DR. RIDDLE STILL UNRAVELING.

Dr. Riddle, of Waxahachie, recently preached a sermon from the sensational text: "Why Bob Ingersoll is Permitted to Live." As a sacred headline architect Dr. Riddle is almost equal to Sin-Killer Griffin, whose oratorical chef d'œwore is entitled, "The Child Sneezed Seven Times"; but can scarce be compared to Stump Ashby, who, before exchanging the pulpit for politics, was wont to take for his text, "We're in a Hell of a Fix." But Dr. Riddle is young yet. If he doesn't waste too much of his brain-power scribbling for the Waxahachie Daily Squirt, and concentrates all his wonderful vigor on one vocation, the race for the immortal bays will clearly lie between him and the Rev. Whangdoodle Baxter. Sancho Panza's joy at finding his beloved Dapple were as naught to mine on discovering the Rev. Jeremiah Bustamente Riddle. I needed him in my business. That I should find him seems nothing short of a special dispensation of Providence. It was just like winning seven consecutive times at faro, or getting money from home. "Why Bob Ingersoll is Permitted to Live." I am sorry I didn't hear that sermon. Why didn't Dr. Riddle wire me, that I might hie me in hot haste to Waxahachie and sit beneath the droppings of his sanctuary? "Pagan Bob" was touring Texas at the time, and I should have persuaded him to attend. The great agnostic would have enjoyed such a feast of reason and flow of soul as Dr. Riddle is capable of when he girds up his sacred surcingle and forces his lung-power through his face. "Bob" has been trying for more than forty years to find out not only why he is here, but whence he came and whither he goes. And Dr. Riddle could have told him all about itcould have made it translucent as Ellis County mud! Information pours out of Dr. Riddle like water out of a

pump all that seems necessary is suction. If he will send me that sermon I will print it-with annotations— in the next issue of the ICONOCLAST, and thus preserve the priceless morceau to posterity. I will even pay space rates for the blessed privilege of spreading such an intellectual treat before a million Americans. It is barely possible that Dr. Riddle did not write that important sermon down and practice it before an amorous looking-glass. I fear that he even forgot to "get his pictur tooken" in the act of making the effort of his life for the delectation of a few ossified dodos. He may have "just made it up out of his head" while Deacon Twogood snored softly in the amencorner and Priscilla Oldmaid took a mental inventory of her neighbor's new bonnet, or put up a silent prayer that the Lord in his infinite mercy would send her a man. Dr. Riddle could do it dead easy, for he hath a great head. That's why he does all his fighting by mail and telegraph -threatens to cowhide editors, then crawls behind his Christ. "Why Bob Ingersoll is Permitted to Live." Ye gods! To think that Dr. Riddle knows, and "Bob" doesn't. Verily Mrs. Hemans wrote wiser than she knew when she declared that,

"Beast and bird have seen and heard,

That which man knoweth not."

Dr. Riddle is a bird; that's where he has the advantage of "Bob."

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RECTOR PAGE'S PROTEST.

REV. FRANK PAGE is rector of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Waco, Texas, and is a most worthy man. While his name does not adorn the subscription list of the ICONO

CLAST, he is evidently a close reader of its religious reflections, for he is slowly, but surely developing into an idol breaker is already talking like a man who does not fear the truth. I am informed by one of his parishioners that he recently preached a sermon that gave swell sassiety the cold shivers-that he intimated pretty broadly that some of the members of his flock were too much addicted to the pleasant pastime of chewing each other in back parlors at a time when respectable people should be abed, and that, as a natural sequence of this midnight swapping of slobber, several very nawsty scandals had reached his saintly ears and weighed heavy upon his heart. He further intimated

so runs the tale—that members of his congregation of both sexes, are in the habit of looking upon the wine when it is red and rolling home from social functions at unseemly hours, drunker that Billybedamned, and mixed up in closed carriages and night hacks worse than Byron's horses and riders" in one red burial blent." I trust that matters are not nearly so bad as Rector Page appears to suppose. It would grieve me much to think that any of the ladies who sit beneath the droppings of the Episcopal sanctuary are so indiscreet as to tarry with their male company in darkened parlors until long past the witching hour when graveyards are supposed to yawn and ghostesses butt their heads against postesses. I should dislike to think that any of them are devotees of Bacchus, or mistake St. Paul's injunction to take a little wine for the stomach's sake for license to get on a hilarious jag and indulge in the giddy skirt dance for the delectation of driveling dudes. I trust that all the Episcopal brethren succeed in keeping their brains above their bellybands when champagne corks are popping, and that all the sisters are models of propriety; still, Brother Page's sermon, as reported to me, suggests that there may be some rather shaky people even in the

Protestant Episcopal Church. In England and various portions of America it is preeminently the fashionable church—and upper-tendom is corrupt to the very core. Gambling, drunkenness and other forms of debauchery are all too common in the "highest social circles " of every

modern city; and the worst feature of it all is that a general knowledge of these facts is not incompatible with social leadership. If a man have money he may be as unprincipled as Caliban; if a woman possess wealth she may be foul as Sycorax and still be warmly welcomed into the inmost circles of the most "select society." Charity may cover a multitude of sins; but the almighty dollar gilds even moral guano with supernal glory. Men as guiltless of moral character as Uriah Heep; women who would disgrace a Whitechapel dive or add fresh horrors to "Hell's Half-Acre " may not infrequently be found floating on the highest social wave. Every member of the community knows them to be morally rotten; yet all doors fly wide at their approach-their advent is hailed as a distinguished honor in every home. High and low, rich and poor, the Titans of intellect and the groveling ignorami bow and scrape to the gilded thieves and private prostitutes who should be given time to leave town. No wonder that penniless dudes are eager to acquire a spike-tail coat and enter “swell society." A moneyless man is an unwelcome visitor in the "Reservation," but in "our higher social circles" salvation's free. If Brother Page has been investigating the "hupper suckles " of almost any American city I am not much surprised that his nose, like that of Trinculo, should be in a state of indignation; still it is a novelty worthy of remark that a minister of the Protestant Episcopal Church-which depends so largely for its revenue upon the ultra-fashionables-should presume to call attention to the fact that drunkenness was prohibited

by the Hebrew lawgivers and fornication regarded by the Apostles as more than a venial fault. It is possible that the evil of which Brother Page complains is but an outcropping of atavism that will quickly pass; for it must be remembered that the Protestant Episcopal Church was founded by a Blue Beard and fostered by a bawd. Having been incontinently kicked out of the Catholic Church, Henry VIII became the Dalia Lama of a schism, with Bishop Cranmer as Chief Talapoin. The religious “establishment" set up by the most corrupt of princes, was ably supported by Queen Elizabeth, supposed to have been with the possible exception of Semiramis and Catherine of Russia-the most lecherous old heifer that ever went unhung. But the foulest stream will purify itself by flowing far; the children of the canaille sometimes rise to civic eminence; the great blush rose, deep rooted in a pile of compost, transforms its unsavory nourishment into pleasing color and sweet perfume. I cannot but think that a church which discarded the bachelor Pope and took the muchly married King Henry for its head-builded upon him as a second St. Peter-has already risen somewhat superior to its origin.

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THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

THE United States of America is the wealthiest nation in the world. Columbia can "buy and sell" any of her contemporaries. Her wealth exceeds Her wealth exceeds by more than a thousand million dollars that of Great Britain and Spain combined. She can buy and pay for Russia, Italy, Spain and Belgium at one and the same time, and still have enough money left to build a navy such as never sailed the sea, to arm and equip seven million fighting men. Yet John Bull