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DONNELLIANA: 
 
 AN APPENDIX TO " CjESAR'S COLUMN. 
 
DONNELLIANA 
 
 All Appendix to "Caesar's Column." 
 
 EXCERPTS FROM THE WIT, WISDOM. POETRY AXI) ELOQUEXCE 
 
 IGNATIUS DONNELLY 
 
 SELECTED AXD COLLATED, AVlTll A BlOGKAi'HY, 
 
 By 
 
 EVERETT W. FISH, M.D. 
 
 Aulliorof ConipKHd <>f Chemical. Analysis aud The Grexit Puramid, aud Editor of 
 
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 F. J. SCHULTE & COMPANY, PT'P.Lisir>:HS, 
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 '' Oiie of the most remarhahle men of this age.'''' — St. Louis Ceitic. 
 " The most icnique fgure in our national history.'''' — New Yoek Stak. 
 ^^ America,, the land of '■big things,^ Jias, in Mr. Donnelly, a son vjorthy of her 
 inmiensity.''^ — Pall Mall GtAZETTE. 
 
 Copyright, 1892, 
 
 By FRANCIS J. SCHULTE. 
 
 All rights reservecl, 
 
JV. 
 
 By IGNATIUS DONNELLY. 
 
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ERRATA. 
 
 Part I. p. '61, next to last line, for " 1889" read '' 1869." 
 " . " p. 62, 1st line, for '^ 1888" read " 1868." 
 " " p. 83, 4th line should read " would not have been 
 re-elected." 
 
 Part II. p. 19, 8th line, for " Quincy" read " Quiney." 
 " " p. 66, 9th line, for " tooted" read " toted." 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THERE is, perhaps, no man in the United States who is more 
 talked of to-day than Hon. Ignatius Donnelly, of Minnesota. 
 For while one man may be more prominent in the political arena 
 and another more conspicuous in scientific circles, and still an- 
 other more talked of in the literary world, no one man, perhaps, has 
 combined so many diverse fames. TLiere are thousands in Europe 
 who are familiar with his name, as an author, who know nothing 
 about his career as a statesman and lawmaker; and, on the other 
 hand, there are many in the United States, with whom his name is 
 a household word as an orator, who know little or nothing of him as 
 a writer. One man believes in his " Atlantis, " another swears 
 by his '' Ragnarok," still another is a convert to the " Great Crypto- 
 gram;" and there are hundreds of thousands, on both sides of the 
 Atlantic, who think " Caesar's Column " or " Doctor Huguet " the 
 greatest book ever written; while there are tens of thousands more, 
 who have never read any of these books, or scarcely heard of them, 
 who love him for his quarter of a century's championship of the rights 
 of the common people, against all the crushing power of Corpora- 
 tions, Rings, Trusts, and the Plutocracy generally. He is indeed 
 a many-sided man. 
 
 When, therefore, the publishing house of F. J. Schulte & Co. re- 
 quested me to prepare a biography of Governor Donnelly, I hesitated, 
 for some time, about attempting the task. Not that a long continued 
 political intimacy, and kindred scientific and literary tastes, with 
 many visits to him in his own home, and seeing him tried under all 
 sorts of circumstances, had not made me very familiar with his char- 
 acter and writings; but Governor Donnelly's career had been so active, 
 he had lived through so many and such important events, and had 
 taken such an important part in them all, that I felt that it would 
 require years of time, and a volume of hundreds of pages, to do jus- 
 tice to his life and acts; and that anything I could attempt, in that 
 
6 PREFACE. 
 
 direction, would be but a feeble and imperfect sketch, prepared 
 in the hurry of other pursuits, aud unworthy of both the writer 
 and the subject. 
 
 It is in this view that I submit the following pages to the reader 
 — more as an editor and compiler, than an author. A great many, 
 perhaps hundreds, of short biographies of Grov. Donnelly have been 
 published in newspapers, magazines and encyclopsedias ; and these 
 show the public curiosity to know something about the history and 
 character of the man; and I feel confident, therefore, that the many 
 additional and interesting facts given in these pages will be 
 acceptable to general readers, on both sides of the Atlantic. 
 
 ^^4. I beg leave to acknowledge my indebtedness to Hon. John A. 
 
 ■ tiiltiriau for valuable assistance in the preparation of this work. 
 Judge Giltinan made a visit of several weeks' duration to Gov. Don- 
 nelly's home, in 1887, and had free access to^allhis jjapers; and he 
 selected and collated hundreds of the extracts given in Bon- 
 nelUana, and arranged them in very much the order in which they 
 stand in the following pages. The work could scarcely have been 
 prepared without his help. 
 
 E. W. F. 
 St. Paul, Minn., October, 1891. 
 
DONNELLIANA. 
 
 A BIOGRAPHY OF HON. IGNATIUS DONNELLY. 
 
 IN THIS age of the world the lives of many great men become 
 a part of history before the contemporary chapter is closed, 
 and it often becomes necessary to write the chronicles of the day 
 before the sun has reached the western horizon. Thus the history 
 of the individual is often inscribed while the sky is still brilhant 
 with promise and the day pregnant with events. 
 
 That the subject of this sketch has attained a zenith at this 
 date, no one acquainted with his powers can calmly contemplate. 
 The suppression of his political activities, during years of vigorous 
 manhtmd, because the beating of his heart would not silence, has 
 schooled him for a loftier flight in the present great humanitarian 
 movement, many of whose watch-fires his inspiration has lighted 
 upon the western hills. 
 
 Hence we put forth this biographical sketch as one who, witness- 
 ing great and immediate changes in the world, descries a clearly 
 defined ''genius " — one whose profound thoughts and masterful 
 utterances have become guiding forces in the contentious elements 
 of the times. We write not as one ringing down the curtain upon a 
 mighty drama, involving human destinies, but as one who lifts the 
 curtain upon another act, wherein the drama approaches the chmax 
 of its power. 
 
 Ignatius Donnelly was born in William Penn's famous old 
 City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia, in the State of Pennsylvania, 
 on the south side of Pine Street, between Ninth and Tenth Streets, 
 on the third day of November, in the year of our Lord 1831. 
 
 His father. Dr. PhiUp Carroll Donnelly, was an eminent physi- 
 cian of Philadelphia, a graduate of the Jeflerson Medical College of 
 that city, an institution founded by the celebrated Dr. George 
 McClellan, a man of profound mind and great learning, and the uncle, 
 w^e believe, of General George B. McClellan, famous in our Civil War. 
 
 Doctor Donnelly was a native of the parish of Fintona, in Tyrone 
 County, Ireland. While yet a boy he emigrated to Philadelphia, in 
 the early part of the present century. Here, on June 29, 1826, he 
 
8 BIOGRAPHICAL. 
 
 married Miss Catharine Frances Gavin, a native of the District of 
 Southwark, a part of the present city of Philadelphia. 
 
 Jolm Gavin, the father of Catharine, came to the United States 
 in the latter part of the last century. He was, also, from Fintona, 
 Tyrone County, Ireland, and a descendant of one of the Scotch 
 emigrant families which settled in Ireland at the time of the great 
 English and Scotch emigration, to the North of Ireland, about 1640. 
 He died in Philadelphia in 1826. 
 
 Young, in his History of Christian Names, derives Gavin from 
 the name of " Sir Gawain," King Arthur's nephew, the meaning of 
 which was " Hawk of Battle." He says: 
 
 " His name, whether as ' Waluron,' ' Gawain' or 'Gavin,' was popular in England 
 and Scotland in the middle ages, and in the last-mentioned shape named the high- 
 spirited bishop of Dunkeld, the one son of ' Bell the Cat ' who could pen a line, and 
 who did so to good purpose, when ' he gave rude Scotland Yirgil's page; ' nor is the 
 name of Gavin by any means extinct in Scotland." 
 
 In Lower's Patronymica Britannica, page 126, we read that — 
 
 "Gawan, Gawen and Gavin are different forms of an old Scotch and Welsh per- 
 sonal name. The Gawans of Norrington, in the parish of Alvidestan, continued in 
 that place four hundred and fifty years." 
 
 The reader of Eobert Burns' poetry will remember his devoted 
 attachment to his friend Gavin Hamilton, to whom he dedicated a 
 volume of his poems : 
 
 " So, sir, you see 'twas no daft vapor. 
 But I mutually thought it proper. 
 When a' my works I did review. 
 
 To dedicate them, sir, to 
 
 you, 
 
 Because (ye need na tak it ill) 
 
 I thought them something like yoursel'." 
 
 De. Edward Maginn. 
 
 Mr. Donnelly's mother's mother was a first cousin of the cele- 
 brated Dr. Edward Maginu, Bishop of Derry, the friend of Daniel 
 O'Connell, and, in his day, the greatest orator, controversialist and 
 philanthropist of the North of Ireland. The New York Nation, of 
 February 17, 1849, speaking of his death, said : 
 
 "He was the earliest and most ardent friend of the union of parties. He was 
 ntterly opposed to the antiquated folly of petitioning England. He was a believer 
 in the right of nations to resort to arms for the defense, or assertion, of just claims; 
 and if banners had appeared, last year, in the summer air, over the fields of Ire- 
 land, his benediction would have Hailed them as they rose. The utter vanishing of 
 all our brave prospects, beyond a doubt, weighed on his enthusiastic spirit, and 
 perhaps induced that fever of mind and body which has ended in his death." 
 
 He was a profoundly learned man. A gentleman who heard 
 him speak describes him as possessing — 
 
 "A mind stored with an immense accumulation of general knowledge, with 
 an imagery bold, various and peculiar ; brilliant, correct, striking. His views were 
 clear and vivid, and he had always a full and absolute possession of his subject. A 
 
BB. FT) WART) MAGTNN. f 
 
 warm heart and a cool licad jiavc him that very rare ('onil)iiiatioii of stroiit-:. |n <!• 
 tical eommou .sense united to a brilliant imagination and a vigorous poeti(^ t'auey."" 
 
 The celebrated Thomas D'Arcy McGee, who wrote a biogra- 
 phy of Doctor Maginn, speaks of — 
 
 " His public spirit, his moral courage, his thorough identity with the country, 
 his tierce eloquence, his unwearied industry." 
 
 He adds: 
 
 " His application to details made him, in some sort, the judge and legislator 
 of his people." 
 
 Thomas D'Arcy McGee says of him : 
 
 "The continued negligence of subordinates, indifference of superiors, and 
 insensibility of the government to the wholesale destruction of Irish life, at last 
 inspired Dr. Maginn with that deep-seated abhoiTence of English misrule which he 
 carried with him to his grave. ' For myself,' he says, in a letter, ' as a Christian 
 bishop, living as I do amid scenes that must rend the heart of any one having the 
 least feeling of humanity, though attached to our queen as much from affection as 
 from the duty of allegiance, 1 don't hesitate to say to you that there are no means 
 under heaven that I would not cheerfully resort to' to redeem my ])eople from their 
 present misery ; and sooner than allow it to continue, like the Archbishop of Milan, 
 1 would grasp the cross and the green flag of Ireland, and rescue my country or 
 perish with its people.'" 
 
 He died preniatiirely at the age of 53. He was really the great 
 man of his epoch and country; and but for his early demise would 
 have played a still more important part in the history of Ireland. 
 
