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Friday, March 4, 2016

Such bad deeds ....



Takes Cash Subscriptions for a Book Not Yet Written.

“Rev.” S. D. Rogers, who was in Chanute last week soliciting subscriptions to a religious book, which he clams he is writing, unexpectedly reappeared here yesterday, says the Chanute Blade. He was in a state of high Indignation and declared that the newspapers would have to be forthcoming with retractions of stores printed about him or he would do all kinds of things to the publishers.

Rogers was fresh from the Humboldt calaboose [ie jail] but he kept this fact carefully guarded as a secret in his own breast. About the middle of the afternoon colonel O. H. Fisher, landlord of the Oriental hotel, and Rogers met by accident in Boschert & Williams' drug store. Rogers made some remark to Colonel Fisher, when the colonel told him something which must have sounded unpleasantly on his ears. “It is my candid opinion,” said Colonel Fisher, “that you never occupied a pulpit in your life. If you are indeed a minister of the gospel you fall far short of my standard of the clergy.”

Colonel Fisher had entertained Rogers at his 'hotel a day or two last week, and while there Rogers addressed an insulting remark to one of the waitresses. Upon leaving Chanute Rogers went to Humboldt, and up to supper time Monday had collected $14 in subscriptions to his forthcoming book. After supper, and when he was in the parlor talking to a couple of ladles, an officer arrested him on the suspicion that he was “grafting” the people of' Humboldt. Rogers was locked up but was released yesterday morning.

It was not 'ascertained whether he paid a fine or was permitted to go scot-free. Rogers, as was told by The Blade yesterday morning, claims that he is writing a book which is explanatory of the spiritual meaning of the Scriptures and which will bear the title, “The Opening of the Books.” He is traveling over the country getting cash subscriptions in advance for the volume. Some say that he got as much as a hundred dollars from Chanute parties.

January 11, 1904
The Hutchinson News from Hutchinson, Kansas · Page 7

4 comments:

jerome said...

I love it. Move over Albert Delmont Jones - you have a rival on the downward spiral road.

roberto said...

Jones, and now Rogers, strange people......

Semer said...

Do we have his picture, or one of the other three "conspirators" (Otto von Zech, Elmer Bryan, J.B. Adamson)?
Also does volume 2 cover this episode in 1894? Is the detractors' pamphlet available?

Sha'el, Princess of Pixies said...

No, since our cutoff date is about 1887, we save all the 1894 agony for the next book. We have a photo of Bryant and his family. Bryant married a Zech daughter. We don't have their circular letter, but a Zech granddaughter sent us family papers that will stand in its place. The Bryant photo is in Bruce's stuff. So I can't immediately post it.