sanction-recks little whether he be the first or fifth in possession, if his predecessors conformed to the law of the land. Mr. Dimmick is dead, and his relict only contracted to love, honor and obey him while he remained on earth. By dying Mrs. Harrison released her husband from his obligations-left him free to seek another to keep tab on his puff-bosom shirts and comfort his bed. That's the law and the gospel. It is likewise the way of the world, and hath the unqualified sanction of our most æsthetic society. True, Mr. Harrison has passed his grand climacteric; but that is all the more reason why he should remarry. When David, the beloved of the Lord, waxed old, fair women were placed in his bosom to keep him warm. And in Indiana the mercury frequently falls through the bottom of the thermometer. Is not an ex-president of the greatest of nations entitled to be as carefully considered in the matter caloric as the moribund monarch of a country no larger than the fag-end of California? Sure! I heartily congratulate Mr. Harrison. His first wife was one of the crown-jewels of American womanhood. Her love and tact led him from obscurity of a Hoosier lawyer, step by step, onward and upward, until he stood in the great white light that beats upon Columbia's uncrowned king. Her work was done, her mission ended, and so she folded her worn hands upon a patient breast and died, leaving the companion of her youth standing high above all the sceptered sovereigns of the earth-poised in midheaven like a star! I thought his heart was broken as he followed that glorious woman to the grave, "like Niobe, all tears "—but it was only sprained. It is again in working order, doing business at the old stand. Happy Harrison! The writhen bolts of God that blast the towering pine have no effect on gutta-percha. The fact that his fiancée is a niece of the late lamented, and that he will become his first wife's

nephew, is no bar to the bans-at least not within the purview of the law; and that is all that people who enter into civil contracts-good only until death-need consider. And the happy couple will find such comfort in weaving garlands of blue forget-me-nots to place on Auntie's grave! Prince Russell and Mrs. McKee are protesting against the marriage because they say, Mrs. Dimmick does not trot in the same class with the spouse of the erstwhile Cæsar. They intimate that for some years preceding their mother's death, Mrs. D. was their father's paramour-that she was kept at the White House for carnal purposes. The public will hesitate to believe this remarkable story on the testimony of a brace of froward brats, who, like Ham, expose a parent to public shame. They are entirely too subsequent with their tale of woe. They should have made their play while Mrs. Dimmick was abusing their mother's confidence, or forever after held their peace. Having enacted the rôle of Pandarus while their father was able to push the fortunes of their favorites; having dishonored their mother by permitting her to remain under the same roof with a wretched concubine, they should have the decency to conceal their shame. I would not condemn Falstaff and Doll Tearsheet on such doubtful testimony. I have heard of nothing so horrible since the heirs of a wealthy West Texas woman-now social favorites in a certain cityproved in open court that her first born was a bastard in order to beat him out of his share of the boodle. I opine that President Harrison's relations with Mrs. Dimmick were purely avuncular. I cannot imagine an ex-chief magistrate marrying his mistress. But even were Mrs. Dimmick his discarded drab, he owes it as a solemn duty to himself and his dead wife, to seize an adult fence-picket and wear the physiques of his lippy kids to a frazzle.

