Has arrived, and-will remain only a short time. Call at once at HOTEL WINDSOR, 119, 121 and 123 East State street, Room 19, third floor. Please take elevator.
The greatest and most natural born, and highly celebrated, and well-known all over the country, Clairvoyant, now traveling on the road, and Wonder from the Pacific coast.
Seventh Daughter of the Seventh Daughter; born with veil and second sight; every mystery revealed; if one you love is true or false; removes trouble; settles lovers' quarrels; causes a speedy marriage with one you Jove; valuable information to gentlemen on all business transactions; how to make profitable investments for speedy riches; lucky numbers; Egyptian talisman for the un lucky; cures mysterious and chronic diseases. All who are sick or in trouble from any cause are invited to call without delay.
I have always claimed that clairvoyance could be made a success if we could find some one who was sufficiently natural born to grapple with it. Now, Mrs. Edwards seems to know what is required. She was born utterly without affectation. When she was born she just seemed to say to those who happened to be present at the time, "Fellow citizens, you will have to take me just as you find me. I cannot dissemble or appear to be otherwise than what I am. I am the most natural born and highly celebrated all over the country clairvoyant now traveling on the road, and Wonder from the Pacific coast." She then let off a whoop that ripped open the sable robes of night, after which she took a light lunch and retired to her dressing-room.
Ex-Mayor Henry C. Robinson, of Hartford, Conn., if I am not mistaken, suggested a school of journalism at least twelve years ago, but it did not meet with immediate and practical indorsement. Now Cornell comes forward and seems to be in earnest, and I am glad of it. The letters received from day to day by editors, and written to them by men engaged in other pursuits, practically admit and prove that there is not now in existence an editor who knows enough to carry liver to a bear.
That is the reason why every means should be used to pull this profession out of the mire of dense ignorance and place it upon the high, dry soil which leads to genius and consanguinity.
The above paragraph I quote from a treatise on journalism which I wrote just before I knew anything about it.
The life of the journalist is a hard one, and, although it is not so trying as the life of the newspaper man, it is full of trials and perplexities. If newspaper men and journalists did not stand by each other I do not know what joy they would have. Kindness for each other, gentleness and generosity, even in their rivalry, characterize the conduct of a large number of them.
I shall never forget my first opportunity to do a kind act for a fellow newspaper man, nor with what pleasure I availed myself of it, though he was my rival, especially in the publication of large and spirited equestrian handbills and posters. He also printed a rival paper and assailed me most bitterly from time to time. His name was Lorenzo Dow Pease, and we had carried on an acrimonious warfare for two years. He had said that I was a reformed Prohibitionist and that I had left a neglected wife in every State in the Union. I had stated that he would give better satisfaction if he would wear his brains breaded. Then he had said something else that was personal and it had gone on so for some time. We devoted fifteen minutes each day to the management of our respective papers, and the balance of the day to doing each other up in a way to please our subscribers.
One evening Lorenzo Dow Pease came into my office and said he wanted to see me personally. I said that would suit me exactly and that if he had asked to see me in any other way I did not know how I could have arranged it. He said he meant that he would like to see me by myself. I therefore discharged the force, turned out the dog and we had the office to ourselves. I could see that he was in trouble, for every little while he would brush away a tear in an underhanded kind of way and swallow a large, imaginary mass of something. I asked Lorenzo why he felt so depressed, and he said: "William, I have came here for a favor." He always said "I have came," for he was a self-made man and hadn't done a very good job either. "I have came here for a favor. I wrote a reply to your venomous attack of to-day and I expected to publish it to-morrow in my paper, but, to tell you the truth, we are out of paper. At least, we have a few bundles at the freight office, but they have taken to sending it C. O. D., and I haven't the means just at hand to take it out. Now, as a brother in the great and glorious order of journalism, would it be too much for you to loan me a couple of bundles of paper to do me till I get my pay for some equestrian bills struck off Friday and just as good as the wheat?"
"How long would a couple of bundles last you?" I asked as I looked out at the window and wondered if he would reveal his circulation.
"Five issues and a little over," he said, filling his pipe from a small box on the desk.
"But you could cut off your exchanges and then it would last longer," I remarked.
