SABBATH BREAKING

 

CSX freight train on NYS&W R.R. at Onatavia, N.Y.

The Cortland News, Friday, November 24, 1882.

CORTLAND AND VICINITY.

   Thanksgiving next Thursday.

   Rev. H. W. Hand, the new pastor of the Universalist church, was in the army four years, during the latter portion of the time as captain in a regiment of colored troops, of whose bravery he speaks in warm terms.

   It seems to us that what this village needs for protection is a police force, and our citizens should move in this matter at once. Mr. Bauder [proprietor of Cortland House, lost $4,000 to burglars—CC editor] lost enough to pay the yearly salaries of four or more policemen. We shall have more to say upon this subject.

   Steps have been taken here for the formation of a new wagon company. The capital stock is $10,000, limited, and the stockholders are H. M. Whitney, Coleman Hitchcock, G. W. Phillips, A. W. Hobert, Edmund Stevens, Newell Jones, J. H. Holdridge and Amos Hobert. The shops formerly used by Smith, Hobert & Jones in the manutacture of busses have been secured and operations are to begin as soon as possible.—Homer Rep.

   One good result to flow from a Democratic [state] legislature : A superintendent of public instruction in place of Neil Gilmour. It is hardly in the range of possibilities that a man so utterly unfit for the place will be picked up. And with a new superintendent will come a new deputy, which is another thing that can be borne without tears.—Utica Herald. As the Standard has of late exhibited a fondness for quoting from the Utica Herald, we suggest that it copy the above item.

   About 6 P. M. Monday a team standing near W. B. Stoppard's on Main street took a notion to walk off and then to run off. They dashed across the road to C. F. Thompson's, and then turning took a bee-line for the doors of Tanner Brothers', where an iron post against which they ran and broke threw them down, where they lay kicking until secured. The off-horse broke the glass in the basement of the store and cut several gashes in his legs and a vein in his neck (the latter being near the jugular vein and carotid artery), from which he bled profusely. The team belongs to Mr. D. Topping, who resides a short distance west of the village.

   The Second National Bank will take possession of its rooms about the first of December.

   Miss Hattie Smith, one of the earliest graduates of the Normal, and a teacher of drawing in the Kingston, N. Y„ schools, is visiting our school this week and will exhibit specimens of drawing in the library this afternoon and explain to the A and B classes her system.

   H. D. Waters, Esq., the new clerk of the Board of Supervisors, is an intelligent business man, courteous and obliging. Formerly a justice of the peace and a member of the Board, he brings to the duties of his present office a full knowledge of its requirements, which will enable him to aid largely in the dispatch of business. He follows one of the most gentlemanly, efficient clerks the Board has ever known. Mr. R. W. Bourne as such officer has no superior.

   Alvin Getman became very drunk at Preble on Friday night, and on his way home fell in the roadway after putting a lighted pipe in his pocket. His clothing took fire and was wholly consumed. His body was terribly burned, but he was able to crawl to the house of a neighbor, where he presented himself in a most pitiable condition. Getman's death will probably soon follow his injuries.—Syr. Standard. The unfortunate man died on the evening following.

   Tuesday night the stores of G. W. Bradford and R. A. Randall & Co. were entered through the rear windows by burglars, and from the former about a dollar in small change and a few packages of cigars, and from the latter perhaps a couple of dollars in change, a quantity of cigars, and an old overcoat, were taken. To neither store was there any fastening, aside from a catch at the top of the lower sash, and this was unclasped through a hole broken in the pane of glass. Under these repeated visitations, citizens will learn to be careful.

   The Tuesday evening passenger train [S. B. & N. Y. R. R.] from Syracuse, due here at 8:45, was thrown from the track about a mile south of Onatavia by a misplaced switch. The engine was turned bottom upward, the tender upon its side, and the express and baggage car precipitated down the embankment a short distance. A telegraph pole was struck and cut off some distance from the ground so that a few feet of the top hung suspended by the wires. The engineer and fireman were thrown out of the cab, the former receiving cuts and bruises but no serious injuries, while the latter escaped comparatively unhurt. The train was running about twenty miles an hour. It is believed that a coal train going north just previous, which backed up for water, left the switch turned, as it was locked. Mr. and Mrs. Annable, Mrs. Carmichael, Mrs. H. P. Dunbar and mother with two children, Judge Smith, Mr. H. Pudney, Mr. E. Brewer, and [S. Williams?], of this place, were on board but received no injury. They conceive themselves fortunate. The passengers did not reach Cortland until after 11 o'clock that night.

