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Show I' A GREEK ERUPTION. H A Gift-Bearer Without Gifts Says H Something. Pi Greece is one of the many cradles pi I of poetry and art, the -rocking of PB! which has produced more or less f swaying throughout the terrestrial orb. Its history is interwoven with B. the classics, the beautiful and the M hcr,oic in real life having descended. PM J to modern times through song and P" story, along with much that was un- H real, fictitious, mythological, but all H: indicative of the grand, the cntcr- H prising and the beautiful in life. Wiho H that has not heard of Helen of Troy, H who raised the first syllable of her H name with a young sport named H Paris? And there was that in'csis- H tiblc young masher and later cxplor- Hl cr, Jason, who had the scandalous af- H ; fair with Medea that was in all H the papers of that day, and subse- H ' qucntly went on a prospecting expe- H I dition at the head of a lot of toughs H; calling themselves Argonauts he H ' was one of the choice spirits of that H, favored land. In more modern times H the maid of Athens (Greece) has H been a rjcgular enchantress, a sort of PJ Lorelei whose siren songs have lured PJ young Grccccrs to destruction. Lord PJ Byron got after her once, but had no PJ sooner got his muse properly tuned PJ up than he turned and fled, his lay H running H Maid of Athens, wc must part, H Because I heart the bulldog bark. PJ A' great place is Greece, ancient or H modern, in song or story, in the fry- PJ ing pan or elsewhere. PJ Well, wc have here in Zion a whole H lot of the offspring of that historic H land. Among them is an editor and PJ some others more fortunate. They PJ have a paper here named "Ergatis," H and it looks it. This paper captures PJ And materializes the divine afflatus H which escapes from the brain tissues H of the said opinion moulder. To H ' show that he and it are in no sense pi I behind the times, a recent issue has In & an article paying its respects to Reed Smoot. The recognition comes a little lit-tle tardy, but the tail of the procession proces-sion is counted better than no part of it at all, evidently. The Pclopon-ncsian Pclopon-ncsian emanation has taken exception apparently, to what Reed lately said about his (the Greek) countrymen sending all their spare earnings back to home and mother, a proceeding hardly as reprehensible as sonic others oth-ers which many of them arc known to engage in, and' he thereupon proceeds pro-ceeds to demolish the senator in the following style, handed down perhaps from the school of Hon. Marco Bo-zarris: Bo-zarris: "This is the same Smoot who is an apostle of the Mormon church one of the most gigantic grafting institutions institu-tions ever devised by the genius of man, and whose polygamous faith has probably done more by way of example for the pollution of American Ameri-can morals than any other single influence in-fluence and this same Smoot is a member of an idle priesthood, consisting con-sisting of an even dozen leeches called apostles, who receive a tithe from the product of the labor of the mem-bers mem-bers of that institution. No wbnder he complains at the falling off of labor lab-or on the part of the tithe-payers which is his real complaint. He professes pro-fesses alarm at the speculative tendencies ten-dencies of the Americans, but if wc arc correctly advised, he and his associates as-sociates during the past year have floated innumerable wildcat mining ventures in Utah and Nevada and have gathered in large sums fipm bunches of festive suckers who possessed pos-sessed a like speculative mania. It is well known that he is not a member of the working class and also that a portion of the great fortune he owns has been cinched out of the speculative specu-lative public." And then some, for this modern renaissance of the Odyssey endcth not here, but the rest, like the corresponding cor-responding portion of a cat's tail, is similar. How fortunate that that son of Greece (or something) permitted his wandering foot-steps to cease their westward march here in this dugout of the Rockies, where his talents amount veritably to the long-felt want no longer missed 1 True, others have sung fori a long time the same old song that he sings, but in less rhythmic rhy-thmic worfls and to the accompaniment accompani-ment of a less tuneful lyre. Who among us that have heard with mingled min-gled incredulity and ridicule of the awful land piracies of the Mormon church that can now afford to longer buck against the' irresistible? Wc, who have had our pockets rifled and our veny raiment spirited away by these modern Saracens of the Rockies might, (by reason of the smallncss of the plunder, probably) have remained in ignorance of our situation had not that bird with the patent medicine name, or whatever else "Ergatis" is, swooped down among us with a squawk of wisdom in its beak and a pinch of salt on its tail? A good-many people-who were here before the Greek invasion occurred) - and who arc presumed to have some little judgment of men and things hereabout, arc prone to look at it this way: While it is hot necessarily to an incomer's disadvantage that he is an alien to our shores, our customs and our tongue, so is it not necessarily to the ail-along resident's advantage. All arc given the benefit of the doubt and treated with as much consideration considera-tion as their deportment warrants, even though coming with no thought or purpose of adding one cent to the country's prosperity or one square foot to its cultivated area; nor does the contrary fact that their only purpose pur-pose is gain the getting of substance sub-stance and comfort here which is denied de-nied them at home interfere with, the national hospitality which meets them at the ship's landing and accompanies ac-companies them right along until they forfeit their right to it. But among their privileges is not the exclusively ex-clusively American one of butting in. No matter that here or elsewhere are conditions and circumstances which the home-made mischief purveyor and incurable scandal-monger continually magnify and pass around through the country, it is not the province of the sHckcl-secking alien to take a hand. Let him look on and enjoy the repulsive repul-sive skeleton dance which is kept going go-ing on here ad nauscum (these words ar;c not Greek, they are Latin) if they will; but their words of approval or disapproval one way or another arc not wanted and they had better keep their hands off' if they want to keep the same in working order. As for Reed Smoot well, after what he has passed through and survived sur-vived it is hardly worth while for even as noisome an insect as the Macedonian Macedon-ian tumblebug to toss its peculiar product pro-duct in his direction. What matters it if he does get the best of others on mining deals and other such means of legalized plundering? There is a sovereign remedy Don't deal with him. ESSAY CAIGII. |