The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1896-02-22
PECK,s REFORMATION.

George r. Peck'S new environments
must be peculiar, his experiences
something out of the common place
since severing his Kansas affimities
or otherwise his lately acquired senti-
ments are being misrepresented. Nei-
Their the heart or purlieus of Chicago
seem to warrant such a conversion.
Our old friend, it is said, no longer
holds TO Khayyan's fatal
''The moving finger writes and having
| writ
Moves on; nor all thy piety or wit
! Shall lure ii back TO cancel half line
/ Nor all thy tears wash out a word of il"
no longer believes that this life is but
a moments halt in desert waste of
| bitter wells and phantom caravans,
where but hair divides the false and
! true, and then back to insensate dust
again, with no other reward but the
hope that if the clay is not made up
into some beautiful cup for some fair
lip, that it may produce a flower; but,
| tearing aside the pendant veil which
bangles between the now and the fu-
ture he declares that the American
civilization of today will soon take on
the life of the Puritan. Without stop
ping to enquire the particular Ken
tuck brand of our friends inspira-
ton, we would like to ask how potent
a piece, in the new mOOve, does he es-
innate himself? That brand must be
all right which impels the victim to
play the saint rather than the infidel,
and it is sadly needed by the people
of the state TO which he so long held
allegiance only to desert when things
looked blacklist. Besides any talk of
the millennium from a corporation law
yer too much smacks of the song and
dance that turned Mother Ewes head,
that is, turned her head before she
became a mOther-the devil would new
er have tackled her after she had.
Why didn't our friend George, while
he was about it, promise US something
more picturesque, for instance a re-
turn of the life and romance Of the days
of Knight Errantry, instead of the rig
id selfishness and WITHDRAWING ny
pOcrisy of New England. We haven't
heard Georges premises but we hope
they are not so pregnable as the one
deduced by Ed Howe to prove the
tranSmigration of souls, or reincarna-
ton, which was but a big black dog
that had been regularly and all alone
attending a series of revival meetings
in AtchiSon, leaving with bowed head
and reverend mein on the prOr0uncing
of the benediction. If George means
by Puritanism an enforced morality
Of sumptuary laws and legal penalties,
laws defining what a man shall eat
and drink, where and how worship,
and when to kiss his wife, we protest |
that he is off his nut. Morality and |
all the goodness of life which goes
with it is a matter of right thinking |
and exalted conviction, not of penal |
laws, pClicemen'S clubs and the terrors |
of the prison or the lash. An English |
woman, Marie Correlli, has Just writ
ten a book entitled the Sorrows of |
Satan" That the miserable old sim |
ner has sorrows, sorrows as immeasur- |
able as eternity, SORROWS intensified |
through unending cons by seeing now
and then a poor devil of a mortal sue |
ceSSfully winning his way into Heaven, |
there is not the least doubt upon our |
part. Should Georges prediction
prove a verify in which a universal
reformation would return all the lost
joys Of the first estate and make it
plain sailing TO paradise for even such
people as Dawes, Dick Wake and the
state administration generally, the tor
ture of Satan would prove more than
ever his demonShip could bear, and
there Is nowhere for him to appeal.
AS it is now, the foul crimes of men,
the deceitS and crueltieS of women, the
Ingratitude of children, the scOrn of
good everywhere, the selfshneSS. the
lvarice, the senSuality of human life,
the sin and blasphemy of it all, consti-
TuteS the only joy left to Mr.. Satan,
we suspect, but he recalls with regret,
40 doubt, the glorious old puritanical
lays when he furnished the fire for the
witch'S stake at Salem and the villages
along shore. Therefore, despite the
fact that it would give us joy to wit
ness a general reformation. and with
put reference TO the extra sorrows
heaped upon his Plutorian majesty
who deserves all he has got because
ne didn't know a good thing when he
had it, joy TO know that Morrill, and
Dawes and even Wake and all their
ribe had repented, still George must
excuse us for falling to desire any more
ladeS on earth in the way of Puritan
'ule and life.
CANADA IN HOT WATER.
Manitoba from whence comes all our ;