Thursday, October 17, 1901
A large panther was seen near Dr. Cunningham’s place on Marlin Mountain recently. These creatures, so numerous years ago, have about disappeared from our county with the exception of a few isolated sections.
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Cattle and sheep are being shipped to market from Marlinton in large numbers. Seldom a day passes but that several cars of livestock are intermixed with the many box cars and heavily laden log cars. The amount of freight being handled by the Greenbrier Railway far reaches the most sanguine expectations and is a cause of wonderment.
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Wild hogs are appearing in considerable numbers in Marlin Mountain. Wellington Ratliff killed one last week which would have weighed 300 pounds had it been in good condition. His hounds bayed it, and before Mr. Ratliff could get a shot, it came near killing a dog, tearing a gash 8 inches long in the dog’s side. Its tusks were about 6 inches long. Very few wild hogs have been seen since the hard winter of 1890-91.
THE MEANING
An instructive paragraph is now on its rounds in the American press in effect:
In his farewell address, Washington said in reference to foreign relations, “friendship with all, but no entangling alliances.”
Lincoln at Gettysburg gave a great guiding truth in our relations one with another – “charity, justice and union.”
In his parting words at Buffalo the day before he was fatally wounded, William McKinley gave one great guiding truth on industrial and economic development: “The period of exclusiveness is past.”
Washington meant peace; Lincoln meant perpetuity; McKinley meant prosperity…
DOG-FISH
The United States Fish Commission has sent Paris D. Yeager a tank with a request that he procure some dogfish, or guano, or water dog, as this big lizard is sometimes known; to be put on exhibition in the tank room of the National Museum. Several specimens have been caught and there should be no trouble in getting any number. So far as we know this species of Saurian is found only in West Virginia waters, being especially indigenous to the larger streams and seldom seen in the headwaters, but when found there, it is of exceptional size, sometimes measuring 18 inches, the usual size being about 12 inches.
THE WAY OF THE WORLD
One of Marlinton’s most prominent citizens is a person of pronounced metaphysical and psychological proclivities. For several nights and some days recently passed away, he has been pondering one of the most perplexing enigmas he has ever tackled in this brief but busy observant life experience heretofore. His perplexity seems to be this: How comes it, or why is it, that an elegantly dressed, prepossessing, pompous, waxed mustached exotic from a city of “magnificent distances” can come to a mountain town, small in size, but big in its way and pretensions and smart as they make them, and said person be honored, toasted and caressed until he gets away with a thousand dollars or more and with a something else, more to be valued still, and never be looked after and be allowed to keep up his pompous, alluring ways elsewhere without a protest from anybody. All this, too, while a meek, quiet unobtrusive herald of the cross is molested in the midst of revival services in an almost obscure mountain community…
PREACHER ARRESTED
Several weeks ago, the Bank of Marlinton received a letter from White Sulphur Springs from “E. N. Moore,” enclosing a check made payable to W. G. Cochran for $45.00 with Henry Barlow’s name signed to it and endorsed by E. N. Moore and W. G. Cochran. So little skill had been used in imitating the signatures of the drawer and endorsers, all well-known citizens, that the bogusness of the check was well apparent.
A package of paper was done up to look like a bunch of bank notes and registered to White Sulphur and Mayor King issued a warrant which was placed in the hands of the Sheriff of Greenbrier County, who went to White Sulphur on the same train which carried the letter. The letter was not called for.
The handwriting was afterward identified to be that of Rev. Watson C. Sharp, a young Methodist minister, a native of this county, who has had charge of the Anthony’s Creek Circuit in Greenbrier County.
A warrant was issued for his arrest, and he is now in jail at Charleston, a United States prisoner charged with using the mails to defraud. …
“Rev. Sharp is about 33 years of age and has a wife and four little children. He has been the pastor of the churches at Alvon, Watts Chapel and other points in that section and has, it is said, always had the respect and confidence of the people.
“The shock both to his family and his parishioners is such that they can scarcely realize it.”
