Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 September 1892 — ELDER WILSON’S LECTURE. [ARTICLE]

ELDER WILSON’S LECTURE.

‘Elder J. H. Wilson, of Valparaiso, presiding elder of the Valparaiso district of the M. E. church, delivered his lecture on Andersonville Prison, at the Opera House, Friday evening, to a pretty fair audience. The elder is certainly one of the mobt entertaining public speakers that ever came before a Rensselaer audience. Unfder the spell of his wonderful wit, mimicry, eloquence and occasional pathos, he held the undivided attention of his audience for t over two hours and might have made it as much longer without becoming tiresome. In his powers of entertaining an audience, the elder surely has few equals.

The elder does not confine himBelf very closely to his subject however, in fact, qu|te the contrary, and it would probably be a fair estimate to say that not over 30 minutes of the! whole time he talked was devoted to the actual subject of his lecture. The rest of the time was given to pretty much every thing, largely consisting of fragments of the Elder’s most ultra-Sara Jonesean sermons against the social vices. Some of these discursive passages were very eloquent and impressive. But it is the Elder’s wit and humor and lollicking exuberance of spirits that most manifests itself in this lecture, in spite r of the fearful grimness of the subject, and his funny anecdotes and sallies of wit, kept the audience in a pretty constant state of laughter. And it must be admitted that some of the reverend gentleman’s little squibs ordered close, very close, on the smutty, and at these no one laughed quite so absolutely uncontrollably as the speaker himself.

Measured from the standard of the clearness and truth of the picture of life in Andersonville which the lecture leaves upon the mind it is only a partial success. Too much rime is devoted to preaching and “funny business” to give the supposed real subject of the lecture much attention, and, besides, as the lecturer announced at the beginning, he purposely passed over the darker aspects of'the picture and gave only its brightest side. To such a degree did he carry out this principle that even when he did incidentally mention some of the all prevailing horrors of -thatnvar to be execrated spbt, it was in a gay and half jesting way, far indeed from the law voice of horror with which most men who were there recall its soul-harrow-iog incidents. Andersonville prison is the foulest blot on the page of civilization’s history for three hundred years. Deliberately and with premeditated malice and with the very quintessence of cold and calculating cruelty, Union prisoners, by thousands upon thousands were there starved, shot, frozen, rotted to death, mid scenes of horror, degradation and filth unspeakable. It was done deliberately and for

a purpose. The Rebel authorities intended that every strong, weH fed and well-clothed Union prisoner that entered the portals of that earthly hellgfeould go out of it, either a corpse or a physical wreck, and they succeeded in the purpose. Little idea, indeed, of the true character of this place could be had from Elder Wilson’s lecture last Friday evening, i The Elder is a political prohibitionist, and of the Helen M. Gougar style of architecture, and

he indulged in a few side speeches in favor of his political party. In the course of one of these tirades he remarked in a manner so coarse and rude that in any man but a minister of the Gospel would be counted as absolute profanity, that "Both the old parties are corrupt as the devil” Now if this assertion were true, as fully 95 per cent, of the American people are adherents of one or the other of the old parties, it must follow that

the great mass of the American people are either themselves corrupt, or are besotted and hopeless fools, in either of which cas*es not only-may Republican institutions but civilization itself be voted a —miserable —failure. —Happily however, the assertion is not true. Our theory for many of the un. looked for things the elder says in this lecture, as well as the for things that he does not say, is that he is one of those pecularly malignant prohibitionists like St. John and Helen M. Gougar, who having been a Republican and failing to bring the party to take the stand they wish on the liquor question, have come to have a hatred for their former party so rank and unreasoning as to be anaetuaT mania. J " T "