“Edenton must be a wild old town according to all reports,” observed the Soda Jerker to the Bank Clerk the other morning.
“What’s the latest from Edenton?” queried the Bank Clerk.
“Why they tell me that a certain prominent professional man in that town has been running around with another man’s wife and getting away with it in fine shape until he got her in a briar patch the other night and the poor girl got hooked in the briars. He had to strike about a dozen matches to get her extricated and the light of the matches gave both of them dead away and everybody in Edenton is talking about it.”
“Well, Edenton hasn’t got a think on Elizabeth City,” said the Bank Clerk sourly. “How about that couple who ran out of gas on the Weeksville road not so long ago? Here was a prominent married woman who sets herself up as a great church worker, choir singer and all the rest of it. She takes another woman’s husband out for an evening and gets caught out at midnight with a stalled engine.
“She hails a passing car and asks them to send her help. Instead of that fool man with her keeping out of sight, he didn’t do a thing but hop on the car coming to town so that he could get home before his wife got the police looking for him. His fool break gave the whole thing away and now the town is talking about that.
“There is too much of that sort of thing going on in every little town. Now, I want you to understand me; I don’t set myself up as a Holy Moses; I’m no Puritan and I’d be one of the last persons in the world to condemn a heart-hungry man or woman, married or single, for falling in love wisely. But when people who set themselves up as shining marks of righteousness in the community conduct themselves like a lot of prostitutes and are so bold and shameless in their conduct as to attract public attention to their doings and set a rotten example for all the younger folk in the town, then I haven’t a damn bit of patience wit them.”
“Me too!” said the Soda Jerker. “But I think I’m going to church next Sunday. I haven’t been to church in a long time, but I shall drop in Sunday morning and see how well the lady sings after she has seen her picture in the paper.”
From the front page of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Friday, Aug. 6, 1926
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn83025812/1926-08-06/ed-1/seq-1/
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