"Yes, but only for one additional issue. I am very anxious to appear to-morrow, because my subscribers will be looking for a reply to what you said about me this morning. You stated that I was 'a journalistic bacteria looking for something to infect,' and while I did not come here to get you to retract, I would like it as a favor if you would loan me enough white paper to set myself straight before my subscribers."
"Well, why don't you go and tell them about it? It wouldn't take long," I said in a jocund way, slapping Lorenzo on the back. But he did not laugh. I then told him that we only had paper enough to last us till our next bill came, and so I could not possibly loan any, but that if he would write a caustic reply to my editorial I would print it for him. He caught me in his arms and then for a moment his head was pillowed on my breast. Then he sat down and wrote the following card:
Editor of the Boomerang:
Will you allow me through your columns to state that in your issue of yesterday you did me a great injustice by referring to me as a journalistic bacteria looking for something to infect; also, as a lop eared germ of contagion, and warning people to vaccinate in order to prevent my spread? I denounce the whole article as a malicious falsehood, and state that if you will only give me a chance I will fight you on sight. All I ask is that you will wait till I can overtake you, and I am able and willing to knock great chunks off the universe with you. I do not ask any favors of an editor who misleads his subscribers and intentionally misunderstands his correspondents; a man who advises an anxious inquirer who wants to know "how to get a cheap baby buggy" to leave the child at a cheap hotel; a man who assumes to wear brains, but who really thinks with a fungus growth; a man the bleak and barren exterior of whose head is only equalled by its bald and echoing interior.
Lorenzo Dow Pease.
I looked it over, and as there didn't seem to be anything personal in it, I told him I would print it for him with pleasure. He then asked that I would, as a further favor, refrain from putting any advertising marks on it and that I would make it follow pure reading matter, which I did. I leaded the card and printed it with a simple word of introduction, in which I said that I took pleasure in printing it, inasmuch as Mr. Pease could not get his paper out of the express office for a few days. It was a kindness to him and did not hurt my paper in the end.
There are many reasons why the establishment of a department of journalism at Cornell will be a good move, and I believe that while it will not take the place of actual experience, it will serve to shorten the apprenticeship of a young newspaper man and the fatigue of starting the amateur in journalism will be divided between the managing editor and the tutor. It will also give the aspiring sons of wealthy parents a chance to toy with journalism without interfering with those who are actually engaged in it.
IALWAYS enjoy a vegetable garden, and through the winter I look forward to the spring days when I will take my cob pipe and hoe and go joyously afield. I like to toy with the moist earth and the common squash bug of the work-a-day world. It is a pleasure also to irrigate the garden, watering the sauer kraut plant and the timid tomato vine as though they were children asking for a drink. I am never happier than when I am engaged in irrigating my tropical garden or climbing my neighbor with a hoe when he shuts off my water supply by sticking an old pair of pantaloons in the canal that leads to my squash conservatory.
One day a man shut off my irrigation that way and dammed the water up to such a degree that I shut off his air supply, and I was about to say dammed him up also. We had quite a scuffle. Up to that time we had never exchanged a harsh word. That morning I noticed that my early climbing horse-radish and my dwarf army worms were looking a little au revoir, and I wondered what was the matter. I had been absent several days and was grieved to notice that my garden had a kind of blase air, as though it needed rest and change of scene.
The Poland China egg-plant looked up sadly at me and seemed to say: "Pardner, don't you think it's a long time between drinks?" The watermelon seemed to have a dark brown taste in its mouth, and there was an air of gloom all over the garden.
At that moment I discovered my next-door neighbor at the ditch on the corner. He was singing softly to himself:
O, yes, I'll meet you;
I'll meet you when the sun goes down.
He was also jamming an old pair of Rembrandt pants into the canal, where they would shut off my supply. He stood with his back towards me, and just as he said he would "meet me when the sun went down," I smote him across the back of the neck with my hoe handle, and before he could recover from the first dumb surprise and wonder, I pulled the dripping pantaloons out of the ditch and tied them in a true-lover's knot around his neck. He began to look black in the face, and his struggles soon ceased altogether. At that moment his wife came out and shrieked two pure womanly shrieks, and hissed in my ear: "You have killed me husband!"
I said, possibly I had. If so, would she please send in the bill and I would adjust it at an early day. I said this in a bantering tone of voice, and raising my hat to her in that polished way of mine, started to go, when something fell with a thud on the greensward!