 He was an ardent friend of teujperance, having administered 
 the pledge of total abstinence to several thousand persons before he 
 became bishop. He was a strong opponent of slavery, a lover of 
 liberty, and a profound admirer of the United States. But his 
 hatred of oppression and sympathy with the wretched were the 
 strongest sentiments of his noble character. In his speech, when 
 elevated to the episcopate, he said: 
 
 " Believing the poor to be the 'treasures of God's chm'ch,' I must have proved 
 false to my vocation had I stood on the side of the powerful against the weak, or 
 of the oppressor against the oppressed. The rich seldom want advocates — the 
 poor often. Aly sympathies, 1 own, have always been with the poor and lowly. In 
 this I have a bright example in His conduct who refused to go to the ruler's 
 daughter, and went, with alacrity, to the centurion's servant." 
 
 In reading his eloquent speeches, full of learning, vigor, imag- 
 ination and humor, one is constantly^ reminded of his relative, the 
 subject of this sketch. 
 
 Mr. Donnelly's Mothee. 
 
 Mr. Donnelly's mother died June 13, 1887, at Philadelphia. 
 She was a woman of great mental endowments. The Philadelphia 
 Star, speaking of her death, said: 
 
 '• Mrs. Catharine Donnelly, of 534 Pine Street, widow of the late Doctor Philip 
 Carroll Donnelly, was a lady of marked and admirable traits of character, and 
 
10 BiOGRAPHTCAL, 
 
 beloved by all who knew her. She possessed extraordinniy breadth of mind and 
 excellence of judgment, associated Avith great kindness and benevolence of heart, 
 and all the womanly graces. She was the beloved center of one of the brightest 
 and happiest homes in the city, and the gap in the lives of those who loved her 
 can never be tilled. The poor will miss her many charities, and all who came in 
 contact with her, in the daily walks of life, will grieve to think that her cheery and 
 vivacious manner and kindly presence are gone forever." 
 
 The New York Freeman^s Journal of June 18thj 1887, spoke of 
 Mrs. Donnelly as — 
 
 " A woman of rare intellectual force and unremitting energy, joined to solid 
 piety. She was the mother of a family noted for talent and even genius in its 
 members." 
 
 The Philadelphia Record of June 16th, 1887, speaking of her 
 death, saids 
 
 " She was a lady of rare force of character, combined with other qualities that 
 Ivin respect and esteem. She was the mother of a notably talented family." 
 
 The Philadelphia Times spoke of her as " a woman of extraor- 
 dinary powers of mind, great vitality, and beloved by a large 
 circle of friends. '' 
 
 She was seventy-seven years old at the time of her death. Mr. 
 Donnelly thus speaks of his mother in his journal : 
 
 "My mother was a great-brained, noble-hearted woman. Her life was one 
 of sacrifice for her children. When my father died, she was still young and 
 attractive ; but she took the ornaments from her ears, and, assuming her widow's 
 weeds, resolutely devoted herself to the care of her family, repulsing the advances 
 of the suitors who sought her hand. For herself she had no ambition and no van- 
 ity ; she was the humblest of women ; but her pride in her children Avas unbounded. 
 Active and powerful as was her mind, her heart over-weighed it. She could never 
 have attained distinction, for all her energies went out in behalf of those she loved. 
 
 " Her courage, resolution, perseverance and sagacity were man-like, but she 
 never employed them for herself Her temper was cheeiful ; her heart tender, and 
 the elasticity of her spirit extraordinary. Her energy was without limit. 
 
 " She was a true mother. The wings of her spirit spread over her brood con- 
 tinually, and she had no thought but for their happiness. A purer and cleaner 
 heart never beat on earth. I cannot believe that she could be happy, even in 
 heaven, if she knew that her children were miserable." 
 
 The Donnellts. 
 
 The Donnellys, according to Doctor Donavan, are an ancient 
 sept, of Ulster. In his great work, The Annals oftJie Four Mast- 
 ers (vol. vi. p. 2426), Doctor Donavan traces back the pedigree of the 
 '' clan Donnelly" to ^'Niall of the Nine Hostages," monarch of all 
 Ireland, slain A. D. 406. The eighteenth in descent from ]|«fiall was 
 *' Donnghal, a quo O'Donnelly." 
 
 The Doimellys boasted that their ancestors never wor i the iron 
 collar of serfdom since the foundation of the world ; that they and 
 their ancestors were clansmen ; and in the clan every member was 
 held to be of as good Ijlopd as the chief, and might succeed to the 
 command. 
 
THE DONNELLY S. 11 
 
 Accordiiip: to Doctor Donovan, the Donnellys were originally 
 settled, more than two thousand years ago, in the district of 
 Tir Enda, in the extreme northernmost part of the island; they 
 were probably descended, in the remote past, from some colony of 
 Northmen who had landed on that wild coast. 
 
 Not from any desire to carry the subject of this sketch back into 
 ancestral shadows, deeply involved in the mythical, but to connect 
 modern research with that Irish history approached, at least, by 
 this investigation, we make the following suggestions: 
 
 It was in this North-Ireland region that the ship of the Danites 
 landed, 480 B. C, bearing the Lais fail, or stone of destiny, borne, 
 subsequently, to Scotland by King Feargus, and now the coronation 
 stone of England. With this Danish vessel came the old seer of 
 Irish tradition (who either justly or unjustly gave origin to the belief 
 that Jeremiah was buried near the Lake of Tara), and the fair- 
 haired " Tephi," or Hebrew daughter. And it is held by some that 
 the Saxon-haired, or light-haired, Semite-faced Irish sept sprang 
 from this source, at the village of Tuatha-d'Danaan. 
 
 From that point, on the extreme northern coast of Ireland, 
 the Donnellys fought their way inward to the center of Tyrone 
 County. They were a bold, warlike race. The head of the clan, 
 according to Keating, was the hereditary marshal of the great 
 O'Neill's forces. Fynes Morryson, in his Historic of Ireland, states, 
 in his enumeration of the forces of the chieftains of Ulster who 
 combined to oppose the Earl of Essex, in 1599, '^ rhat the Donolagbes 
 (O'Donnellys) had, in their country, one hundred foot and sixty 
 horse." 
 
 Doctor Donovan says : 
 
 "DoBuall Groome MacDoanell (Donnelly), the brother of the marshal, accom- 
 panied Tyrone to Kinsale, where he fought with such desperation that he, a cap- 
 tain of one hundred, and ail his vieii were slain." 
 
 This was courage worthy of the field of Marathon. If all Irish- 
 men had fought with similar desperation Ireland would never . ave 
 been conquered. 
 
 Francis Bacon little thought that the revelation of his wonder- 
 ful cipher was to come from a descendant of one of the Irish rebels, 
 who were giving at that time so much trouble to the Earl of Essex 
 and Queen Elizabeth. Phettiplace wrote the English council, speak- 
 ing of the great John O'Neill, that '' his strength and safety' con- 
 sists, not in the noblest of his men, nor in his kinsmen, nor his 
 brothers, but in his foster-brothei's, the O'Donnellys, who are three 
 hundred gentlemen. " 
 
 According to Doctor Donovan Queen Elizabeth at one time pro- 
 posed to make John O'Donnelly an earl, but he refused the splendid 
 offer, and stood by his country. 
 
12 BIOGRAPHIC 4.L. 
 
 Doctor Douovan concludes his lengthy account of the Donnellys 
 with these words : 
 
 " All of tlie men of this family that I ever saw are remarkable for their manly 
 form and symmetry of person ; and even the peasants, who bear the name, exhibit 
 generally a stature and expression of countenance which indicate high descent." 
 
 The Carrolls. 
 
 Dr. Philip Carroll Donnelly's mother was a Carroll, from whose 
 family he took his middle name; and, with pardonable pride, he en- 
 tered in the family Bible, many years ago, a statement of the fact 
 that she was a lineal descendant of the last of the ancient kings of 
 Ergall, or Orgiall, whose royal seat was at Clogher, in Tyrone 
 County. 
 
 The kingdom of Orgiall comprised the counties of Armagh, 
 Monaghan, Louth, and part of Tyrone; and the dynasty lasted from 
 the year 332 to near the end of the twelfth century, more than eight 
 hundred years. The remains of their royal palace still exist, sur- 
 rounded by extensive earthworks, mounds and ditches. The 
 race of the O'Carrolls was held in such high esteem that it was stip- 
 ulated, with the King of all Ireland, that if any of the sept were 
 given as hostages, they should, if shackled, wear fetters of gold; 
 and hence the name of their kingdom, signifying " shackles of gold. " 
 
 Of course, in these days, and this free country, such memories 
 are very little thought of; and yet those who believe in the hered- 
 itary transmitability of qualities of the mind and heart find a cer- 
 tain interest in them. 
 
 This, I think, is the same family of Carrolls from which the cele- 
 brated Carrolls of Maryland are descended. The reader will 
 remember the often quoted remark of Charles Carroll, of the Con- 
 tinental Congress, in 1776. When he signed the Declaration of 
 Independence some one said — for it was a perilous deed to do, 
 and might lead to confiscation and the scaffold: '' Well, Carroll, you 
 will escape, for there are so many of the name of Carroll that, if we 
 are beaten, the government can never tell which Carroll it was who 
 wrote his name there." Whereupon the bold patriot took the pen 
 again and wrote after his name the words, '' Of Carrollton; " and 
 there it stands to this day, a memorial of the time when men staked 
 " their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honors" for liberty. 
 
 In Ireland, as has often been remarked, the native aristocracy, 
 who, by '^ natural selection," had, during centuries, fought their 
 way to the top, were trampled down into the ranks by conquest and 
 confiscation ; and hence it is that so much talent constantly crops 
 up from the Irish peasantry. An Irish king was as much in his day 
 as a Saxon king, and possessed just as much power, splendor 
 and culture ; and there is no reason, therefore, why the strong traits 
 which made his race leaders of men should not reappear in his 
 
DOCTOR DONNELLY. i; 
 
 descendants for many generations.* The world, moreover, is nc 
 iirally curious, when any man attracts public attention, to inquir 
 whence he got his characteristics, believing that " like must pro 
 duce like. " 
 
 Doctor Donnelly. 
 
 Doctor Donnelly, the father of Ignatius, held several importan 
 positions. He was one of the Board of School Commissioners, anu 
 a great friend of the public school system. He was also one of the 
 commissioners of the township of Moyamensing, in Philadelphia, 
 during 1837, 1838, 1839 and 1840. 
 
 He was one of the founders of the Philadelphia College of 
 Medicine, having been one of the original incorporators named in 
 the act of the Legislature of Pennsylvania. 
 
 At the time of his death, he was the physician in charge of the 
 Moyamensing Alms-house. Moyamensing, now part of the city of 
 Philadelphia, was then a separate municipality. Doctor Donnelly 
 owed his death to his benevolence of character. A poor fellow, an 
 immigrant, was brought to the Alms-house, suffering from typhus 
 fever, or •' ship fever, " as it was called. His case was so hopeless, 
 and the disease so far advanced, that the assistant physicians and 
 nurses refused to wait upon him, knowing the dangerous and con- 
 tagious nature of the disease. Doctor Donnelly devoted himself to 
 the poor man, and in doing so contracted the disease from which he 
 died. 
 
 He was respected by all who knew him, and was long remem- 
 bered by the poor of Philadelphia for his many charities. He was a 
 profound thinker and a great student. At the time of his death he 
 had accumulated a library of several thousand volumes. It is a 
 curious fact that he was a constant reader of the works of Francis 
 Bacon, and this may be cited as another illustration of the theory 
 that even mental tastes, as well as talents, are transmitted from 
 father to son. 
 
 Ignatius Donnelly's Education. 
 
 The subject of this sketch owes all his education to the public 
 school system. He was sent, when about ten years old, to the publi 
 grammar school at the corner of Eighth and Fitzwater Streets, Phil 
 adelphia, where he remained until his thirteenth year, when h 
 entered the Central High School of Philadelphia, a very fine institu- 
 tion, possessing a collegiate course. 
 
