EDITORIAL

There are thousands of men in politics who are the very salt of the earth. Indeed, the majority are honest and true. But it is rapidly becoming fashionable for clans of bold, political schemers to put their heads together and capture the floating vote and thus defeat the will of the people; and to such these lines are dedicated.

Modern machine politics is the most subtle and exquisite art that ever crushed a hope or shattered a dream. It is the beautiful art of chloroforming public confidence and stealing the reins of power from the hands of the sleeping sovereigns. It is the mysterious art of political hoodoo, which works shady miracles in every theater of government, from the county courthouse to the national capitol.

The jugglers of this art slip into conventions, caucuses and legislative halls, and whisper a magic word, and lo! in the twinkling of an eye, majorities are changed to minorities, and minorities to majorities; oft expressed opinions and deep rooted convictions upon vital principles and policies of government are reversed in an hour, and the enchanted floating solons, forgetting old hickory shirt and copperas breeches at home, forgetting the men with cheeks of tan who walk in the furrow, forgetting the sturdy toilers at the anvil, the workbench and the drill, losing sight of the confiding multitudes who but yesterday twined the laurel wreath of honor about their brows,—fall down upon their faces before the golden Combine, in that sacred temple of free government which is dedicated to righteousness and the liberty of the people, crying with a loud voice both night and day, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!” That whispered word, so full of the music and the dream, is “Pie.” O, wondrous word of marvelous power! O, sweet and juicy symbol of perfect happiness. O, ravishing synonym of golden eagles and the goddess of liberty! In it are reflected the bewildering glories of a thousand heavens of pure delight; golden slippers and laurel wreaths to burn; heaving seas of “sour mash” whose amber surfs forever break on fragrant shores of mint; sweet journeys on Pullman palaces of rosewood and mahogany to the land of the orange and the palm. In it are the stolen fires of the stars, flashing in diamond shirt studs, and the crimson glow of sunset skies imprisoned in rubies set in gold on lily white hands that will toil again never more. In it are visions of mansions in spreading groves where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest. Is it any wonder, then, that opinions so suddenly change and promises and pledges so swiftly dissolve into a puff of wind and leave not a rack behind? Is it any wonder that Samson is shorn of his locks while yet he slumbers, and only wakes to find his window up, his strength and piety gone and his breeches pockets turned wrongside out? Is it any wonder that when, at last, the Rip Van Winkle of Public Confidence rises up from his trance he finds only the skeleton of Fidelity at his feet and the gunstock of safety rotted away from the rusted barrel of sovereignty by his side? And is it any wonder that he exclaims, in the language of old Rip of the Adirondacks, “Am I sosoon forgot?” Is it any wonder that the bewildered Commonwealth, like poor old Rip, so often looks around, and failing to recognize the little pile of bones near by, asks with tearful eyes, “Vare iss mine leetle dog Schneider?”

But what doth great Diana careFor Samson when he’s lost his hair?The tears are vain that Rip doth shed:He slept too long, his dog is dead.So states are shorn, and nations weep,For crime committed while they sleep.

But what doth great Diana care

For Samson when he’s lost his hair?

The tears are vain that Rip doth shed:

He slept too long, his dog is dead.

So states are shorn, and nations weep,

For crime committed while they sleep.

Scheming lobbyists of mighty combines juggle together and whisper into the listening ears of shrewd politicians, “You’ve got the power and we’ve got the pie. We are willing to swap pie for power. Whatwewant is legislation or no legislation, as our interests may require. Whatyouwant isoffice.” Then the politicians juggle and honey fuggle the floating vote, and there is a mighty shuffling of political cards and soon they all join hands behind closed doors and the soft whisper passes round the ring, “We are one and inseparable for power and for pie; we are the flowers that bloom in the spring, tra, la! Let the word be mum.” Then follows the secret banquet of bargain and intrigue under the very dome of liberty. It is quite exclusive, even more so than a banquet of the four hundred in the great metropolis. Old Copperas Breeches is not invited nor Brother Hickory Shirt, nor Dr. Honesty, nor ’Squire Patriotism, nor any of the old folks at home. There is no room around the festive board for Professor Pedagogue, of Purity High School, nor Deacon Righteousness, of Churchville. The public welfare is lost in the shuffle. After a short blessing is whispered by the Rev. Judasio Iscarriotis, the sumptuous feast begins, the menu consisting alone of pie: senatorial pie, sweetened with ring syrup; gubernatorial mince pie, flavored with moonshine; speakership pie, highly seasoned with the sunshine of spicy promises of favors to come; clerkship pie, dripping with the honey of fat and succulent salaries; and on down, to a little half moon dried apple pie of a free pass to oblivion.

