Life — November 19, 1885 — page 2: what you’re looking at

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

VOL. VI. NOVEMBER roth, 1885. NO. 151. 1155 Broapway, New York, Published every Thursday, $5 a year in advance, postage free. Single copies, 10 cents, Back numbers can be had by applying to this office. Vol. I., 50 cents per number ; Vol. II., 25 cents per number; Vols. IIT, IV, and V. at regular rates. Rejected contributions will be destroyed unless accompanied by a stamped and directed envelope. F the genus crank, the most flourishing and instructive specimen to-day is the professional Prohibitionist. He is the man who cannot look upon the wine when it is red without getting himself into difficulties. He is a poor, driveling mortal who, because he has not as strong a head as his neighbor, wants to make a political issue out of it; dubs his weakness a principle and clamors for it; spends money on it and probably does more treating in secret than all his opponents put together, trying to “pile up a tidal wave vote” for his weak head. That degree of vice, which by this method he manages to suppress in his system, is compensated for by the weed-like growth of others. The Prohibitionist can look dreadfully sleek and pious in church, but he can swear a leg off the table at home if his dinner does not suit him. He can devote hours of his daily life to his hypocritical cry for the establishment of his principle, and on election day he can be just as venal as the Democrat or the Republican. He can take the stump and depict the dreadful consequen- ces of liquor selling upon the poor, in glowing colors, while the expenses of his campaign are largely paid for by the rents he receives from groggeries on his own real estate. He is like the man who went to live in a bad neighborhood so that he would not be tempted to covet anything that was his neighbor's. He has one virtue which he parades before the public, and ten thousand vices which he strives to keep from view, and in the matter of veracity he is about as reliable as the man who asserts that Washington never lied. If he only knew it—and there is much he does n't know—- he is the liquor dealer's best friend. He advertises him; he makes him an issue; he affords him amusement; and, when the moment for action arrives, the record of the past shows conclusively, he is the ally of his worst foe, and the enemy of the one who could and probably would help him to achieve such results as ought to be achieved. When will this combination of noise and hypocrisy be called in? ~ ERDINAND WARD does not find prison life the acme of bliss, and has aroused much sympathy among the feminine portion of our race and some among the sterner sex. These people doubtless thought Mr. Ward was to live in fine style at his Sing Sing chateau. He was to have the bridal cell, finely upholstered and specially decorated for him by some leading artist from the metropolis. His meals were to be furnished by Delmonico, and were to comprise every known delicacy the market could afford, and as for a pro- fession, the prisoner was to have something light, such, for instance, as taking care of the flowers in his garden, or offer- ing suggestions to the ballet at the Sing Sing Casino. Mr. Ward was to have all this because he managed to steal several millions of dollars, and didn’t really commit any such disgusting crime as running away with a loaf of bread for his starving family, and it is a great disappointment to Mr. Ward's friends that the distinguished ex-financier has been brought down to bed-rock crackers and Boston-bean coffee. It is too bad, indeed, and probably it never would have happened had Mr. Ward not committed a still greater crime. After setting away with his ten or fifteen millions, it was a heinous offense for him to allow someone else to steal them from him. There is an aristocracy of wealth in our prisons as well as in our streets, and Mr. Ward should have ascertained this before he counted on the blissfulness of the Sing Sing dungeon, ° * . HE sanity of the Sua and World is likely to be an issue in the near future if they continue their undue self- congratulation over the extinction of the Mugwump. This undesirable creature—from a Democratic stand- point—may be, to all intents and purposes, temporarily under acloud in this State, but the way he shines in the purely local atmosp..ere of National affairs is a caution. Witness the appointment of Mr. Saltonstall as Collector of Customs at Boston! A civil service reformer to the core. A man of absolute uselessness to such men as are now clamoring for Jeffer- sonian simplicity and crowing because the President “has learned the lesson of the Democratic victory in New York.” Of course Mr. Cleveland is to be censured for appointing to so important a position one who will attend strictly to | the business of his office to the exclusion of politics, and as a natural sequence there is of course a howl from the organs | of the Hill stamp over the appointment, but —and this “but” must be humiliating to Messrs. Dana and Pulitzer—this howl and the cry of triumph over the suppression of the Mugwump are like oil and water. They do not mix well. FT RTT Ere comicbooks.com