The Sun

Mr. Frothingham's Misfortunes.

The Rev. OCTAVIUS B. FROTHINGHAM is a man sincerely to be pitied. He is a preacher and a public speaker, but somehow every little while he has the bad luck to be egregiously misreported by the press. His latest misfortune of this kind was on occasion of the recent Harvard Club dinner. He made some remarks at that dinner which he intended to be highly humane and compassionate toward the Indians, but which one of the editors of the College Review, who was present, took in a directly opposite sense, and commented on in his paper accordingly.

This drew from Mr. FROTHINGHAM a note to the following purport:

"That the speech was utterly misconceived and misrepresented I count as of small importance. That, I have learned, is a mere matter of course, and am entirely resigned to it. Even so ridiculous a misrepresentation as yours only provoked a smile. What grieves me is that a magazine that claims to speak in the interest of culture should echo the vile aspersions of the lowest representatives of the daily press."

In reply to this communication the editor reiterated that he certainly did understand Mr. FROTHINGHAM to make the remarks which were attributed to him, and listened to them with pain; that several other gentlemen who were present construed his remarks in the same way; but that, desiring never to do intentional injustice to any one, he cheerfully offered him the use of his columns, in which either to correct or vindicate his remarks. This elicited another and longer epistle, in which, in addition to setting himself right on the Indian question, Mr. FROTHINGHAM refers to certain allusions in the Review to his connection with the RICHARDSON-McFARLAND marriage, after this manner:

"At any rate, to my faults of logic, great or small, the brief and casual reference to history was all that had the slightest bearing on the Indians, either as fellow-students or fellow-men. The et cetera that followed may have been 'ad nauseam,' but they had not the remotest connection with the aborigines.

"As little, I should imagine, had my other 'peculiar views' on 'certain social topics to which you mysteriously allude. You probably feel quite competent to state precisely what these views are. Editorial omniscience has revealed a good many secrets respecting them of late. But on my own part, I am not conscious of entertaining, on any social topics, views that deserve to be called 'peculiar' in an evil sense. For purposes of their own, which they best understand, enemies tried to fasten on me obnoxious opinions. You must pardon me if I express amazement at seeing the same thing countenanced by a journal like yours."

It will be observed that Mr. FROTHINGHAM here again complains of the press for misrepresenting him, but mentions no paper by name. It is evident, however, that he had the New York Tribune in his mind. It was the Tribune which first published his celebrated prayer in which he thanked the Almighty for what two adulterers had been to each other, and what they might be yet; and it was the Tribune which published a report of his no less celebrated sermon on elective affinities, which gave everybody who read it the impression that Mr. FROTHINGHAM favored the doctrines of Free Love, not in their coarsest, but still in a very dangerous form. This was the construction put upon the sermon by Mr. FROTHINGHAM's co-religionists of the Liberal Christian; and when he wrote to them that the Tribune had misreported him, the Tribune indignantly denied the aspersion upon its accuracy, and insisted that it had printed exactly what he said.

Certainly Mr. FROTHINGHAM has been very unfortunate in his experience; but his conclusion that the press has any animosity against him is altogether illogical. It would be far more reasonable in him to conclude that it is the uncertainty and incoherency of his opinions, and his own imperfect method of expressing himself, which cause him to be misunderstood. The press has no interest in telling anything but the truth, and, we may add, rarely fails of doing so.