They clink their merry glasses,Now hear them softly sing—“The people are all asses,Diana’s in the swing!”And after the feast is over,After the pie is gone,The combines are in clover,As we go marching on.

They clink their merry glasses,

Now hear them softly sing—

“The people are all asses,

Diana’s in the swing!”

And after the feast is over,

After the pie is gone,

The combines are in clover,

As we go marching on.

Then the band begins to play, and the elephant moves around, bearing on his spacious back the anointed high priests of Pie and Power, followed by a great procession of worshipers, and heralded by a flourish of trumpets in the hands of the jugglers, who alternately blow and shout, crying out, as with one voice, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians, who hath the world by the tail and a down-hill pull! Clear the way for the most high priest of power! Clear the way for the priestly priest of Pie! Hail, all hail!!”

Thus the dismal tale of history runs; hopes of free government are crushed; dreams of liberty are shattered; blind Samson nurses his wrath until his shorn locks grow out again; and then, with giant strength and insane rage, he lays hold of the pillars of the temple,

And with a crash republics fall,Down go liberty, combines and all.

And with a crash republics fall,

Down go liberty, combines and all.

This is the shady side of politics. But the burnished crest of the darkest cloud reflects in golden arcs the splendors of the sun, and the angels of hope hang a rainbow on its bosom. All power is inherent in the people, and there are patriotism and courage enough in their bosoms to weather the storms that rise dark o’er the way, if they do not get lost in the Adirondacks of Prosperity and drink from the jug of indifference and sleep too long on their rights.

Combined capital is digging its own grave when it becomes the Diana of modern machine politics. And combined Labor is driving the nails in its own coffin when the spirit of anarchy directs its blows for the redress of its grievances. Until recently the South has maintained its integrity and its immunity from the hoodoo art of machine politics; but the methods of destructionhave found their way into Southern capitols, and, unless Samson wakes, he will soon find himself utterly powerless to use his favorite jaw-bone, or any other kind of a weapon, on the Philistine combines who are plotting against him in the temple.

God speed the day when Capital and Labor shall combine under the banner of arbitration and of peace, and when the battle cry of the Republic shall be, “Equal and exact justice to all, with special favors to one.”

I entered the car, threw my grip between two seats and sat down by a drummer. He looked at my valise and then at me and dryly asked, “Are you a traveling man?” “Yes,” was my reply. “What is your line?” asked he. “Sweetened wind,” quoth I. A smile lighted his face as he quickly asked, “Preacher or lecturer?” And then there was a laugh and a lull.

After an all day’s travel which wore me into a frazzle, I reached my destination at 8.30p.m.It was a cold, drizzling evening. The skies were leaking spray, and in the language of Mrs. Partington, the street was a perfect “lullaby” of soft and sticky mud. The little freckle-faced dreamer who had bought me for a hundred and fifty caught me by the arm with one hand as I stepped off the cars and seized my grip with the other and literally pushed me head foremost into a Jim Crow hack drawn by one old spavined horse,

