Omaha daily bee., 1888-10-07
Nobody crossed the line ocall Bishop

Nobody crossed the line tocall Bishop
HOwton to account. All licensed cler-
gymen could marry; the bishop had a
license signed by the deacon, his son,
and the son had a license signed by the
bishop of THE Zionskite Purified Order,
Garrick Howton, First Templefungus.."
If any preacher OF a large church
dared to inquire into the subject he was
told that there had been a laying on
of hands," and this sent him to the
right-about. to be followed by the cruel
i%nsinuation that his sole motive in ques-
tioning 'liberty OF conscience" had
been envy and cO~vetOusness OF Bishop
HOwtOn's marriage fees.
Still that idea of marrying children
TO designing men had a bad ound. 1t
gave a supertitlous name to Bishop
Howton's parsonage" The runaway
slaves from the old slave states knew
and avoided that house, for they remem-
bered how little Miss This or That had
been spirited away by a reckless cousin
or a designing overseer and made Il
wife In her early, teens by dat bad ole
Bishop Howton."
"If we could only get at HIM" vas
muttered by many a proud, awed,
Inundated homestead along the She
nandoah or the MonOcacy.
But they could not get at him for
| the same reason that he could not get
at them nor interfere with their privil-
| eyes and abuses. We had no common
| country; we were inviolable states
| secure in our W venerable violations.
AS time advanced Bishop HowtOn be-
came a widower. and his mind wa set
on marrying again.
1t may have been the example OF mar
rying children under age, torn from
their parents by their own disobedient
impulses or the powerful sinister infiu-
| ence of man. or it may have been the
childish beauty Of Eunice Howton, his
| distant relative, which doomed her to
become the bishops wife when she
should be old enough to receive his
orders and not bring the laws OF Penn
sylvania down upon his head. The
bishop bided his time.
Eunice was hardly fifteen, a slender,
grey-eycd blonde, whose feet, touch the
ground as they would, turned into lines
of grace, and music seemed to be play
ing as she walked or moved, to such
harmonies did she bend; while in the
action Of her head upon her delicate
neck and even in the motion OF her lips
there appeared to be violin music
whistled by her spirit as the upland
zcphyrs played upon II and her heart
u NS'th W. Wv
The country people said that this was
because her mother had baen All actress
and a dancer.
Somewhere back in the undiscerned
past and yagueuesS Of a larger world ii
was said that Bishop Howton had been
q show manager and that his orphan
cousin had married a French dancer
who was in his strolling company.
This cousin had been left to Garrick
who had kept him down and nearly
starved him, REFRESHING his spirits by
an avarice and superstition which lay
across each other, and finally retired
Garrick from the show business a com
plete failure, while his ward, set free
by matrimony, made a nice little for
tune keeping a dancing academy with
his wife.
When the parents died, something Of
the husbands inherited tenets caused
him to repent, though he had never
done anything bad, and in the weak
ness Of dying he gave his child TO his
relative to be her trustee and the
trustee OF Il respectable little fortune.
The poor dancing teacher thoughtthe
word bishop" covered a r~cgenerate
heart.
The bishop was merely a capitalist in
marriage fees.
This is considered reasonable humil'
ity.
Some Of the schoolboys called him