murderer. Dr. Niles, of Jacksonville, Fla., does not understand his well. It is 300 feet above the high-water mark of the Florida coast, is but sixteen feet deep, yields a full supply of pure, -cold, fresh water, and yet it rises and falls with the ocean tides. He wants It explained. A Sam FAancisco old woman, who had failed in an attempt to write on a postal card hs long a letter as she had intended to, presented the spoiled card at the postoffice to be exchanged for a clean one, and when the clerk refused she scratched his face and bit his finger. Im Kingston, Ontario, some gypsies drove to a minister’s house and requested him to marry a young couple. When the young lady was asked whether she would accept the man. She stuttered and stammered, and finally ran out of the building. On being eaught, she was horsewhipped by her father. John SBanks, an aged Indian, is repairing the old Council House in Portage, N. Y, From the woods near by he gathers a peculiar dry moss and packs the interior space between the logs, and with a queer wooden trowl he plasters the outside cracks with tough clay, making the walls impervious to wind and cold. IxrSHWATOBOoMKLiNo can repeat the whole of Soott’s ‘•Lady of the Lake.

Dorsey, tlie New Democratic Saint. There has been a complete revolution in Democratic Sentiment within three years in reference to the starrouter Dorsey. When he was appointed Secretary of the Republican Campaign Committee in 1880 on account of his special knowledge of the politics of some of the Southern States, which the committee at the time determined to make an effort to carry for Gen. Garfield, the Democratic organs bitterly assailed him. He had been what they called a ‘•carpet-bag” Senator from Arkansas, and this circumstance alone furnished the Bourbon editors* and stump-speakers with texts for many a slashing editorial and many a withering speech against Stephen W. Dorsey. The Democrats have now changed their opinion of Dorsey. They have forgotten apparently that he wasa ‘’carpet-bagger. ” They have welcomed him as a prodigal. He is the best saint in their calendar. His statements are implicitly believed by them. The man whom they denounced as a liar and a falsifier in 1880 is now the embodiment of truth. His slanders of dead men whose reputations have stood among the highest in the nation-are accepted as infallible Democratic tiuths; his cOarges against the living, though contradicted and proven false, are repeated by Democratic journalists and speakers as if Dorsey’s character for veracity had never been assailed. The incarnate Republican fiend of three years ago is now a Democratic evangelist and proplidt. What has caused the change ? Since the close of the campaign of 1880. Mr. Dorsey lias been charged with being a member of a star-route ring which swindled the Government out of a large sum of money. Strong circumstantial evidence lias been given that he was a member of that ring. The evidence was enough to justify the President whose electian lie aided to direct a prosecution to be /instituted against him. That President was, not diverted from his duty in this matter, though Dorsey threatened to make public the circumstances of the campaign, and to circulate stories, if the prosecution was persisted in, which might create a bad impression. President Garfield, moved only by a sense of duty, and being convinced that there was sufficient evidence on which to proceed against Dorsey, undeterred by threats of any kind aud conscious of his own rectitude, directed that the prosecution should be persisted in. President Arthur, though his political association with Dorsey was closer, when he became the Chief Executive urged tlie prosecution also, and Dorsey and his confederates were indicted and brought to trial. The prosecution was vigorously pushed; the evidence was strong, but Dorsey was saved on a quibble by a jury consisting of eight Democrats and four negroes, on whose sympathies Mr. Ingersoll deftly played. Notwithstanding the action of the jury, the Government yet propose if possible, to make Dorsey disgorge tlie money lio may have stolen. He lias been acquitted of “conspiracy;” he has not been acquitted of theft, j Two Republican administrations prosecuted Dorsey, because they believed him to be a rascal and dishonest. In revenge for this just prosecution Dorsey lias, since the trial ended, devoted himself/as was to be expected, to the task of blackening tlie character of his prosecutors and slandering those, living or dead, who were instrumental in bringing him to trial. Straightway the Democrats have discovered that there can be vir ue in a carpet-bagger. They have taken this political blackmailer and prosecuted star-router, with his damaged reputation and his faithless character,to their hearts. The columns of their journals are open t® him to assail the memories of the dead, the character of the living. They who denounced him when his only known sin was that he differed from them in polities proclaim him a man worthy of credit, whose word has to be taken as against tlie words of men distinguished for their patriotism-—and probity. They have induced him to publish letters which were not his; and now they set him up as a political saint. This is nothing new with the Democrats. The Democratic par ty is the refuge of Republican rascals. Ch icago Tribwne.