St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1885-02-25
RATHER RACY READING.
A Severe Rebuke to the Profane Legislators
of an Eastern State
Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage's Reply to the
New jersey Legislature.

of the State of New Jersey: quote the fol
lowing elegant extract from the report OF
your session as printed on the morning of
March %, 1884, which report 1 find, after
full investigation, is accurate:
"Mr. Harrigan then walked to the speakers
desk and said: This matter ought to be
settled
1.-THE Speaker-I've stood this long enough.
This is the second time those Essex men have
defed me and I'm id if I'll stand it,
Here Mr.. Fish came up and the speaker con-
tinued 10 him: Il don't want to say anything 10
you or hear anything. and I'm Id If will; if
I'd been sergeantat-arms I'd have put you out OF
the house.
"'No you wouldn't unless you carried me-
said Mr. Fish.
"'Then, --. I'd have carried your
''Mr Burgess next spoke 70 the speaker, when
the latter said: by -, II you want TO talk to
me, talk on the floor of the housel' "
Last Tuesday, and nearly year after this
report, you fly into rage at something | am
alleged to have said in regard TO the behavior
of some ofyour members 30 that occasion.
Let me first except the honorable members
of your legislature, the gentlemen who are
worthy of their important position, and who
will once for all understand that do not
mean them. Next let me express my utter
contempt for the members who. on the first
occasion, in March, 1884, and, who, on the
second occasion, last Tuesday. male such
au asiniue exhibition OF themselves. To
what a depth has the New Jersey legislature
fallen. Shades of Samuel L. Southard and
William L. Dayton and Theodore Freling-
huySen, ''the three mighties'' of the past,
rebuke them The language used by some
Of your members in March, 1854, would dis
grace a mule-drver on the tOwpath OF
your Raritan canal. You have no right
by your vulgar behavior to deprcciate state
which many OF us are proud to call the place
of our nativity. and in whose legislatures
have deem many whom we have loved and
hOlored, among them myOwn father. As to
your charge that / seek notoriety in attack
ing you. that is absurd. No one for such
| purpose would assal such insignificant men
as those who went into that legislative wran-
gle and INDUCED il such scurrility. / never
saw their names before and probably will
never see them again. unless | find them
some morning in the calendar OF the police
court. Surely, If l wanted a reputation for
skillful hunting would not go to shootiu g
muskrats.
As the resolutions against me offered in
your body are said to have been Withdrawn
| suggest the following resolutions as u sub
sttute to be passed by you immediately:
Rssofc6d, That the members II the New Jer-
sey legislature who put themselves into everlast-
ing disgrace by the indecent and profane behav-
for on the 26tb of March. 1884 he requested TO
resign IL they still belong TO this body. or II,
refusing to do so that their constituents be re
quested 10 take away these political accidents
who have crawled into official positions.
Resolred. That the swearing blanks be filed
up in the report Of the session Of March, 1881,
and that the precious document be hung up over
the speakers chair warning 10 all legislatures
Of the possible depth OF degradation into which
members may fall:
ResoiCsd, That we depore the idiocy of our
associates in exhuming this legislative scandal,
which had been buried eleven months, and ad-
yertising 1t TO all the world, and that the members
responsible for this be a committee to fumgate
our hail and sprinkle themselves with carbOlic
acid disnfectant.
After you have Lassed the above resolutions
please send me copy, as | shall see that
each one Of you gets copy Of this letter, and
thus It will be sn exchange Of courtesies.
The only merciful explanation Of
the behavior OF March, 1854, Is
that the members may have been
over-stimulated by crooked whisky, com
monty called New Jersey lightning" and
they knew not what they we're doing. Or has
your body so degenerated that profanity is no
more noticed and your moral olfactories
have been so toughened that you
DO not observe the malOdor of
March, 1854, or have those members
banded together to fslsify about that which is
a monumental shame for my beloved New
Jersey. The fact that they the next day ex-
plunged BY unanimous vote the whole affair
from their records did not expunge it from
the memory of the people.
As these, my acrimonious antagonists,
threaten me with 4 lawsuit aud arraignmeut
before the bar Of their house, l will say that
l an at home, No. l South Oxford street,
Brooklyn, every evening when in the city, al
4 O'Clock, and will be ready TO receive any
document they wish to serve on me; or if
they want me to appear before the bar of
their house, although | am not under their
/ jurisdiction aud would not answer to formal
summons, on polite invitation (R- S. '. p. }
Ivould come in pure missionary spirit aud
teach them a lesson in common deceucy
which they are woefully in need Of learning.
Mathematical problem: II the report OF
Al old sermon, the contents Of which / have
! forgotten, throws the New Jersey legislature
into suca CONSERVATION and paroxysm, hoT
many thousand feet into the air would they
be blown by 4 new sermon on legislative