Saturday Evening Mail, Volume 3, Number 6, Terre Haute, Vigo County, 10 August 1872 — Page 1

Vol. 3.—No. 6.

THE MAIL?

Office, 3 South 5th Street.

m^iODE TO A PAIR MAID.

BYI. H. LOKD.

[In the last Issue of The Mail ft piece of "practical poetry" was advertised for—a poem "that would draw some good batter to town." The idea struck the author as being a good one. Virgil wrote his Bucolics to stimulate the Romans to turn farmers and why may not a modern bard Impress the muse for the purpose of encouraging the dairy art? In compliance with therequest the following lines were written which, It is to be hoped, (whatever may be feared,) may supply the Prairie City with good butter for sorue time to come :J O Dairy Maid, who mid the dewy clover,

With milk-pail on thy head, Dost lightly trend, _»' Musing perchance of last night'.* tarrying lover,

And what he said,

But look In vadn.

Olve ear instead fs To me and to the tulc I shall run over, -i Asking thy aid Wo lia\^ no butter, O lactiferous maiden,

Fair goddess of the cliuru, And though we turn To steaming tables with rich viands laden,

We still complain .. .v, And look again For tlint one product of'tiie rural alde'n,

The soft, white bread goes to our mouths unbuttered, Thejaceted pota-

To, dull and gray, Lies almost bursting with Its wath unuttered,

Because we lay It down, and say, With deep disgust and anger half ont-stut tered,

No grease to-day

Our mutton chop seems to have lost its flavor, And our sweet roastlng-ear

Ii held less dear, While all the meal Is fat a poor endeavor To fl nd tlmt cheer

Which is the sheer, Spontaneous jputgrojvtJj .of gbod, buttery savor

Arising near.

O Dairy Maid, to thee wo come entreating ,s That thou wilt nimbly go. Where, Idly low Thy bovine tlook, so lazily completing

Their stinted dole, i1 And tell them our roll .2

Is thrust on ired papplllae all ungreeting Their unctuous toll. And then, O maiden, to the kino returning,

While rumlnaut they stand, Ply thy deft hnud ,5' With that old vigor which thou used when learning

„,,„

This pastoral art, -v nt And when they start, Heedlessly careless of thy golden churning,

Patience, klad heart

Thus goddess of tlio sweet, lactescent treasure,

Protect roia of tho churn, Thus shalt thou earn The poet's praises, sung In tuneful measure,

Better than gold, For they will hold For tlioe a fund of unexhausted pleasure

When butter's sold!

Town-Talk.

i'or somo weeks past, T. T. has "been very much on his dignity in a herculeau effort to got rid of his reputation as a scold. He has tried hard and with somo succoas to keep off everybody's corns, and to appear the most amiable and sweet-tempered of men. He has beou delighted to hoar frequent expressions of approval of his improved temper, and would bo still more delighted if he could continue to say ploasant things and hear moro of such appreciative remarks. But there is "a timo for all things.'1 The whip has its plaoe as rightfully and necessarily as tho sugar plum. And T. T. is profoundly impressed with tho neoessity of applying the lMh to

THE LAZY MAN.

There are a good many of him in town, and wherever you find him, he is the worst of nuisances. T.T. is constantly afflicted with one who is a sample of a numerous clask. He hasn't done a day's work at his trade for months and the only labor he has performed in all that timo has been gratuitous interference in other people's business. He walks the streets in dilapidated garments while work is waiting for him on every hand. Ho could carry home three or four dollars every night, but he carries only empty pockets and hunger. Ills wife toils inccsaantly has grown prematurely old and gray, while timo touches him but lightly. Like others of hlsclass.hls household Is numerous. "Many children play round his door." They are not always wellfed, and they are generally poorly clad, for it is beyond the strength of the poor mother to keep the flock neatly clothed, to keep hunger always Car from the door, while adding every year "a well-springof pleasure" to the numerous list. It seems one of the strangest of God's providence* that the house of the lazy man Is almost always lull of children. If they inherit the peculiar paternal trait the world will soon bo full of lazy men. Society Is too easy with these loafers, too leni

