Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-10-20

Sunday afternoon. Those were the days Mr..
Fisher, OF Medway, told Of when his adult
Bible class objected to reading chapter % Of
Isaiah a. anti-slavery in sentiment.
MODERN INTOLERANCE.
It sounds all very queer now, but the spiritof
intolerance is not done playing its freaks yet
1t isn't much queerer than that Miss Jol1et
Corson should be mobbed in Long Island
village dozen years ago for lecturing on
cheap cookery. on the idea that she was sent
to teach cheap living, SO that the manufac-
turers might cut down wagesi The same
lady, whose sympathies with enlightened
freedom are too well known to need refer
ence, was threatened with violence by the
communists OF New York during their ex-
citement two years since, aud plans laid to
assault her, when she was warned in time by
woman to whom she had shown kindness.
The new magazine, which Miss Corson is to
edit, would have some lively episodes if she
wrote her own experiences.
1t is not many years since, in village
two miles out of Brooklyn, that the roughs
and "toughs'' of Coney Island road made
life terror to the families active in pro-
noting decency in the place. They did not
attempt prohibition, but held that,one saloon
TO every five houses was enough,and for this
the old Baptist deacon going to his carriage
at dusk was met with a shower OF stones, his
property stolen and MS hired men assaulted.
My father, having taken such part for tenn
perance as PRESBYTERIAN minister over 20
might, we were startled one evening by q
stone foot thick crashing into the base
ment room where nv invalid mother sat
alone. Nightly concerts of competitive
swearing and ribald songs on the sidewalk
till o'clock in the morning was half kill
ing every nervous woman in the neighbor-
hood. The one policeman on two-mile
beat could not suppress the trouble, so
one woman took lawyers advice, borrowed
pistol, and the next night, wakened by
the bowling crew, she bounded into a gown,
and read brief riot act from the porch,
giving them two minutes to leave, with the
alternative which the cooking of the pistol
made plain. She held the watch in the
moonlight and counted, with the big silver
and pearl mounted Colts revolver shining
in the other hand. The crew waited odt
one minute, but before the next half minute
the corner was left to its leafy quiet, and
the last One was flying down the Greenwood
road. Three nights of prompt work like
this, with the big pistol patrolling the
garden in the moonlight with slim, de-
termined woman behind it, convinced the
boys IL was not safe corner for operations,
and thenceforth there was quiet. What
was more to the point, at the next election
the drunken justice lost his commission and
his place on the school board.
THE WORK STILL GOES ON.
What is wanted all around for the cure of
State and civic troublss is some of that old
abolition grit, set as Sumner charged it,
against all injustice, all inter efence with
human rights in any shape. Its work, we
were reminded, is not ended with emanci-
patton. 1t is but begun. It takes wider
scope from the abolition of convict oppres-
sion in Russia and Arab slavery in Africa,
to the wide, low-breathed but stubborn
struggle beginning in our own communities,
which is not capital against labor or nation
alism against individualism, or vice versa,
but singly of justice against injustice, in
whatever bulk it rears or in what crevice it
hides. 1t was good to see that spirit is not
dead, and to hear the old Israelites like In
crease Sumner Lincoln, of New Hampshire,
81 years old, and Fisher, of Medway, 80 years
and more, and Father Taftou, the witty Meth
odist. who wear their years so grandly, pass
the work on to the Younger generation, with
fire only exeelled by the speakers of color
present, born orators, whose equals you
must look for in the meetings of foreign
l1berators-not anarchistsv-in New York
That colored Luther, Bishop Turner, of
Georgia, the first chaplain OF his race COM
missioned in the army, has the most mag
nifcent clarion voice ever heard, and his
impassioned reasoning held that critical
Boston audience delighted till nearly II at
night. In contrast to him was George
Downing, of Newport, r. T., the friend of
Sumner and Phillips, whom I took for an
aristocrat of the aristocrats, without suspi-
cion of his race, till reference was made to
it, and whose speech was fine as silk through
out. Divest yourself of every popular idea
of the negro in thinking Of the educated
men Of color. Inflated language, pompous
airs, are found among Boston business men
more than with these. In easy, polished
manner, natural dignity and their pointed
speech they compare to advantage with the
best of the American Congress to-day-such
strides has despised race made in SELF
culture in % years. Ii you want strong
attraction for your lecture course try to get
Bishop Turner-not that know whether
he would lecture or not-but any one would
forgive his abolitionism for his eloquence.
We have no greater natural orator among
rs.
Forgive me if again have escaped from
chifons. Such an occasion will not come
twice. One thing / have to correct; in
late article misprint seemed to join the
name OF Lincoln in the Judgment passed
upon three politicians whose names are
hardly worthy to be written on the same
page with his. Lincoln remains almost
the only leader in modern history whose
honor deies a slur. SHIRLEY DARE.
An-Ediror's Gratitude.