MOBBING AN EDITOR.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3782, 29 August 1883, Page 4

MOBBING AN EDITOR.

James A. Davidson is one of the old-time lecturers on temperance, and labored in California a year or two about 1800. He is now editor and proprietor of the Geauga Leader, in Burton, Ohio. His friends Avill be surprised to hear that, owing to somo old ngrudge against him on account of his ter-

perance record, his house ivas forcibly entered by a mob of excited citizens, even ministers-, doctors, and a Judge among them, on April 27, Avhich happened to be —owing to no fault of his—the fifty-ninth anniversary of his birthday, or tho anniversary of his" fifty-ninth birthday, as the Dublin people say it. They subjected him to a course of treatment never before experienced by an editor. One of bis assailants

got in ou him Aiith bis right and made a hard hit with a purse of gold. Another put in a left-hander that smote him all over with a bran new suit of clothes, said to bo from top to bottom, which must of course have included hat and boots. This blow was cruelly accompanied with an invidious and uncomplimentary comparison of thoso clothes with tho suit ho wore when he made his- first appearance in the country fifty-nine years ago. Others assailed him with similar missives and weapons. Then they harangued him in a long speech they raked up all the grievenccs in his past life which had led to the present visitation, reminding him that he had been spreading his turbulent doctrines over various States of the Union and in the British provinces; how ho had been in California too and there persuaded a sweet, trusting, innocent girl to abandon her loving parents and her home, and marry him and move off to Ohio. Then they put him on the Avitness-stand and made him own up to various of his antecedents. Not satisfied yet Avith all thoy had done to their victim they held possession of the premises all day and evening, played on the family piano, sang the family songs, aud tried to eat up all the family provisions like a swarm of locusts.

If editors are going to be lawlessly assaulted and punished for such a triiial offence as having a fifty-ninth birthday, it is going to be a dangerous profession. Lots of sympathy ivill bo extended to Bro. Davidsou in his sufferings.