The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1895-06-25
POSTULATIvE TOPEKA.

| Topeka Is the greatest make De
lieve" town on the occidental slope of
| Gods footstool. What it fails TO as
sumo it presumes and then talks and
acts accordingly. This is true sc the
town in the concrete, OF her 'nsuta-
| tons in the aggregate, and of her leo
| pie in the mass. With the individual
citizen it is not so much u suspicion as
surmise. Everything pertaining TO
| her political, religious or material in
terestS are first pOstulated, subsequent
| ~ mooted and finally affirmed as gcs-
pei. Utopia is no dream With them.
Alike in the concrete all in the asgre-
gate, individually or enm1Sse, they live
| in the land of PreSter John, and their
town is the capital Of the kingdom Of
Micomocon, its hash-houses being at
once their substance and their shadow.
Their religion and their politics are
merged and embraced in that single
rhapsodical word "Prohibi:icn How
ever ardent the religious fervor,
whether it be orthodox or but 4 fetish
of occult spiritism, and though the heat
of the political campaign partakes of
the frey. all differences are merged and
the golden dream of AlnaSchar he
comes theirs individually and collec-
lively once the magic word 'Prohibi-
&c nit nj
presumptvely divine, this worship of
the hypothetical, prevades all and en-
braces everything from the state. house
on the hill 10 The hovel in the Shunga-
nunga bottoms. Even with her pub
lie journals the postulatory and the
conjectural "goeS" in preference to the
most reliable news however important
or startling. Deny the Topeka news
paper the surmise and the suspected
and brooding melancholy ike a night
mare suppresses all that is in them of
the original or creative. They are
fertile solely in the supposable. Ex-
ecutive nor courts can rise superior to
the "run-in-the-head" or make-believe"
theorems and prefgured prognostica-
lions. So we have a judge Of the
United States court of that town suing
an editor Of that town for libel, and the
editor answering that it all grew out
of Prohibition" The question is not
to be settled in that judges court or in
any other, but in the columns Of the
Topeka newspapers with the public as
the jurors. 4 policeman was lately
found drunk in an alley Of that town
and everybody, including the news
papers, charged the disgrace to ''anti
prohibition" A girl was arrested on
one of the principal streets the other
day for insulting a young man. He
swore that she offered him WhiSkey,
which at once crested" the case and
convicted the female. alphabetically
and presumably she had violated the
only law known to Topeka jurispru-
dence, and that the fundamental one,
prohibition"
This "make-believe idiosyncracy at
times becomes embarrassing to out
siders. The Capital last week con-
jectured that the Eagle ought to con-
tain an editorial expressive of the pre-
vailing Topeka sentiment and no soon
er did its editor thus postulate than
he proceeded to affirm. He published
a loaded article up to his hypothecal
standard and credited it to the Eagle
OF course it was emphatically along
Topeka'S loose abusive line. We
fathered it by silence. But they thing
so tickled the provided-and-perhaps
head Of the Capitals editor that he re-
produced it in his Sundays issue fol-
lowing it up with an all around in
dorsement, urging the Fourth of July
Morrill, mauling convention to embody
the thing bodily in their platform.
There is no disposition upon our part
to go back on that editorial, so con-
siderately anticipated and so gener-
ously Endorsed, but as we must have
written it under hypnotic spell sup
erinduced by reading toe attentively
our sciomanic Topeka exchanges due
allowance should be made for its Pro-
hibitory exhuberance.