The Weekly Times - Saturday, April 13, 1895

PEERYBINGLE PAPERS
THE WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN TEMPERANCE UNION
ON THE CADET - AUTHOR'S MANUSCRIPT - MY
NEWSPAPER CUSTOMER ON OSCAR WILDE -
SOME "JUSTICES' JUSTICE."

"Have I an opinion about the Oscar Wilde case?" said my newspaper customer to me yesterday, as I left two copies of the "Temperance Chronicle" and a dozen of lime juice at his house. "I have, indeed, a very strong one, but until the unhappy man is found legally guilty, I keep it to myself. I am an advocate for fair play in every way, and do not believe in that style of newspaper writing that virtually condemns an accused man before he is found guilty. As for the loathsome subject itself, I am not a student of morbid physiological pathology. In my early days I read all kinds of classics, but I preferred Homer to Petronius Arbiter, and Quentin Durward to Roderick Random. I have, I admit in all humility, worshipped at the shrine of Venus. I wouldn't have minded, had I lived in the days so well described by dear old Lempriere, spending a month or so in the Island of Cythra or a flirtation with Sappho when Phaon was out of the way. But, for these monstrosities, cursed by some freak of Nature with a moral squint, I would go even further than Mr Jerome in his remarks on Oscar's paper, "The Chameleon." I would not have them driven away into a sort of leper camp of their own. I would have each offender tried by a jury of British matrons and, if found guilty, carried straight away to an asphyxiating chamber, and there put out of his misery like a lost dog. A very lost dog indeed!"