I note that the Baptist Standard-that sectarian sewer through which Dr. Jehovah Boanerges Cranfill, professional Christian and candidate for President on the pink lemonade ticket, spills himself upon a defenseless worldis trying to run a boycott on Waco's morning paper because it had the temerity to allude to Bob Ingersoll without calling him a beast. Doc proclaims himself mean and vindictive enough to destroy a little business patiently built up by the tireless industry of moneyless young men; to turn their printers into tramps, deprive their carrier boys of employment and snatch the nursing-bottle from the mouths of hungry babes if he possessed the power. And yet "Pagan Bob" says there is no Hell! And who, in the name of all the gods at once, is this fellow Cranfill, that he sets up as censor of the American press and orders newspapers placed in the index expurgatorius? When did the Baptist Church renounce the doctrine of liberty of conscience, preached by its much-vaunted Roger Williams, and begin to persecute religious dissenters? When did it elevate this pot-bellied symposium of ignorance and impudence to the office of infallible pope and place in his paw the keys of St. Peter? Who is he and what is he? Whence came he and what for? Doubtless God made him; but it does not follow, therefore, that he should pass for a man. The Architect of the Universe may have had some remnants left over-disjecta membra of various mammalia. Nature wastes nothing; hence, what more likely than that the Creator should throw these remnants together and call it Cranfill? On no other hypothesis can I explain the head of an ape and the legs of a kangaroo united to the body of a hippopotamus, the whole animated by the cowardly and cruel heart of a hyena. This amorphous freak missed the dime museum and broke into the sectarian sanctum through the back door of a beer saloon-perhaps rode in on that

country stallion for which he had the honor to collect the fees! And now he is supervising American literature and guarding the public morals! Angels and ministers of grace defend us! What does he know about literature that he should assume to sit in judgment? He cannot speli words of four syllables, nor tell an ellipsis from a lightning rod. I'll bet $4 that he cannot name the Twelve Apostles or the books of the New Testament without cramming for the occasion. I am inclined to suspect that the Times subsidized Cranfill to assail it that it might be loved for the enemies it has made. Perhaps it is trying to work up a circulation in Gatesville, where he "got converted "— when he could no longer obtain credit for corn-juice. It has ever been a mystery to me why a community composed largely of white folks, would permit this feculent he-Meddlesome Mattie to pollute its atmosphere with his presence. The city council should either abate him as an incorrigible nuisance, or put him on a "Reservation" with the Baylor University management, and have the unsavory aggregation disinfected occasionally by a sanitary official.

I don't know why Cranfill should remind me of Dan Stuart; but he does. And that's about the meanest thing I could say of Dan, if I studied all day. Perhaps it is because they are both sports, and possessors of " pedigrees duly recorded in the ICONOCLAST. True, they employ different systems of corraling the long green; but they are both out for the stuff, and neither is playing for a permanent engagement in the cotton patch. The first advises consistent Christians not to patronize the daily press, that he may supply them with puffs of "lost manhood" restorers and panaceas for impotency at the rate of $2 per annum, cash in advance, while for divertisement he wars on working printers and orphan boys and fairly chortles in his

joy over their prospective pauperism; the latter "puts his fortune to the touch," or regales himself with gladiatorial sports such as commanded the patronage of the proudest sons of Imperial Rome. The "Doctah" is an ostentatious Christian with a vaulting political ambition concealed about his ample person; while Dan, we are expected to believe, is a child of the devil. If Doc goes to Heaven and Dan to Hell, I pray the Recording Angel to make out my ticket to the latter place. Having lived in Houston two years, I do not particularly object to heat; but I will not associate with hypocrites and humbugs here, and d—d if I do in the great hereafter. Col. Stuart has collected at El Paso all the cracker-jack pugilists of earth, and “our heroic young Christian Governor" and the soulful Dr. Seasholes with his peculiar Canada excursions—to the contrary notwithstanding, will pull off a series of physical culture contests calculated to make even the blood of a eunuch dance through every vein like Carmencita rounding off a Virginia reel. Dan has contracted for pugilists like Dudley bought votes-in blocks of five. He has in stock pretty much everything, from a bantam to a heavyweight world's champion. He has taken his great moral show a long ways from the centers of civilization; but it is worth a trip across the continent to become acquainted with the El Paso people. When I last saw the city it was wide open like a boot-jack, and the McGinty Club in the hey-dey of its glory. A man could actually take a glass of beer or "spit yaller " without being suspected of a sin against the Holy Ghost. I understand that Stuart has succeeded in matching Maher against the terrible “ Kangaroo," Gentleman Jim having conveniently availed himself of the biblical exemption of newly married men from the perils of war-until their wives can view their exposure to danger with indifference. Corbett has announced his in

66