And they buried his clothes out of pity.
Venezuela’s Abominations
As full of dynamite and fusel oil as ever, Reverend Morrill returns to Minnesota this month brimful of information on the South and Central American countries, which for the past three months he had been touring for the Whiz Bang, and here’s his first report. Incidentally, Reverend Morrill’s home in Minneapolis is broken into by burglars nearly every time he goes away on a Whiz Bang jaunt, and last fall he lost $3,000 worth of choice red-eye. This last trip he left a note: “Dear Boys: You won’t find any booze or Liberty Bonds, but some good books, especially this Bible, which says, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ God forgive you—I do. G. L. Morrill.” Whether or not the note was responsible is undetermined, but nothing was missing this time.
BY REV. “GOLIGHTLY” MORRILL
Pastor People’s Church, Minneapolis, Minn.
“Easy is the descent to hell”—except by way of Venezuela, at whose ports of entry one suffers so many inconveniences in the form of passport visés, custom fees, red-tape, delay and insolence, that if the Devil wishes to sustain his reputation of a conductor of luxurious pleasure-tours to the infernal regions, he should immediately get rid of his disagreeable officials there. At La Guayra, custom authorities rob the traveler of time, money and patience. These sun-burnt bandits would steal the pennies from the eyes of their dead father, and body-snatch their dead grandmother to sell her entrails for sausage-casings. The visitor should be on his guard, too, lest the city’s dark-eyed daughters of delight steal away his heart.
La Guayra señoritas, like the scenery, are wild, beautiful and romantic, though there are many wizened witches, rheumatic, mustachioed and flea-bitten, who make one sea-sick on land. The local enchantresses give the stranger a good (bad) time—as well as a choice assortment of undesirable souvenirs. It is a pestiferous port where the laudable profession of prostitution is much practised. These moral lepers are much more dangerous than the physical ones in the big asylum in the outskirts. Gay girls throw kisses to the tenderfoot as he walks the streets—a most sanitary and microbeless pastime.
Here I entered a girls’ school where the young misses were learning much and not missing anything, for as a practical object-lesson in physiology a naked little boy had strolled in from the street and was roaming about the room. Some of the citizens are quite devout and show their gratitude to God for his numerous blessings. I passed a saloon bearing the inscription, “Gracios a Dios” (Thanks to God). Thus do the simple-minded people obey the Scriptural command, “In everything give thanks.”