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I greatly regret that my Baptist brethren, Drs. Hayden and Cranfill, Burleson and Carroll, should have gotten into a spiteful and un-Christian snarl over so pitiful a thing as Baylor’s $2,000 presidency–that they should give to the world such a flagrant imitation of a lot of cut-throat unregenerates out for the long green. If one-half that Hayden and Cranfill are saying about each other in their respective papers be true–that I presume that it is–then both ought to be in the penitientiary. Brethren, please to remember that ye are posing as guardians of morals, as examples for mankind–as people out of whom the original sin has been soaked in the Baptist pool and whose paps are filled to the bursting point with the milk of human kindness. If you must fight and scratch like a brace of Kilkenny cats, why the hell don’t you sneak quietly into the woods and fight it out instead of exhibiting your blatant jackasserie to the simple people of Dallas and McLennan counties and thereby bringing our blessed church into contempt! Gadzooks! if you splenetic-hearted old duffers don’t sand your hands and take a fresh grip on your Christian charity I’ll resign my position as chief priest of the Baptist church and become a Mormon elder. I’ll just be cofferdamned if I propose to remain at the head of a church whose educators, preachers and editors are forever hacking away at each other’s goozle with a hand-ax and slinging slime like a lot of colored courtesans.

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Our little boiler-plate contemporary, the Austin Statesman, prints a court docket containing 69 divorce cases–side by side with 12 church notices. Which is cause and which effect I will not assume to say; but Austin is headquarters for camp-meetings–and every neurologists endorsed the ICONOCLAST’S theory that emotional religion is a terrible strain on the Seventh Commandment.

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“Our heroic young,” etc., etc., announces himself a candidate for the United States Senate to succeed Roger Q. Mills. The young man’s modesty is really monumental. Having succeeded by all manner of petty chicanery in capturing the governorship, I am surprised that he isn’t seeking the job of Jehovah. Displacing Mills with Culberson were much like substituting a Chinese joss for the Apollo Belvedere or an itch bacillus for a bull-elephant. I really cannot consent that the little fellow be sent to Washington lest some hurdy gurdy man should swipe him. Chawles says: “Next spring and summer I shall canvas the state thoroughly, presenting my views of public questions to the people.” Which is to say that while we are paying him a good stiff salary for doing his little best to discharge the duties of one office, he will “canvas the state thoroughly” chasing another. If he attempts to perpetuate such a brazen swindle on the tax-payers of Texas, I’ll camp on his trail to some extent, and see that he has a hot time in at least a few old towns. I cannot afford to trail him at my own expense all spring and summer, while he’s cavorting around on free passes and drawing $11 a day from the public purse for unrendered services; but I’ll trump his card in all the large Texas towns as quick as it strikes the table. I’m getting dead rotten tired of helping pay the salaries of Texas officials for time devoted to fence-building, and it will afford me considerable SATISFACTION to place this cold-blooded little ward on the body politic properly before the people. The duties of the governor’s office were supposed to be so onerous that a board of pardons was created at the tax-payers’ expense to lighten his labors; yet Mr. Culberson proposed to spend the spring and summer, not in a reasonable effort to earn his salary, but in explaining why he should be sent to the senate. Coming before us thus self-evidently unfaithful over a few things, this “heroic young Christian” poker-player and red-light habitue has the supernal gall to ask us to make him lord over many things,–to accord him political promotion for dereliction of duty! In the name of Balaam’s she-ass, does this snub-nosed little snipe suppose that we are all hopeless idiots? You are the state’s hired hand, Charlie boy–duly employed to remain at Austin and display your anserine ignorance in the governor’s office. The people don’t care two whoops in hades what your “opinions” may be on any subject within the purview of the United States Senate. If you want to spend the “spring and summer” rainbow chasing, a proper sense of duty to your employers, even a slight conception of commercial honor, would induce you to resign your present position. If you are destitute of both honor and decency you will probably campaign at our expense as you have promised; but I opine that I can pour enough hot shot under your little shirt-tails in a few engagements to drive you back to your duty, and that you will go in a gallop. What the devil do you suppose that Texans want with a two- faced little icicle like yourself in the United States Senate? What taxpayer has asked you to become a candidate? Despite all your wire-pulling, your trading and self-seeking, and the further fact that you are employing the state machinery to strengthen your pull, you really stand no more show of succeeding Roger Q. Mills than you do of succeeding the Czar of Russia. You have managed to get thus far, not on your own merits, but solely because you are “Old Dave” Culberson’s son. Yours is simply a case of magni nominis umbra, and the umbra is getting deuced thin at the edges, is no longer capable of concealing the ass. For many years past we have been paying men fat salaries for gadding about the country exploiting their supposed “opinions.” It is high time we put an end to such idiocy, and I have selected you, as probably the worst specimen of these political malefactors, of which to make an example in the interest of honesty.