 *And. it must not be forgotten that Ireland once possessed a degree of culture 
 higher than any of the other nations around her. The kings of England (notably 
 Alfred the Great) resorted to " the green isle " to obtain their education; and Irish 
 scholars traveled to all parts of Europe disseminating learning and civilization. 
 To this day, in France, Germany, aud even in Austria, you will find ancient colleges 
 and monasteries that were established by Irish missionaries. 
 
n BIOGBAPHICAL. 
 
 The principal of the school was, at that time, Professor John S. 
 3art, the author of numerous books, editor of Sartain^s Magazine, 
 the leading literary monthly pubhcation of that day, and a gentle- 
 man of great amiabihty, as well as learning; afterwards president of 
 Princeton College. 
 
 Mr. Donnelly graduated from the Philadelphia High School in 
 1849, and soon after entered upon the study of law in the office of 
 Benjamin Harris Brewster, subsequently Attorney-General of the 
 United States. He remained in Mr. Brewster's office until his ad- 
 mission to the bar, and was a careful and laborious student. He 
 worked so hard, the first year, in mastering the mysteries of the pro- 
 fession, that his health was temporarily affected, and his mother sent 
 him, in 1851, to Muncy, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, where he 
 spent some months, hunting and fishing, in the wild, mountainous 
 region of Sulhvan County, then infested with panthers and bears, 
 and full of deer and other game. Here he shot his first deer. These 
 excursions restored him to health. 
 
 In his nineteenth year he published a volume of poems called 
 The Mourner^ s Vision. He has since been diligently engaged 
 trying to suppress all the copies he could find. At this time he gave 
 more promise of turning out a poet than anything else. 
 
 Admitted to the Bar. 
 
 In the year 1853 he was admitted to the bar, and at once en- 
 tered upon the practice of his profession. He speedily built up a 
 considerable business. In 1855 he dehvered the annual address on 
 the 4th of July, from the steps of the old Court-house, from the 
 very spot where the Declaration of Independence was first promul- 
 gated in 1776. The Pennsylvanianj Col. John W. Forney's paper, 
 then the leading journal of the city, complimented this address 
 strongly. It said : 
 
 ' ' The oration delivered by Mr. Donnelly is an effort deserving of the highest 
 encomium. The style in which it is written is clear, cogent and graceful, combin- 
 ing eloquence of thought with purity of diction." 
 
 Nominated for the Legislature. 
 
 In the fall of the same year (1855), Mr. Donnelly was nominated, 
 without any sohcitation on his part, by the Democrats of the legis- 
 lative district in which he resided (his home was then on the south 
 side of Spruce Street, above Sixth), for the House of Representatives; 
 but he declined the nomination, partly because be began to have 
 jdoubts about the soundness of the position of the Democratic party 
 ,:Jon the slavery question, but principally because he was very busy 
 i paying his addresses to a young lady, Miss Katharine McCaffrey, 
 a native of Philadelphia, whom he soon afterward married. 
 
HIS MARRIAGE, 15 
 
 His Marriage. 
 
 Miss McCaffrey was the principal of the boys' secondary school 
 at Eighth and Fitzwater Streets, Philadelphia, and was generally 
 regarded, at that time, as the finest amateur singer of that old and 
 cultured city. The marriage took place on the 10th of September, 
 1855. Mr. Donnelly's groomsman was Samuel S. Fisher, afterward 
 of Cincinnati, Ohio, and one of the leading patent lawyers of the 
 United States. He was Commissioner of Patents under President 
 Grant. That 10th of September was " a red letter day " in the lives 
 of both Mr. and Mrs. Donnelly, for their married life has been an 
 exceptionally happy one. A lady correspondent of the Chicago 
 Times, who visited Mr. and Mrs. Donnelly at their home, in 1886, 
 said : 
 
 '^ Nothing could be happier than the domestic life of Mr. and Mrs. Donnelly. 
 
 Upon the occasion of my last visit to them Mr. Donnelly, in speaking of his early 
 
 life, said : ' Wtien I was three and twenty 1 manied the oest woman in the world.' 
 
 '" 'Yes,'siMd Mrs. Donnelly, with the ready wit which is one of her many 
 
 charms, ' we both of us met with bargains.' 
 
 "Mrs. Donnelly is the intelligent, sympathetically critical, and admiring 
 partner of all her hilsband's eftbrts, and although the eldest of their three children 
 is now twenty-eight years of age, they are still aifectionate companions, happy in 
 their busr retirement, and in their sincere attachment ; wholly free from sentimen- 
 tality, they demonstrate, to those who hold high ideals of what the domestic relation 
 may be, the practicality of their conceptions." 
 
 The celebrated Mrs. Jane Gr. Swisshelm, in 1861, thus spoke of 
 Governor and Mrs. Donnelly : 
 
 "Lieutenant-Governor Donnelly and lady dined and spent the evening with 
 us. Our readers all know our opinion of Mr. Donnelly, Governor Ramsey's right- 
 hand man in bringing our State up from the slough of despond in which they found 
 it floundering ; biit Mrs. Donnelly is by far the most entertaining companion. She 
 is the finest singer I have ever heard off the stage : and those who hear her can 
 form a good idea of Jenny Lind. Then she read for us ' Lochiel's Warning,' as 
 one might expect Charlotte Cushman to have read it.'' 
 
 He Takes a Trip West. 
 
 In the winter of 1855-6 there was a great deal of talk, in the 
 East, about the new and rapidly growing West, and an immense 
 movement of population westward followed. In the spring of 1856, 
 [April 14th] , Mr. Donnelly, accompanied by his wife, and a young 
 lady and gentleman, cousins of his wife, who had relatives living in 
 Iowa, started west to look at the new world. Mr. Donnelly kept 
 a very curious and interesting journal, from which I extract the 
 following description of Chicago : 
 
 Chicago in 1856. 
 
 "We find Chicago situated on a flat, so low that they are busily engaged 
 raising the houses above the level of the mud and water. The buildings, even on 
 the pnncijial streets, are of wood. Everything has a temporary look ; it gives one 
 iho idea of a great caravansary. There seems to be a large amount of busine!=s, 
 but verv little comfort. That will come with time. 
 
16 BIOaBAPHICAL. 
 
 ' ' Here we are in the heart of the Great "West. All is hurry and confusion ; 
 rapid growth is everywhere ; millionaires are as thick as whortleberries ; life and 
 animation are visible on all sides. 
 
 "Our old friend F. L. married a gentleman who is part owner of the 
 ' Young America,' a handsome hotel here. So, with letters of introduction, we go 
 there. 
 
 "The house, despite its grandeur, seems to have fallen into disfavor. We 
 are lodged sumptuously, sleeping in a bed that would do honor to royalty, and 
 waited on by liveried servants ; but the fare, although heralded on a gorgeous card, 
 with the names of many French dishes, consists, when reduced to the test of 
 reality, of beef-steak and lake-snipe. These latter are very abundant at this season, 
 and sell, we are told, for one dollar per bushel. 
 
 "We ride around the town. The city looks as if a gigantic board-yard had 
 been worked up over night into a multitude of small, half-finished houses, and 
 these had been dropped at random over the face of a dead flat prairie. The streets 
 are muddy beyond conception. The sidewalks are of boards, in many cases high 
 above the streets, and often dilapidated to an extent dangerous to life and limb. 
 Yet it is a city of mighty possibilities — the great city of the future." 
 
 The travelers reached the Mississippi Kiver April 23, 1856. 
 The Father oe Waters. 
 
 "Here we beheld, for the first time, the mighty river — the Father of Waters. 
 We survey it with feelings almost of awe, sweeping on from its intercontinental 
 birth-springs to its grave in the tropical sea." 
 
 They crossed the river at DaveDport, on the first railroad pas- 
 senger train ever draivn across the Mississippi River. 
 
 The road terminated at Iowa City, then the end of the railroad 
 system of the West. The journal says: 
 
 " The railroad to Iowa City is in a horrible condition. It was built under con- 
 tract during the fall and winter, and as the frost went out of the ground the road 
 sank into the soft mud. After leaving Davenport, a beautiful and growing city, on 
 the west bank of the river, we were a whole day reaching Iowa City, when we 
 should have accomplished the distance in a few hours. Twice we had to leave the 
 train and walk, with baggage in hand, past portions of the mud-drowned road, and 
 then take a new train to Another mud-hole. The country is wild prairie ; two or 
 three deer are seen in the distance. Most of the passengers are going to Kansas ; 
 and nearly every man (and they are all men) has his Sharpe's rifle, or some other 
 similar implement of civilization. There is a good deal of conversation in the car 
 about the troubles and bloodshed in that territory." 
 
 He describes the accommodations at an Iowa City hotel : 
 The Beef- Steak and the Pickaninny. 
 
 " By taking a carriage we got to the ' American House ' in advance of the reg- 
 ular ' bus,' and with great difiiculty obtained one room for all four of us. The room 
 
 was about six feet by ten. My wife and Miss slept in the single bed ; John 
 
 and I on a quilt on the floor, with our feet under the bed. We had to put them 
 there or out of doors. The rush of travel is enormous. The landlord and his clerk 
 acted as chambermaids. I looked into one room, aboij^t twenty by twenty ; there 
 were eight beds, occupying the entire room ; each bed holding three persons, twenty- 
 four in all. The struggle for room and air was so great that we observed, in some 
 instances, the middle man with his head at an angle of fortj^-five degrees against the 
 head-board, and his arms stretched out, like a crucifixion, above the beads of his fel- 
 lows. How human beings could live in such an atmosphere was a marvel. Dirt 
 and discomfort were everywhere; We should probably have endured it all but for 
 
IOWA IN 1866. 17 
 
 a pleasing incident which occurred at breakfast the next morning. The ladies of 
 our party were seated where they had a full view of the kitchen. The cook— a 
 large, black Avoman — had placed several pans of fried meat, read}- cooked, for carv- 
 ing, upon the brick pavement near the fire. Her child, a little, eig'hteen-months-old, 
 bow-legged, half-clad pickaninny, was toddling around, when it accidentally fell 
 backward, in a sitting position, into one of the pans of meat. The mother rushed 
 over, picked it uj). gave it a slap and a wipe, and proceeded to carve up the con- 
 tents of the pan for the waiting guests. That settled us." 
 
 They removed to '' The Park House." 
 
 Mr. Donnelly left the ladies at Iowa City, and he and '' John" 
 proceeded west by stage. 
 
 Iowa in 1856. 
 
 "Our route lay through Iowa and Poweshiek Counties, and part of Jasper; 
 the eountiy is almost altogether treeless prairie. The roads are utterly abominable 
 — rough and muddy to the last degree. Occasionally they are crossed by sloughs, low, 
 Avet swales, where the hidden bog is covered by a carpet of grass, through which 
 the Avheels of the lumbering stage are apt to' break. At this season they are 
 especially bad. The traveler is regaled with humorous stories illustrating their 
 character. One, for instance, of a man who, on arriving at the brink of the slough, 
 found a stranger Avhistling. as if calling for something. 
 
 " 'Is this slough sate ?' asked the new-comer. 
 
 " ' Oh, yes,' was the response. 
 
 '• ' What are you whistling for ? ' 
 
 '• ' My oxen and wagon are down in there somewhere, and I am trying to coax 
 them out.' 
 
