The Caldwell tribune. [volume], August 01, 1913, Image 6

About The Caldwell tribune. [volume] (Caldwell, Idaho Territory [Idaho]) 1883-1928

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©be tribune
PUBLISHED BT
Caldwell Printing Company.
CALDWELL, I LI AHO.
Ill Main BU
Subscription |U# P |r Annum
WEEKLY ESTABLISHED DEC »
1881, and entered at the Caldwell Po»t
office as second-class matter.—Act. of
March S. 187».
THE IMMORALITY CHARGES.
The meeting held at the Commer
cial club rooms Monday evening was
one of the most remarkable in the his
tory of the city—a public meeting
called to defend the school children
of the entire city against charges of
immorality preferred by a minister of
the gospel.
In a sermon Rev. D. B. Titus of
the Christian church had made charges
of gross immorality affecting 1100
school children of the city. His evi
dence was freely admitted as hear-say
and he does not appear to have made
very strenuous effort to verify his in
formation. By fathering the story
given by the physician whose name
Mr. Titus refuses to make public, he
becomes responsible.
The facts in the case do not carry
out the contentions of Mr. Titus in
any regard. The experience of at least
three physicians in the city are a di
rect contradiction to the statement
that there exists many cases of vener
eal disease among the school children.
The statement that the locks on the
school buildings had been broken that
the children might enter to engage in
immoral practices remains unproven
in any regard.
The Tribune does not for a moment
question the motive of the reverend
gentleman. It is exceedingly unfor
tunate that the press saw fit to give
the sensational charges such wide
publicity. The statements on the face
were preposterous. That immorality
exists to some extent among the
young people cannot be doubted. '"Tis
true, 'tis pity; and pity 'tis, 'tis true."
But not to any extent among the
school children. Young men after
they leave the duties of school life
enter into a new sphere of activity.
Too often they are led to ape their
elders and indulge in different phases
of immorality in the mistaken idea
that this is manhood. It is so in
Opening Jlnnouncement !
MONDAY, AUG. 4
THE COLONIAL
will be in its New Home in the Hughes Building
C-O-M-E
We Have a Treat for You. Music in the Evening
5 :.
Caldwell, it is so everywhere. Some
effort should be made to curb the evil
and it was to awaken parents to the
danger confronting their children that
Rev. Mr. Titus made his sensation.al
charges.
Character is the most sacred asset
possessed by man. No attack on the
character of an individual, an organi
zation, or a community is to be coun
tenanced unless based on absolutely
immutable fact. To correct a situa
tion that he was not at all certain ex-,
isted, Mr. Titus has deliberately plac
ed a stigma upon 1100 school children.
This is a very grave injustice.
In three years' diligent search the
school board has failed to bring to
light more than one possible case of
immorality among the school children
of the pity. These men are not fools—
they are hard-headed business men;
men who know the world and while
they would be loth to believe that
the boys and girls of such tender
years, their own children among them,
could be guilty of such disgusting
practices, not ioj a moment would
they close their eyes to fact. Immor
al conditions do not exist among the
school children of the city, except
perhaps in very isolated instances
which have remained hidden from the
watchful eye of the authorities. That
there is any widespread condition of
the sort is not to be believed.
It is to be hoped that should any
one become severely infected with
the dangerous reformitis germ in the
future that common-sense shall direct
the method pursued in developing the
disease. There has been a grave in
justice done—and no Jesuitical plea
that the end was meant to justify the
means will be accepted by the good,
folk of Caldwell.
THE OBSERVATORY.
It is curious how a writer will have
a pet word, which he will use over
and over again, as though no syno
nym could be found. I recall that
years ago the author of a book which
was an authority cn European Tur
key's history thus used the word ''ra
pacity" to describe the character of
the Turk in his treatment of Chris
tians; it sometimes occurring several
times in the same chapter.
And just recently I came across the
Life of Goldsmith by Washington Ir
ving. I had forgotten that he had
writen such a work, and having a
hazy remembrance that each had a
vein of sly humor, I wondered what
Irving had said of Goldsmith; after
a few pages I came across the word
"whimsical," to describe a peculiarity
of Goldsmith's style. And as 1 read
on I kept coming to that word; some
how it seemed to tickle Irving's fan
cy, and no other could correctly por
tray that trait of Goldsmith contin
ually appearing in his writings and
his doings. It is "whimsical man",
"whimsical notion", "whimsical de
sciption", "whimsical style", over and
over again; but, by the way, that
overworking of a word did not dull
my interest on the "Life". I wonder
could anyone else have so sympathet
ically written of Goldsmith? I ran
sacked my library and dug out Wil
lian Black's book on Goldsmith in
the "English Men of Letters" series,
and while it is good, real good, it can
not compare with Irving. Yet Black
is much less apologetic for Gold
smith's spendthrift ways than Irving;
the latter is rather hard on the pub
lishers, and very ready to pity "poor
Goldsmith" for the small pay he got
for his immortal works; while Black
thinks 'he got as much as anyone
should have expected under the cir
cumstances.
I must confess that 1 am so in
tense a Yankee that I ns*r really
realized Irving's ridicule of them, the
Connecticut variety; they were con
tinually invading that part of New
York where he grew up; and some
years ago I left the "Knickerbocker
History of New York," half read.
