Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1888-04-02
2eliainns department.
How to Treat Ingersoll.

soils arguments unanswerable ? What
are you going to do about it F-hav-
ing been submitted to college pres
ident by several of his students, he
replied as follows: $50 you are
out half a dollar apiece, are you!
No. no, | can not answer him. Boys,
[ recall the incident in my eager and
impetuous youth of wasting pound
and half of bird-shot on small
owl. 1 followed him from tree to
tree, and shot away as much as a
hatfuI of feathers, and when he died
of fatigue l found that his body was
about as large as robins and l
could put it to no earthly use. He
was deceptive target. If under
stand the gentleman from Peoria,
he wishes to liberate youth from the
incubus and thraldom of superstition.
That devasting influence of the coun-
try clergyman on $500 per annum
and donation is what worries Rob
ert, and he proposes to cure it and
eradicate it for the trifing pittance
of $3.50 per lecture. For fifty cents
he proposes to iberate your mind
from that influence which was fill
tered into it from the trembling lips
of your mother, and free you from
the chains of superstition loaded
upon your soul by the rough but low
ing hand of your father. OF course
he worries more about you than those
old fogies did-for fifty cents. You
look around you in the city here, and
YOU discover several millions of dol
lars invested in hospitals, semina-
ries, asylums, forced on the COM
munity by this same mythical, MI
raculous and superstiticus incubus
of religion. You ask the gentleman
from Peoria where his little public
institutions are, founded by his pc
culiar teachings, and he says, in an
absent minded manner, Fifty cents
at the door, Boys, you see some
times, a poor mans little funeral
procession, with democratic wagon
and a little coffin in it, so small you
could carry it under your arm. A
poor couple walk behind it with
breaking hearts. Their baby is in
the little coffin. 1t was their all.
Their hearts are broken. Oh, if we
only had Bob here to tell them about
liberty and myths and miracles-for
fifty cents-how it would cheer them
up. But you say, There are sc
many in6dels.' Boys you are mis-
taken. An infdel is an abnormal
growth, and nature feels funny once
in a while and creates a freak-e. g.,
the living skeleton, the fat woman
the two-headed girl. So there is
about one infidel to a million sane
men. The most of these noisy fell
lows are amateur infdels. They talk
Ingersoll in fair weather and pray
themselves hoarse every time Il
thunders. A well-develOped case
of cholera morbus will knock theil
infidelity out of them and leave then
in cold sweat, like a china dog il
an ice-hOuse. | know them. The
most of them are like the boy who run:
away from home and comes back tC
stay with his father nights. Their
again, BOYS, take look around yor
when you invest another fifty cent:
in liberty, and compare the crowc
with the kind of people you find IL
almost any church. Is it the odor OF
sanctity you smell? Hardly, boys
hardly. But you can eat peanuts
there and choke on the shells, while
you applaud the funny joke abou
the heaven where you know in you
hearts your dear mother is, or hea
the humble Nazarene ridiculed who
you think, and always will think
gave a home to your weary old faith
er when he left the earth. Yes, boys
his al guments are unanswerable, anC
| think the seasons will come along
and the churches will continue tx
bloom. and all nature will most ex
asperatingly and calmly perform be
functions if Robert is not answered
You know when the first steame
crossed the Atlantic great philos
opher was delivering most con
elusive argument to prove that b.
no possibility could steam vesse
cross the ocean, and that provoking
steamer came snorting and sizzling
and splurging right into the harbor
Bows, so will Gods foolish children
go right on praying and preaching
f and dying and going to heaven il
spite of argument. "-EGchdnge.
A Boy Grown Up.
Yonn0 neOD1e rarely realize whel