ent with their great fault which is often worse in its results than crime. The ordinary thief is not a worse enemy to society than the drono. He subsists on the fruits if others' toil contributing nothing to the general stock. All that he eats, drinks or wears is paid for by the sweat of others' brows. He should be made to feel that there ifin't room for suoh a fellow in this busy world. He should be told that his treatmont of his wife, however, patiently the poor drudge may bear her terrible burden, is murder—slow, deliberate, but sure and cruel murder. T. T. knows a number of such murderers here in this city. He knows a good many mounds in the city oemetery on which, if tho whole truth were always advisable, there should be placed tablets inscribed: "Here lies tho victim of a husband's la'ziness." There are many other wives who tire fast approaching just such graves, while their murderers are idly loafiog about town, talking politics, perhaps, and being tolerated by respectable people. As T. T. was going up town, the other night, he met what he at first thought was a ghost, but a second look, and a moment's thought told him that it was the living remains of an old schoolmate, one whom he had known a dozen years ago as a bright, happy, beautiful and good girl. He met her now bending under the weight of a heavy basket of clothes which she had washed and ironed, bending over the wash-tub and ironing board through the slow-dragging hours of one of the hottest of our scorching days. She had finished her task, had rocked her babe to sleep and was carrying homo her work to get the pittance so hardly earned. She looked wan and pitiful "Care and sorrow and child-birth pain had left their traces on heart and brain." She will soon find release in death—will soon go to the grave more cruelly murdered than-lf the deed had been done with a knife or poison. On the same evening, T. T. met the husband of this slave in a public place. He was fat and sleek, looked halo and youthful and talked politics longer and louder than any other man in the crowd. T. T. inquired after his health, lie said it "was never better and he thought he should go through this campaign hotter than he did in '68." T. T. asked him how his wifo was getting along. "Well," he replied "very well indeed." Evidently ho believes his wife is doing "well" so long as she bears her burden uncomplainingly. That man is simply a murderer, and society pught to brand him so.

Husks and Nubbins.

IV.

In the August number of Scribner's Mouthly Dr. Holland discusses the Wino Question in Society. Like most agitators of the temperanc9 question, he takes tho total abstinence ground. He inveighs against the custom, fast becoming general, of placing wine on the dinner table. He says: "If the men and women of good society wish to have less drinking to excess, let them stop drinking moderately.

and

they are not willing to break off the indulgence of a feeble appetite for the sake of doing good to a great many people, how can they expect a poor, broken-down wretch to deny an appetite that is stronger than the love of wifo and children, and even lifoitself?"

We cannot agree with the good Dootor. Let us look at the question. Tho vine grows In the soil of halt tho earth. Its fruit is of the most beautiful and delicious kind. But of what account is it except for wine What will you do with the product of a vineyard ifyou do not put it in the winepress? Why those rich, purple clusters are already wine. Wine, the rarest and sweetest Is bottled up 10 those transparent bladders. There is nothing else there bat a little pulp and a couple of hard, valueless seeds. Who could be long among grapes and not discover that they are for wine And so we find, go back as for as we may in the history of the race, that wine is the Inevitable product of the grape. And it Is always in high repute. Poets sing its praises

historians account a land of vineyards rich. Can it be that mankind has always esteemed it as one of the greatest blessings what is in truth only a curse? Have all the ages been deceived by the grape and praised when they should have cursed It Rather, shall we not, when we tind an nppftlte so universal, a Judgment so unchangeable In a world of change, an instinct co-eval and co-existent with the rpce, shall we not rather examine whether it have its foundation in evil or in good, before we pass hasty sentence upon it

It is characteristic of all blessings that their perversion brings a curse. Moderate labor is healthful slavish toil destroys. Food, in proper quantities, nourishes gluttony prostrates and enfeebles. Wine, need to excess, shatters the constitution and wears out the vital energies may it not bo that Its proper indulgence is beneficial and healthful? It cannot be denied that

there is in humanity a deep, abiding faith that it is. But, says tho good doctor, suppose your postulate be granted, still, if you want less drinking to excess, stop drinking at all. Here it is exactly where we beg to differ. Say onee for all that the moderate use of wino is good or bad, on physiological grounds. If it is bad banish It utterly, as you would banish any other sin against tho body. If it is good you shall not banish it, because, in excess, it is evil. When you utter this edict, prescribe beef from your table as well as wine.

But says'the author we have been quoting: "It may seem hard that they should be deprived of a comfort or a pleasure because others are less fortunate in their iomperament or their power of will. But the question is whether a man is willing to sell his power to do good to a groat multitude for a glass of wine at dinner. That is the question in its plainest terms. If he is, then he has very little benevolence, or a very inadeqnate apprehension of the evils of intemperance." We think this is a very narrow view of the subject. We lay it down as an article of the true catholic creed, that no one is required to forego tho enjoyment ol any blessing which nature has provided. You have a right to them all there is no principle of benevolence or duty which can deprive you of them. The benevolence which would do so is a false and unnatural benevolence.

