The Wichita Daily Eagle

That Prude Comstock

Right wofully is the country pained to hear that that white-washed, alabaster angel of crystalline prudery, Anthony Comstock, has got his feet in the mud and is floundering around in scandal like a cross-eyed porcupine in a platter of thin sirup.

For years Anthony Comstock has been prowling around picking up opportunities to have his moral sense shocked. He has walked miles to see a naked statue in order that the hot flush of righteous indignation might mantle in his cheeks. He has snooped into the book-stalls and waded through thousands of volumes that he might meet a girl with a paucity of clothes on, and throw his hands up to his eyes and utter a piercing shriek and have the book-seller arrested.

At first Anthony Comstock was rather entertaining because he was something of a novelty. It was a diversion to know that New York at least had one citizen who could be made to blush. So when Anthony paraded around through the art galleries of Gotham with a flush on his cheeks that singed the circumambient air and scorched the mean temperature the country thought it was funny and laughed.

But Anthony did not wish to be regarded as a joke. He was not satisfied with merely inflaming his features with indignant blood. He called at several of the galleries and entered upon a campaign of destruction. Many a Venus de Milo was grabbed by the hind leg and smashed around a street lamp post. Many an airy Mercury was seized by the hair or the fig leaf and jumped upon.

Then the country voted Comstock a variegated, double-geared crank. But Anthony went right along flaunting his sense of decency in the eyes of the public. It made no difference whether a work was classic or not. If it offended the eyes of Anthony Comstock it had to go. Centuries of accomplished men and women might have voted a statue wonderful in conception, brilliant in execution, but when Anthony Comstock in the nineteenth century hove in sight with his hair-trigger blushing apparatus in good working order, Art, and Love of Nature, and Good Sense had to take a back-seat in order that Anthony might come forward and be shocked.

Now Anthony is in trouble. The Lexow committee is after him and a green goods man has appeared before the investigating body and confessed he bribed Anthony to the extent of $1,000. Anthony denies this of course. But the country will believe it.

It is all right for a man to be good, but when he goes around with a pitch-fork and coerces everybody into an acknowledgement that he is good, he will get little public sympathy when he is got caught in the toils and shown to be a fraud.