Blue-grass blade., 1894-05-20

he'd. 4 Ma(h1ll
EGeneratioms of ny o1e
hves Of purity agd ek16l
none that eyer bfea1ln 6 49,
life-in this city Of I.ezl1 - & 81 >
ed BY W. G, p. BreckinridGr. 4 ': {. s.:
Not long since Ireed tint year ~
its for last winters lectures had
$4,000 And now you, Robert G. II
gersoll, write to me that you are sorry
that have touched the feelings of my
neighbors. When have read your re-
plies to Gladstone, have said that you
where the prince of irony and that Ju-
venal was not your peer in Satire; but
little did think that your humble
friend and admirer would be the victim
of the most scathing of all that has ever
flowed from your gifted pen.
have now some adequate apprecia-
ton of what "The grand old man." and
the lovely DIR. Field must have felt, and
what must have been the sense of pain
with which you actually killed old Judge
Jerry Black. But they were your en-
emies and was your friend. They got
only what they had right to expect.
They were rich and had millions of
friends. l stand alone, and moneyless
and troubled, and seeing the almost GER
tainty of my conviction when my trial
comes in July.
l was silly enough to boast how you
would come to my aid, though I was
ashamed to have to say that l would
have to pay you for your services
You could not have been ignorant of
my case. 1t was in the Associated Press
dispatches everywhere; and when l
asked you for bread, even for money,
you gave me stone
The last issue of my paper tells how q
Catholic priest of St. Paul, Minnesota,
who had never seen and talked to me
half as mnch as you have done, sent me
$500 to help me out of a $500. salary,
and wrote a splendid article which Waa
published in my paper, and twe1ve
pages of beautifully and closely WHITES
private letter to me, full of such tn
der love and brotherly affection thnx ~
aspiration is now to have him come and
see me in my humble but sweet and ro-
mantle country home, and sit on our fa-
nous Blue Grass under the very tree
where for years have had the dream
that some day you and Mark Twain
would sit with me and my wife and chill
dren.
This priest, Martin Mahony, did this
vUhatr ho sv,f he hoh of -.
my paper that was an atheist, and that
l did not believe in the immortality of the
soul, as you thought possible at the
grave of your brother.
l have no more faith in any kind of
Christianity, Catholic or Protestant,
than l have in Buddhism, and not as
much faith in either of them as 1 have
in Mohammedanism. do not believe
that Jesus Christ was any better man
than Martin Mahony, or that the mother
ofJesus was any better than my mother, or
my wife; and yet see what kind of a fix
you have left me in to boost infidelity
and blast Catholicism.
Where did you get the idea that l had
lacked courtesy?" You are the first man
that has ever suggested it. Certainly
no Kentucky infidel has said it, and If
Christians may have said it, are you alb
solutely certain that the whole Christian
world has concurred in the sentiment
that you were absolutely courteous?
Though am gentleman to the ma
nor-and manner-born, 1 have lately
worked with the negroes, and l have
been imprisoned and treated as if were
an outlaw and if, under these circum-
stances, may not have lived up to my
Chesterfield so punctiliously as you who
have lived on grand stages and Fifth
Avenue" may have done, is a little lack
Of courteousy thing for which ought
to be imprisoned
hope that your time is all of you that
S "mortgaged," and that your soul is
not in the same fix, with the devil as the
mortgage.
1t was so considerate in you to sug
gest that your presence might iniure me
by tanning into fame all the bigotry in
nv section.
OF course nothing of that sort exists
here now where they have had me in
Jail twice and will try to get me in Jail
or the penitentiary the third time, and
where last week a Christian editor
threatened to kill me, and where Wifi
cation and lies about me constitute a
large feature of the newspapers.
Your guess that | would not need
much help was an exceedingly bad guess
for man of your distinguished percep-
tive powers, but guess will try not to
need yours.
A sadder but a wiser man | am yours
respectfully,