Don’t you think the Texas law should be applied, which is that the guilty party is taken out and given a good thrashing the first time and for the second offence double the dose?
W. D. Wattles, Winchester, Ind.
Permit me to express my appreciation of the February number of Watson’s. It is the best Magazine I have seen, and I have seen most of the good ones. I like your practice of publishing short, pointed articles, and your cartoons are of the best. Your educational and news summary departments seem to me to be especially valuable. I shall take it into my pulpit Sunday evening, and read from your editorial.
D. C. Pryor, Uvalde, Tex.
When I was a boy I saw a carpenter place side by side three pieces of lumber which he was pleased to call “dimension timber.” These pieces were something like forty feet long and were two inches wide and eight inches deep. He took iron spikes and nailed the three pieces together until they looked to be all in one piece. He told me it was “a girder” for the “warehouse” he was constructing. I wanted to know why he did not use a solid piece of timber of the same measure. He answered by saying that the three pieces united together with the stronger part of the one fitting opposite the weaker part of the others would give the girder a greater strength in the power of resisting the immense weight that would have to be borne than if the girder had been made of just one piece of lumber.
In connection with the foregoing incident I wish to draw a pen picture of a scene which is passing before my vision: At Washington, within the shadow of the Capitol, standing side by side facing the west upon the steps of that magnificent structure, are three of the greatest men of renown the world has ever known. In the centre of the group stands the “Immortal Lincoln,” to the right of Mr. Lincoln stands the “Irreproachable Jefferson,” and to the left stands the “Irrepressible Watson”—whose mind is the very incarnation of Jeffersonian principles. Above this scene on either side, hanging toward the centre at half mast, are our national colors, beneath which is a life size portrait of “The Father of Our Country.” Above the portrait in raised letters I read “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”
Now I wish to impress upon those who may care to read this article and who are tired of living under the present system of “graft and greed,” and to those of us who have always believed in party lines and are more or less prejudiced in favor of our political tendencies, that there can be no reformation ever made in either of the old parties that exist at the present time. I therefore believe we should endeavor to secure the very best “dimension timber” that can be had out of the now scattered ranks of the Republican, Democratic and Populist parties, and with the nails of iron and bands of steel bring them together and make of them a girder for our country that the gods of ancient Greece could not knock asunder! And why not at an early date advertise this new party and organize party clubs throughout the land and let the watchword be “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”?
I would suggest that we name this “new party” Demo-Re-Polican or so word the name that each member from an old party may not feel that he had lost all of his former identity. I have not the least hope of electing as the chief magistrate of the nation a Southern man for years to come, and it is useless to put one at the head of the ticket to be slaughtered just to make a Roman holiday. But Mr. Watson can be our leader, and when we win “There will be glory enough for us all.”