With one eye out and t’other blind,He racked before and paced behind,

With one eye out and t’other blind,

He racked before and paced behind,

until we reached the hall where I was to lecture. I found a little cold and shivering crowd seated there, waiting to be warmed by my eloquence, and without a chance to make my toilet and don my little “swallow tail,” I was ushered on the stage and introduced as the greatest orator, philosopher, poet, musician, statesman, scientist, actor and artist that ever came down the pike, whereupon I began to shake my jaw and pour out my metaphors; but somehow or other my eagle wouldn’t soar that night. He flopped his cold and flabby wings and rose and fell for an hour and a quarter. The audience departed like mourners from a funeral; but one good old lady lingered in the hall till I came off the stage and in her pity she sidled up to me and whispered, “I liked your little talk right well.” I found the freckled-face dreamer waiting at the door, and, cold as it was, the sweat was rolling down his cheeks. His face was the picture of despair when he handed me a hundred dollar bill and ten fives. I knew that his castle in the air had fallen. “How did you come out?” I asked. “Well, Governor,” he said, with a tremulous voice, “I’m out just eighteen dollars.” I took the roll he had given me out of my pocket and skinned off four bills in the light of the lamp dimly burning and said, “There are twenty dollars, my boy, and my blessing upon you.” He almost shouted and pressed my hand continuously as we walked through the mud to the little hotel on the starvation plan. Then there were a brief sleep and an easy conscience. I crossed the Father of Waters in triumph next morning and tarried in Memphis till the next train out. I went to the bank to buy New York exchange, took out my roll and lo! I had given old freckle-face the one hundred dollar bill and three fives. Then again there was a laugh and a lull—he laughed and I lulled. I pocketed my laugh and my loss and climbed into the pouch of a Southern Kangaroo on wheels and with a single hop I cleared the state of Mississippi and lit in Alabama. I climbed out and got into the ’bus in a beautiful little town among the blushing hills. Before I had washed the dust of travel from my brow, a spider-legged dude, with ambrosial locks curled and parted in the middle, came strutting like a clean-shaven and musk-scented dream into the dingy and time-honored little room where my valise and I were safely deposited, and with Chesterfieldian bow and a fluted voice announced that he had been designated by the ladies to introduce me that night to the audience. He shook his curls and said, “Governor, I havenever delivered a speech in my life, but I have been at work on this one for about two weeks; and pardon me for saying that I think she’s a daisy.”

“Well, my friend,” I said, “I am fond of daisies.” With another shake of his locks he said, “The society people are all coming out to-night to hear me introduce you.” I shook my scanty locks and said, “I am glad there is something bringing them out.”

The clock struck 8. An elegant carriage stopped at the hotel door where I was waiting, and the sweet-scented dream in full evening dress, emerged, and gently took me by the arm and ushered me into it. We went whirling to the stage entrance of the theater, but as we walked up the stairs I observed that he tottered like a man ascending the gallows and his lips were colorless and quivering. We took our seats side by side behind the curtain. I motioned to the curtain man that all was ready, and with a whiz and a bang the curtain went up, and, sure enough, there in front of us, in the brilliantly lighted auditorium, was a breathing bouquet of youth and beauty and old age which greeted us with a storm of applause—the society folks had indeed come out to hear him introduce me. I nudged my friend and said, “Shoot.” He never budged. I nudged him again and said, “Go ahead!” He never budged. I looked around and his face was as white as a sheet and great drops of perspiration like beads of pearl were standing on his pallid brow. I said again, “Go ahead!” and in his agony he mumbled with muffled voice, “Governor, she’s gone.” There was a lull and a laugh, and in about two seconds he was gone. Before I had delivered half my sweetened goods I observed a number of yawns and stolen glances at watches and increasing signs that my crowd wanted to go. There is no anguish like that which a lecturer feels when his listless audience turns to frost and nips all his flowers of speech. The saddest spectacle in all the tide of time is a frost-bitten orator. He gathers up his little withered tropes and similes and vanishes, and all that saves him from suicide is the dream that he will blossom again in a more congenial garden. I collected my tribute money in the Alabama town and mounted a grasshopper train and went hopping and stridulating from rail to rail until I found a patch of clover in a rich and aristocratic Georgia town where I lounged and exchanged anecdotes with traveling men and with the natives until the lights were turned on and I stood all robed in my “swallow tail,” in the midst of as delightful an audience as ever listened to a sap-sucker speech or laughed at the unwinding of my little ball of yarns. A tall and handsome Georgia lawyer rose to introduce me and thus he spake:

“Ladies and Gentlemen: I have traveled a great deal in my life and on one of my journeys I took in the mountains of East Tennessee. I paused in that peculiar country to study the customs of that peculiar people. They make maple sugar in East Tennessee. They have great sugar orchards there, and one of the customs of the people is to tap the sugar trees in the spring when the sap begins to rise and they give the children in the family a tin cup and turn them out into the sugar orchard and never see them any more for six weeks. I have the pleasure to introduce to you to-night a sap-sucker from East Tennessee!”

There was a lull and a laugh,And the sap began to run,And they kindly took a quaffFrom my sugar-trough of fun.

There was a lull and a laugh,

And the sap began to run,

And they kindly took a quaff

From my sugar-trough of fun.

I settled with the secretary of the treasury and mounted a March hare train and sped away through many a cotton patch, from town to town, out of Georgia into the Old North State, and, flanking Charlotte, squatted at the State University at Chapel Hill, that classic spot of earth so rich with memories of the glorious past and still teeming with joyous student life, like those who have gone before, dreaming of the glorious future. There I met Dr. Battle, that grand old man who has fought a thousand battles for enlightenment and human happiness. There I met Alphonso Smith, one of the South’s foremost young men in thefield of educational endeavor and whose soul is in tune with Southern progress and Southern development.