What wo need is our metropolitan society," continues Dr. Holland, "is a declaration of independence." Yes, but this abstinence for example's sake is the most arrant cowardice. Your real independent man is he who holds his appetite firmly within the grasp of his will, and says: So far but no farther. There is no curse in the wine-glass for him. He finds health and the elixir of life there. It is good to him as the slice of beef is good. When It becomes an evil and a curse he puts it from him. He says: No more. The man stops here in that other glass the brute begins. It is not true independence when a man refuses a good because he may go to extremes. He must not go to extremes. We insist upon it that he must be master of himself. But what if he can not be Then ho is weak and must sufler. But if you remove the temptation he need not suffer. True, but God never intended that temptation should be removed. Temptation is our school-master without it wo should grow up rude and ignorant. We should be neither good nor independent, but mere negative things, without stamina, without self-control, tbistlo-down carried wherever the wind chanced to blow us. We have no respect for or confidence in that virtue which is virtue only because there is no temptatiou to vice. If there were no Devil in the world what would it signify to be a saint? We make this complaint —charge, we shall call it— against the total abstinence teachers, that they make men cowardly and weak instead of strong and noble. They say to the young man: Don't taste wine it may be good, but you will drink too much you cannot control yourself. Here is a strong lever. The young man does drink and he drinks too much. He becomes a sot and a beast. Then he was surrounded by puling sympathy which deplores his unfortunate fall and curses the Circean cup Instead of him! Wo would prescribe a widely different treatment. We would heap vigorously on the young transgressor such epithets as weak, contemptible, disgraceful. We would shame him for his lack of manliness and tell him he was not fit to dine in decent company, as he is not. We imagine that such treatment would do vastly more for his recovery than sentimental tears, vain prayers and fervent exclamations against the irresistible power of the wine-cup.

Ah, you will aay, this is all very fine, but it 1s no antldc^e for the tears of heart-broken widows, the cries of orphaned children and the thousand crimes and vices which intoxication sows broad-cast in the land. Neither do a thousandth part of these flow from the use of wine, but from the baneful stuff which, in the name of the law, is sold by the glass to the low inebriate. Do what you please or can with this. Throw it in the flames, pour it upon the street, rare to the ground the accursed dens where it is sold for this is indeed an evil. But this has no more relation to the wine question than opium has.

hr Green Isle of Erin" has become the property of a ver^ limited number of individuals. Its entire area is owned by less than 20,000 persona, and nearly 6,000 of this number own less than 100 acres. One thousand four hundred and forty-thiee own oneseventh of the solL It is no great wonder that the Island is flu* being depopulated by the working classes, who can never become landed proprietors, or in feet, the possessors of anything save a lease-hold of a few acres of land and a thatch-roofed shanty.

1TERRE-HAUTE, SATURDAY EYENING, AUGUST 10, 1872.

People and Things.

Stokes wants to go to Europe.

551

Spurgeon parts his hair in the middle. Train promises Omaha a "jubUep Ol oratory."

Joe Emmett is studying German character in Berlin.

Faro dealers wouldn't thrive if it wasn't for their betters. Commodore Vanderbilt is about to join the Methodist Church.

Potato bug in the gizzard is what is killing a St. Joseph lunatic. The merry men of North Carolina didn't elect their Merriman.

Wigfall, tho famous Texan sonator.is practicing at the bar in Baltimore. Pirds mit yoost dor same kind of fedders vill gone together mit demselfs.

Orson Hyde, Captain of the Mormon \postles, has ben stricken with paralysis.

Rev. Mr. Watson, the accomplished English wife murderer, is slowly dying.

Homeopathic physicians are not permitted to practice on the Island of Jamaica.

Great beads of perspiration stood out upon the forehead of a Madison bridegroom during the ceremony. ,s

When you're past ninety years of age you'll be on the free list of the Detroit ferry boats—a thing worth living for.

It is decided that a blind man can legally hold oflico in Iowa. The morally blind have been at it these many years.

Matthew Finley, of Council Bluffs gave a debtor two fearful threshings and paid three fines in the effort to collect a small bill.

A Memphis man has been jailed for firing a pistol to frighten his wife. If he had killed her he would have been insane and got off.

A medical writer advises people who can't sleep to court the sun. We have a friend who can't sleep on account of courting the daughter.

A Mllwaukeo man drank a quart of ice water to get cool. And his friends don't know but that he would like somo more ice water where he is now.

A lawyer advertises to examine deeds. There are so few men whose deeds will bear examination we doubt about his doing a large business.,

Greeley is a teetotaller, and Brown a first-rate "wicked example." If they would go into tho temperance lecturing business together, tho combination could not fail to be a grand success.

A New York manufacturing company has entered upon the pious business of manufacturing idols for the Hindoo market. There is said to be several christians connected with the company.

