Month: April 2015

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And Here’s Your Diploma

Rev Mike

“Before the graduates of St. Joseph’s Training School for Nurses last evening, the Rev. Michael Clune declared emphatically that divorce and re-marriage is consecutive polygamy. The courts, he said, can separate the physical bodies of man and woman, but marriage is a sanctuary where courts cannot invade. Real marriage cannot be annulled any more than can the law of gravitation.

“Father Clune in his remarks congratulated the graduates. He said that they were to heal not only the diseases of the body but the fevers of the mind. They might appear humble in the glare of the footlights or in the divorce courts but in the sickroom they are ministering angels. Continuing, he said:

‘Divorce courts and Coroner’s juries are busy because people have not learned self-denial. Our brethren from the Episcopalians and the Unitarians are denouncing divorce. They do wisely. Either divorces or civilization must cease. They are incompatible. Our civilization is founded on the family. If family life perishes, our civilization perishes with it.

‘I do not believe that there is a religion in the world outside of Christianity and the Jewish, from which it sprang, that condemns polygamy. I know that the Buddhist does not, that the Mohammedan does not. They see no evil in polygamy. To admire them for their service to humanity would be like admiring our hospital physicians for wearing white linen to prevent infection while they let their patients drink water poisoned by cesspools.’

— “Protests Against All Re-Marriage,” The Syracuse Journal, November 25, 1904

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Why the Mail Was Late

Mail McEvoy

George Nesbit McEvoy was an artist from Brooklyn, N.Y., who wanted to paint marine views and southwestern subjects, and so for the sake of research he sailed to Galveston and trekked into the interior of Texas where he worked as a cowboy. However, ill health forced him to return to Galveston, on foot, and the rough life of a seaport prompted him to stow away on a schooner. Once at sea, he decorated the walls of the captain’s cabin with sketches to pay for his passage, and was put ashore at Pensacola. Next he crewed on the brig “Shannon,” carrying a cargo of sugar from Cuba, and landed in Philadelphia in 1882 with just enough money to get back to Brooklyn. A wanderer no more, he applied himself to his art, selling paintings to collectors and illustrations to newspapers, and by 1893 was an established artist with a family, horses and dogs, living in a home “surrounded by grounds of considerable extent, studded with noble trees and handsome shrubs.”

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With thanks to The Eagle and Brooklyn (1893)