 "The accommodations are wretched. In atrip of one hundred and thirty 
 miles, we saw butter but once, and then the specimen was floating at the bottom 
 of a dirty saucer. The hotels are log-houses ; the fare, fried ham and bad bread 
 (forty or fifty cents per meal); the drivers rough and impudent; the stages in- 
 tolerable. 
 
 "The male passengers, in the morning, usually fire off their revolvers and 
 re-load. 
 
 " This country will not do for me. It is a great and rising country, certain to 
 become rich, prosperous and popular, but it is desolate and bleak, and the comforts 
 of life are all wanting. The next generation will find it a paradise compared to 
 what it is now. Trees are so scarce that even a bush is a relief to the eyes; the 
 scenery is so monotonous that the sight of a boulder, on the prairie, furnishes the 
 stage-passengers with conversation for an hour. The winds roar and sweep over 
 the laud as they do over the ocean. I saw large houses that had been removed 
 bodily from their foundations and carried several feet." 
 
 After visiting " John's " father at Albion or Lafayette, in 
 Marshall County, Mr. Donnelly left " John " to stay a few days with 
 his parents, and returned alone to Iowa City. 
 
 Two Iowa Families Coxtkasted. 
 
 '• 1 took dinner at Indiantown on my way from Xewtou eastward. We staid 
 all night at a place called 'Clem's.' Mr. Clem was. 1 think, from Indiana. His- 
 house was of logs, but large and roomy and well built. It realized all my ideas of 
 a comfortable Western home. It had a huge old fire-place, ornamented with 
 'andirons.' The walls were hung with all manner of things: powder-horns, rifles, 
 whips, children's dresses, etc. 
 
 "It was a cold, windy night. I went to sleep in a bed facing the.glorious fire ; 
 the room roseate with its flickering light. 
 
18 BIOGBAPHICAL. 
 
 " Inteljigence sets its stamp every w^here. There is no substitute for brains. 
 From the old 'grand'ther,' who warmed his shriveled palms before the fire, down 
 to the hearty-looking boy who waited on the horses, the whole family bore the 
 marks of industry and intelligence. 
 
 ' ' I have rarely enjoyed a night's rest more than I did in that cleanly bed, facing 
 that pleasant fire, dropping off to sleep listening to the crackle of the logs and the 
 howl of the wind outside. 
 
 "The next night was a violent contrast to all this. It was at a place twenty- 
 two miles west of Iowa City. A rickety, rough-built cabin; a dirty, cheerless 
 room; a huge, empty stove, around which we gathered, vainly hoping to extract 
 some comfort from its cold sides; and a set of villainous-looking louts of stage- 
 drivers, lying around upon equally villainous-looking beds. A vinegar-faced old 
 woman acted as landlady ; an overgrown slouch of a young one acted as cook ; 
 while a dirty-faced boy filled the position of chambermaid. My bed-room was a 
 loft; my bed a straw mattress on the floor; my overcoat served for a pillow, while 
 the rain, trickling through the miserable roof, lulled me into uneasy slumber. The 
 fare was equally bad. Molasses supplied the place of butter ; doughy cakes were a 
 substitute for bread; while ham, here as elsewhere, was the unvarying substitute 
 for all the meats. And all this was flavored with the most uncompromising im- 
 pudence. One or two of the company ventured to complain, but always at the risk 
 of being drubbed by the landlord, who took any objection to his fare as a personal 
 insult to himself" 
 
 Mr. Donnelly and the ladies left Iowa City May 2d, 1856, and 
 that evening took the steamb^oat ^' York State " for St. Paul. Some 
 twelve hours were consumed in getting through the Rock Island 
 bridge, the force of the current being terrific. The boat was four 
 days going to St. Paul. There were no railroads then north or west 
 of Galena, Illinois. I quote again from that interesting journal : 
 
 The Upper Mississippi. 
 
 "The whole trip was delightful. . . . The meals on the boat are not to be 
 surpassed at any hotel. We had a beautiful cabin, fine bed and polite attendance, 
 everything, in short, that the most fastidious could desire. Deducting the value of 
 the meals, tliis floating piece of civilization carried us four hundred miles for two 
 dollars ! 
 
 "Without, the scenery is magnificent — it is one unending and ever-varying 
 panorama of beauty. 
 
 "When we' first came on deck we were twenty-five miles above Dubuque. 
 The river is full of islands, now overflowed by the spring freshets. Through their 
 foliage we could catch glimpses of the glancing waters. 
 
 " ' Anon, tliroiiph many a copse, 'gan peep 
 The wandering river, wide and deep.' 
 
 "The whole scene is beautiful, indeed. The black waters, the green islets, 
 the guarding hills, the sunlight and the fresh wind, made it all seem like fairyland. 
 
 "The river shores appear to rise as we go northward. On the Iowa side the 
 hills are rolling and broken. The channel lies toward the eastern side. A narrow 
 strip of arable land stretches along the river's edge, backed by high rocks, with 
 their rough fronts marked by variously colored strata, greened by mosses, and worn 
 by wind and weather and the uncounted centuries into towers and rounded pillars, 
 and all the shapes of antique castles, Avhich remind one of Praed's lines: 
 
 " 'Where foams and flows the glorious Rhine, 
 Mao7 a ruin wan and .^^rey 
 O'erlcoks the eornlield and the vine. 
 Majestic in its dari: decay.' 
 
 ■' Ab we advanced we caught glimpses of the rapidly fleeting barbarism which 
 for so many centuries has held these beautiful lands in thrall. We saw an old 
 
ST. FA UL IN I6d(j. 1!) 
 
 Indian, dressed in a curiously compounded costume, — leggins and stove-pipe hat, 
 moccasins and cloth coat, — hurrying along in a bark canoe, from one little island to 
 another, as the great steamer moved slowly forward. 
 
 "Although we had left Iowa bleak and bare, in her gray winter garb, with not 
 a tree in leaf. Ave were surprised to find the trees cm these islands, hundreds of miles 
 further uorth, covered with bright foliage. This was probably due to the moisture 
 of the river-bed. 
 
 "We have sailed into a new world. We have left the flats, the morasses — 
 the old coal-fields — of Illinois, Indiana and Iowa, far below us. Here are health, 
 beauty, majesty. 
 
 "The blue river; the green islands ; a white steamer (.-The Ladj- Franklin"), 
 steaming along the nari'ow channel in front of us ; while far along the western bluffs 
 lie the deep shadows east by the departing sun, his yellow light bathing the eastern 
 banks in glory. 
 
 '•What a beautiful land has the red man lost and the white man won!" 
 
 After describing in detail Winona, Prescott, Hudson, Stillwater 
 (for tlie boat went up the St. Croix), and Hastings, as they ap- 
 peared in 1856, Mr. Donnelly's journal proceeds to narrate that he 
 and his wife and her cousin reached St. Paul May 7, 1856, He thus 
 describes that city : 
 
 St. Paul in 1856. 
 
 "When I awoke the next morning, at about five o'clock, I hun-ied out, for the 
 steamer Avas not in motion, and there, before us and above us, lay the bluffs and 
 storehouses of St. Paul. The levee was crowded; steamboats were on all sides of 
 us. Early as it was, men were at work on the levee, with drays and wagons, among 
 the piles of freight. 
 
 "We had reached the city of promise; the cynosure of all eyes; the new 
 St. Louis; the youthful Chicago; the capital of the new-born territory of Minnesota; 
 the ultimate practicable point of navigation on the great liver. 
 
 " I hurried ashore. Everything was rough and new. 1 climbed the precipit- 
 ous bluffs, overlooking the landing, and reached the level of the town-site. ... I 
 hurried to the post-office, expecting letters from home. It was not yet open, to my 
 great disappointment. The post-offiee Avas a little brick building which looked as if 
 it had been built as a sample Avheu bricks were scarce. It was not yet six o'clock, 
 and the office Avould not open until half past seven; so 1 returned to' the boat, Avak- 
 ened my companions, and Ave left the 'York State'; not Avithout some regret, for 
 Ave had had a very pleasant, comfortable time upon her. To be sure, the four days' 
 trip had been somewhat tedious. The first day T exhausted all the neAvspapers on 
 the boat, even to the advertisements, and then took to a diligent perusal of the 
 Holy Bible, the only book on the steamer, which I read with the utmost assiduity. 
 In fact, I Avas so devoted to it that the ladies on the steamer concluded I was' a 
 clergyman, and they appointed a committee to request my wife to ask me to preach 
 to them! ... 
 
 "I had heard on the boat that the 'Winslow House' was the best hotel in 
 town : so, taking a conveyance, we proceeded there. It was a fair house, but the 
 rooms were small and the place too croArded for comfort. After staying there a 
 day we concluded to remove to the ' American House.' kept by E. H. Long. It was 
 nearly opposite the WinsloAv. and was a large, frame, rambling establishment, built, 
 evidently, in patches and sections, at different times. The landlady. Mrs. Long, 
 was a study. A plump figure, a pleasant face ; sharp, black, restless, energetic 
 eyes, and a voice that rose to ' X sharp.' especially when addressing the servants. 
 She was of Pennsylvania-Dutch extraction, and had all their thrift, and ten-fold more 
 than their usuaf energv. She Avas a good woman, a thorough help-mate to her 
 husband, and a trcracudou.s worker. Ew educatinn \ras iint cijual to her intelli- 
 fience. She told me. with wide-open eyes, one morning, that there had been ■ mid- 
 night buglers' in the house the night IJeforc. On another occasion she infonned 
 
20 BIOGBAFHICAL. 
 
 me that the schools of St. Paul were not very good, and that Mr. Long intended to 
 take their daughter— a handsome young girl — to Pennsylvania, and put her in a 
 ' cemetery.' But these little slips of the tongue were a small thing, compared 
 with her many sterling virtues^ 
 
 "Everything in the town is, as might he expected, crude and new. The 
 houses and stores are generally small and of frame. There are very few on the 
 upper half of the main street, hetween the American House and the steamboat 
 levee. There is, however, a great appearance of growth and prosperity. It is the 
 heart of all this region, 
 
 A Chaeacter Described. 
 
 " I met Mr. . He is a nondescript. His father was an Alsatian, an old 
 
 soldier of Napoleon, living at . ... He is a small man, with a marked 
 
 countenance and a droop of his nose that looks like a reminiscence of Hebrew 
 blood. He is very illiterate. He has no breadth of mind, but great nerve and 
 shrewdness. His knowledge of men, his cunning and his self-control are remarka- 
 ble. When most excited, he holds his head a little higher and talks a trifle through 
 his nose ; these are the only indications he gives of any internal commotion. A 
 close and selfish man he is, nevertheless lavish in decorating his wife and chil- 
 dren, in whom he takes the greatest pride. This is almost the only redeeming 
 trait of his character. He is one of a class of men here who infest the hotels, 
 examine the registers, get acquainted with all strangers, and, under the guise of 
 courtesy, show them property which they have for sale, and till their heads with 
 stories of enormous fortunes, made in a few weeks or months, by the rise in real 
 estate. Their art is, of course, to hide the art — to sell Avithout appearing to want 
 to sell. For this end they have accomplices and stool-pigeons — snufiy-nosed 
 adventurers and fast young dandies — and they work their games with great skill 
 and shrewdness." 
 
 Five Per Cent. Per Month for Monet. 
 
 "Everything here is inflated and exaggerated. The people are discounting 
 the future. It will require years to give body and substance to their speculations. 
 Everything is wild. 
 