There, too, I met Eben Alexander, a brilliant star from the sky of Tennessee, shedding the soft light of Grecian literature upon the youthful brain of Carolina. I met a score of other stars in the faculty of this great University. I stood on the platform of its splendid auditorium and tossed bouquets at as refined and cultured an audience as ever sipped sap from a sugar tree. And when I packed my grip and started Southward I could not repress the sweet old song:

“Hurrah! hurrah! for the Old North State forever!Hurrah! hurrah! for the good Old North State!”

“Hurrah! hurrah! for the Old North State forever!

Hurrah! hurrah! for the good Old North State!”

Finally, I landed in Charleston, South Carolina, where I played Beauregard, but instead of firing bomb shells at Ft. Sumter, I fired soap bubbles at the heads and hearts of a magnificent audience of representative Charlestonians; and whether I pleased them or not, they were so generous and hospitable as to flatter me with occasional bombs of laughter and a few volleys of applause.

I swung back through Alabama to my home in Nashville, on hearing the news that the political sap was rising; but, alas! only to find that the Tennessee sugar tree was already tapped, you see, and that the senatorial sugar-trough was full of sap-suckers holding a snap caucus, and there was a lull and a laugh—I lulled and they laughed. When I awoke from my lull I kissed my wife and children good-bye, and broke for Texas, the queenly young sister of Tennessee, who took me in her arms, and brushing away my political tears, pressed me to her loving heart.

There is no state in the Union that gives a Tennesseean a warmer welcome than Texas, because her lap is full of Tennesseeans, and, moreover, she is naturally hospitable and kind. There is a place on her fat knee for every troubled soul, a kiss of sunshine on her lips and a lump of sugar in her hand for every weeping wanderer.

O, glorious empire state of the sun-kissed South, with thy hundred and seventy-five thousand square miles of as rich a country as was ever tickled by the plow or the pick, and as ever laughed a harvest of cotton and grain for the comfort and happiness of man! With thy cattle on a thousand hills, thy countless flocks, thy gushing wells of oil, thy fields of rice and sugar cane stretching far away like the sweet fields of Eden on the other side of Jordan! With thy fatness thou canst feed and warm the world! I wonder why the poor huddle in the smoke and filth of crowded cities when Texas smiles and beckons them to her landscapes of beauty, where the prairie flowers bloom and the sunshine plays with the zephyrs from the Gulf and sometimes scuffles with a cyclone. I wonder why toiling millions dwell amid blackened walls only to be slaves to heartless masters, when untouched fields invite the happy home and virgin soil still waits for the plowman and his merry song. I wonder why helpless children are doomed to die by thousands in polluted hovels and crowded alleys, when the green meadows of Texas bid them come and chase the butterflies among the bluebells and the daisies, and the blossoming hills call them hither to romp and play where the happy birds sing and the cows come home in the evening fragrant with the breath of alfalfa and the sweet wild grasses of the plains. Texas is a Paradise for the poor, it is a third heaven for the rich.

But I am about to forget that I was talking about my lecture tour. Let me see!—O, yes!—“All aboard for Nashville!” the conductor cries. Well, the rest of my story I will tell around the happy hearthstone of home.

It is a marvelous truth that this golden era of the world’s history has inspired no great poets that rank with Byron and Burns and Tom Moore and a long list of other immortals who have enriched literature with their songs;and it has developed but few prose writers worthy to wear the mantles of Blackstone and Kent in law, of Gibbon and Macaulay in history, and Scott and Bulwer in romance and fiction.

It is well we call it the golden era, for it is an era of commercialism, when men are trampling literature and art and music under their feet in the mad rush for gold and the gilded glory that it buys. To be a millionaire is greater in the estimation of modern worshipers of mammon than to be a Goldsmith; and a multimillionaire is greater in their gold-jaundiced eyes than a William Shakespeare. The highest aspiration of these nervous and strenuous generations is the acquirement and hoarding of gold. Religion is tinged with it. Politics is its ally—and alloy in the ratio of sixteen of gold to one of Patriotism. And most of the business and social relations of this enlightened age are purely golden and measured only by the circumference of a dollar. The English poet sounded the keynote of true philosophy when he sang:

“Ill fares the land to hastening ills a preyWhere wealth accumulates and men decay.”

“Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey

Where wealth accumulates and men decay.”

The true wealth of a nation rests not so much on bricks of gold as upon golden thought—the riches of brain and heart—the treasures of truth and the pure and beautiful sentiments of life. In the wild scramble for sordid gain and the golden reins of power in these wing-footed days of avarice and materialism, the angels of happiness no longer beckon from the landscape and the stream nor call from the sweet solitudes of the forest; but they stand tip-toe on the burnished domes and glittering towers of the city and the town, with crowns of gold in their hands. And the brain and brawn of the land gather there from the hills and hollows to climb after them on a thousand ladders of dreams. But the environments of domes and towers, while they stimulate the brain to grasp great financial problems and to weave the web of glory around the thrones of money kings, contract the nobler and better ideals and impulses of the heart to the gilded forms of artificial pleasure.

Did you ever watch a bevy of city swells and society belles swinging and whirling under flaming chandeliers until the coat-tails of the swells popped like whip crackers and the skirts of the belles flapped like the sails of a schooner in a high wind? That was a piping gale of pleasure in high life in the town. Did you ever attend a great reception in the heart of the metropolis? It was a gorgeous scene of icicles and spectacles, of broadcloth, and jewels arrayed in white slippers and costly gowns of richest colors; and the icicles and spectacles bowed to the jewels, and the jewels bowed to the icicles and spectacles and they held sweet converse on the subject of their bicycles and tricycles and various and sundry articles and drank champagne and sherry and all got very merry and wound up with oysters and dill pickles. And then the tipsy icicles and spectacles got in their elegant vehicles and went home with the jewels in the morning. That was the cream of urban civilization. Did you ever gaze on a gaudy throng of bald-headed Apollos and painted Minervas walling their eyes in speechless rapture before the garish lights of the grand opera? How the fans and ribbons fluttered and the side-whiskers swayed and spluttered amid the inscrutable harmonies of Wagner! That was the tuneless pandemonium of urban music. Did you ever watch the bulls and bears of finance turn the stock exchange into a howling wilderness of confusion in the struggle to raise or lower prices? That was the third heaven of artificial pleasure and excitement in the city.

But what is a thrill of victory in the gambling hell of frenzied finance compared with the joy a fisherman feels down on the farm when a game trout strikes his baited hook in the darkening eddy of a crystal stream and the good reel sings as he gives him line and the fishing rod bends and the waters splash? What is the gilded club room where the wizards of finance meet to sip and smoke and shuffle the cards of fortune compared with a fisherman’stent and a fisherman’s luck on the bank of a moonlit river where hearts are trumps and souls overflow with song and story?

Did you ever hear the tale of Mark Antony, the funeral orator of Rome and the Romeo of the Nile? He went angling in Egypt one day on the royal barge with the beautiful Cleopatra and he fished and fished and fished, unrewarded by a nibble, until the hours grew dull and heavy. But the cunning queen conceived a plan to change her lover’s luck and unfolded the scheme to a slave; and the slave secretly dived from the larboard side of the boat and hung a dried herring on the General’s hook and then gave his line a vigorous pull. “By Jupiter!” shouted Mark Antony, “I have hooked a monstrous fish.” “Take care, my lord, and give him line lest he drag thee into the sea,” cried the dark-eyed queen, as she chuckled behind her fan.

“By the gods! that fish shall flounder on thy deck, or I shall flounder beneath the waves!” cried the impetuous Roman. He squared himself and gave a mighty jerk, but fell sprawling on his back at the feet of the laughing queen, and when he looked up and saw nothing but a little dried herring dangling among the ropes above him, he blandly smiled and dryly said: “He was a monstrous fish while biting, but between his bite and my jerk, he has wonderfully shriveled. But he’s the oldest looking fish and has the loudest smell of any that ever perfumed the royal barge.”

And so many an ambitious Antony sits in the stock exchange of the great city and drops his hook in the sea of speculation, and he fishes and fishes with his little wad of hard earned cash, until some shrewd manipulator, just to change his luck, takes the little wad off and gives the line a heavy pull, and when our guileless Antony thinks he has hooked a million, he jerks and falls at the feet of fickle fortune, and finds dangling in the air above him only the dried herring of a shrivelled hope, and there is nothing left but the aged look of an empty purse and the smell of a dream that is vanished!

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