Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1882-07-18
HON. JAKE THOMPkON'S
SHOES.
A Tissue of Malicious Lies from
the Whole Cloth.

Hon. Jacob Thompson, a quiet and
honest citizen in our midst, has been
as persistently lied upon and abused
as any man who was connected with
the Southern Confederacy. The old
lies die out occasionally only to be
revived in more vivid colors by some
rowing correspondent or chronic hater.
The following will not hurt Mr..
Thompson where he is known, but we
think it will be rather enjoyed by his
best friends. The writer should have
added that he has horns and a ten
foot tail. 1t is from a correspondent
of the Washington Capital, He says:
While in Memphis last week | heard
d queer story about Jake Thompson.
Buchanan's Secretary OF the Interior,
and JEFF Davis Plenipotentiary, in
1864, in Canada. Davis entrusted
Jake with large sums of money with
which to buy cruisers for the lakes,
burn st. Adams and other Yankee
towns, and provide, so the absurd
story went, for the diffusion of small.
pox in New York and Boston.
Jake husbauded his resources.
He spent little, His account
with the Bank of Toronto.
when the Coniederacy collapsed, was
redundant. Jake transferred his Cor
federate cash, with his own person, to
Europe, and thither Jake goes each
year to contemplate his boards. He
is childless. He has few associates.
He is transcendentlY ugly. He seems
very, very old. His brow is CORFU
gated, and his nose, that was as beau.
tifully p1gged years ago as Sunset
Cox's most ardent adherents from
Killarney to Cork, now fops at the
lower end like hat Of a Hebrew shop
keeper. Jake keeps his millions in a
bank in Paris, where JEFF Davis also
has a very healthful account.
Jake Thompson does not enjoy life
in Paris, The civilization of the
French capital is too refined for
Jake's tastes, formed during flush
times in Mississippi and Alabama" of
which Joe Baldwin wrote with mimi
table grace. Jake, therefore, goes
down into Egypt, and sauuters about
Jerusalem. He instructed his Paris
ian shoemaker to construct for him a
pair of thick -soled shoes, designed TO
last a year. The son of Crispin.
knowing that Jake was going to Jeru-
salem, arranged the hobnails in the
bottom of the shoes so that their
heads made the picture of the
cross in the sands of
Egypt and India. Jake's bald
pate and stopped shoulders, weary,
stumbling gait, his nose hanging over
at the end, caused multitudes every.
where in the Orient to stare at him.
No Arab begger ever thought of de
handing "backsheesh" at the hands
of such a d~essiccated figure as Jake
made hobbling along the narrow
streets of Jerusalem. But some keen
eyed Hebrew at length discovered the
signs of the cross imprinted upon the
sands and filth of the streets by Jake's
footsteps. The cry was raised. There
he goesl 1t is hel"
Parenthetically, let me ask your
readers how many of them have read
two most wonderfully lacinating books,
"Salathiel," (the wandering jew, by
DR.. Croly, and The Wandering jew
by Eugene Sue. The latter begins his
startling narrative by describing a
scene on the extreme Northeastern
Siberian coast. On the verge of the
ice lncrusted shore he stands who
cursed the Savior when descending
Calvary hurdened with the cross, re.
fusing to aid the Son Of Man when he
staggered beneath the weight He bore.
On the American side of Behr.
ing's strait is the wife of the
accursed shoemaker. They look wist.
fully at each other with outstretched
arms but never meet. They turn
Sway, leaving their tracks, constitu-
ting pictures of the cross, made BY
hobnails, upon the eternal blocks Of
ice. Every child and man and woman
Of Jerusalem recalled the story of
Eugene Sue and the tradition de-
scriptive of the deathless %wanderer,
who only prayS, as he trudges on
through weary ages, for the absolution
and oblivion that death may give.
Jake's figure, dress, face and tracks
identified him as the Wandering Jew.
The mob followed him ~revereptly.
solemnly, pittifully, wonderingly at
first. The story passed in gutteral
Arabic and greasy Greek from lip to
lip: The deathless shoemaker has
come home at last to die"
An open space was left along the
street by the superstitious multitude.
that the fateful tracks Of old Jake
might not be obliterated. They were
invested with a share Of sanctity in
ignorant Hebrew eyes Romanists and
Mohammedans and Protestant mis-
sionaries came, and Chritian hate and