St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1919-01-29
Our Legislature
It's our legislature.
Praise the Lord!

Praise the Lord!
1t may display some fearful and
wonderful hair cuts. It's clothes MAJ
smell of the COW barn. There may be
tobacco juice running down inside its
whiskers and its trousers may bag at
the knees. Ii may say wal, | swami"
have dandruH Oh it's collar, g burr in
its speech and several teeth missing
in the orchestra. But you can't buy
it and you can't rush it. You can't
bulldoze it or you can't buffalo it.
You can't borrow it, steal it, excite
it, trip it up, or make it stampede.
There's not another legislature like
it in the country.
Its 10O per cent Amcrican!
It's our legislature
Twenty-Five months out of the
twenty-four it sets hens, haws the off
horse, and pulls cows teats for liv
ing. 1t spends its summer evenings
fishing for full pout down by the
dam OF sitting with q neighbor in the
dusky shadows Of the front piazza
splitting with long syruppy swishes in
to the lilac bushes. 1t spends its
winter evenings mending the harness
OF feeding green birch wood into the
kitchen stove, while it reads the
county weekly with its shoes off. 1t
makes last years suit do for another
season so that Ruth, the eldest
daughter can blossom forth in white
muslin and a few do-dabs for the
Annual Home Coming dance down to
the Center and it drives to meeting
Sunday morning and looks more
kindly on the crime of rape than up
on the crime of not paying its bills.
1t doesn't dicl1er nor spar for the
price of its immortal soul and it gives
its boys cheerfully to the flag when
the need arises.
It's a legislature to be proud of.
1t doesn't stand for monkeydoodlc
and clap-trap. 1t comes through
clean!
The bright city boys who want
things, breeze in occasionally, cast an
antiseptic glass eye over it and kid
themselves that they can run off
with the State House doors.
The oily Corporation boys sluicc
and sitter around and hand out
pleasant hints and bum cigars that
Our Legislature takes in fingers likes
hams and smokes at weird angles.
A certain percentage of the ladies
God Bless 'Em!-look on and get
disappointed, and feel certain-posi-
tive that the country is going to the
dogs.
But the Bright City chaps and the
Oily Corporation Boys and even the
ladies-God Bless 'Em!-go home af-
ter a while sure they know what is
implied by an immovablc object hit
by an unstoppable force and some
thing slipped us somewhere. The
legislature adjourns with a fair
amount of good laws to its" credit and
not more than the usual number of
near murders and a pleasant time is
had by all.
We wouldn't swap it for any other
legislature we've yet seen in America
and we reckon we've seen a lot.
Because there's no other legislature
exactly like it
It's honest and human and takes
itself seriously.
Which says everything.
It's the legislature which doesn't
take itself seriously that breed the
ROlSheyiki--oltside
We're strong for the Vermont leg
lslature. AZ the small boy said: eve
love every bat in it's belfry." Which
may or may not be making light of
sacred things but anyhow, it express
es the idea and after all what
constitutes language?
The boys at the press table may
wear the Bored Man of the World
look and feel like sliding under the
table when some rising young states
man, corn fed and greasy with ba-
con, rises in his place and an eight
dollar suit and tries to rock Miss
Justice atop the gilded dome with a
speech which listens like Daniel Web