 ' ' To-day Mr. was telling me that business was done here so differently 
 
 from the East; and to illustrate this, he took from his safe a promissory note for 
 about two thousand dollars, drawn by a Mr. Eandall, living here, familiarly known 
 as 'Pap Randall,' supposed to be a millionaire; the note bearing interest until due, 
 at three per cent, per month, with five per cent, per month, after maturity, until 
 paid! It was overdue several months. I expressed the opinion that the maker of 
 
 such a note must be crazy or a bankj'upt. 'Not at all,' said Mr. . "Come with 
 
 me, and I will prove to you that it is the usual custom, and that the note is fully 
 worth all that it calls for.' So saying, he took me to the banking-house of Borup & 
 Cakes, and, laying the note on the counter, they purchased it as readily as they 
 would a State bond, and counted him out the face* of the note, with three per cent. 
 and five per cent, added, as calmly as if it were indeed an every-day transaction. 
 
 BoRUP & Oakes. 
 
 "This fijrm of Borup & Oakes are the leading bankers of St. Paul. Mr. 
 Borup is a Dane; Mr. Oakes is a mild-spoken New Yorker. Both went years ago, 
 as young men to the shores of Lake Superior, to engage in the fur trade with the 
 Indians. Here they made money and married two sisters, daughters of a French 
 officer I)y one of the native women. These young ladies had been educated in a 
 Canadian convent, and are spoken of, by all who know them, as highly intelligent, 
 able and excellent women. They are at the head of society here, and entertain in 
 splendid style. 
 
 "Mr. Borup is a man of marked character; short, thick-set, prompt, active, 
 keen ; a great lover of music and well-read — a Napoleonic style of man. He is 
 said to be merciless in business and generous outside of it. 
 
VITtTUE IS ITS OWN nEWAHlX 21 
 
 " t like the people of St. Paul — wbat I see of them. They are all adA^enturers, 
 but of the best type. There seem to l)o a great number of intellectual men con- 
 centrated here. 
 
 '• Mr. took me through the town and showed me various pieces of prop- 
 erty. Mem. — A real estate dealer should always own a fast horse. In that way 
 outlying property seems nearer the improvements." 
 
 Mr. Donnelly's journal details his visits to Lake Como, St. 
 Anthony's Falls, IMinneapohs, etc. He describes the way in which 
 he and two or three other gentlemen, who were with him, got a 
 room in a crowded hotel in Hastings.' 
 
 Virtue is its Own Reward. 
 
 " After taking dinner at Mr. John Bassett's, we drove to Hastings, and put up 
 at a frame hotel belonging to the Bailleys, French halt-breeds, the principal owners 
 of the town. Fare and accommodations are all poor; the house rough, and the 
 guests of all degrees, from the rudest specimen of a Western outlaw to the Eastern 
 capitalist looking for an investment. The crowd is veiy great, and we should 
 probably have been obliged to sit up all night on chairs in the bar-room, but for the 
 fortunate fact that we happened to get on very friendly terms with a Mr. Boyle, the 
 agent or clerk of the Baillej's, having charge of the house. He is an Irishman ; 
 quite handsome and gonial, and a good singer. We adjourned to a saloon near by, 
 aud had something to eat and drink, and he treated us to some good music. He is 
 a line specimen of the dark-haired Irish, Avith all their good qualities. 
 
 " \Ve so won upon his good will that about 8 o'clock he came to us and told 
 us, in a AA'hisper, that there was not a bed in the house not already engaged, but 
 that one of the rooms had been given to a party of three or four rough fellows, who 
 Avere drinking hard, and Arould probably make a night of it; and that we had better 
 secure the room and lock the door. 
 
 " We acted promptly on this suggestion. About midnight we were aroused 
 by a terrible banging at the door. It Avas our gay fellows returning fi-om their spree. 
 We refeiTed them, through the unopened door, to Mr. Boyle, and he, when called 
 upon, told them that that was not their room; and, in 'fact, he expressed grave 
 doubts as to whether they ever had had any room anyhow! This was followed by 
 a great deal of banging and swearing, but it finally subsided, and the roysterers 
 slept off their potations on the hard floor of the* bar-room. There we saw them 
 stretched out the next morning. Thus were illustrated the great truths, that 
 virtue is its own rcAvard, and that the way of the transgressor is hard. And with 
 these reflections I quieted my conscience." ' 
 
 He Lays Out the Town of Nininger. 
 
 I wonld be glad to quote more extensively from this very inter- 
 esting journal, did space permit me to do so, for it is full of descrip- 
 tions of men and things and the new country, but it will be sufficient 
 for me to state that Mr. Donnelly united with Mr. John Nininger in 
 the purchase of about 640 acres of land, where the present village 
 of Nininger stands (or rather where it did stand, as it is now only 
 known to transitional Western history), and laid out a town there of 
 that name. He returned to Philadelphia, and came back in July, 
 1856, accompanied by his brother-in-law, Mr. Louis Faivre, of Louis- 
 ville, Stark County, Ohio, and made arrangements to build the 
 house where he now resides. 
 
 , The plan of the town was his own, and it was unique. 
 It proposed to set aside one-half the lots, to be held by the 
 
22 mOGBAPHlCAL. 
 
 proprietors, Nininger and himself; the remainder were to be sold at 
 the cost price, about six dollars per .lot, to those who would con- 
 tract to make a certain amount of improvements upon them. The 
 plan worked admirably. The price of the lots rose at once to one, 
 two and three hundred dollars each, and men eagerly took the six- 
 dollar lots and erected stores, mills, dwelling-houses, etc. Some 
 two hundred houses were erected in a year, and there were con- 
 tracts out for hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of improve- 
 ments. The town would have been one of the most successful in 
 the Territory, but unfortunately, about one year after it was started, 
 in August, 1857, the great and memorable crisis came which swept 
 over the whole country. The town collapsed. The houses were 
 hauled off onto the neighboring farms, or to the town of Hastings, 
 three miles distant, and Mr. Donnelly, who had built a much finer 
 house than he needed, and had held on to the greater portion of his 
 lots, in perfect faith in the future of the place, found himself prac- 
 tically a bankrupt, in the midst of the hardest times that had ever 
 fallen upon the West. 
 
 But while the good times lasted Mr. Donnelly pushed the town 
 with unexampled energy. 
 
 The Emigrant Aid Journal. 
 
 He established a large newspaper, with an illuminated head, 
 called The Emigrant Aid Journal. The first number was printed 
 December 1st, 1855, in Philadelphia. Mr. Donnelly edited it. Its 
 object was to aid the town, and furnish information to emigrants to 
 the new Territory. It was a very able journal. It died in the fall 
 of 1857, in the midst of the financial panic. 
 
 He Establishes Another Paper. 
 
 Nothing disheartened, he established, in April, 1859, another 
 paper, called The Dakota County Sentinel, which was strongly 
 Kepublican. This paper acquired a large circulation in the county, 
 and continued to exist until the civil war broke out, when the pub- 
 lisher, Henry W. Lindergreen (now pubhshing a paper in Geneva, 
 Ohio), entered the army as a volunteer, and pretty much all his 
 subordinates in the office followed his example. 
 
 Mr. Donnelly's Scrap-Books. 
 
 And here I would notice Mr. Donnelly's voluminous and method- 
 ically arranged scrap-books, of which there are very many volumes. 
 They contain not only details of his own history, copies of his 
 speeches and public letters, newspaper clippings, but he has even 
 preserved what others would have esteemed the most unimportant 
 trifles, but which time has rendered very curious and interesting. 
 For instance, I have one before me of 1857 and 1858. Here is a copy 
 of the old St. Paul Financial Ileal Estate and Bailroad Advertiser 
 
A WINTEU TRIP. 23 
 
 (J. A. Wheelock & Co., publishers), dated April 3d, 1858. Here 
 we have a bill-of-fare of the Fuller House, for dinner, June 14th, 
 1857, surrounded by wood-cuts, and showing just what the pioneers 
 of that day lived on. It commences with " green turtle soup " and 
 ends with eight different kinds of pie, two kinds of pudding and two 
 sorts of ice-cream ! Here we have hand-bills setting forth the attrac- 
 tions of the new Territory. Here is the original programme of a 
 Christmas party at Concert Hall, Prescott, Wisconsin, December 25th, 
 1857. And another at the Tremout Hall, Nininger, December 31st, 
 1857.' And here is an old, yellow Mississippi steamboat ticket, 
 with the distances from town to town on the river, printed on the 
 back. And here is a grand, eloquent placard of the " Red River 
 Land Improvement Company; " and here a still larger hand-bill, 
 printed by " The Calhoun Steam Printing Co., GG State Street, Hart- 
 ford, Connecticut," booming " Bois des Sioux City," a paper town 
 on the Red River, never heard of after the collapse of 1857. Here 
 we have an election ballot of 1857. And so it goes. These things 
 are already very valuable on account of their rarity, and, if not 
 destroyed, will be still more valuable in i;he future. 
 
 And in this connection I would also notice Mr. Donnelly's 
 library of pamphlets, of all kinds an J periods, neatly bound; a 
 collection that will some day have great interest for the antiquarian 
 and historian. 
 
 A Winter Trip. 
 
 But I am anticipating the course of events. After a few weeks 
 spent at Nininger and St. Paul, Mr. Donnelly i-eturned to Philadel- 
 phia. He had only one doubt upon his mind as to removing his 
 family to the Territory of Minnesota, (for it was not yet a State), and 
 making it his permanent home, and that was the question whether 
 or not the winter climate was too severe. The Eastern papers, at 
 this time, were full of horrible narrations about the arctic cold of 
 the region. I find in one of the old scrap-books a story of a mother 
 who went out sleighing, with her babe in her arms, to attend church, 
 and when she got to her destination she found the child frozen stiff 
 at her breast. These stories were set afloat to divert emigration 
 to regions farther south. But Mr. Donnelly resolved to make a 
 winter trip to the Territory, to test the question for himself. And 
 so, arrayed in fur coat and buckskin leggins, and carrying a travel- 
 ing robe, he started alone for his long and severe journey. After 
 leaving Dubuque, where the railroad ended, the rest of the journey 
 to St. Paul had to be performed in a sleigh, which was simply a 
 wagon box, on runners, with a canvas cover, like a Connestoga 
 wagon. It required six days' journey to St. Paul. The winter 
 (1856-7) was long famous for its severity. The snow in Iowa was 
 very deep, so much so that in some places only the tops of the 
 upright stakes of the " snake fences" could be seen projecting, like 
 horns, above the white expanse. 
 
24 BIOGBAPHICAL. 
 
 Plating Caeds for the Road. 
 
 The roads were beaten hard by travel, but only to the width of 
 the runners, and on each side was the deep, soft snow. It was all 
 very well as long as the stage had the road to itself, but woe to it if 
 it met another, for one or both had to turn out and go over! A 
 story was told of a travehng peddler, a bright, smart Yankee, well 
 known on the road, who met another, as bright as himself ; each 
 refused to turn out, and they sat for an hour, with their horses' noses 
 touching each other, the thermometer down to about 40 degrees 
 below zero. At length the Yankee said : 
 
 " See here, stranger, it won't pay to sit here all day. What do 
 you say to come over here and play a game of poker, to settle who 
 shall turn out?" 
 
 " Agreed," said the other. 
 
 And so they played their game, under many inconveniences; 
 and the defeated party, with good grace, turned out and went over: 
 and the victor helped him to straighten up again and reload his 
 sled, before he drove on. These were what might be called " the 
 amenities of the road. " 
 
 Bres^king the Ice. 
 
