Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 August 1879 — Cool Burgess Creates a Sensation. [ARTICLE]

Cool Burgess Creates a Sensation.

N. Y. Special to the Enquirer. The audience in the Tivoli theater enjoyed a sensation to-night. At the middle of the performance the manager came upon the stage and announced that Cool Burgess (the negro minstrel, who, on Tuesday night, shot William W. Widgerly, the alleged betrayer of his wife in a hotel in Toronto, Canada) would next appear. As the manager passed off the stage Burgess came on, and was received with applause. He sang one song, and gave a recitation for an encore. A third time he returned to the stage, but he was evidently much excited by a remark made by some person occupying a front seat tn the audience. The remark was only overheard by those in the immediate neighborhood, but it conveyed some insult. Burgess, advancing excitedly, cried out: “I am not-a murderer. I have never hurt man,woman or child, and I am not sorry for what I did in Canada. Widgerly pursued me about, ruined my wife, ana made my children more than orphans and wrecked my hopes. On that occasion he followed me almost to the bedside of my dying mother, and if I have any regret it is that I did not kill him. If anybody has anything to say, let him come out like a man, dud I will meet him like a man. You must excuse me; I have been riding for four days and nights In the cars, and cannot sing again to-night” Burgess then left the stage amid loud applause. American railway agents are in Canada endeavoring to induce intending emigrants to Manitoba to go to Nebraska and Minnesota.