Albany has four hundred dwelling houses, and two thousand four hundred inhabitants, all standing with their gable ends to the streets." So it was printed in a school geography not long since.

It is rumored that Stokes has procured a warrant for the arrest of the doctors who probed his friend Fisk to death. .He thinks the hanging of two or three doctors will have a wholesome effect upon the rest of the tribe.

Every minister in Indianapolis turned out to see Barnum's show, especially the animals, and it was noticed that most of them had childron with them who would not be pacified without being taken into the circus tent.

"Spotted Tail" indignantly denies that he authorized the association of his name with that of Vicloria C. Woodhull on the presidential ticket. The following dispatch has been received from him: Woodhuil! Squaw! Ugh! Me no ran!"

Wilkinson, who killed his wife with a cleaver in Baltimore on the first of May, has been struck with paralysis on the left side which is slowly affecting the right side. And people given to moralizing look upon it as a judgment of heaven.

Little Boy—Be you the drug man Druggist—Yes, sonny what can I do for you Little boy—Dad has got 'em agin! His boots is full of 'cm, and he is a howlin' like thunder, and mother sent me over to get sutbin' for him quick. Druggist—Whatdoes he want Little boy—Don't know, but he's yelling anything to beat Grant.—[Buffalo Express.

There is to be a convention of fat men at Put-In-Bay on the 10th of September, when it to expected that there will be a greater weight of humanity in proportion to the number than was ever before accumulated at one point. The quantity of obesity that will congregate on that occasion is something to alarm the imagination, and strike consternation into the hearts of hotel keepers.

Fresh Facts.

Louisville wants a peace jubilee. There are said to be nine thousand Jesuits.

Quack medicine posters are prohibiin a go ii 4 The national debt is being paid at the rate of |2.50 a minute.

Mount Jefferson, New Hampshire, is still deeply snow clad. Baltimore gas is so poor that the policemen get lost on their beats.

A favorite resort for Sunday School excursions in Wisconsin is Devil's lake. ,,

Jacksonville, Fla., boasts of a seven-ty-two pound watermelon raised in that vicinity.

If Woodhuil and Clafflin's Weekly ever had any readers it has them no I011ger. It is dead, i-j *,

Nebraska is the only State that had a railroad in running order when admitted into the Union.

The Saratoga Indians buy their"genuine beadwork" from the pupils of the blind asylum at Troy.

Now York City boasts nearly 7,500 bar rooms, and yet there, were only three murders last Sunday!

In about two weeks the soil'1 of Virginia will be disgraced by a prize fight between Mace and O'Baldwin.

When a heathen Chinee gets angry at one of his fellows, he doesen't "blow him up," but he blows up his house.

It took four hundred skips with a skipping rope to send a little girl at Pella, Iowa, skipping inte the "kingdom come" last week.

The hangman is reaping a ghastly harvest in South Carolina. There will be three hangings in each of two counties of that State this month.

An English chemist avers that the manufacture of wine is now conducted on such scientific principles that grapes are gradually being dispensed with.

In Connecticut is found a bed of wbito sand, which, it is reported, has found a market in New York for the purposo of adulterating white sugar.

The romance and natural beauty of the Catskills is all destroyed by the patent medicine advertisements that are daubed over the rocks and trees.

Tho Constitution of the proposed State of Deseret guarantees suffrage, right of office and education of all citizens, without respect to race, sex or religion. ,*

A Kansas paper, in reporting a trial, concludes with "the Jury returned a verdict of not guilty, but if the prisoner is sharp he will leave town withnut loss of time."

Chicago advertises Itself as a watering place, and those who have tried to purchase pure milk or whisky in that town aro inclined to put faith in the advertisement.

The most popular restaurant at present in New York is one designated "The Dairy," where fresh-faced country maids dispense bread and milk and home-made doughnuts.

Tho Artesian well at the State Fair grounds, at Ottawa, Illinois, is only 325 feet deep, and an abundance of water is flowing thirty feet high, at the rate of eighty-five barrels per minute

The Louisville Courier-Journal poetically remarks: In Montgomery, Alabama, the other day, four negroes got on a spree one took out his little jackknife, and now there aint but three.

All European accounts agree that the grain crop of Europe, especially in Russia and Hungary, will be very deficient this year, and that all America can spare will find a ready market on the other side of the Atlantic.

A Westport, Massachusetts dog attacked a cirous elephant in the street the other day. An eye witness said that the dog in about one minute was spread out over several yards of ground about the thickness of sheet Iron. Too thin!