It was the author of these lines. I did not know till two days afterward that my neighbor's wife wore a moire antique rolling-pin under her apron that morning. I did not suspect it till it was too late. The affair was kind of hushed up on account of the respectability of the parties.
By the time I had recovered the garden seemed to melt away into thin air. My neighbor had it all his own way, and while his proud hollyhocks and Johnny-jump-ups reared their heads to drink the mountain water at the twilight hour, my little, low-necked, summer squashes curled up and died.
Most every year yet I made a garden. I pay a man $3 to plow it. Then I pay $7.50 for garden seeds and in July I hire the same man at $3 to summer-fallow the whole thing while I go and buy my vegetables of a Chinaman named Wun Lung. I've done this now for eight years, and I owe my robust health and rich olive complexion to the fact that I've got a garden and do just as little in it as possible. Parties desiring a dozen or more of my Shanghai egg-plants to set under an ordinary domestic hen can procure the same by writing to me and enclosing lock of hair and $10.
Asheville, N. C., Feb. 10,1887.
MY DEAR HENRY: Your last issue of theRetina, your new thought vehicle, published at New Belony, this state, was received yesterday. I like this number, I think, better than I did the first. While the news in it seems fresher, the editorial assertions are not so fresh. You do not state that you "have come to stay" this week, but I infer that you occupy the same position you did last week with inference to that.
I was more especially interested in your piece about how to rear children and the care of parents. I read it to your mother last night while she was setting her bread. Nothing tickles me very often at my time of life, and when I laugh a loud peal of laughter at anything nowadays it's got to be a pretty blamed good thing, I can tell you that. But your piece about bringing up children made me laugh real hard. I enjoy a piece like that from the pen of a juicy young brain like yours. It almost made me young again to read the words of my journalistic gosling son.
You also say that "teething is the most trying time for parents." Do you mean that parents are more fretful when they are teething than any other time? Your mother and me reckoned that you must mean that. If so, it shows your great research. How a mere child hardly out of knee-panties, a young shoot like you, who was never a parent for a moment in his life, can enter into and understand the woes that beset parents is more than I can understand. If you had been through what I have while teething I could see how you might understand and write about it, but at present I do not see through it. The first teeth I cut as a parent made me very restless. I was sick two years ago with a new disease that was just out and the doctor gave me something for it that made my teeth fall like the leaves of autumn. In six weeks after I began to convalesce my mouth was perfectly bald-headed. For days I didn't bite into a Ben Davis apple that I didn't leave a fang into it.
Well, after that I saw an advertisement in theRural Rustler—a paper I used to take then—of a place where you could get a set of teeth for $6.
I didn't want to buy a high-priced and gaudy set of teeth at the tail end of such a life as I had led, and I knew that teeth, no matter how expensive they might be, would be of little avail to coming generations, so I went over to the place named in the paper and got an impression of my mouth taken.
There is really nothing in this life that will take the stiff-necked pride out of a man like viewing a plaster cast of his tottering mouth. The dentist fed me with a large ladle full of putty or plaster of paris, I reckon, and told me to hold it in my mouth till it set.
I don't remember a time in all my life when the earth and transitory things ever looked so undesirable and so trifling as they did while I sat there in that big red barber-chair with my mouth full of cold putty. I felt just as a man might when he is being taxidermied.
After awhile the dentist took out the cast. It was a cloudy day and so it didn't look much like me after all. If it had I would have sent you one. After I'd set again two or three times, we got a pretty fair likeness, he said, and I went home, having paid $6 and left my address.
Three weeks after that a small boy came with my new teeth.
They were nice, white, shiny teeth, and did not look very ghastly after I had become used to them. I wished at first that the gums had been a duller red and that the teeth had not looked so new. I put them in my mouth, but they felt cold and distant. I took them out and warmed them in the sunlight. People going by no doubt thought that I did it to show that I was able to have new teeth, but that was not the case.
I wore them all that forenoon while I butchered. There were times during the forenoon when I wanted to take them out, but when a man is butchering he hates to take his teeth out just because they hurt.
Neighbors told me that after my mouth got hardened on the inside it would feel better.
But, oh, how it relieved me at night to take those teeth out and put them on the top of a cool bureau, where the wind could blow through their whiskers! How I hated to resume them in the morning and start in on another long day, when the roof of my mouth felt like a big, red bunion and my gums like a pale red stone-bruise.
