Judge — September 6, 1913 — page 4: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Distinction A GLOW of pride must have mantled the expansive and habitually genial countenance of Secretary of State Bryan as he perused a dispatch from Stroudsburg, Pa. the other day. “Expecting an unusual repre- sentation of pickpockets when William J. Bryan makes his Chautauqua address here,’ said the dis- patch, ‘‘the bor- ough fathers have taken de- cided action. Secretary Wil- liamswas direct- ed to ask Su- perintendent Grooms to have the State con- stabulary here on Bryan Day. The occasion is expected todraw a larger crowd to Stroudsburg than any circus in the last twenty-five years."” No matter how vigilant and industrious the police may be, it follows that when a crowd assembles in any town for a great event pickpockets are bound to get some of the money. That is the vocation of pickpockets. The police may arrest one or two of this gentry, but the authorities are powerless on circus day to prevent robbery. Mr. Bryan is not to blame for this truth, and whenever he speaks be- fore a rural throng—just as when a cir- cus unfolds its wonders in alike neigh- borhood—there are bound to be found in waste places after the show a great num- ber of the wallets of the simple and unwary, denuded of the stuff that makes wallets desirable things to carry. This phase of the visit of Mr. Bryan to Stroudsburg—and it is likely to be re- peated wherever he speaks—will probably cause that eminent Chautauqua headliner a great deal of sorrow. In each place where his oratory is to stir the masses he should be sure to exhort the police to the utmost vigilance, to the end that wallets may not be taken from their legitimate owners before the owners are assured of tickets to the oration. It would be too much for a man and his family, after traveling weary miles to hear the Great Commoner, to be robbed before that felicity. It is not this incidental feature of his appearances that should make Mr. Bryan a proud man. It is the fact that in such a town as Stroudsburg he should be able to gather by his magnetic personality a crowd larger than that attracted by any other circus in twenty-five years—a pe- riod during which the circus has reached its full flower as to marvels and its greatest power to allure. When the his- tory of Mr. Bryan shall be handed down to posterity, some biographer may legit- imately have it to say—and the press of this day will bear him out—that no other statesman of his time could draw a crowd equal to that decoyed by that other great American institution of which the late Phineas T. Barnum was the con- structive, and is the traditional genius. « What's in a Name?” A NEWS headline, ‘‘Edwin Booth Saves Lillian Russell,’’ set part of the world agog the other day, and revived serious and other theatrical memories. The head-writer was a wag. A lad at a summer resort had rescued a little girl. History and names repeat themselves. Progress WHEN most of us were young, it was a well known and indisputable fact possibly journey that one could not through this vale of tears without consum- ing his or her peck of dirt. This was not taken for its food value, but it was “rather a measure of our inefficiency in se- lecting purveyors, hiring cooks, and otherwise keeping our food free from contaminating influences. We are glad to observe, however, that the situation has grown better. What with swatting flies, the use of package goods, vacuum cleaners, and other modern devices, there is every reason for thinking that one can get through nowa- days on not over seven quarts of dirt. This is progress, if anything can ever be called progress, and there is no reason in sight why we shouldn't continue to clip off one quart after another of non-edible particles until eating dirt will be as rare as riding in horse cars. Brief Decisions A MIRROR and a camera are the two things in this deceitful world that unflinchingly tell the truth. There are some people in whom the milk of human kindness has become soured, and no power on earth can ever make anything more of it than a respect- able article of buttermilk. Whatever else may be said of her, woman is not a silent partner in the matrimonial firm—and in some cases it is just as well, perhaps, that she isn’t. comicbooks.com