 I have heard Mr. Donnelly describe the beginning of his trip. 
 The sleigh left Dubuque at about six o'clock iu the morning. It 
 was still black night. He packed himself into his corner of the 
 stage, and could see by the light of the hotel lantern that the sleigh 
 was full of men and women, principally men. The driver whipped 
 up his horses, the runners groaned and creaked on the hard snow, 
 and all was darkness. And so they rode on in profound silence, 
 each traveler wrapped to the eyes in his or her furs and robes, and 
 deep in his or her own cogitations; probably not very agreeable at 
 such a time. Gradually" the wiuter day commenced to dawn, and 
 the travelers began to examine each other furtively and with cold 
 distrust. And so they rode for hours in glum silence. To a man of 
 Mr. Donnelly's cheerful and convivial temper, this was very distress- 
 ing. He thought, with horror, of the idea of riding in this way for 
 six or seven mortal days ! At last he could stand it no longer, and 
 addressed the crowd generally : 
 
 " Ladies and geutlemen,'" he said, " this will never do. If -we 
 are to ride this way for a week, we will all be lunatics ! Can't some 
 one tell a story? " 
 
 There was dead silence. No one even smiled. Not to be de- 
 feated in this way, he turned to one after another of the men, and 
 then to the women, and preferred the same request individually. 
 No. No. They all shook their heads, and relapsed into chilled 
 silence. Then Mr. Donnelly asked whether any of them could slug 
 a song. No — no. None of them could sing. 
 
HIS FINAL UEMOVAL TO THE WEST. 2:> 
 
 Mr. Uoxnelly's SixginCt. 
 
 *' Then " said be, " I'll sing a song myself. " 
 
 Now, if there is any one thing, among his varied accomplish- 
 ments, which Mr. Donnelly cannot do, it is to sing a song to any 
 recognized and established tnne. He often says that " any fool can 
 sing a song to one tune, but it takes a man of genius to sing a song 
 to half a dozen tunes at the same time ; " and his wife persists that 
 he always sings " Bonny Doon " to the air of " The Last Kose of 
 Summer." Consequently when, on that cold morning, he broke 
 forth into melody, the passengers forgot the cold and the discom- 
 forts, and the long trip before them, and everything else, and 
 laughed till they were sore. 
 
 But he had accomplished his object. In a few minutes some- 
 body was found who coiUd sing; and then the story-telling began, 
 and for the rest of the trip they were the j oiliest crowd that ever 
 rode over Minnesota snow-drifts. 
 
 The Retuen Home. 
 
 Mr. Donnelly started back on the same route, ar.d after another 
 ■journey, not quite as long as the last, reached Dubuque, and thence 
 made his way to Philadelphia by rail. But he had satisfied himself 
 of one thing — the winter cold could be borne, and instead of being 
 destructive it was beneficial to him. He had considerably increased 
 in weight and strength, for at the time he started on his trip he 
 weighed but 13.5 pounds. He came to the conclusion that Minne- 
 sota's cold was a bugbear, and he made up his mind to remove to 
 the new Territory with his family in the spring. 
 
 His Final Removal to the West. 
 
 He had intended to leave on the 1st of May, but the closing-up 
 of his business detained him until the 15th. His departure elicited 
 a number of newspaper compliments. The Bail?^ Pennsylvanian of 
 April 4th, 1856, the leading Democratic paper of the city, in referring 
 to Mr. Donnelly's proposed removal to the West, spoke of him as 
 " young, energetic and enterprising," and as having earned for him- 
 self" a high reputation for probity and integrity," and as '^a promi- 
 nent graduate of the Central High School "and honorably dis- 
 tinguished in the Democratic party." 
 
 And so, with his little family, consisting of his wife and e dest 
 child, then an infant of a few months old, accompanied to the depot 
 by more than fifty relatives and friends, among whom were Hon. 
 Benjamin Harris Brewster and other prominent personages, he left 
 his native city for the new Territory in the land of promise — the 
 Great West. 
 
 He remained for some months at the Fuller House in St. Paul, 
 bought some property in that city, which he still owns, and which 
 has recently become quite valuable; laid out forty acres with John 
 
26 BIOGBAPHICAL. ' 
 
 Nininger, as " Nininger & Donnelly's Addition to St, Paul, " and then 
 removed his family to the new city of Nininger, where the construc- 
 tion of his residence was still progressing. 
 
 Minnesota in 1857. 
 
 Minnesota in that day was in a strange condition. It did not 
 produce one-tenth of the food consumed by its inhabitants. Al- 
 though now one of the most productive portions of the Union, then 
 the steamboats came up the Mississippi River, every day, drawing 
 great flat-boats loaded to the water with piles of flour in sacks, 
 together with stacks of pork in barrels. All travel was by the river, 
 and the steamers would bear several hundred passengers at a trip. 
 The usual state-rooms would not accommodate but a small part of 
 them, and they slept at night on the floor of the cabins, on the tables 
 and under the tables. 
 
 There were scarcely any farms opened ; a garden was almost 
 unknown; an onion was as scarce and almost as valuable as an 
 apple; nobody j)roduced anything, but everybody speculated. 
 Every tenth man was a millionaire — in his own conceit; and every 
 other man hoped that he soon would be. On almost every window 
 in St. Paul there were written on slips of paper, with pencil or pen, 
 " Money to loan; " and money could be had in unlimited quantities 
 at three per cent, per month! Every man trusted his neighbors. 
 It would be regarded almost as a piece of disrespect to examine the 
 title to a property which any man professed to own. Fast horses, 
 fast women, gay equipages, display, high living, were everywhere. 
 It was a holiday time, without any of the orderly restraints which 
 usually characterize society. 
 
 The Crisis oe 1857. 
 
 " Nininger City " grew with great rapidity — hotels, mills, stores, 
 residences sprang up in every direction. Mr. Donnelly tells, with 
 great good humor, that he one day walked his porch, saying to him- 
 self: ** Here I am, but twenty-six years old, and I have already 
 made a large fortune. What shall I do to occupy myself during the 
 rest of my life"? " 
 
 But an event soon occurred which relieved him of any of these 
 perplexities. 
 
 In August, 1857, the Ohio Trust Company failed, and, like a row 
 of bricks, each knocking down its neighbor, the panic spread north, 
 south, east and west, until the whole business of the United States 
 lay prostrate. In Minnesota, the catastrophe was overwhelming, 
 for the Territory had nothing to build on but hope and ( onlidence, 
 and the panic leveled both. In a few days the whole nature of man 
 seeiiied to have changed ; every one distrusted his fellow; rogues 
 sprang up in every dn-ection ; the creditors turned on the debtors. 
 Values did not shrink ; they collapsed utterly. Millionaires were 
 G'-rambling around to And enough to pay their board-bills. 
 
A REMARKABLE PROPHECY. 27 
 
 Its Be^^eficial Effects. 
 
 But while the butterflies perished, tlie sturdy veoiaanry took to 
 industry. The town lot that could not be sold could be turned into 
 11 garden ; the broad acres that could no longer be mortgaged, even 
 at three per cent, per month, could be turned into tarms. Society 
 divided itself into workers and drones, and the drones were soon 
 driven out. The next year there was not so much flour and pork 
 imported, and soon the Territory began to ship out its productions; 
 and gradually the community got upon a substantial basis of pros- 
 perity, which it has continued ever since to occupy. 
 
 Mr. Donnelly suiiered with the rest. His vast fortune disap- 
 peared; but he began to cultivate his lands, and soon he was seen 
 driving his reaper in his own wheat-fields. 
 
 A Remarkable Prophecy. 
 
 In the summer of 1857, Mr. Donnelly was going from Nininger 
 to St. Paul on a steamboat, and met on the boat Dr. Thomas Foster, 
 of Hastings. Doctor Foster was a man of remarkable vigor and 
 ability. He came to the Territory from Philadelphia, whei-e he had 
 been a newspaper editor, with Hon. Alexander Ramsey, the lirst Ter- 
 ritorial Governor, and had acted as his secretary. ' He was then 
 running a flour-mill at the falls of the Vermillion River, near Hast- 
 ings, owned by himself and Governor Ramsey. He was a natural 
 politician and an earnest Republican. He felfinto conversation with 
 Ml-. Donnelly on the boat, and the subject of slavery came up. Mi-. 
 Donnelly quietly remarked: 
 
 " In twenty years it will be impossible to find in the United 
 States any man wiio will acknowledge that he ever defended, or even 
 apologized for slavery." 
 
 Doctor Foster looked at the young man with open-eyed aston- 
 ishment. Slavery was then in command everywhere; Buchanan 
 was President; Minnesota was Democratic, and every office in the 
 State was filled with advocates of slavery ; it was looked upon by 
 many as a divine institution. Doctor Foster said: 
 
 " Well, then you are a Republican? " 
 
 Mr. Donnelly replied : 
 
 " I don't know about that. I have been a Democrat, in 
 Philadelphia, but I am no politician; all I know is that I am 
 opposed to the spread of slavery over our new Territories.'^ 
 
 His Advent in Politics. 
 
 This conversation was the beginning of Mr. Donnelly's career as 
 a public man in Minnesota. Doctor Foster went on to explain to 
 him that they were trying to keep up a Republican organization in 
 Dakota County, but that the county was thinly settled, the Repub- 
 licans few and far between, and the cause hopeless, so far as per- 
 sonal success was concerned, as the Democrats were nearlv two to 
 
28 mOGBAPHICAL. 
 
 one in numbers. He told him that in a few days they would have' a 
 Republican county convention at Hastings, and he begged him to 
 come down, as a voluntary delegate, from Nininger Township. This 
 Mr. Donnelly did. 
 
 He is Nominated for State Senatoe. 
 
 He found a few gentlemen gathered from different parts of the 
 county. There was no struggle for nominations ; the struggle was to 
 get some one to let his name be used as a candidate. Under these 
 circumstances, without any solicitation on his part, and very much 
 to his surprise, and against his wishes, Mr. Donnelly was nominated 
 for State Senator. The county was entitled to two Senators, and 
 his friend Doctor Foster was nominated for the other place. The 
 whole vote of the county was 1,690, of which the Republicans had 
 about 670, and the Democrats about 1,020. He was, of course, de- 
 feated. 
 
 Nominated Again for Senator. 
 
 In 1858 there was another election, and again the Republicans 
 placed Mr. Donnelly on their ticket for State Senator. This time 
 he decided to make a canvass, for the good of the cause, hopeless as 
 the contest was. Accompanied by Archibald M. Hayes, a young 
 attorney, who had not long before migrated to the new Territory 
 from the State of New Hampshire, and for whom Mr. Donnelly had 
 formed a strong attachment (for he was the soul of honor, and a 
 genial and intelligent gentleman), he started out into the half- 
 settled country. They would ride sometimes for miles without 
 seeing a house or a man; and the men they saw were often Indians, 
 moving in squads through the country, with their ponies, with long 
 poles fastened like shafts on each side of them, the ends resting on 
 the ground, and their squaws and children and household goods 
 piled half-way up on them. The white people were gathered in 
 clusters at certain points, and here the young lawyers, made what 
 were probably the first political speeches ever made in that section. 
 After a week or two of rough living, the pair started back to Hast- 
 ings, and in fording the Vermillion River, in the night, they upset 
 their buggy and rode the rest of the way into town thoroughly 
 drenched. 
 
 As showing the esteem in which Mr. Donnelly was held in his 
 own town (Nininger) I would point to the vote he received in both 
 elections. In 1857, w^hile the Republican candidate for Governor 
 had but 102 votes, Mr. Donnelly had 143 ; in 1858 he had seventy- 
 four votes, while his associate on the ticket had but forty-one votes. 
 
 His Red Nose. 
 
