“Wickedness in High Places.”
By R. M. Kilgore
THE following significant item in going the rounds, appeared in one of the papers of this city on the same day that the “Fall of Babylon” was to be presented, and served well to illustrate that stubborn fact:— “POLITICAL PRAYING.—From the Keokuk Constitution: As the disgraceful scene which occurred at the late radical State Convention at Des Moines, at which a Methodist minister named Wilson, opened the ball with a political prayer, is the subject of much comment by the press, we republish the following account of the affair given by the reporter for the State Press, the correctness of which, we believe, is not denied. The political preacher said: “‘O God, send us a radical majority of 40,000 in Iowa,’ when an earnest delegate shouted out, ‘Yes, Lord, double it;’ whereupon Wilson repeated, ‘Yea, Lord, let it be 80,000,’ upon which the convention broke out with applause and cheers, a pious old radical office-holder remarking, ‘Now let the democrats try their God a whack.’ At the end of the prayer there were prolonged and tumultuous cheering and laughter. “The Gate City, in referring to the blasphemous proceeding, approved of Wilson’s conduct, but thought the cheering ought to have been omitted. To our mind, that’s a strange kind of logic. It’s like condemning sin and praising the devil.”