A year ago, Henry, about two-thirty in the afternoon I think it was, I left that set of teeth in the rare flank of a barbecue I was to in our town.
Since then I have not been so pretty, perhaps, but I have no more unicorns on the rafters of my mouth and my note is just as good at thirty days as ever it was.
You are right, Henry, when you go on to state in your paper that teething is the most trying time for parents.
Ta, ta, as the feller says.
Your father.
George E. Beath, Areola, Ill.,-writes to know "the value of a silver dollar of 1878 with eight feathers in the eagle's tail."
It is worth what you can get for it, Mr. Beath. Perhaps the better way would be to forward it to me and I will do the best I can with it. There being but eight feathers in the eagle's tail would be no drawback. Send it to me at once and I will work it off for you, Mr. Beath.
"Tutor," Tucson, Ariz., asks "What do you regard as the best method of teaching the alphabet to children?"
Very likely my method would hardly receive your indorsement, but with my own children I succeed by using an alphabet with the names attached, which I give below. I find that by connecting the alphabet with certain easy and interesting subjects the child rapidly acquires knowledge of the letter, and it becomes firmly fixed in the mind. I use the following list of alphabetical names in the order given below:
A is for Antediluvian, Anarchistic and Agamemnon.
B is for Bucephalus, Burgundy and Bull-head. C is for Cantharides, Confucius and Casabianca. D is for Deuteronomy, Delphi and Dishabille.
E is for Euripedes, European and Effervescent. F is for Fumigate, Farinaceous and Fundamental.
G is for Garrulous, Gastric and Gangrene.
H is for Hamestrap, Honeysuckle and Hoyle.
I is for Idiosyncrasy, Idiomatic and Iodine.
J is for Jaundice, Jamaica and Jeu-d'esprit.
K is for Kandilphi, Kindergarten and KuKlux. L is for Lop-sided, Lazarus and Llano Estacado. M is for Menengitis, Mardi Gras and Mesopotamia.
N is for Narragansett, Neapolitan and Nix-comarous.
Q is for Oleander, Oleaginous and Oleomargarine.
P is for Phlebotomy, Phthisic and Parabola.
Q is for Query, Quasi and Quits.
R is for Rejuvenate, Regina and Requiescat.
S is for Simultaneous, Sigauche and Saleratus.
T is for Tubercular, Themistocles and Thereabouts.
U is for Ultramarine, Uninitiated and Utopian.
V is for Voluminous, Voltaire and Vivisection. W is for Witherspoon, Woodcraft and Washerwoman.
X is for Xenophon, Xerxes and Xmas.
Y is for Ysdle, Yahoo and Yellowjacket.
Z is for Zoological, Zanzibar and Zacatecas.
In this way the eye of the child is first appealed to. He becomes familiar with the words which begin with a certain letter, and before he knows it the letter itself has impressed itself upon his memory.
Sometimes, however, where my children were slow to remember a word and hence its corresponding letter, I have drawn the object on a blackboard or on the side of the barn. For instance, we will suppose that D is hard to fix in the mind of the pupil and the words to which it belongs as an initial do not readily cling to memory. I have only to draw upon the board a Deuteronomy, a Delphi, or a Dishabille, and he will never forget it. No matter how he may struggle to do so, it will still continue to haunt his brain forever. The same with Z, which is a very difficult letter to remember. I assist the memory by stimulating the eye, drawing rapidly, and crudely perhaps, a Zoological, a Zanzibar or a Zacatecas.
The great difficulty in teaching children the letters is that there is really nothing in the naked alphabet itself to win a child's love. We must dress it in attractive colors and gaudy plumage so that he will be involuntarily drawn to it.
Those who have used my method say that after mastering the alphabet, the binomial theorum and the rule in Shelly's case seemed like child's play. This goes to show what method and discipline will accomplish in the mind of the young.
"Fond Mother," Braley's Fork, asks: "What shall I name my little girl baby?"
That will depend upon yourself very largely, "Fond Mother." Very likely if your little girl is very rugged and grows up to be the fat woman in a museum, she will wear the name of Lily. When a girl is named Lily, she at once manifests a strong desire to grow up with a complexion like Othello and the same fatal yearning for some one to strangle. This is not always thus, but girls are obstinate, and it is better not to put a name on a girl baby that she will not live up to.
