After much vaporing, sundry threatenings and something akin to thunderings, Rev. Mr. Gill, a former student of, and associate pastor with our leader, the Rev. Mary B. G. Eddy, has discharged against us and her his wrathful bolt. From afar it comes hurtling. The warrior comes not to close conflict; he draws back (some one thousand miles, to Chicago), doubtless to add to the momentum of the riving shaft. Can we imagine our antagonist, as we might the fabled Jove, when angry, raising his majestic form, drawing back his mighty arm, and loosing, with terrific crash, the dreadful blow? The pitiful weapon lying spent before us, its intended mark untouched, forbids. It resembles more the poisoned barb of a Pi-Ute, or the javelin of a native Australian. Perhaps, were it not for the venom, it might be likened to a clumsily thrown boomerang, and be deemed likely to injure the slinger without harming the object at which it is aimed. With reluctance we waste time and space upon so trivial an attack.
That it was uncalled-for and unprovoked goes without saying, among our readers who know those concerned. That its venom consists of mere sensational inuendo is apparent to any impartial, even though casual, reader; that it is false in many of its most vital statements we can, and will show; that it really is commendatory to its object, when it intends to be severe and to condemn, is demonstrable. It is libellous in structure and intent; but to properly deal with this part of it is not for these pages, and weighing the makers of the libel and their responsibility, and their ultimate aims, it is matter to be considered whether we shall do that which is likely to further those aims, by affording them opportunity for substantial gains, though they have grovelled in the dirt to provoke that chance. The punning, alliterative title of the libel points out the dwarfed mental character of its makers. The contemptible insinuations of the heading show the vile spirit; and the utter absence of any foundation for them, either in fact or in the article itself, shows the reckless greed for notoriety, sensational self-advertisement, and newspaper gain, of its writer.
The ex-Baptist, ex-Methodist, would-be Unitarian, and Philosophical "Scaler of the Olympian Summit, only discovered a Secret Tunnel to Tartarus." As you seek, so you will find. He was the only one to discover it; and the only one to use it, if he did discover; and the fumes left by his departure (via the discovered route!) would indicate that he had been a frequent solitary user of it after the discovery, and intended now to make a "corner" on it.
