The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-11-15
EARLY CITY MORALS.
THE Peccadillos Incident to indianapolis
When 1t Was YOung-Little Open Vice.

The early history of Indianapolis was smirched
by the excuses of as few fools or scoundrels as
that of any city in the West The people who
20 to country TO live work and rear fami
lies are not usually now and never were then
the class of people who make mischief. They COM
NIT few crimes and rarely punish crimes by
mobs. They generally prefer the settled courses
of the law. even if they often lead to uncertain
or inadequate results. And the scattered popu-
lation of a backwoods town, quite as widely
separated in their village connections as the
farmers of an ordinary European rural
district their farms, have as little
opportunity as disposition to combine
for purpose of any kind on sudden impulse
The people of Indianapolis in early days were
moreover. largely religious, not to say purtani-
cal Some were wild and mischievous, and once
in while vllanous or murderous, but the bulk
Of them had been brought up in the nurture and
sdmonition of the Lord, and had due respect for
all religious ordinances and associations. The
best educated and weathiest whether from south
OF the Ohio east OF the Big Miami, were either
protesting Christians or the husbands OF profess
ing wives.
If il had not been for this prevalent feeling of
respect for sympathy with the religious senti-
Knent Indianapolis would not have had a Union
Sunday school, in three years after its first
settlement, and less than two after it had
been 'laid OUT into a town. But for this senti
ment, no such instructive or amusing incident
could have been possible as that Of the late
James Blake riding down on summer Sunday
morning to the ''swimmin' hole where the
Union Depot is now, and 'corralling" some
dozen of the Union Sunday school boys, and,
with the help of colored servant, driving them
all up to Sunday school. Just imagine a Sun
day-school superintendent of these days taking
another man along and collecting dozen tru-
ants from the Meridian Methodist or the Second
Presbyterian, the First Baptist Sunday
school, while froicking in the cool waters of
Fall creek. or the cleaner sections of the river,
and marching them past fifty saloons, full of
back door customers, and score of brothels lit
tie less populous moral, up to their respective
schools, and making them take their places in
their classes. The very suggestion is enough to
lift the Mortified hair of the Liberal League and
set the whole recounting conspiracy on a groan.
This moral element influence, if it was
sometimes abused into intolerance and absurd-
fy and did things that added little to the i'm
provement of community or the glory of God
yet did nothing to propagate or perpetuate the
means of diffusing vice or shielding vicious prac-
tices. 1t might not be always judicious but it
was always pure; and great deal may be safely
pardoned to the shortcomings of public dispo
sition that does wrong through an impulse to at
tempt good than is practicable. This
early dominant sentiment held circus
or theater aboninatlOn.
menagere was we'll enough, but if com
bined with circus, it was at least haz-
;ardouS experiment in temptation to evil. The
theater was clearly DEVILS device that we
had nothing that resembled the stage and
scenery and action of a theater-except little
runaway performance by a man and his wife in
the dining room of hotel before the Capitol
came up-for nearly twenty years. and when the
city was forty years old, the directors of the
orphan Asylum, though greatly straitened in
means, refused benefit at the old Metropolitan,
because they held the theater too immoral an
institution to be entitled to do anything for
Gods sake
But a set-off to this folly it may be noted that
the city of age, had attained its majority be-
fore it had brothe a business resort of sexual
vice. Whatever evil of that kind existed was secret.
No professional harlot made open proclamation
by any artifce of her occupation There was
gambling. of course-as there has always been
since mankind existed and discovered the CO.
existence Of chance, and always will be- till
chance disappears in the ixedness Of eternity
but it was not open, and it never became defiant
Nearly forty years ago, though, the citizens
got FESTIVE under the presence of an
avowed gambling population, and held a
meeting to lay the heavy hand of the law upon
it. The fraternity of 'nigritudnous legs" as
Sake calls it, thought it as we'll to heed the signs
of the times, and faded away for awhile. There
was much more open liquor drinking then than
now, for the Washngtonan movement did not
reach here till the city was of age. Whisky was
as one of the largest importations, next to -four.
Yet it couldn't but be the same lawless influence
then as nearly unrestricted as it was, as it is
now. The very first Indictment found by the
grand jury of the county was for selling liquor
without license.