   The album which held the photographs of the M. E. Church official board, and which was presented to Rev. Mr. Horr a few evenings previous to his departure from Cortland, was not the one intended for the purpose for which it was used. This had been ordered but could not be produced in time. It has now arrived and will soon be forwarded to Mr. Horr. It is about twelve inches square, has a nickel clasp and a sealskin cushion cover, is strongly bound with flexible back, and will hold only the portraits of the twenty-five members constituting the Board and a picture of the church edifice. On the outside is skillfully lettered, "Official Board, M. E. Church, Cortland, N. Y.," and on the title page besides the foregoing, the following is printed in gold: "Presented to their Pastor, Rev. E. Horr, October, 1882." The portraits are cabinet size, and are of the following gentlemen: Rev. Andrew Peck, Rev. B. F. Weatherwax, Prosper Palmer, Artemas Reed, Nathan Smith, R. Bruce Smith, Reuben Rood, Ira Hatfield, Frederick Conable, George Conable, Isaac Edgcomb, Martin Edgcomb, Charles E. Sanders, Horace A. Jarvis, Lewis S. Hayes, T. B. Stowell, C. B. Hitchcock, J. W. Hinman, Abram T. Tanner, A. Leroy Cole, W. H. Myers, D. W. Bierce, Geo. W. Edgcomb, H. M. Kellogg, B. Hinman. All of the portraits are excellent and some of them superior, and are the work of our townsman, Mr. C. I. Page, who has good reason to feel proud, for to his taste and skill is owing the fact that the intentions of the donors have been so fully carried out.

TRANSIT OF VENUS.

   A sight of rare occurrence will soon be exhibited. On the sixth of December, prox., at 8:35 A. M., a mote will be seen upon the sun, which will appear like a potato bug slowly crawling across its surface. By aid of a smoked glass it can plainly be seen. You had better see it, as the opportunity will not recur during the lives of yourselves or of your children.

   Flamsteed, who died in 1719, observed the phenomenon in his day, and, from data observed, deduced the distance of the sun. But the instruments with which he wrought were so impeded that an error of several millions of miles, which his instruments could not detect, may have occurred.

   The black drop annoyed him.

   The black drop is a thing that prevents sight where nicety of perception is required. If you make two of your fingers approach each other, your sight will not inform you when they meet. When very near each other, something black starts out from both, so that conjunction appears, while it has not in fact taken place. This black drop vitiated Flamsteed's observation. He had to guess at the duration of it. It there was an error of half a second in his guess, an error of more than two millions of miles would be consequent in his mathematical result.

   Photography sets the black drop at defiance. Astronomers with the photograph, the telegraph and every instrument improved are abroad in Patagonia, New Zealand and Melbourne. When they shall have finished the pending observation, we shall know with more exactness the stellar distances.

   Get ready your smoked glass.

H. L.

A FALSE ALARM.

   The Standard suggests that we have been reading it out of the party. This is a mistake, for the Standard, under its present editorial management, has not yet been in the Republican party. It has simply been the mouth-piece of a Ring of which its editor, W. H. Clark, is the Boss. The Boss and his subalterns, Waters and Wright, and others, have annually procured themselves to be substituted into Republican conventions, and have there attempted to boss the party. Failing in this, they annually turned themselves over to the Democrats, and helped elect more or less of the Democratic ticket.

   They are mere political street-walkers, crying their virtue, or rather the want of it, upon the streets, offering to boss the household of any party that will take them in and give them "spoils."
   They have no idea that principles are represented by parties—their only conception of a party is as a machine which somebody is to run, and they want to run it. The fact that they cannot is ground enough for them to go against the party.
   Such men are always noisy and hypocritical and while the Standard is never engaged in publishing praises of Republicans over Democratic and Temperance parties to which it contributed…[bottom of news page is ink-smeared and illegible—CC editor] and Binghamton papers, to inform their readers that the election of Democratic candidates over the good men on the Republican ticket is the cause of such a jubilee as to stop business.
   The Standard was more abusive of President Hayes' Administration and the civil-service reforms then inaugurated than any other Democratic paper in this section. Its support of President Garfield was of a kind with other Democratic papers. Three years ago it found fault with the nomination of Mr. Cornell for Governor, as it has this year with Judge Folger’s; and as to county matters it has been anything but Republican.
   No, it is unnecessary to read it out of the party, but we shall republish some of its editorials of the last six years on National and State politics, so we may not hear it appealing for "civil-service reform," and "in the name of Hayes and Garfield " any more.
   The Democrat man [B. B. Jones, editor of Cortland Democrat] has been looking up the state of the county, and has discovered that the Supervisors' Committee, appointed by Chairman Carley, before which printers' bills will go, is not satisfactory to him. The probabilities are that the plethoric bills of the Standard and Democrat, as well as others, will be scrutinized—which would do them no harm if honest. Therefore, in the interest of "civil-service reform " and economy, the twins raise their usual cry that "Judge Smith has done it." However, Judge Smith is not entitled to any credit in this matter, for he left town last week Monday and did not return until Wednesday. Mr. Carley had been elected Chairman, and had appointed his committees in the meantime, and to him alone is the credit to be given. Next!
   The Standard blows its own bugle to notify the people how honorable (?) it is. The Boss says in his last week's issue that he would have had Bushby elected Clerk of the Board of Supervisors, only for the fact that he was ineligible under the law. Before election the objection of the Standard Ring to Bushby was that he already held the office of County Treasurer, which he still holds. He was eligible to the office for which he was then a candidate, but the Standard Ring defeated him and elected in his stead a man who already held two offices. Magnanimous consistency!

