The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1885-02-20
THE TOWN TRAMP.

the Romans 1t must have been some
other foreigners. I'm pretty sure 1t
wasn't the Americans that said 1t. II
they ever said anything at all about it
| 1t must have been the other way,
keep silent unless you can speak i'll
Of q man." Leastways that's TIE way
most of them practice it. OF course
they may preach different, but as a
rule when you find a whole nation
practicing one particular way, you will
find that they either preach that way
er else don't preach about it at all.
***
guess that last is the way of it in
this case. They don't exactly preach
in favor of abusing your neighbor, and
they don't preach against it. They
never think about taking it for text.
At least they didn't when 1 used to go
to church. AS I told you once before,
I haven't haunted churches much of
late years and maybe they do different
now.
~
But used to go pretty steady for
years and years, and in all that time 1
never heard a preacher say word on
the subject. OF course they would
sometimes read the commandments
and then they would come to one that
said something about not bearing false
witness against your neighbor but they
would read it as though they didn't
seem to know what it meant, and go
on to the next one. Maybe they didn't
know what it meant. Maybe they
never heard anybody running down
somebody else; there's no telling.
From the way most preachers preach,
it's plain enough that they don't know
much about the common, everyday
sins of men that are not in the preach
ing business.
And since l have said it, l believe
that's what is the matter with most
preachers. They don't know anything
about the temptations that common
men find hardest to resist, or about
the sins that common men are most
apt to commit, for the simple reason
that they were never in the same cir
cums.ances that other men are. They
never sold milk, for instance, and they
have no idea how hard it is to keep
from filling up your pans with chalk
and water. They never sold meat, so
they don't know how apt one is to let
his hand rest on the scale second just
to give good down weight. They
never sold sugar, and that's the reason
they don't know how often man for
gets, when a customer has sent in a
written order, that the price is twelve
pounds for dollar instead of eleven.
They never sold corn by the wagon
load and they don't know why it is
that man should always be tired and
have to sit on the wagon when he gets
his load weighed, and always cold so
that he has to stand around on the
ground and stamp his feet when he
brings the empty wagon back to the
scales.
x*x
They don't know anything about ali
these things. They seem to think
that as long as a man don't go off
wrong in his theology he's all right.
Why don't they open their eyes? If
they did they would see lots of men in
the penitentiary that are as straight
as string on theology. The things
they got off on were covetousness and
revenge and hatred and injustice and
such things. Some people seem to
think that dogmas aud morality are
the same thing. Sometimes they are
but oftener they amt. One is prom
Uses; the other is cash down.
x#x
But I didn't start out to scold the
preachers. Most of them that ever 1
knew were very good men. 1 was on
ly going to suggest that if they would
stand around and listen once in awhile
to the way people. talk
about each other, they might find a
text nearly as good as anything in
their Bible. And when they found it
they ought to. preach on 1t, and keep
at it. For 1 don't know of any one
thing. outside of actual violence and
crime, that hurts society more or needs
worse to be preached about. 1 knew
a woman once that was killed by it.
She had slipped once when she was
young girl, but she repented. She
went to another state. married good
mar and was useful and happy. But
one Of her old neighbors happened to
find her one day and he told her new
friends of the old fall. The new friends
turned against her, then her husband
heard of it and reproached her, and af-
ter awhile she committed suicide. I
believe the old neighbor committed
murder,-and 1 told him 80.
Pretty near verybody knows of such
cases, only not quite so bad maybe.
And still everybody keeps on listening
to gossip and scandal, and sending it