Apparently, “it is an ascertained fact that Jesuits are prowling about all parts of the United States in every possible disguise, expressly to ascertain the advantageous situations and modes to disseminate Popery…. [T]he western country swarms with them under the names of puppet show men, dancing masters, music teachers, peddlers of images and ornaments, barrel organ players, and similar practitioners.”
Even barrel organ players? IS NOTHING SACRED?
(Quoted from The Paranoid Style in American Politics, which quotes it from an 1835 tract by S.F.B. Morse, who probably should have stuck to dots and dashes.)