 I have heard Mr. Donnelly laugh over an incident connected 
 with this campaign. He wore a narrow-brimmed. Eastern city hat, 
 
ENGOUBAGING THE VANQUISHED. 213 
 
 and the sun beat down upon his face, and especially his nose, with 
 full force. Mrs. Hayes, like a careful lady, was naturally solicitous 
 about the company her husband kept, and one day, soon after this 
 campaign, she said: 
 
 " Archy, I wish you would not associate so much with that Mr. 
 Donnelly." 
 
 *' Why, my dear? " asked Archy. 
 
 " Because you will fall into bad habits like him. " 
 
 '' What habits?" he asked. 
 
 " Why, drinking. " 
 
 " Drinking! He don't drink! He never touches a drop of any 
 kind of liquor. " 
 
 " You can't make me believe that. Just look at Jiis nose! " 
 
 Encouraging the Vanquished. 
 
 This time, in consequence partly of the canvass they had made, 
 and partly of a split in the Democratic ranks, the Republican vote 
 was larger and the Democratic vote smaller ; so that Mr. Donnelly 
 was beaten by but six votes. 
 
 After the election was over, he issued a brief address to the 
 voters of the county, dated October 18th, 1858, in which he said : 
 
 ' ' Fellow Citizens : After a close contest, the Republican party of Dakota 
 County has again, with one exception, been defeated. Defeats are dangerous things. 
 They unnerve and discourage the weaker party, and encourage and strengthen the 
 victorious one. There are always those whose opinions are in a formative and 
 fluctuating state, and these naturally fall into the ranks of the dominant party. . . . 
 
 *'The Republican party is one of sentiment and principle, not of spoil and 
 plunder. We have joined it, not for selfish aims of personal advancement, but in 
 pursuance of our convictions that it embodies in itself the great moral and political 
 advancement of the day — that movement which points to complete fulfillment of 
 the purposes which made us a distinct nation. If, then, we have failed to accomplish 
 political success, let us not be cast down, but, comforted by the assurance that we 
 have done our best, gird up our loins once more, and prepare ourselves again to 
 fight the good fight." 
 
 Resumes the Practice of the Law. 
 
 Soon after this, that is to say, in November, 1858, Mr, Donnfelly 
 was admitted to the bar of Dakota County, and resumed the prac- 
 tice of the law. Shortly after he formed a partnership with Messrs. 
 Archibald M. Hayes and Oren T. Hayes, the latter afterwards 
 Major of the First Minnesota Regiment ; the name of the firm being 
 Hayes, Donnelly & Hayes. 
 
 He Starts the Dakota County Agricultural Society. . 
 
 Mr. Donnelly was the first to organize the Agricultural Society 
 of Dakota County, and this was either the first, or one of the first 
 societies of this kind ever organized in the new Territory. He com- 
 menced his WM:)rk by issuing a circular, which was extensively dis- 
 tributed through the county. The Agricultural Society of Dakota 
 
30 BIOGRAPHICAL, 
 
 County, thus established, has held annual fairs from that day to this, 
 and will probably last for hundreds of years to come. It now has 
 fine buildings at Farmington; and the people of the county take 
 great interest in it. 
 
 The State is Admittetj i>^to the Unto>t. 
 
 Up to the year 1857 the people of Minnesota had remained in 
 the swaddling-clothes of a Territorial existence. On the 26th of 
 February of that year, Congress passed an Act ''to authorize the 
 people of the Territory of Minnesota to form a Constitution and 
 State Government, preparatory to their admission into the Union," 
 etc. A constitutional convention was called; a Constitution was 
 agreed upon, and the people ratified and adopted it at an election 
 held October 13th, 1857; and, on the 11th day of May, 1858, Congress 
 passed the Act of admission, and Minnesota became one of the great 
 sisterhood of States. At this time the Territory bad perhaps some- 
 thing over 150,000 inhabitants. It has now about one million four 
 hundred thousand. In 1857 there were 35,340 votes polled; in 1859, 
 38,917; in 1890, the total vote was 240,892. 
 
 Lectures i:n" St. Paul. 
 
 On January 17th, 1859, Mr. Donnelly lectured in St. Paul, 
 before the Mercantile Library Association, on " Style in Comxjosition 
 as Indicative of Character.''^ The lecture was repeated at other 
 places, and was highly commended. But his literary power was, as 
 yet, shadowed by the evident development of political power. The 
 word " strength " is more fitting than power. His political 
 " strength " was the promise of great i^ower. The solid character 
 of his mind; his loyalty to conviction; hisabihty upon the platform; 
 his already apparent love for the common people; a mastery of 
 humor in public address; the purity of his life, and above all, a 
 prescience in conversation and public address that impressed his 
 auditor with far-seeing statecraft, all combined to bring him forward 
 as a future political power in the West. 
 
 The great combinative elements of unjustly accumulated wealth 
 had, as yet, built up no aristocracy. The term " Plutocracy " had 
 not yet been constructed, and, however much individual " dollar 
 despots" may have dishkeid his anti-monopoly views, they were 
 unable to mold their antipathy into a political force against him. 
 
 And hence the promising and reasonable entrance of Ignatius 
 Donnelly into State and National politics was but the natural 
 development of a fair morning into the noontide. However, the 
 irruption of such an intellectual, power into the great maelstrom of 
 political intrigue, alarmed the scheming political forces of the North- 
 west, and before the sun was half-way to the zenith, a combination 
 of those who were spreading their robber-tentacles out over the 
 great State ^as accomplished; and the policies of the then formative 
 
NOMINATED FOR LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR. ol 
 
 Plutocracy of the Nation began to exhibit some of that tremendous 
 power to crush which has since extinguished much of the noblest 
 and best brains of the great Western republican empire. The very 
 preface to Mr. Donnelly's life was one of inspiration ^o the pioneer, 
 and of misgiving to the public robber, but his tremendous antag- 
 onism to corruption and public wrongs had not, as yet, been dis- 
 tinctly formulated or noted as an indestructible element of his 
 character. 
 
 Nominated for Lieutenant-Governor. 
 
 The canvass Mr. Donnelly had made in Dakota County had 
 attracted a good deal of attention throughout the new^ State, and 
 his letter of encouragement to the defeated Eepublicans had been 
 extensively copied through the party papers; and when the Repub- 
 icans held their second State Convention on June 20th, 1859, Mr. 
 Donnelly's name was urged by Doctor Foster and others (the Doctor 
 was then publishing the leading Eepublican paper of St. Paul, the 
 Daily Minnesotian), for the position of Lieutenant-Governor. The 
 party were in the minority in the State, and they needed speakers 
 to advocate their principles, and Mr. Donnelly had already achieved 
 considerable renown as an orator. There were three ballots: the 
 first was taken July 20th. Mr. Donnelly had 31 votes out of 125 del- 
 egates. The convention adjourned until the next day; on the second 
 ballot Mr. Donnelly had 53 votes; on the third, he had 77 votes and 
 was nominated. He made a short speech thanking the convention. 
 
 He was probably the youngest man ever nominated for so high 
 an ofiace, being then but twenty-eight years of age. 
 
 The Political Campaign of 1859. 
 
 In 1859 there were no railroads in the State; the peopie and the 
 candidates were alike poor. Alexander Ramsey (the first Governor 
 of the Territory, appointed in 1849) was the nominee for Governor. 
 He took his family horses and carriage (an open conveyance), and 
 invited Mr. Doimelly and Hon. Aaron Goodrich (who had been the 
 first Chief Justice of the Territory) to seats in it; and the party set 
 forth to convert the State from Democracy to Republicanism. At 
 Winona they were joined by Mr. William Windom, who had Just 
 been nominated for Congress, and who was at the time practicing 
 law in Winona. Mr. Windom has since filled the high posts of 
 United States Senator, and Secretary of the Treasury, under Pres- 
 ident Garfield, and again under President Harrison, and died 
 recently while fining that post. Governor Ramsey has also been 
 United States Senator, and Secretary of War under President Hayes, 
 Judge Goodrich, who is also now dead, was, during the war, Secre- 
 tary of Legation of the U. S. at Brussels, and has written a very 
 interesting and valuable work, The Life of Columbus. 
 
32 BIOGBAFHICAL. 
 
 The Hon. William Windom in 1859. 
 Mr. Donnelly in his journal says : 
 
 ' ' Mr, Winclom, having no experience in campaigning, had an idea that he 
 could travel from town to town by stage-coaches. This expedient did well enough 
 for a day or two ; but he then found himself at a small town that had stage connec- 
 tions with its neighbors but once in one or two weeks. He started out to find a 
 horse and buggy, but after diligent search the only thing he could discover, in the 
 way of conveyance that he could hire, was a great long-eared, venerable mule ; but 
 he would have to ride him— for carriage or wagon of any kind was out of the ques- 
 tion. So the candidate for Congress mounted his mule and accompanied the other 
 candidates in the carriage. It was a painful mode of traveling to one unaccustomed 
 to it, especially for the first two or three days ; and Mr. Windom was a handsome, 
 modest, rosy-faced young man, who felt very much abashed. The worst of it was 
 that the mule was of a social temper, and whenever he came near a cluster of 
 houses, be it hamlet, village or town, he would set up the most sonorous and un- 
 earthly braying; and the astonished inhabitants would rush out in alarm to find the 
 future Member of Congress, blushing to his eyelids, bestride his long-eared com- 
 panion, looking the very picture of mortification, and wishing the ' dratted mule ' 
 was in Hades. 
 
 "The worst of it was that his competitor, the Democratic candidate for Con- 
 gress, a witty young Irishman, by the name of 'Jim Cavanaugh,' got to telling, in 
 his speeches, that 'an ass was riding a mule through the country, and that one of 
 them was running for Congress.'" 
 
 But the party of campaigners won, all the same. They traveled 
 by this private conveyance about two thousand miles, and made 
 over sixty speeches each. They visited regions that had never 
 heard a pohtical speech before. They spoke in barns, saw-mills, 
 school-houses, halls, churches, and in the open air. They were for 
 ten days in a frontier region so primitive that there w^as not a pair 
 of stairs to be seen. 
 
 Mpv. Donnelly's Part in the Campai&n. 
 
 The State went Republican for the first time, the entire State 
 ticket being elected: Ramsey, Governor; Donnelly, Lieutenant- 
 Governor; Windom, Congressman, etc. Mr. Donnelly's speeches 
 contributed a great deal to the conversion of the State. The 
 Minneapolis State Atlas said, after the election: 
 
 "Mr. Donnelly's nomination was thought by some, at the time it was made, 
 to be a weak one, but the service he has rendered the cause, and the fact that he 
 has run ahead of Governor Ramsey even, in many sections, must, we think, satisfy 
 every Republican that his selection for that post was a most excellent and fortunate 
 one." 
 
 The Mankato Independent said : 
 
 "In noticing the nomiaation of Mr. Donnelly, we spoke of him as ' the coming 
 man of Minnesota.' Some of our friends thought this was too strong, but since his • 
 speech here we believe the universal verdict is in favor of the truthfulness of Our; 
 prediction." 
 
 Many Democrats concede, to this date, t>hat it was Mr. Don- 
 nelly's speeches which, more than anything else, turned the scale 
 and made the State Republican. Of course we have no doubt that 
 
A S LIE U TENANT- G VEENOM. 33 
 
 eventually Miunesota would have beeu Republican anyhow — the 
 character of its settlers would have produced that result ; but there 
 is no doubt that Mr. Donnelly's speeches hurried forward that event. 
 
 His Career as Lieutenant-Governor. 
 