Again, "Fond Mother," let me urge you to refrain from naming your little daughter a soft, flabby name like Irma, Geraldine, Bandoline, Lilelia, Potassa, Valerian, Rosetta or Castoria. These names belong to the inflammatory pages of the American novelette. Do not put such a name on your innocent child. Imagine this inscription on a marble slab:
I have seen a young lady try faithfully for years to live down one of these flimsy, cheesecloth names, but the harsh world would not have it. A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and while I can imagine your little girl in future years as a white-haired and lovely grandmother, wearing the name of Mary or Ruth, with a double chin that seems to ever beckon the old gentleman to come and chuck his fat forefinger under it, I cannot, in my mind's eye, see her as a household deity, wearing a white cap and the name of Rosette or Penumbra, or Sogodontia, or Catalpa, or Voxliumania.
ON BOARD a western train the other day I held in my bosom for over seventy-five miles the elbow of a large man whose name I do not know. He was not a railroad hog or I would have resented it. He was built wide and he couldn't help it, so I forgave him.
He had a large, gentle, kindly eye, and when he desired to spit he went to the car door, opened it and decorated the entire outside of the train, forgetting that our speed would help to give scope to his remarks.
Naturally, as he sat there by my side, holding on tightly to his ticket and evidently afraid the conductor would forget to come and get it, I began to figure out in my mind what might be his business. He had pounded one thumb so that the nail was black where the blood had settled under it. This might happen to a shoemaker, a carpenter, a blacksmith, or almost any one else. So it didn't help me out much, though it looked to me as though it might have been done by trying to drive a fence-nail through a leather hinge with the back of an ax, and nobody but a farmer would try to do that. Following up the clew, I discovered that he had milk on his boots, and then I knew I was right. The man who milks before daylight in a dark barn when the thermometer is 28° below zero, and who hits his boots by reason of the uncertain light and prudishness of the cow, is a marked man. He cannot conceal the fact that he is a farmer unless he removes that badge. So I started out on that theory, and remarked that this would pass for a pretty hard winter on stock. The thought was not original with me, for I have heard it expressed by others either in this country or Europe. He said it would.
"My cattle has gone through a mowful o' hay sence October and eleven ton o' brand. Hay don't seem to have the goodness to it thet it hed last year, and with their new process griss mills they jerk all the juice out o' brand, so's you might as well feed cows with excelsior and upholster your horses with hemlock bark as to buy brand."
"Well, why do you run so much to stock? Why don't you try diversified farming and rotation of crops?"
"Well, prob'ly you got that idee in the papers. A man that earns big wages writing 'Farm Hints' for agricultural papers can make more money with a soft lead-pencil and two or three season-cracked idees like that 'n I can carrying of 'em out on the farm. We used to have a feller in the drug-store in our town that wrote such good pieces for theRural Vermonter, and made up such a good condition powder out of his own head that two years ago we asked him to write a nessay for the annual meeting of the Buckwheat Trust, and to use his own judgment about choice of subject. And what do you s'pose he had selected for a nessey that took the whole forenoon to read?"
"What subject, you mean?"
"Yes."
"Give it up!"
"Well, he'd wrote out that whole blamed intellectual wad on the subject of 'The Inhumanity of Dehorning Hydraulic Rams.' How's that?"
"That's pretty fair."
"Well, farmin' is like runnin' a paper in regard to some things. Every feller in the world will take and turn in and tell you how to do it, even if he don't know a blame thing about it. There ain't a man in the United States to-day that don't secretly think he could run airy one if his other business busted on him, whether he knows the difference between a new milch cow or a horse hayrake or not. We had one of these embroidered nightshirt farmers come from town better'n three years ago. Been a toilet-soap man and done well, and so he came out and bought a farm that had nothing to it but a fancy house and barn, a lot of medder in the front yard, and a Southern aspect. The farm was no good. You couldn't raise a disturbance on it. Well, what does he do? Goes and gits a passle of slim-tailed yeller cows from New Jersey and aims to handle cream and diversified farming. Last year the cuss sent a load of cream over and tried to sell it at the new crematory while the funeral and hollercost was goin' on. I may be a sort of a chump myself, but I read my paper and don't get left like that."
