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family pride; a gentleman would have declined to answer and accepted the consequences; a man worthy to minister in the temples of Almighty God would have suffered eternal hell to keep the secret safe in his imperial heart. No wonder that the black gonfalon of Lucifer still casts its baleful shadow upon the land, when such creatures as Harman and Wimberly wear epaulettes in the Army of the Lord!

I much fear that these Brenham preachers do not understand how to make the most of their golden opportunity, -to turn their new-got notoriety to the best account. Let them "learn of the wise and perpend." There is no need for them to wear their lungs to a frazzle delivering "Grand Lectures." Enough is as good as a feast. Let them hire a hall, sit on the platform and put a man at the door to relieve the eager public of its cash. People would travel half across a continent for the mere privilege of looking at such ministerial curiosities, and I can only wonder that they have not been already engaged by the museum managers. If they can but find the woman in the case and add her to the combination, it will be the greatest show on earth and Barnum & Bailey won't be in it a little bit. A dollar admission were cheap as dirt, and the exhibit would have nothing to do but loll on plushcovered divans and look pleasant, while a flunkey in spiketail coat and white kid gloves pointed out each animal to the delighted audience and expatiated upon its habits and history. No hall or opera-house could accommodate the crowds that would fight for admittance and to pay big prices to inhale the odor of such an æsthetic bouquet and feast their enraptured eyes upon its loveliness. A ten-acre tent would be necessary, and even then standing room would go to a premium. And what a rake-off could be secured by peddling photos of these celebrities, and pamphlets containing an authentic account of that "Galveston

Escapade," which made them objects of popular interest! If Revs. Harman and Wimberly will but heed the Apostle's hints they will soon realize wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. Then they can return to Galveston and settle that hack bill. Some will doubtless criticize these enterprising preachers for proclaiming their disgrace to fill their purse; but shall Satan be permitted to scoop in all the sugar plums? Mary forbid! Shall Lily Langtry, Mrs. James Brown Potter and others of that ilk, suspected of having given the Seventh Commandment the marble heart, rake in all the shekels, while these poor preachers, who have toiled so assiduously to acquire a small stock of salable notoriety, continue to polish bare floors with their calloused knees and struggle with the donation party and the dyspepsia? Not on your life. True, Theo. Tilton, the prince of the lecture platform, fled from public gaze when the shadow fell upon his home, and Parnell sank beneath the cry that he was a "sport" and given to “Escapades "; but these men were not ministers—they were only gentlemen.

***

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.

SENATOR DAVID BENNETT HILL has hoist himself with his own petard—whatever that may be. Like the maid in the old blue-back speller, he has tossed his head in high disdain, only to spill the milk within whose pearly foam glistened so many chateaux en Espagne. With one whiff of air from his lungs-that fateful bag in which the political Odysseus should have kept close confined the adverse winds-he has blown his presidential boom into the great void and sunk his frail bark fathoms deep in the Stygian wave. In an evil hour he forgot to remember that

the hand that wields the powder-rag is the hand that rocks the world, and brought down upon his bald head the anger of the ladies. It is difficult indeed to make a president of an old bachelor, even when his moustache drips with honey-dew and he professes to worship at the shrine of beauty; for the ladies look at him askance-suspect his patriotism and resent his neglect of duty to his God, his country and his kind. How then can one of those social suspects hope to obtain the presidency after throwing down the gauntlet to the power behind the throne? Clearly Senator Hill has committed political hari-kari—has deliberately impaled himself upon the feminine finger of scorn, and hangs suspended there, a warning to all the world. Senator Hill's offense consists in his recent suggestion that the female devotees of fashion be bundled out of Washington, bag and baggage, in order that Uncle Sam's servants may be relieved of exhaustive social duties and thereby enabled to earn their salaries. He intimated that men who dance and flirt with the fair Four Hundred until the roosters crow for morning, then go about their duties loaded to the nozzle with imported wines and pate de foie gras, find themselves in no condition to pass upon important affairs of state. He has adopted as his motto, "Business before pleasure." He would subordinate the social to the political function. He has somehow absorbed the absurd idea that we are not paying people to enact the role of Lord Chesterfield or Beau Brummel, and is inclined to attribute the lapses of our public servants to the ladies. "The woman tempted me, and I did eat." It's the old story. Poor Joseph! Wicked Mrs. Potiphar! Oh what an immaculate lot of he-seraphim were we had the Lord allowed that Adamic rib to rest secure in situ and continued to make men of mud and bring 'em up on the bottle. It is unquestionably true that too much time,

paid for by the public, is frittered away with charming females, with wining, dining and the trifling frivolities of fashion. Not a few wealthy men accept public service solely to get their families into the blue waters of the social swim. Senator Brice is said to have expended "$50,000 entertaining" during one fashionable season in Washington. But there are worse things than frittering away a master's time" doing the elegant." Social debutantes and diplomatic dinners are by no means the only things that serve to distract from his duty the average congressman. Not all the women to be found in Washington are "in society,”—as Col. Breckinridge can certify. What will it profit the country to remove its susceptible congressmen and departmental heads for les doux yeux of the semiofficial ballroom,

Where pap-suckers and parvenues meet

To chase the champagne punch with tangled feet, and leave the remorseless prey of the Pollards-to substitute the closed-carriage for the banquet-board, the congressional scandal for the swell levee? Luther has intimated that the man who loves not wine, woman and song should be sent to the lunatic asylum rather than elected to congress; hence it only remains for us to decide what kind of beauty, booze and melody will do our Solons the least damage. Shall we leave them to the fashionable butterflies, blue label and Wagnerian melody; or shall we consign them to the female lobbyist, red licker and the risque songs of Yvette Guilbert? So far as his servants are concerned, Uncle Sam appears to be located between the devil and the dark blue sea. If he permits them to trot with the Four Hundred they become demoralized, while if he drives them to seek recreation elsewhere they become degraded and are made targets by the pietists and Park

hursts. It is quite true that a congressman struggling with a case of katzenjammer, aggravated by visions of ballroom beauties with corsages cut perilously low, is scarce competent to decide the tariff problem or currency question, so as to confer the greatest good upon the greatest number; that a president who has to reduce his head with camphor and cracked ice before he can get his hat on by the aid of soapstone and shoehorn, is not a safe person to entrust with such edge tools as ultimatums. When a man wakes up with that won't-do-so-any-more-feeling, he is apt to imagine war a necessity. What then? Would Senator Hill transform the Federal officials into a stag-party-even segregate them from those female clerks whom they have placed under lasting obligations by securing for them positions where there is little to do and plenty to get? Would he remove the seat of government to some lone island of barren rock and put a guard of gorgons and hippogriffs about it to keep the girls away while our Lycurguses are considering the general welfare and coining political capital? Would he declare Schenck's manual and poker chips, sour mash and Mumm's contraband and drive congress, by means of unslaked thirst and that longing for female companionship manifested by all animate beings, to do something besides filibuster and work its jaw-bone-to complete public business with all possible expeditions that it might the sooner return to its social tomfooleries? If so, he can count upon the unswerving support of the ICONOCLAST. Such a plan would at least insure us a sober president.

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