After Goldsmith, I got it out and,
queer enough, almost the first page
gave me "whimsical" in Irving's de
scription of one of the Dutch govern
ors; evidently Irving was whimsical
himself and therefore it exuded from
him as he wrote. And after a few
pages I came across a passage which
was in one of the reading books at
school when I was a boy; and how
such passages, if they were really
good, stuck in one's memory; here
was his description of the old New
York Dutch home:
"The front door was never opened
except on marriages, funerals, New
Year's day, the festival of St. Nich
olas, or some such great occasion. .
. . The whole house was constantly
in a state of inundation, under the
discipline of mops and brooms and
scrubbing brushes; and the good
housewives of those days were a
kind of amphibious animal,, delighting
exceedingly in dabbling in water—
in-so-much that a historian of the
day gravely informs us that many of
the townswomen grew to have web'
bed fingers like unto a duck . .
As to the family, they always entered
by the gate, and most generally lived
in the kitchen. . . In those happy
days a well-regulated family always
rose with the dawn, dined at 11, and
went to bed at sun-down. . . Fash
ionable parties were generally con
fined to the higher classes. . . The
company commonly assembled at 3
o'clock and went away at 6. The tea
table was crowned with a huge earth
em dish, well stored with slices of
fat pork, fried brown, cut up into
morsels, and swimming in gravy. The
company being seated around the
genial board, and each furnished with
a foçk, evinced their dexterity in
launching at the fattest pieces in this
mighty dish—in much the same man
ner as sailqrs harpoon porpoises at
sea, or our Indians spear salmon in
the lakes. Sometimes the tab|e was
graced with immense apple pies, or
saucers full of preserved peaches and
pears; but it was always sure to boast
of an enormous dish of balls of sweet
ened dough, fried in hog's fat, and
called doughnuts, olykoeks—a deli
cious kind of cake, at present scarce
ly known in this city, excepting in
genuine Dutch families.
The tea was served out of a ma
jestic delft tea-pot, ornamented with
paintings of fat little Dutch shep
herds and shepherdesses tending
pigs—with boats sailing in the air,
and houses built on the clouds, and
sundry other ingenious Dutch 1M
tasies. The beaux distinguished them
selves by the adroitness in replen
ishing this pot from a huge copper
tea-kettle, which would have made
the pigmy macaronies of these de
generate days sweat merely to look
at it. To sweeten the beverage, a
lump of sugar was laid beside each
cup—and the company alternately
nibbled and sipped with great decor
um, until an improvement was intro
duced by a shrewd and economic old
lady, which was to suspend a large
lump directly over the tea-table, by
a string from tlhe ceiling, so that it
could be swung from mouth to
mouth—an ingenious expedient which
is still kept up by some familjes in
Albany; but which prevails without
exception in Communipaw, Berger,
Fiatbush, and all our uncontaminated
Dutch families. At these primitive
tea-parties the utmost propriety and
dignity of deportment prevailed. No
flirting nor coquetting—no gambling
of old ladies, nor noyden chattering
and romping of young ones—no self
satisfied struttings of wealthy gen
tlemen, with their brains in their
pockets, nor amusing conceits, and
donkey divestisements of smart
young gentlemen with no brains at
all. On the contrary, the young ladies
seated themselves demurely in thejr
rush-bottomed chairs, and knit their
own woolen stockings, nor ever op
ener their lips, excepting to say, "Yah
Mynheer," or "Yah, yah, Vrouw," to
any question that was asked them;
behaving in all things like edcent,
well-educatatf damsels.
"The parties broke up without
noise and without confusion. . . .
The gentlemen gallantly attended
their fair ones to their respective
abo'des, and took leave of them with
a hearty smack at the door, which,
as it was an established piece of eti
quette, done in perfect simplicity nd
honesty of heart, occasioned no scan
dal."
And in the old reading book was
the story of Wolfert Webber, the
Dutch Money-Digger, the quaintness
of whidh used to make us boys and
girls smile and sometimes laugh—if
we had a teacher with some sense
and a sense of humor; how Wolfert
dreamed ifnd dreamed of the m ?^
Capt. Kidd was supposed to have
Buried in New York sand; how he
absentmindedly put his waistcoat on
"with the hind part before, a sign
o fgood luck; and how he dug his
garden patch over and over secretly
in the night to find the hidden treas
ure, and had to return to the raising
of cabbages; but later .against his
protest, the corporation put a new
street through his ancestral acres,
and in spite of himself Wolfert after
wards became a rich landlord from
ground rents. Well, if Goldsmith
was whimsical, surely Irving was
also.
OBSERVER.
Suppose
your present income was reduced $2.50
a week, you'd soon adjust yourself to
the change, wouldn't you? And it
wouldn't be a very serious change ei
ther—not quite so much waste, that's
all.
Now, why not pretend that your in
come had been cut—and save that $2.50
a week— every week. Or, if your in
come won't stand $2.50 make it a little
less—but save something.
Did you ever stop and figure out
how rapidly savings accumulate? Sup
pose you save $2.50 a week—take your
pencil and work it out—work it out
for a year—it's a surprisingly neat lit
tle sum. You are probably wasting
that money righ now—suppose you
start this week and save it—the smal
lest account is always welcome here,
and at this bank your savings will
draw a good interest, compounded
twice a year.
Open YOUR account today.
First National Bank
CALDWELL
IDAHO
It is believed that the railroad:,
should all put in steel cars so that
the engineers could run past the dan
ger signals.
* * *
Anyway by going to the Capitol
instead of seeing .the Congressmen
at home, Presiden't Wilson is saving
the White House carpets considera
bly.
* * *
It is surprising how cool a girl
feels out in the hot sun when she is
playing tennis with the fellows from
college.