Punches By Priest Break Four Ribs

1914

Thrashes Man Who Turned Family Out of House

Wilmington, Del., Jan. 19. — John Cavanaugh, who was given a severe beating when he attempted to attack Rev. John Lynch at his home on Lancaster pike, will not be able "to get around" for three or four weeks, according to his physician, Dr. J. Harvey Spruance. Rev. Mr. Lynch said Cavanaugh tried to use a knife.

The priest, who is assistant pastor of Thomas' Catholic church, after wrenching the knife from his assailant, proceeded to give him a whipping the like of which Cavanaugh had never experienced in his life before.

Among other injuries Cavanaugh received four fractured ribs and a wound over the left eye. He told his physician that he thought he had been struck by a trolley, so painful were his injuries.

The clerical exponent of muscular Christianity had hurried to Cavanaugh's home on learning that the man had driven his wife and four children out into the cold. The priest had no more than entered the house when the man, it is alleged, made a lunge at him with the knife.

Domestic Woe Caused By Phrase in Bible

March 1914

NEWARK, N. J. — Before Vice Chancellor Emery John P. Hammer, who is seeking a divorce from Anna Hammer, gave as the basic cause of his marital troubles his wife's too literal interpretation of the biblical injunction, "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and cleave unto his wife."

"We often had words on account of my mother," Hammer explained, and so I got in the way of going to see her without saying anything about it to my wife. She used to say that, according to the Bible, after a man married he had no business to see his father and mother or other relations, but should stay by his wife.

"When my stepfather died in December, 1910, I attended to the funeral arrangements, as my mother was too old to do it herself, being about 80, and when I got home my wife said to me, 'Did you have a good time?'

"Then I told her that while before I had been going to see my mother secretly, thereafter I would do so openly."

This declaration. Hammer testified, brought on a serious estrangement, and his wife finally, on March 24, 1911, left him, after a violent quarrel.

A Dovetailer of Sermons

1845

The Rev. Dr. B—— was what is commonly termed a popular preacher; not, however, by drawing on his own stores, but by the knack when he possessed of appropriating the thoughts and language of other great divines who had gone before him to his own use, and by a skillful splicing and dovetailing of passages, so as to make a whole. Fortunately for him, those who composed his audience were not deeply skilled in pulpit lore, and with such he passed for a wonder of erudition. It happened, however, that the doctor was detected in his literary larcenies. One Sunday, a grave old gentleman seated himself close to the pulpit, and listened with profound attention. The doctor had scarcely finished his third sentence, before the old gentleman said loud enough to be heard by those near him, "That's Sherlock." The doctor frowned, but went on. He had not proceeded much farther, when his grave auditor broke out with "That's Tillotson." The doctor bit his lips and paused, but again went on. At a third exclamation of, "That's Blair," the doctor lost all patience, and leaning over the side of the pulpit, cried, "Fellow, if you don't hold your tongue, you shall be turned out!" Without altering a muscle the old cynic, looking the doctor full in the face, says, "That's his own."


Geniuses Shouldn't Marry

A woman named Christian poisoned her husband, lately, at Wurtemburgh, for which she had her trial. The reasons for the act were, that he was always looking for the Philosopher's stone or inventing the perpetual motion. — St. Louis Reveille.

—Mineral Point Democrat, Mineral Point, Wisconsin, May 2, 1845, p. 1.

Wife Fasting 43 Days to Get Husband to Go To Church

1920

Fasting Wife Gets His Proxy Prayer

Danville, Ill., Jan. 10 — When his wife fasts and prays because Ernest Harrington will not join her church the husband today and yesterday prayed for her by proxy. The Rev. Henry Green, an itinerant negro preacher, knelt down with Harrington in his yard and uttered a prayer. On each occasion the preacher made a dollar "touch" for his services.

While the husband was praying for his wife outside, her friends of the Pentecostal Church of God, which she wants him to join, also prayed and sang inside. Mrs. Harrington began her hunger strike forty-three days ago, but her husband apparently is no nearer becoming a church member now than he was then.

"She is like the man who caught the bear by the tail," said Harrington today. "She can't let loose now. She has lost seventy-five pounds, but is still going strong, although I believe she is sorry she started the thing. As for me, I am still standing pat: I believe my life is my own to live as I see fit and I do not intend to have any person force me to do a thing I feel is wrong. She will soon give it up. I have lived with her for 19 years and I never knew her to complete anything she undertook yet."

The Harrington home is guarded to prevent newspaper correspondents and moving picture operators from seeing the fasting woman, who has shrunk from 210 to 135 pounds, it is said.

Hundreds of letters and telegrams urging both to hold out are received everyday. Religious fanatics implore the woman not to interrupt her fast, because the right must prevail, although one cynic wonders why if the Lord told her to begin her fast He doesn't tell her that it is time to quit, because it is of no use.

—Bedford Gazette, Bedford, Pennsylvania, January 9, 1920, page 2.