Reports from the stationers show that there is no demand at all for the
revised edition of the Bible, and had it not been for the newspapers
publishing the whole affair there would have been very few persons that
took the trouble to even glance at it, and it is believed that not one
reader of the daily papers in a hundred read any of the Bible, and not
one in ten thousand read all of it which was published. Who originated
this scheme of revising the Bible we do not know, but whoever it was
made a miscue. There was no one suffering particularly for a revision
of the Bible. It was good enough as it was. No literary sharp of the
present day has got any license to change anything in the Bible.
Why, the cheeky ghouls have actually altered over the Lord's Prayer, cut
it biased, and thrown the parts about giving us this day our daily
bread into the rag bag. How do they know that the Lord said more than
he wanted to in that prayer? He wanted that daily bread in there, or He
never would have put it in. The only wonder is that those revisers did
not insert strawberry shortcake and ice cream in place of daily bread.
Some of these ministers who are writing speeches for the Lord think they
are smart. They have fooled with Christ's Sermon on the Mount until He
couldn't tell it if He was to meet it in the Chicago _Times_.
This thing has gone on long enough, and we want a stop put to it. We
have kept still about the piracy that has been going on in the Bible
because people who are better than we are have seemed to endorse it, but
now we are sick of it, and if there is going to be an annual clerical
picnic to cut gashes in the Bible and stick new precepts and examples on
where they will do the most hurt, we shall lock up our old Bible where
the critters can't get at it, and throw the first book agent down stairs
head first that tries to shove off on to us one of these new fangled,
go-as-you-please Bibles, with all the modern improvements, and hell left
out.
Now, where was there a popular demand to have hell left out of the
Bible? Were there any petitions from the people sent up to this
self-constituted legislature of pinchbeck ministers, praying to have
hell abolished, and “hades” inserted? Not a petition. And what is this
hades? Where is it? Nobody knows. They have taken away our orthodox
hell, that has stood by us since we first went to Sunday school, and
given us a hades. Half of us wouldn't know a hades if we should see it
dead in the road, but they couldn't fool us any on hell.
No, these revisers have done more harm to religion than they could have
done by preaching all their lives. They have opened the ball, and now,
every time a second-class dominie gets out of a job, he is going to
cut and slash into the Bible. He will think up lots of things that will
sound better than some things that are in there, and by and by we
shall have our Bibles as we do our almanacs, annually, with weather
probabilities on the margins.
This is all wrong. Infidels will laugh at us, and say our old Bible is
worn out, and out of style, and tell us to have our measure taken for
a new one every fall and spring, as we do for our clothes. If this
revision is a good thing, why won't another one be better? The woods are
full of preachers who think they could go to work and improve the Bible,
and if we don't shut down on this thing, they will take a hand in it. If
a man hauls down the American flag, we shoot him on the spot; and now we
suggest that if any man mutilates the Bible, we run an umbrella into him
and spread it.
The old Bible just filled the bill, and we hope every new one that is
printed will lay on the shelves and get sour. This revision of the Bible
is believed to be the work of an incendiary. It is a scheme got up by
British book publishers to make money out of pious people. It is on the
same principle that speculators get up a corner on pork or wheat. They
got revision, and printed Bibles enough to supply the world, and would
not let out one for love or money. None were genuine unless the name of
this British firm was blown in the bottle.
Millions of Bibles were shipped to this country by the firm that was
“long” on Bibles, and they were to be thrown on the market suddenly,
after being locked up and guarded by the police until the people were
made hungry for Bibles.
The edition was advertised like a circus, and doors were to be opened
at six o'clock in the morning. American publishers who wanted to publish
the Bible, too, got compositors ready to rush out a cheap Bible within
twelve hours, and the Britons, who were running the corner on the Word
of God, called these American publishers pirates. The idea of men being
pirates for printing a Bible, which should be as free as salvation. The
newspapers that had the Bibles telegraphed to them from the east, were
also pirates.
O, the revision is a three-card monte speculation; that is all it is.
Geo. W. Peck, of the _Sun_, recently delivered an address before the
Wisconsin State Dairyman's Association. The following is an extract from
the document:
_Fellow creamationists_: In calling upon me, on this occasion,
to enlighten you upon a subject that is dear to the hearts of all
Americans, you have got the right man in the right place. It makes me
proud to come to my old home and unfold truths that have been folded
since I can remember. It may be said by scoffers, and it has been said
to-day, in my presence, that I didn't know enough to even milk a cow. I
deny the allegation; show me the allegator. If any gentleman present has
got a cow here with him, and I can borrow a clothes-wringer, I will show
you whether I can milk a cow or not. Or, if there is a cheese mine here
handy, I will demonstrate that I can--_runnet_.
