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American Wit.
A\ illiam Shakespeare, who codified our English
speaking, conversational laws, made his admirably
wise fool Touchstone divide the more or less pleas
ant custom of giving one’s adversary the lie into
seven classes, ranging from the Retort Courteous
to the Lie Direct. The field of politics is more
prolific in famous instances of retort than any
other.
Gen. Charles H. Grosvenor is the hero of a hun
dred wordy battles in the House. He has a luxu
rious snow-white beard and a caustic tongue. One
day, William D. Vandiver, now insurance commis
sioner of Missouri, launched into a furious attack
upon ‘‘the gentleman from Ohio.” And Champ
Clark innocently inquired,/‘Which gentleman from
Ohio"?” The Missourian shook his finger at Gen.
Grosvenor and replied: “I mean the gentleman
from Ohio who looks like .Santa. Claus and talks
like Satan.” Grosvesnor, white with rage, shouted
back, “But my picture has never served as a warn
ing on poison pots in pharmacies.” Vandiver had
such a thin face and bony frame that he had been
nicknamed “Skull and Crossbones.”
The late Senator Ingalls, of Kansas, was attack
ing Gen. McClellan and Gen. Hancock, two Fed
eral generals of the Civil War, who were afterward
Democratic candidates for the presidency. Senator
Blackburn, of Kentucky, arose and interrupted:
“When Gen. George B. McClellan was leading the
armies of his country, and when Gen. Winfield
Scott Hancock lay wounded by the enemy’s bul
lets under the flag of his country, the Senator from
Kansas, in the capacity of judge advocate general,
was prosecuting non-combatant Jayhawkers for
robbing hen-roosts.”
In the old days Tom Marshall and one Graves
were rival candidates for congress in the Blue
Grass region of Kentucy. Marshall was an aris
tocrat, Graves was the son of a cooper, and he was
always making an appeal to the “peepul” by boast
ing of the humble occupation of his father. Mar
shall found it was hurting his chances, and he de
cided to stop it by the Countercheck Quarrelsome.
In reply to Graves he said: “My opponent boasts
of the humble calling of his father. For aught
I know his father may have been a good cooper,
but it is easy to see that he put a mighty poor
head on this whiskey-barrel,” clapping his hand
on Graves’ head.
Tennessee bred two great orators in the olden
days —Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, once presi
dent of the United States, and Gustavus A. Henry,
a Whig, known as the “Eagle Orator of the South.”
They ran against each other for governor, and when
a long series of joint debates had reached its close,
Johnson addressed the Whigs in the audience: “I
have spoken with the boasted eagle orator from the
Mississippi river to the Unaka Mountains, and as
yet I see no flesh in his talons or blood on his
beak.’’ Quick as a flash Henry was on his feet,
saying: “The American eagle is a proud bird,
and feeds not on carrion.”
Champ Clark, in a speech on civil service re
form, told a story of a sharp retort to an examina
tion question propounded by the civil service board.
A man applying for a position to run an elevator
was asked: “How many troops did England send
to the colonies during the Revolutionary War?”
The reply was: “A big sight more than ever
went, back.”
Lemuel Eli Quigg and James Hamilton Lewis,
two of the most picturesque men ever’ in Congress,
were having a heated debate on the trust question.
Mr. Quigg, who was from New York, was openly
defending the trusts. At the close of one of his
fiery periods, J. Ham interjected with fine intona
tion: “For the ox knoweth his owner and the
ass his master’s crib.”
Senator Ingalls was always quick in retort, al
though he was himself a subject of some sharp
shafts. Once he was attacked by Senator Eli
* Saulsbury, of Delaware, the second smallest state
in the Union. He disposed of the whole matter by
saying: “I thank the senator from that great
state which has three counties at low tide and two
counties at high tide, for his advice»,New York
Sun.
The Golden Age for March 21, 1907.
Reasons For Prohibition.
The liquor traffic is the one great curse of the
nation. It defies law; it coerces suffrage; its allies
are evil; it produces nothing good; it conspires
with the gambler against justice and integrity; it
leads to, and fosters, the brothel in sin against
virtue and honor; it robs the weak, degrades the
simple, pauperizes the helpless, and vulgarizes the
pure. It is the center of profanity, vulgarity, low
themes and base conduct. At least half of the
insanity of the present day is due to its deadly
work.
Georgia should protect her children. The legis
lature which refuses to allow this option should be
buried beyond political resurrection.
The saloon system is the enemy of the laboring
man. The saloon produces nothing but evil. All
its employes are non-producers. They have to be
supported by others. More than half of this sup
port comes from the laboring man.
In return for the money spent for liquor, and to
support the saloonkeeper and 'his family in luxury,
the laboring man gets a decreased wage, discontent
ment, drunkenness and misery. The saloon im
pairs the laborer’s capacity. It deprives his family
of necessities. It is a burden to the laborer and
his employer. The representatives who deny the
laboring man the right to vote to protect his ability
to labor, and his humble home against the arch
enemy of labor —the open saloon —should be black
listed by every organization and individual in the
state'.
