The Vermont Watchman

A GEORGIA CRACKER

To say simply that Rev. Sam W. Small spoke in the Armory Hall on Friday evening to a large assemblage hardly covers the matter. Mr. Small spoke, and every time he spoke he insulted the State of Vermont and the people of Montpelier.

Such a virulent, vicious, vehement vocabulary of vituperation never before drifted into the capital. Having listened to the Rev. Mr. Small for nearly two hours one does not ask why negroes fear their white brethren in Georgia. A man who would, in the presence of ladies, use such indecent, insinuatingly vulgar terms in his language would surely not stop when it comes to lynching a negro.

This "thing" that floated into town along with a corn salve vender who was hawking his wares on Haymarket Square, while his fellow and less reputable traveller was putting up bids for Clement in the adjoining armory, told his hearers that he was editor of the Atlanta Constitution. Shades of the late lamented and brilliant Grady! God pity the readers of the Constitution - if, indeed, the Rev. Sam Small were telling the truth. But Mr. Small was exaggerating himself. Mr. Clark Howell is editor of Georgia's leading newspaper, and he's a man of another stripe. Small plays about the same part on the Constitution that he does on the string of "dead ones" that Mr. Clement has hired to talk at different points in the State in this canvass. He is billed as a monstrosity in Vermont. Down in Georgia he is undoubtedly used as a capper for the religious department of the Constitution.

When Mr. Small uses the names of unmentionable crimes while addressing an audience of Vermont, in which there were many ladies, he belittles even the name of Small, unfit to mention the clerical profession and the State of Georgia. As a public purveyor of the cheapest kinds of indecent and vulgar reference, Sam Small is it.

Clergymen, who listen to the savage, uncouth mutterings of this paid understudy of Percival W. Clement, shudder to think that their profession is cursed by such a degenerate specimen of a dismantled, shopworn Georgia aristocracy. Mr. Small made some charming satirical references to the Daily Journal and to prominent citizens of the city who are leading Republicans. To think that any Vermont audience, even though befogged with the Clement fad, should allow itself to sit 120 minutes, two whole hours, and listen to this cheap spasm from down south, trying to add a few spectacular features to the dying boom of the cheapest politician that ever bobbed up in Vermont! It passeth all understanding.

Rev. Sam Small of Georgia, must feel a bit depressed when he appears before Vermont audiences as a substitute for a negro quartette. It is probably Mr. Small's first offence at playing second fiddle to the colored race - a race that enjoys referring to such men as Mr. Small as "poor white trash."

We have not listened to Mr. Small for some years, but the recent trip of the Poincianna quartette of Jacksonville, Fla., through Vermont showed the members to be gentlemen in every sense of the word. An analysis of Mr. Small will be made on Friday evening when he will speak in this city.