ESSAY ON "MEEKNESS." (By our Special Reporter.)

Evening Post, Volume L, Issue 48, 24 August 1895, Page 1 (Supplement)

ESSAY ON "MEEKNESS." (By our Special Reporter.)

The Bushto wn Literary Society opened its session lost evening, the Vice-president (Mr. Pamperson) being in the chair. The President (Mr. Tennyson Shortfellow), who stands somewhere about aix feet two, with a ohest measurement of nearly 50 inches, and wears number eleven boots, read an essay on " Meekness," which was very well received. Following is the full text of the essay : — " Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen — Be meek ; meekness is the soul of strength. If thy brother smite thee on the right cheek turn unto him the other also. (A voice : ■What do you think?') Meekness is the better part of valour. It pays better for a small man to be meek than to bully. " Friends, be gentle, mtek, and humble, Never stand up io a fight; Never wrestle, nerer tumble — Bun away, aud you'll be right. (Applause.) "A meek man has always plenty of friends. (A voice : ' Tes ; while he has plenty of money.') A bully has plenty of enemies. (Applause.) The thought of meekness greatly inspires my poetic muse, so I pray you will excuse the occasional lapses into verse in this short essay. By-the-wav, it is all original. " Oh, bright thought, my soul inspiring With poetic fancies sweet. "Always be meek in the presence of the dear women. (A female voice: 'Ladies, please.') Ladies, then. " Friends, l» meek all through your life ; Be meek, al»o, before your wife. For though she promised to obey It often turns the other way. (Applause.) "Meekness is not cowardice, and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise. A man is always thought much more of who is meek than one who is always bullying. (Here the essayist fixed his eye sternly upon some boys at the baok, and said, ' If you boys do not be quiet I will be under the painful necessity of chastising you.') If you feel your temper getting the best of you repeat the following lines of mine : — 11 NeYer.bully, nerer bluster, Take life easy while you con ; Or elte you're suro to get a buster From aome other bigger man. (A voice: 'Not many bigger men than you, old boy.') Look at the birds, they are meek ; look at the beasts of the field, they are not. Which do our children like best P —they are the best judges. Why, the birds, of course ! " O, dicky bird 1 O, dicky bird ! I wish that I was you ; Of all the songs I ever heard, The best was sung by you. (Applanse.) " When your wife is out of temper be careful, be meek ; for if you cross her you will be sure to get it hot. " Then gently ■con your brother man, Still gentler sister woman ; For, oh, she has a stinging tongue. Which you, perhaps, may rue, man. "Tou all think that because I am a big man I'm not meek. I ohallenge anyone who dares to doubt my word to oome outside for five minutes. (Applause.) I will conclude with the following verse, whioh I wish to impress upon your memory : — " Lives of big men oft remind us We should always humble be ; Bun away, and leave behind us He who is our enemy." Mr. Tennyson Shortfellow then sat down, amidst storms of applause, and the ohairman called upon members to discuss the subject. Mr. Fawner, a Uriah Heep sort of a man, congratulated the essayist on the efficient manner in which he had dealt with the aubjeot. He said:— "l should just like to add an instance from presentday events. .Look at the Japanese, they are a meek little people, but they have given China a whipping, and will irive big, bullying Russia one too if she doesn't look out. This is a lesson, I think for us to be meek and humble." (Applause.) Mr. Hobbs, a young farmer, also congratulated the essayist. He said :—" Oi think Muster Shortfeller is a rale pote, better nor Tennson himself. Oi dunno much about bein' meek, but I loike his poultry." Mr. Bulger, a dapper little person, the storekeeper of the township, then took up the running : — " Mr. Chairman, Ladies, and Gentlemen — I am greatly surprised and somewhat pained at so many of. our members congratulating a man on suoh an — an abortion as the essay just read. Poetry ! poetry does he call ie ! What rot ! (Cries of ' Go it, bantam. 1 ) To call sueh — suoh— such tw — tw — twaddle poetry ! I — I — I don't know where your senses are. I think if a member cannot write better poetry than that he Lad bettor stand for the Poet Laureateship, whioh is open at present. I— l— l don't, I— l can't, I— l will say no more — my feelings overcome me." Mr. Shortfellow, in reply, said: — "Mr. Chairman, Ladies, and Gentlemen — I am sorry to see our friend in suoh a fume. He should take a lesson from the essay — be meek! It is well for him he is a little fellow. His size protects him. I will overlook his remarks. He is beneath me. (A voice: 'Tes, something like twelve inohos.') I know my poetry cannot be compared with Mr.Hoben r s,butlflatter myself itisasgood as Mr. Swinburne's." Votes of thanks were passed to the essayist and Chairman, and the meeting then Adjourned. —"Warata" Bushtown April 31. To build one of the " crack " ships in the P. and O. service entails a cost of about £300,000. When it is remembered that a big ship oan accommodate iv her bunkers over 1,700 tons of coal, and that more than a hundred tons a day is expended in driving her along, it is not surprising to learn that the coal-bill of the P. and O. Company amounts to nearly £600,000 sterling per annum. The value of the notes in circulation by the Bank of England is now £23,493,686, while the stock of bullion amounts to £37,397,728. During the oourse of every year railway servants in Great Britain get no less than £300,000 in tips from the public. ' Sir Benjamin Richardson, the eminent physician, thinks that the normal period of human' life is about 110 years, and that seven out of ten average people ought to live that long if they took proper care of themseves'. A useful article for a deaf lady has been recently patented. It is a fan da tly concealing a tiny ear- trumpet in its stick.

