The Sunday tatler and Jersey City express. (Jersey City, N.J.) 1883-1886, 1885-12-27
SUNDAY. DECEMBER 81. 1885
Notice to Our Patrons.

NUtlCU w VuA aVtVAAS
The SUNDAY TATTLER refuses to deliver
papers to newsdealer John Mershelmer;
and those residents of the Hudson City
district who desire the paper win kindly
notify other dealers to deliver it at their
houses. w t
The verdict of $500 against "Tom"
Potter and in favor of the boy whom be
prosecuted with villainous mahgnity is
trayesty on justice. Ten times its amount
would have been the mildest kind of COM
peusation for the wrongs this devil in
human disguise piled upon him. Potter
writes in one of bis letters to Plume that
"your mother had been for twenty years
my open mistress. She had borne me
children, yes, twins" Then after she had
sacrificed her honor TO him, he holds her
up to public scorn and disgrace for the
love she bore him. If ever woman was
entitled to the generous protection of
man, Mrs. Plume was entitled to Potter's
protection. The basest spirit of libertin-
ism frowns upon the exposure of his
victim by roue. Even the meanest
instincts of manhood rebel against it. He
is bound TO shield from assault the
woman who, in the confidence of secret
love, entrusts it to his keeping. And
when for the sake of the son whom she
has reared to manhood, she desires to turn
over new leaf in the hook of life, even
the most reckless of ibertines would
honor her reawakeped conscience, and
permit her to go in peace. But this
can we call him man2-bids her return to
his embrace, under penalty of exposure
and social ruin. She hesitates. 1t is only
for moment. Her love fol- her son reas-
serts itself with irresistible force, and the
liaison is at an end. The threatened
thunderbolts are hurled at her. But she
clasps her boy to her side and stands firm,
immovable. The whole machinery of a
cowardly revenge is put in motion. She
is branded wherever she is known, through
the medium of a private correspondence.
She fees TO distant points to be beyond the
reach of her cowardly prosecutor, and to
begin better life, anew, in strange fields
and among people that had not known
her. The few friends she makes are
limited out by paid agents, and to them
the story of her disgrace is retold. All
around her the shafts of malice strike
with fatal effect. Every mail bears the
story of her fall into new households.
Those whose h nor and love and respect
she hoped to gain by life of rectitude,
scorn and despise her. Every wound
tears her heart into fresh pieces. She hugs
her boy the more warmly to her bosom
and covers him with her hot tears of pain
remorse, but still stands, in her heroic
Psolye, as firm as adamant. When he
1inds Der proof against all the devices of
devilish malignity that are aimed at her,
her pitiless pursuer changes his tactics,
and turns his poisoned arrows upon the
10y for WHOM she has made all her sacri-
fees. "She loves her boy more than she
loves herself, will assail the boy" is the
spirit OF the new move. And now he is
accused of being thief and hauled as
felon on false charge, into the s'dock, !"
and made to suffer for his mother. 1t is
to the honor of Robert G. Plume that he
stood as firmly as his mother had stood |
He treated the charge with the contempt it
deserved ill il assumed shape in which
he could meet ir. Then he met it like
man and showed how hollow and wicked
it was His honorable acquitted counted
for nothing, however. Still came the
letters to every new friend he made.
branding him as thief and a scoundrel
who was worthy of no ones con dence.
Never 10 all the history of romance has
there been pictured SO pitiless an assault
upon a weman's honor. Never in all the
history of romance has there been pic
tured such terribly heroic defence. If
the woman fell, she has redeemed herself
in the unfinching valor with which she
has borne her awful punishment. But it
all goes for nothing when, through her
son, she comes to Hudson County jury
with the story of the relentless persecution.
They fix her damages at the figure they
think her persecu,or would be perfectly
willing to pay; and bid him go on in bis
course until they see fit to assess him
another $500 for his vicious amusement.