A new drunk-prod uoer has been invented, which has not yet received a name, but is said to posesss all the merits of every other stimulant,—and more too. It is made of benzine and ether, and throws the drinker into a state of mental exhilaration that lasts for hours,

Virginia City, Nevada, has a mystery. The bodies of two fashionably dressed women, retaining the roseate hue of arsenic eaters, have been found in an obscure cabin in the outskirts of the city last week. At last accounts, nearly the entire population had been out to see the corpse®, but they were still unreoognized.

The funny fellow of an exchange says that a friend, who worketh like an adder, estimates that not less than 9,009,025,000,072 flies will lose their lives by falling into molasses and things this summer. If readers think this a wild exaggeration, they are at liberty to travel round and count tho flies.

Price Five Cents.

Feminitems.

Shock froam cold surf killed a young lady at Atlantic City, last week. Miss Swan, the Nova Scotia giantess, is wearing away with consumption.

Women in Japan are now granted the same rights as men In visiting tempies.

And now the fair sex are charged with the immoderate use of hydrate of chloral.

Nillson, who can kick a piano stool further than any other living prima donna, married for love.

A lass who once sang in the cafes with Christine Nilsson is now employed as a domestic in Boston.

The ladies congregate on the beach at Long Branch in large numbers to see the fat men flounder in the surf.

Mrs Isabella Hooker thinks the time has come when it is not becoming for a women to ask a man what she shall do.

A young lady of Lee, Mass, sold her hair, which reached almost to tho ground to a Pittsfield hair dealer for $55.

Surf-bathing at the Sandwich islands is unusually fine this summer. The ladies' bathing dresses are as thin as ever.

A shoddy matron told a gentleman friend that one of her lovely daughters •was a "blueuet" and the other was a "bronze". '-v.

Laura S. Webb, the fair publisher of the -sprightly shoet known as South St. Louis announces that she is "on tho fence" in politics.

An old lady bathing at Long Branch with her spectacles on, but without her wig was taken for Mr. Greeley and drew a great crowd.

The mother of a charming Danbury 4 girl would not let her daughter marry a conductor because she didn't want her doors slammed off.

Lady visitors to the Yosemite valley have no use for Side-saddles, but tickle the ribs on each side of their horses with both spurs at the same time.

The ex-Empress Carlotta, of Mexico, believes, in her insanity that she is a wild beast, and she throws herself with indescribable ferocity upon anybody that enters her room.

Mrs Lincoln lives in seclusion at Waukesha, Wisconsin, sees no callers, rides out closely veiled, and her 1 driver is a plain farmer by whose side she sits on such occasions.

A Minnesota girl, while enjoying the mazy dance, planted one of her feet against her partner's north ear, with explanatory remark, "i" don't boast much on beauty, but I'm h—1 on style."

A Kansas City girl dreamed that her brother had hung himself, and receiving no answer to her raps on his door, burst it open and—found him half way in a pair of tight pants that ho was trying on, but otherwise happy.

A Greenfield, Massachusetts, girl, ro- •. turned home recently from a lecture on electricity, got caught in a thunder storm, and promptly pulled off her hoop-skirt, not caring to risk herself inside of that kind of a lightning conductor.

A Boston girl sneezed her corsets into fragments while at dinner at a Long Branch hotel the other day. A waiter, with great presence of mind, held a server in front of her as sho backed out of the room and went into the dry dock for repairs. „.

One young lady who oalls butter "buttaw waitaw" at the Ocean nouse, wears nine diamond rings on one hand and a bustle on which she last night unconsciously carried Charles Augustus Fitznoodle's blue-ribboned straw hat from the lawn to the bluff.—[Long Branch Gossip.

On the arrival of tho Waterbury (Conn.) train at Hartford, last week,, two ladies stepped upon the platform, One of them with a firm step and quick motion, stepped up to the other, and I, clenching both bands into her carls and bonnet, entirely demolished the whole superstructure and then walked off. The attacked party, looking sharply at her retreating antagonist, coolly harled these words at hen "All right! Yourjfc husband will pay for a better bonnet! than this.

A woman in Peoria pr»t an indelible stain on her husband's name ahd fame. He is a somewhat festive genius, andil given to draining the flowing bowl,and singing "We won't go home till morn-/ ing." The wiiis warned the saloon keep-| er, where be spent his time, to sell him fc no more liquor. This was the stain,V and it must be washed away in bloody So the husband went went home and|| hacked his wife to pieces with a hatch et. And they have got him in prison.: Our liberties are indeed fast disappear-: ing when the vile myrmidons of the-' law can imprison a man for defending: his honor. But an intelligent jury ofjjr his fellow countrymen will do him jus-"* tice, and clear him on the plea of poral insanity."