“In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“The brother, John Tetzel, commissary, hath signed this with his own hand.”
The Two Red Cents.
A grocer in Clinton county sold a drunkard a pint of new rum according to law, and made two red cents clear profit. The drunkard shot his son-in-law while intoxicated; and his apprehension, confinement in jail, execution, &c. cost the county more than one thousand dollars—which temperate men had to earn by the sweat of their brows! What say tax-payers? Are you willing to pay a thousand dollars to enable the grog-seller to make two red cents?
But this case is comparatively nothing when contrasted with a recent transaction about the 1st of July, 1843. An Indian, one of those half-civilized, rum-loving creatures who abound in the West, stepped out of Cataraugus county into the State of Pennsylvania, where, it seems, men are sold indulgences to sin, as well as in the Empire State; and then filled his pocket-bottle with real “Red-eye,” and the seller of the poison made two red cents clear profit again. While under its maddening influence, he went into a farmer’s house near by with whom he was totally unacquainted, and murdered a mother and five children;—all that comprised the little family, except the husband and father, who was from home. When he returned to his little interesting family what a sight met his eyes!—enough, it would seem, to curdle his blood, and change the man to stone. There lay the mother and her five little ones—from ten years of age down to infancy, stretched upon the floor—swimming in blood, and all dead! Oh! what desolation was there!
“No more for him the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care;
No children run to lisp their sire’s return,
And climb his knee, the envied kiss to share.”