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Show , MORE OF THE "MARTYRS." The Newt approvingly quotes from the Omaha Herald a mess of bosh in which the recently convicted polygamist Abram H. Cannon is held up to the world as a martyr mar-tyr for his religion's sake. The fact that Cannon himself went upon the witness stand and admitted that he was guilty of the crime as charged, is construed by the Omaha paper as incontrovertible proof that the man "believed in the intensest sincerity of heart and soul in the doctrines doc-trines of his faith," and that therefore he could and did "give the answer that was to convict him sturdily and with the fervor of conscious martyrdom." The Omaha Herald does not know what it is talking about. The facts in the case are that a number of months j ago Abram H. Cannon was indicted for j the crime of unlawful cohabitation. The moment this fact leaked out, Cannon's martyr spirit rose within him to such a degree that he sought to baffle the court officers in their attempt to successfully success-fully prosecute his case, by sending important im-portant witnesses into hiding. Time and time again one witness was sought for, and at last, after months of vigilant searching, by a piece qi strategy the officers managed to catch the Cannon family napping and secured the witness whose testimony was needed to convict. Finding that the jig was up, that the witness wit-ness he had hidden away had been ferreted fer-reted out," and knowing that her testimony testi-mony . alone would be sufficient to send kirn up, Cannon suddenly concluded to work the "martyr" dodge by going upon the stand and acknowleding his guilt. It was a cheap way to gain notoriety and "martyrdom," and he worked the act for all it was worth. And this is the kind of material out of which the Omaha Herald manufactures "martyrs for Christ's sake!" Utah has a plentiful supply of such creatures who are waiting their turn, and whenever they, like this man Cannon, are compelled com-pelled to make a virtue of necessity by going upon the witness stand and ac knowledging their guilt which they will do only after every possible avenue of escape has been closed to them they will, like him, boldly flaunt their illicit relationship in the face of the court and emerge from the ordeal as full-blown "martyrs." This "martyr" business is enough to give the great body politic Buch a cramp in the stomach that only a purging out of the entire system will cure it. j |