'The saloon is an injustice to every taxpayer in
the state. The municipality gets all the revenue
except the pittance of state license. The saloon
prostitutes its patrons, and turns out an army of
criminals, paupers and drunkards to till the jails,
poor houses, penitentiaries and asylums at the ex
pense of the whole county or state.
Georgia’s sons love their homes. Strong drink
is the enemy of the home, and sooner or later will
curse every home it enters. Money that ought to
buy the necessities for wife and child is tod often
squandered at the bar. The saloon destroys filial
and parental affection. It sometimes makes a mur
derer out of a good husband, a beast out of a duti
ful son, a bawd out of a pure, innocent daughter,
and a maniac of a refined and loving mother. The
home-builder should have the privilege to exercise
his inherent right to protect his home against the
blight of all good.
If a man is not a citizen in sympathy with our
constitution, and in accord with the spirit of pop
ular local self-government, he is not the man to
represent you in the legislature. Watch the as-,
pirants for the Senate and the House of Represen
tatives, and see that no man who is more favor
able to the iniquitous saloon evil than he is to our
churches, homes and children, is permitted to sit
in either place.
The saloon will corrupt any one in order to win.
If we could secure prohibition, it would take the
saloon out of politics, and, therefore, remove the
chief cause of political corruption.
The designing, scheming, trading jjolitician wants
to keep the saloon as a political factor, but every
good citizen can see that it is very desirable to get
it out of politics.
The Christian voter will hear the rallying call
of evil —“prohibition violates the sound principle
of our Constitution, Personal Liberty.”
But remember that “personal liberty must be
subordinate to public weal. This law is as deep
as the foundations of this republic. Liberty to sell,
to brew, to drink, if society is thereby injured, is
no more to be tolerated than lepers within our
homes. If the personal liberty of the liquor dealer
is paramount tv public good, then to curtail liberty
of the murderer is tyranny.”
There is not a county nor town —there is not a
man nor a committee —that ever sought a hearing
in the interest of temperance legislation that has
not seen the slimy track of this squirming reptile,
insinuating, threatening, soiling, corrupting the
civic integrity of the state.
The time has come when the truth should be
shown in all its nakedness. Does the saloon exist
in Georgia by popular consent?
Somebody is responsible for this rotten sore, foul
with the odor of crime and corruption. We be
lieve the voters of Georgia would disown the sa
loon, if only an opportunity were afforded.
J. B. Richards.
The Advance of Prohibition.
The uprising in favor of prohibition all over the
country’ is like a mighty ground swell. Every part
of the country exhibits it. and its movements are
of all kinds.
It is very evident that judges are applying old
neglected common law principles to the liquor ques
tion. as they have not done before, and the fact is
becoming very patent that the whole drink business
is an outlaw that has no natural rights under the
law, and deserves no artificial ones.
In Indiana a judge, in what corresponds to a
Superior Court in Georgia, was called on to issue a
mandamus requiring a city council to issue a saloon
license. Or it was the other way: Prohibitionists
sued out an injunction to prevent a city council
from granting a certain license. Judge Altman
held that: The American common law as it is
exhibited in the decisions of the courts has conic
to this: That liquor is a dangerous, destructive,
demoralizing and poisonous beverage. That it is
against public policy to encourage or to allow the
indiscriminate sale of such a commodity. That,
for these reasons, no city council has the right to
issue a saloon license, and that no state legislature
has the right to authorize a city council to issue
such license.
The ruling of Judge Altman is very significant.
He comes out to the full front line of the, subject
winen he holds that no legislature has the right to
license anybody to prosecute a business that in
jures, destroys, and debases the people as the sell
ing ot liquor always does. It is high ground, but
who will say it is too high?
It is said that the defeated liquor men have de
clined to appeal from the ruling of Judge Altman
because in that judgment of his the issue was mad
squarely: Shall the saloon be licensed, or denied
the privilege of doing business? If the supreme
court of Indiana sustained judge Altman the effect
-could be to close up every saloon in the state and
make the state dry. That precedent would be fol
lowed immediately in other states unless the liquor
men appealed to the Federal Supreme Court. That
tihey dared not do, because an adverse ruling on
that question by the Supreme Court of the United
States would kill the saloon business all over the
United States.
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Track Through the Bible.
(Continued from Page 6.)
hand of Saul,” and he passed into Gath, thus tak
ing refuge among the Philistines.
Perhaps there is no chapter in Old Testament
history more tragic than that of Saul’s end. The
last manifestation was that of his visit to the
witch of Endor. The men of Philistia became
afraid of David, and he was dismissed from their
midst. He returned to Ziklag, and found that it
had been sacked by the Amalekites.
The closing chapter of our book is draped in
sackcloth and ashes. It tells the story of the end
of the career of one of the most disastrous failures.
Saul died upon the field of battle by his own hand.
The chief spiritual value of this whole book is in
the solemn lessons it leaches by the life and fail
ure and death of this man. For evermore his
story proclaims the fact that great advantages
and remarkable opportunities are no guarantees of
success, unless the heart lie firm and steady in
its allegiance to principle, and its loyalty to God.
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