Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 63, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 April 1898 — Would Spit On The Golden Streets. [ARTICLE]

Would Spit On The Golden Streets.

All tobacco chewers are not alike filthy. As one star differs from another in glory, so are they among t he masticators of that abomination, who far surpass others in the utter recklessness with which they eject the noisome product of their jaws. There are those, and many of them, to their credit be it said, who try to be as decent as they can, in their slavery to a habit which, in its very nature, is impossible to make wholly decent. But there are others, and many others too, so lost to the sense of cleanliness themselves, and so regardless of the rights and feelings of others, that they seem to make a study of being as offensively nasty as they cart, in their tobacco using. They spit any place and every place. On

floors, on sidewalks, in halls and in churches, and the more beautiful and elegant the floor they spit on the more delight they appear to take in spitting on it. Look, for instance, at the marble mosaic floors, and the polished marble maniscotirig of our new court house! Does anyone suppose that they are spared from the daily defilement of tobacco juice. Not by any means. Spittoons are stationed everywhere. Themselves a constant witness of the imperfectness our civilization, but they don’t save the floors and the walls, and the marble steps. Some of these tobacco setters would spit on the jasper walls and the golden streets of the New Jerusalem —if they ever get there. But if “the filthy must be filthy still”—they’ll neyer get there.