"What are the prospects for farmers in your State?"
"Well, they are pore. Never was so pore, in fact, sence I've ben there. Folks wonder why boys leaves the farm. My boys left so as to get protected, they said, and so they went into a clothing store, one of 'em, and one went into hardware, and one is talkin' protection in the Legislature this winter. They said that farmin' was gettin' to be like fishin' and huntin', well enough for a man that has means and leisure, but they couldn't make a livin' at it, they said. Another boy is in a drug store, and the man that hires him says he is a royal feller."
"Kind of a castor royal feller," I said, with a shriek of laughter.
He waited until I had laughed all I wanted to, and then he said:
"I've always hollered for high tariff in order to hyst the public debt, but now that we've got the National debt coopered I wish they'd take a little hack at mine. I've put in fifty years farmin'. I never drank licker in any form. I've worked from ten to eighteen hours a day; been economical in cloz and never went to a show more'n a dozen times in my life; raised a family and learned upwards of two hundred calves to drink out of a tin pail without blowing their vittles up my sleeve. My wife worked alongside o' me sewin' new seats on the boys' pants, skim-min' milk, and even helpin' me load hay. For forty years we toiled along together and hardly got time to look into each other's faces or dared to stop and get acquainted with each other. Then her health failed. Ketched cold in the springhouse, prob'ly skimmin' milk, and wash-in' pans, and scaldin' pails, and spankin' butter. Anyhow, she took in a long breath one day while the doctor and me was watchin' her, and she says to me, 'Henry,' says she, 'I've got a chance to rest,' and she put one tired, wore-out hand on top of the other tired, wore-out hand, and I knew she'd gone where they don't work all day and do chores all night.
"I took time to kiss her then. I'd been too busy for a good while previous to do that, and then I called in the boys. After the funeral it was too much for them to stay around and eat the kind of cookin' we had to put up with, and nobody spoke up around the house as we used to. The boys quit whistlin' around the barn, and talked kind of low to themselves about goin' to town and getting a job.
"They're all gone now, and the snow is four feet deep up there on mother's grave in the old berryin'-ground."
Then both of us looked out of the car-window quite a long while without saying anything.
"I don't blame the boys for going into something else long's other things pays better; but I say—and I say what I know—that the man who holds the prosperity of this country in his hands, the man that actually makes the money for other people to spend, the man that eats three good, simple, square meals a day and goes to bed at 9 o'clock so that future generations with good blood and cool brains can go from his farm to the Senate and Congress and the White House—he is the man that gets left at last to run his farm, with nobody to help him but a hired man and a high protective tariff. The farms in our State is mortgaged for over $700,000,000. Ten of our Western States—I see by the papers—has got about three billion and a half mortgages on their farms, and that don't count the chattel mortgages filed with the town clerks on farm machinery, stock, waggins, and even crops, by gosh! that ain't two inches high under the snow. That's what the prospect is for farms now. The Government is rich, but the men that made it, the men that fought perarie fires and perarie wolves and Injins and potato bugs and blizzards, and has paid the war debt and pensions and everything else, and hollored for the Union and the Republican party and high tariff and anything else that they was told to, is left high and dry this cold winter with a mortgage of seven billions and a half on the farms they have earned and saved a thousand times over."
"Yes; but look at the glory of sending from the farm the future President, the future Senator and the future member of Congress."
"That looks well on paper; but what does it really amount to? Soon as a farmer boy gits in a place like that he forgets the soil that produced and holds his head as high as a hollyhock. He bellers for protection to everybody but the farmer, and while he sails round in a highty-tighty room with a fire in it night and day, his father on the farm has to kindle his own fire in the morning with elm slivers, and he has to wear his son's lawn-tennis suit next to him or freeze to death, and he has to milk in an old gray shawl that has held that member of Congress since he was a baby, by gorry! and the old lady has to sojourn through the winter in the flannels that Silas wor at the rigatter before he went to Congress.
"So I say, and I think that Congress agrees with me, Damn a farmer, anyhow!"
He then went away.
DURING the recent conventions a great many good speeches have been made which did not get into print for various reasons. Some others did not even get a hearing and still others were prepared by delegates who could not get the eye of the presiding officer.
