The National tribune. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1877-1917, 1885-05-21
A LITTLE CROss-EXAauNaTION.

acted with astonishing liberality toward its
soldiers. Why, our pension payments are 20
OF IS million dollars a year. 1t is simply
monstrous. Bleeding the Treasury to fatten
a lot of cormorants"
Well, you will admit, as a starter, will
You not, that the country owes something to
the men who saved it?"
:" ii may owe something but no such an
enormous sum as is being drained out of the
Treasury for these pension-paupers."
You certainly viii confess that if it had
not been for The obstinate courage of those
whom you denominate as peusion-paupers
the rebellion would have succeeded, the
country would have been ruined, and your
property would not have been worth any
thing"
admit that, for the sake of argument"
"Of course, then, having saved billions Of
property by the sacrifice of their lives,
strength and health, they are entitled to
little salvage, as the insurance men say, out
of the property saved?"
Undoubtedly they are. 1 don't object to
giving a liberal sum to any man who did
his duty in the field. But, as l said before,
I'm forever down on filling the pockets of
gang of cormorants Just because they claim
to have done something 20 years ago"
"'Filling the pockets is good. 'Cormo-
rants is even better. Here's the report of
the Commissioner of Pensions Let's see
how these pension paupers fill their pockets
Let's see how these cormorants gorge them
selves. About 1900 of them get the enor-
nous sum of 81 month. Think how their
pockets must rise up like haystack on
prairie, with this princely stipend of three
cents day! Then $4,000 of them get 50 a
month. How the cormorants must gorge
themselves on this income of seven cents a
day! Then 81 geo of them get So month,
and 10000 receive Sf2 How their pockets
must swell out like mumpy cheek, with
this opulent income! How they must
revel in purple and fine linen, on from q to
DO cents day"
"But you're talking all the time about
the little fellows-the chaps who're hardly
paid enough to get them tobacco or buy
their shoes. Show us some of the big fell
lows.n
"There are none. Nearly one-half of those
on the pension rolls get 81 month Or less
generally very much less. Four-ifths of
very much less. Only one in II gets S24 a
month or over, and these are men who have
been terribly mapgled by shot ard shell. A
very few, who are SO badly crippled as to
need constant attendance, get higher pay"
"a dollar or so day is certainly not much
compensation to a man who has lost leg
or his arms, I'll admit. / wouldn't lose one
of my arms or legs for $500 month"
"No, you would not. I noticed that you
raised row the other day about having to
go a square in the rain without an umbrella.
You vowed you'd get cold that would lay
you up for weeks. Half those men who are
put off with IS month marched back and
forth between Richmond and Washington
for about four years. Ii seemed to rain nearly
all the time, when it wasn't freezing, or
burning up with dust and drouth, and yet
1 know there wasn't an umbrella among
100000 of them. You would think it would
ruin your health to walk down town on a
sloppy day without overshoes. Yet great
part of those men who are getting seven or
eight cents a day for the malaria and rheu-
matism in their bones tramped up and down
through the oozy swamps of the Mississippi,
and waded breast-deep through the marshes
and ice-cold rivers of the Carolinas. I'm al
most sure that not one of them so much as
saw an overshoe from the time they left
Cairo in 1861 till they got to Washington in
1865. / know that you wouldn't go out into
your back yard and sleep single night on
the bare ground with nothing but blanket
between you and the earth for the biggest
pension the Government allows, and yet
even the men who are receiving their pitiful
little three cents day, had to do that
habitually."
"'Thou almost persuadest me to be Chris
| tian'"
az ] would that not only thou, but all they
that hear me were even as those men are
except their wounds"
REVISION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
The 14-year's work of revising the Old
Testament was formally completed last
Thursday, when the first copy printed-ivs
gorgeOusly gotten up volumes-was pre-
scented to the Queen. At midnight of tn,
same day the newspapers and press associa
tions were furnished with proofs and copies
Last Tuesday, which was the Feast of thu
Pentecost, and which also commentaries tn,
Giving of the Laws on Mt Sinai, the books
were put On sale in England and America
or ba paviooJ Varo;nr hos ha.u ro