CRIME NEAR CHICAGO. « Chicago, June 23. — Thirty miles <>! crime, if crime may be said to have linear proportions. From Keldsie Avenue, in Chicago, to Lemont, on both sides of the right-of-way of the drainage channel, one spot after another, in the forest and out on the open, in villages and without them, is infested with the low, vile and vicious, preying upon 5000 labourers on the channel. So serious has the situation become that on Friday afternoon President Wenter, of the Drainage Board, Trustee Eckbart, and Marshal Edward Williams, in charge of the drainage channel police, held a conference for the purpose of outlining a policy which will rid the district of the law-breaking element now in control of it. The Drainage Board cannot act effectively in the matter, though, without the co-operation of the Board of County Commissioners and of the Mayor of Lemont. The records of the corner are gruesome. They are silent, but bitter arraignments of the authorities, of the contractors and of Christian Chicago, whioh permit the pillage of the men constructing her sanitary channel. The great channel day by day gives up unknown dead ; in dent, murder is the jovial end of a debauch. Each foot-pad and convict lies in wait by lonesome roads for victims sent to them by the hurdy-gurdy. There is a blow, a splash in the water or a crash into the pit, and "unknown" is written a day or two later in the death books of the county. There is a murder every day in the year along the line of the canal.. Crime is made easy on the channel by the geography of the Deaplaines Kiyer and the Sac Valley. The Illinois and Michigan Canal parallels the drainage channel. On both sides of the latter huge soil banks arise. The canal is crossed by narrow bridges, the forests are dense, the towpaths are not fenced, and the great pits of the contractors yawn at night for the trip of an unwary step. Into one of these huge holes, known before it disappeared as " Rock hole," two men went at different times. Rock hole will never reveal whether they stumbled in or were thrown there, after being sandbagged and robbed. Marshal Williams, of Lemont, lays the blame for the prevaeluce of so much crime on the channel to the iudit>orimiuate manner iv which saloon licenses are granted by the authorities. " Xhe manifest object," he said "of these saloons being located in the woods, and in places where labouring men can be entrapped, is for the purpose of plundering the drainage channel men. Their money is wanted, and the constant battle of my force is to prevent barefaced robbery and actual murder. The liquor sold is vile, and the majority of the men in the traffic are viler still. I believe if the village authorities stopped the issuing of licenses, and punished violators of the law, crime would be at a minimum." The police foxce of the sanitary district, composed of forty-six men, was organised in 1893, and cost £4000 to maintain it that year, and £10,200 last year. The patrol men receive £15 a month, which is less than the regular men in Chicago do. They travel on foot and their beats are from three to five miles long. They are provided with revolvers and at the stations there are Winchester and Springfield rifles. They have no courts of their own to take their prisoners to. They must act either with the country courts or the local justices in the villages along the channel.