The manuscript of the following speech bears the marks of earnest thought, and though the author did not obtain recognition on the floor of the convention I cannot bear to see an appreciative public deprived of it:
MR. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Convention: We are met together here as a representation of the greatest and grandest party in the world—a party that has been first in peace, first in war and first in the hearts of its countrymen, as the good book has it. We come together here to-day, Gentlemen, to perpetuate by our action the principles which won us victory at the polls and wrenched it from an irritated and disagreeable foe on many a tented field. I refer to freedom.
Our party has ever been the champion of freedom. We have made a specialty of freedom. We have ever been in the van. That's why we have been on the move. Where freedom a quarter of a century ago was but a mere name, now we have fostered it and aided it and encouraged it and made it pay.
We have emancipated a whole race, several of whom have since voted the other way. But we must not be discouraged. We are here to work. Let us do it and so advance our common cause and honor God.
But who is to be the leader? Who will be able to carry our victorious banner from Portland, Me., to Portland, Ore., gayly speaking pieces from the tail-gate of a train? Who is sufficiently obscure to safely make the race? (Cries of "Jeremiah M. Rusk," "Rudolph Minkins Pitler," "Blaine," "James Swartout," "John Sherman," "Charlie Kinney," &c.)
The eye of the nation is upon us. We cannot escape the awful responsibility which we have to-day assumed. With all our anxiety to please our friends we must not forget that we are here in the interests of universal freedom. Do not allow yourselves to be blinded, gentlemen, by the assurance that this is to be a businessman's campaign, a campaign in which conflicting business interests are to figure more than the late war. It is a fight involving universal freedom, as I said in our conventions four, eight and twelve years ago.
We have before us a pure and highly elocutionary platform. Let us nominate a man who will, as I may say, affilliate and amalgamate with that platform. Who is that man? (Cries of "Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine," "Lockwood, Lockwood, Belva A. Lockwood," and general confusion, during which John A. Wise is seen to jerk loose about a nickel's worth of Billy Mahone's whiskers.)
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the convention, there has never been a more harmonious convention in the United States to my knowledge since the Sioux massacre in Minnesota. We are all here for the best good of the party and each is willing to concede something rather than create any ill-feeling. Look at Mahone for instance.
We have a good platform, now let us nominate a man whose record is in harmony with that platform. Freedom has ever been our watchword. Now that we have made the human race within our borders absolutely free, let us add to our magnificent history as a party by one crowning act. Let us fight for the Emancipation of Rum!
Rum has always been a mighty power in American politics, but it has not been absolutely free. Let us be the first to recognize it as the great corner-stone of American institutions. Let us make it free.
We have never had any Daniel Websters or Henry Clays since rum went up from 20 cents a gallon to its present price. The war tax on whiskey for over twenty years has made freedom a farce and liberty a loud and empty snort in mid-air. 'Who, then, shall be our standard-bearer as we journey onward towards victory? (Cries of "Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine," and confusion.)
Gentlemen, I wish that a better and thrillinger orator had been selected in my place to name the candidate on whom alone I can unite. Soldiers, rail-splitters, statesmen, canal boys, tailors, farmers, merchants and school teachers have been Presidents of the United States, but to my knowledge no convention has ever yet named a distiller. I have the honor to-day to name a modest man for the high office of President; a man who never before allowed his name to be presented to a convention; a man who never even stated in the papers that his name would not be presented to the convention; a man who has never sought or courted publicity even in his own business; a man who has been a distiller in a quiet way for over fifteen years and yet has never even advertised in the papers; a man who has so carefully shunned the eye of the world that only two or three of us know where his place of business is; a man who has such an utter contempt for office that he has shot two Government officials who claimed to be connected with the internal revenue business; a man who can drink or let it alone, but who has aimed to divide the time up about equally between the two; a man who had absolutely nothing to do with the war, not having heard about it in time; a man who defies his culumniators or anybody else of his heft; a man who would paint the White House red; a man who takes great pleasure in being his own worst enemy. (Cries of "Name him! Name him!" Great confusion, and cries of pain from several harmonious delegates who are getting the worst of it.)