The manufacture of cheese and butter has been among the earliest
industries. Away back in the history of the world, we find Adam and Eve
conveying their milk from the garden of Eden, in a one-horse wagon to
the cool spring cheese factory, to be weighed in the balance. Whatever
may be said of Adam and Eve to their discredit in the marketing of the
products of their orchard, it has never been charged that they stopped
at the pump and put water in their milk cans. Doubtless you all remember
how Cain killed his brother Abel because Abel would not let him do the
churning. We can picture Cain and Abel driving mooly cows up to the
house from the pasture in the southeast corner of the garden, and Adam
standing at the bars with a tin pail and a three-legged stool, smoking
a meerschaum pipe and singing “Hold the fort for I am coming through
the rye,” while Eve sat on the verandah altering over her last year's
polonaise, and winking at the devil who stood behind the milk house
singing, “I want to be an angel.” After he got through milking he came
up and saw Eve blushing, and he said, “Madame, cheese it,” and she chose
it.
But to come down to the present day, we find that cheese has become one
of the most important branches of manufacture. It is next in importance
to the silver interest. And, fellow cheese mongers, you are doing
yourselves great injustice that you do not petition congress to pass a
bill to remonetize cheese. There is more cheese raised in this country
than there is silver, and it is more valuable. Suppose you had not
eaten a mouthful in thirty days, and you should have placed on the table
before you ten dollars stamped out of silver bullion on one plate and
nine dollars stamped out of cheese bullion on another plate. Which would
you take first? Though the face value of the nine cheese dollars would
be ten per cent, below the face value of ten silver dollars, you would
take the cheese. You could use it to better advantage in your business.
Hence I say cheese is more valuable than silver, and it should be made
legal tender for all debts, public and private, except pew rent. I may
be in advance of other eminent financiers, who have studied the currency
question, but I want to see the time come, and I trust the day is not
far distant, when 412 1/2 grains of cheese will be equal to a dollar in
codfish, and when the merry jingle of slices of cheese shall be heard in
every pocket.
Then every cheese factory can make its own coin, money will be plenty,
everybody will be happy, and there never will be any more war. It may
be asked how this currency can be redeemed? I would have an
incontrovertible bond, made of Limburger cheese, which is stronger and
more durable. When this is done you can tell the rich from the poor man
by the smell of his money. Now-a-days many of us do not even get a smell
of money, but in the good days which are coming the gentle zephyr will
waft to us the able-bodied Limburger, and we shall know that money is
plenty.
The manufacture of cheese is a business that a poor man can engage in as
well as a rich man. I say it, without fear of successful contradiction,
and say it boldly, that a poor man with, say 200 cows, if he thoroughly
understands his business, can market more cheese than a rich man who
owns 300 oxen. This is susceptible of demonstration. If my boy showed
a desire to become a statesman, I would say to him, “Young man, get
married, buy a mooley cow, go to Sheboygan county, and start a cheese
factory.”
Speaking of cows, did it ever occur to you, gentlemen, what a saving
it would be to you if you should adopt mooley cows instead of horned
cattle? It takes at least three tons of hay and a large quantity of
ground feed annually to keep a pair of horns fat, and what earthly use
are they? Statistics show that there are annually killed 45,000 grangers
by cattle with horns. You pass laws to muzzle dogs, because one in ten
thousand goes mad, and yet more people are killed by cattle horns than
by dogs. What the country needs is more mooley cows.
Now that I am on the subject, it may be asked what is the best paying
breed for the dairy. My opinion is divided between the south down and
the cochin china. Some like one the best and some the other, but as for
me, give me liberty or give me death.
There are many reforms that should be inaugurated in the manufacture
of cheese. Why should cheese be made round? I am inclined to the belief
that the making of cheese round is a superstition. Who had not rather
buy a good square piece of cheese, than a wedge-shape chunk, all rind
at one end, and as thin as a Congressman's excuse for voting back pay
at the other? Make your cheese square and the consumer will rise up and
call you another.
Another reform that might be inaugurated would be to veneer the cheese
with building paper or clapboards, instead of the time-honored piece of
towel. I never saw cheese cut that I didn't think that the cloth around
it had seen service as a bandage on some other patient. But I may have
been wrong. Another thing that does not seem to be right, is to see so
many holes in cheese. It seems to me that solid cheese, one made by
one of the old masters, with no holes in it--I do not accuse you of
cheating, but don't you feel a little ashamed when you see a cheese cut,
and the holes are the biggest part of it? The little cells may be handy
for the skipper, but the consumer feels the fraud in his innermost soul.
Among the improvements made in the manufacture of cheese I must not
forget that of late years the cheese does not resemble the grindstone
as much as it did years ago. The time has been when, if the farmer could
not find his grindstone, all he had to do was to mortise a hole in
the middle of a cheese, and turn it and grind his scythe. Before the
invention of nitro-glycerine, it was a good day's work to hew off cheese
enough for a meal. Time has worked wonders in cheese.