Prizefighting--even with pillows, for points--is bad enough, no doubt; but there are worse things. Making the Texas people pay for an abortive little second-term gubernatorial boom is one of them, and canting hypocrisy by sensation-seeking preachers is another. Can the church and state find no grander work than camping on the trail of a couple of pugilists? Are Gentleman Jim and Kangaroo Bob the upper and nether millstones between which humanity is being ground? Are these the only obstacles to the inauguration of the Golden Age--that era of Peace on Earth and Good Will to Men? The world is honey- combed with crime. Brother Seasholes says there are 800 fallen women in this city alone--and I presume he knows. But if there be half so many, what a terrible story of human degradation--more appalling even than soft-glove pugilism! Our streets swarm with able-bodied beggars-- young men, most of them, whom want may drive into wickedness. Human life is cheap. Men are slain in this alleged Christian land for less silver than led Judas to betray Christ. Young girls are sold to shame, and from squalid attics comes the cry of starving babes. The Goths and Visigoths are once more gathering, imperiling civilization itself, and belief in God is fading slowly but surely from the earth. Want and wretchedness skulk in the shadows of our temples, ignorance and crime stalk abroad at high noon--the legions of Lucifer are overrunning the land, transforming God's beautiful world into a veritable Gehenna. The Field of Blood is filling, the prisons and poorhouses are overflowing--crowded with wretched creatures who dared dream of fame and fortune. The great Sea of Life is thick-strewn with wrecks--millions more drifting helpless and hopeless upon the rocks. From out the darkness there come cries for aid; men pleading for employment, women shrieking in agony of soul, little children wailing with hunger and cold. And the winds wax ever stronger, the waves run higher and higher, the wreck and wraith grow ever more pitiful, more appalling. And church and state pause in this made vortex of chaos to prate of the ills of pugilism; to legislate and perorate anent bloodless boxing bouts; to prosecute a brace of harmless pugs. The people ask bread of the church and it gives them a stone; they ask of the state protection of their lives and liberties, and it gives them a special session of the legislature--shoots doodle-bugs with a Gatling gun --and sends them the bill! . . .