Not to take up your time, let me say in closing that the day for great men as candidates for an important office is past. Great men in a great country antagonize different factions and are then compelled to fall back on literature. What we want is an obscure and silent chump. I have found him. He has never antagonized but two men in his life and they are now voting in a better land. He is a plain man, and his career at Washington would be marked with more or less tobacco juice. For over fifteen years he has been constructing at his country seat a lurid style of whiskey known as The Essence of Crime. Quietly and unostentatiously he has fought for the emancipation of whiskey everywhere. He says that we are too prone to worry about our clothes and their cost and to give too little thought to our tax-ridden rum.
Then, Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, here in the full glare of public approval, feeling that the name I am about to pronounce will in a few moments flash across a mighty continent and greet the moist and moaning news editor, the grimy peasant, the pussy banker and the streaked tennis player; that the name I now nourish in my panting brain will soon be taken up on willing tongues and borne across the union, rising and saluting the hot blue dome of heaven, pulsating across the ocean, rocking the beautifully upholstered thrones of the Old World and calling forth a dark blue torrent of profanity from the offices of the illustrated papers, none of which will be provided with his portrait, I desire to name Mr. Clem Beasly, of Arkansaw, a man who has spent his best years manufacturing man's greatest enemy. I hurrah for him and holler for him, and love him for the (hic) enemy he has made.
ILEARN with much sadness that Mr. William H. Vanderbilt's once princely fortune has shrivelled down to $150,000,000. This piece of information comes to me like a clap of thunder out of a clear sky. Once petted, fondled and caressed, William H. Vanderbilt shorn of his wealth, and resting upon no foundation but his sterling integrity, must struggle along with the rest of us.
It would be but truth to say that Mr. Vanderbilt will receive very little sympathy from the world now in the days of his adversity and penury when the wolf is at his door. There are many of his former friends who will say that William could economize and struggle along on $150,000,000, but let them try it once and see how they would like it themselves; $150,000,000, with no salary outside of that amount, will not last forever.
A poor man might pinch along in such a case if he could get something to do, but we must remember that Mr. Vanderbilt has always lived in comparatively comfortable circumstances. His hands, therefore, are tender and his stomach juts out into the autumn air. He will, therefore, find it hard at first to husk corn and dig potatoes. When he stoops over a sawbuck around New York this winter his stomach will be in the way and his vest will no doubt split open on the back. All these things will annoy the spoiled child of luxury, and his broad features will be covered with sadness. They will, at least, if there is sadness enough in the country to do it.
The fall of William 'H. Vanderbilt and his headlong plunge from the proud eminence to which his means had elevated him downward to the cringing poverty of $150,000,000 should be a sad warning to us all. This fate may fall to any of us. Oh, let us be prepared when the summons comes. For one I believe I am ready. Should the dread news come to me to-morrow that such a fate had befallen me, I would nerve myself up to it and meet it like a man. With the ruin of my former fortune I would buy me a crust of bread and some pie, and then I would take the balance and go over into Canada and there I would establish a home for friendless bank cashiers who are now there, several hundred of them, all alone and with no one to love them.
All kinds of charitable institutions, costing many thousands of dollars, are built in America from year to year for the comfort of homeless and friendless women and children, but man is left out in the cold. Why is this thus. Lots of people in Canada, of course, are doing their best to make it cheerful and sunny for our lovely cashiers there, but still it is not home. As a gentleman once said in my hearing, "There is no place like home." And he was right.
In conclusion, I do not know what to say, unless it be to appeal to the newspaper men of the country in Mr. Vanderbilt's behalf. While he was wealthy he was proud and arrogant. He said, "Let the newspapers be blankety blanked to blank," or words to that effect, but we do not care for that. Let us forget all that and remember that his sad fate may some day be our own. In our affluence let us not lose sight of the fact that Van is suffering. Let us procure a place for him on some good paper. His grammar and spelling are a little bit rickety but he could begin as janitor and gradually work his way up. Parties having clothing or funds which they feel like giving may forward the same to me at Hudson, Wis., postpaid, and if the clothes do not fit Van they may possibly fit me.
New York, Oct. 7,1883.
Bill Nye.
P.S,—Oct. 30.—Since issuing the above I have received several consignments of clothes for the suffering, also one sack of corn-meal and a ham. Let the good work go on, for it is far more blessed to give than to receive, I am told; and as Jay Gould said when, as a boy, he gave the wormy half of an apple to his dear teacher, "Half is better than the hole."