THE CAT.

   There is a cheap picture extant of a cat sitting upright with a satisfied air and under it are printed the words, "Ha, ha! ha!! I've eaten the canary!" Clark, of the Standard, is nothing if not a plagiarist. Let him remember that the cat paid for the canary with its own life. History repeats itself. Let the people get a chance at this Clark as they did in Wayne county and see who will laugh then. [William Clark was elected to the Assembly in Wayne County. He was not reelected for a second term--CC editor.]

THE PENAL CODE AND SUNDAY.

   The new penal code goes into effect on the 1st of December, and some of its provisions are so stringent that it is likely to give the Legislature plenty of work for the next year or two in repealing its obnoxious provisions. It was very much discussed last winter, but was finally adopted without any one really seeming to know how far-reaching were its provisions. Even the great body of the legal fraternity have only very indistinct knowledge as to its provisions. The provisions in regard to Sunday observances will work a great revolution it enforced, especially in the matter of the sale of intoxicating drinks.

   The Albany Times points out some of the features of these Sunday provisions not generally known to the public. Section 259, title 10, chapter 1 of the Code sets forth: That the first day of the week being by general consent set apart for a day of rest and religious uses, the law prohibits the doing on that day of certain acts which are serious interruptions of the repose and religious liberty of the community, and that the violation of such prohibition is Sabbath breaking, and such day includes all the time from midnight to midnight.

   The following acts are prohibited and forbidden to be done on the first day of the week: "All trades, manufactures and mechanical employments; all manner of public selling, or offering or exposing for sale publicly of any commodities, except that meats, milk and fish may be sold before 9 o'clock A. M., and that food may be sold to be eaten upon the premises where sold, and drugs, medicines and surgical appliances may be sold at any time in the day."

   If enforced this will stop the sale of milk, fish, meats, and close the barber shops, newsrooms, cigar stores, groceries, and of course saloons and liquor stores after that time. It would prevent all work on Monday morning papers before midnight, and of Sunday morning papers after midnight Saturday night. It would stop work at all our rolling mills, steel works and foundries for the same time. It will prevent the running of horse cars on Sundays, and in fact all other cars, as well as steamboats on that day. It would doubtless prevent livery stables from letting horses. It would absolutely stop all railroad work on Sundays, and would thus prevent the transmission of the mails on that day, and that would be a most serious blow at the business and convenience no less than comfort of the entire community.

   The law in its scope would set back the people of this State more than 100 years. It is the re-enactment of some of the worst features of the old Puritan blue laws, which punished a man tor kissing his wife on a Sunday, enacted that beer barrels should be whipped for working, and mulcted the young men and maidens who "sparked " each other on Sunday nights. The punishment for violation of the Sabbath under the new code is not very heavy—but the violation itself is a misdemeanor punishable by fine for each offence of from $1 to $10, or by imprisonment in a county jail for not more than five days, or by both fine and imprisonment.

   But section 27 opens the way to more serious trouble. It provides that in addition to the penalty imposed, all commodities exposed tor sale on the first day of the week in violation of the provisions of this chapter shall be forfeited upon conviction of the offender by a justice of the peace of a county, or a mayor, recorder or alderman of a city, such officer shall issue a warrant for the seizure of the forfeited articles, which, when seized, shall be sold on one day's notice, and the proceeds paid to the overseer of the poor, for the use of the poor of the town or city. It is found that upon this provision the entire stock of every cigar store, news room, grocery, store, saloon, or any other place opened after the first of December, on Sunday, for the sale of articles, not excepted, as above stated, will be liable to confiscation.

   The Albany Times remarks that it seems hardly credible that any legislature in the present day and generation would pass such an act, but an examination of the statute will demonstrate the fact. Yes, but it is safe to say that no such stringent law can lie enforced, and that it will not remain long on the statute books after the legislature meets.

 

References:

Syracuse, Binghamton and New York Railroad: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syracuse_and_Binghamton_Railroad
Transit of Venus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_Venus