 In 1850 the Legislature met, in the beginning of December, 
 while tbe newly elected State otficers did not take their seats until 
 the beginning of January, 1860. The Legislature was Republican 
 by a large majority; in the Senate, however, the Democrats had a 
 little more than one-third of the members. TheoutgoingLieutenaut- 
 Governor, Mr. Holcombe, was a Democrat, and among the Demo 
 cratic Senators were some of the best parliamentariaus and bright- 
 est men in the State. These gentlemen, getting control, by accident, 
 of the committee on rules, fixed things so that the minority could 
 control the majority on all important questions ; and then provided 
 that the rules could not be amended without a two-thirds vote, 
 which the Republicans did not have; they thus rendered the large 
 Repubhcan majority perfectly powerless. The Lieutenant- 
 Governor sustained his party friends. Political feeling ran very 
 high at the time; the Democrats were incensed at losing the State, 
 while the Republicans were indignant at the trick which had been 
 played upon them ; and they were especially fierce against Lieu- 
 tenant-Governor Holcombe. 
 
 Objects to the Precedent. 
 
 In their rage the Republicans appointed a committee to confer 
 with Governor Donnelly, and they told him that they had pretty 
 much made up their minds to throw Governor Holcombe out of the 
 second-story window of the Capitol, and they wanted to know what 
 he (Mr. Donnelly) thought of the plan. He replied that, so far as 
 Governor Holcombe was individually concerned, he would not object 
 very much, but that he did not want to see such a xjrecedent estab- 
 lished! It would only be a short time until the new State officers 
 would be sworn in and Governor Holcombe would go out, and he 
 thought it better to wait patiently for that event. They took his 
 advice. There was a complete dead-lock until the end of the mouth. 
 The Democrats did not see how Mr. Donnelly could get out of tl:o 
 tangle they had cunningly involved the Republicans in ; but Mr. 
 Donnelly, with his usual thoroughness, had studied parhameutary 
 law in all its refinements. 
 
 He Settled the Question. 
 
 Friends and enemies were alike curious to see how this young 
 and untried man would settle the difficulty. As soon as he had ' 
 taken his seat the question arose, and thereupon Governor Donnelly 
 pronounced a judgment so clear and lucid, and so thoroughly sus- 
 tained at, every point by. authorities, that.he broke the dead-lock, 
 
34 BIOGEAPHICAL. 
 
 and even the Democrats were forced to confess that he was right. 
 After about a month's service, the State Neivs of St. Anthony and 
 Minneapolis, of January 2.1st, 1860, expressed the general judgment 
 when it said : 
 
 "During the recent canvass, Lieutenant-Governor Donnelly was made the 
 subject of especial depreciation bj his opponents. Taking advantage of the fact 
 that he was comparatively a new man in the State, the opposition press denied to 
 him ability, or any other qualifications for the responsible oflBce to which he was 
 nominated. Even his supporters felt a hesitation, because he was so much of a 
 stranger to them. The canvass gave proof of his ability in popular discussion. 
 But he has done much more since his accession to the Presidency of the Senate to 
 prove the propriety of the choice made by the nominating convention. He has won 
 upon the good graces of all parties by the impartial courtesy with which he governs 
 the deliberations of the Senate; and he has amply proved his ability to interpret 
 and apply the laws of parliamentary proceedings. We have read 'the decision' by 
 which he set aside the arbitrary action of his predecessor. It is a logical citation of 
 principles and authorities, perfectly conclusive So convincing is it that even the 
 political adherents of the late President are constrained to admit that he (Hol- 
 combe) was mistaken in his course." 
 
 The Election of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was Governor Donnelly's first choice for the 
 Kepublican nomination for President ; and when he was nominated, 
 he heartily supported his election, making a vigorous canvass and 
 helping very much to again carry the State for the Republican 
 ticket. Some report of one of his speeches was preserved by the 
 St. Cloud Journal, and from it I make a few extracts to show his 
 sagacity in foreseeing the course of events. The " Squatter Sov- 
 ereignty Doctrine " of Stephen A. Douglas was, at that time, very 
 popular in the West, but Mr. Donnelly showed up its errors in the 
 following remarks, every word of which the good sense of mankind 
 will approve to-day : 
 
 " Squatter Sovereignty. " 
 
 "Springing from this state of things — for platforms are but revelations of the 
 conditions of the public mind and heart — is the doctrine of which Mr. Douglas is 
 the great founder and exponent — the doctrine of ' Squatter Sovereignty.' 
 
 "This doctrine has been for some years exposed to the scrutiny of the most 
 intelligent people in the world, and has been fairly riddled and perforated with 
 criticism and ridicule. Its inception, its startling novelty — 
 
 " ' Got. wlien the soul did muddled notions try, 
 And born a shapeless masS, like anarchy; ' 
 
 its incongruities; its deceits; its impossibilities with itself; its shuffling and fraud- 
 ulent history, have all been, time and again, laid beTore you, by your public 
 speakers, In your newspapers, in your private conversations, until it has become 
 
 " ' A thrice-told tale, 
 Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.' 
 
 I should weary your patience did I attempt to go over the well-worn path. 
 
 '■There is, however, one aspect of this singular and novel doctrine, whicji has 
 been but little touched upon,- but which, nevertheless, appears to me of the first 
 consequence. I refer to the practical workings of the doctrine of ' Squatter Sov- 
 ereignty' as applied to the Territories. It is my position here to-night that the 
 
'^SQUATTER SOVEREIGNTY:' 35 
 
 results of Squatter Sovereignty are anarchy, war, bloodshed in the Territorj-, and 
 eventually civil war in the Nation itself. 
 
 •'To that branch of the subject I shall devote my remarks this evening. 
 
 "Mr. Breckenridge says, speaking of the American Congress, 'A stranger! 
 visiting Washington, M'ould suppose the President of the United States to be the 
 ruler of two distinct and hostile nations.' 
 
 '' At this critical moment, when the nation is all tinder, waiting for the spark 
 when the great work, proceeding peaceably, walks amid shadowy dangers Mr! 
 Douglas comes forward with the announcement : ' 
 
 '• ' True, my friends,' he says, in effect, ' wo cannot settle this question hero ; 
 our oflScers cannot keep order; our parliamentary rules amouut to nothing ; we will 
 come to blows and murder each other, which wouTcl be neither respectable nor 
 pleasant. But there is a gi'cat empty region west of us. ^'ou Southerners, T)ick 
 out your best fighting men, and you Northerners j-ours; send them forth and let 
 them tight it out. For my part, 1 don't care which wins.' 
 
 '• And so he washes his hands of the whole matter, like Pontius Pilate, when 
 he handed over Christ to the executioners. 
 
 •' And this, we are told, is a great policy ! This is great statesmanship ! This 
 is ' Popular Sovereignty ! ' . . . 
 
 " 'It removes this question,' says Mr. Douglas, 'from the halls of Congress.' 
 
 "Is it. then, the great end of statesmansnip to remove great questions from 
 the halls of Congress, to dodge issues, to change the venue of agitation ? 
 
 "It was said in condemnation of William Pitt that he transferred the em- 
 barrassments of his own age to the shoulders of a succeeding one. What shall be 
 said of this man, Douglas, who preserves order in Washington by removing the dis- 
 order to Kansas? Who heals the disease at its natural outlet, that it may break 
 forth, with ten-fold virulence, in another part? And who is willing to chase the 
 ulcer from the belly to the members and all around the system ? 
 
 " But whither does he remove it? To the battle field! 
 
 "The words of Alexander Hamilton become prophetic. There, between con 
 tending hosts, amid the mixed population of a new countrv, stimulated by the fury 
 of the on-gazing Nation, beneath the light of blazing dw'ellings. and accompanied 
 by the rattle of rifles and the roar of artillery, the great problem of our age is solved, 
 'dnd man is jvnved capahle of self-government! ... 
 
 "But, my friends, this is more than a question of admiration for this or that 
 man, or even of devotion to this or that principle. Air. Douglas' doctrine involves 
 the perpetuity of our Government, the continuance of i)eace, and the personal wel- 
 fare of all of us. 
 
 "There are portentous consequences flowing from it; a dark terror stands in 
 the background, which every man who sympathizes with Mr. Douglas should be 
 prepared to confront. 
 
 " Who will arrest this Territorial system ^vhen once established? 
 
 " ' Like the yoiiug lion that has once hipped blood, 
 The heart can never be coaxed back to aught else.' 
 
 "Will Mr. Douglas contract to build a wall around this Territorial conflict ? 
 Who shall say to this desperate iniquity, when it reaches the Territorial boundaries, 
 'Thus farand no farther'? 
 
 "Ko, my friends; you will see the inevitable evil rise into the air — gorgon- 
 like—with all its horrors spread; looking abroad with blood-red eyes for wider 
 fields 0f conquests. Where shall its pestilent feet first strike the earth ? 
 
 ^' Let Harper's Ferry answer! 
 
 "Let the agitated Nation rise up and recognize in it — in this Squatter Sov- 
 ereignty — the embodied genius of Civil War. ... 
 
 "There is a mass of tinder in this countr}' which needs only such a fire-brand 
 as this Squatter Sovereignt}- has proved itself to be. ' Warnings,' says Guizot. 'rays 
 of light, are never withheld from rising revolutions.'" 
 
 It is It Striking evidence of the foresight of Govei'nor Donnelly , 
 that, thus early, he foresaw the coming of the civil war, for it will 
 
36 BIOGRAPHICAL. 
 
 "be remembered that even so late as the spring of 1861 there were 
 few who believed that war was possible. In fact, I understand that 
 as far back as 1856 Mr. Donnelly prophesied that the country was 
 on the brink of a great war, between the North and South, on the 
 question of slavery, and he said it would depend on the capacity of 
 the generals, on either side, whether it would be fought out north 
 of Mason and Dixon's Hue or south of it. And he has since argued 
 that if Beauregard had marched on Washington, after the dis- 
 astrous rout of the natienal troops, at the first battle of BulPs Eun, 
 the conflict would have been transferred to the soil of Pennsylvania 
 and Ohio. 
 
 The Civil Wae. 
 
 In the spring of 1861 the great civil war began. This is not 
 the proper place to refer, with any detail, to these great events. 
 
 Governor Ramsey, of Minnesota, was in Washington when the 
 news was first received of the firing on Fort Sumter. The Presi- 
 dent issued his call for 75.000 volunteers, and Governor Ramsey had 
 the honor to offer to the President the first thousand men. He 
 telegraphed to St. Paul, to Lieutenant-Governor Donnelly, who was 
 acting as Governor during his absence, to publish a call for one 
 regiment, whereupon Governor Donnelly issued the following procla- 
 mation : 
 
 "Whereas, the Government of the Uuitod States, in the enforcement of the 
 laws, has, for several months past, been resisted by armed organizations of citizens 
 m several of the Southern States, who, precipitating the country into revolution, 
 have seized upon and confiscated the property of the nation, to the amount of many 
 millions of dollars ; have taken possession of its forts and arsenals; have fired upon 
 its flag; and, at last, consummating their treason, hav under circumstances of 
 peculiar indignity and humiliation, assaulted and capturea a Federal fort, occupied 
 by Federal troops. Ana, whereas, all these outragCb, it is evident, are to be followed 
 by an attempt to seize upon the National Capitol and the ofiices and archives of 
 the Government. And whereas, the President of the United States, recurrmg in 
 this extremity to the only resource left him, the patriotism of a people who, 
 through three great wars, and all the changes of eighty-five years, have ever proved 
 true to the cause of law, order and free institutions, has issued a requisition to the 
 Governors of the several States for troops to support the Xational Government. 
 
 "iS'"ow, therefore, in pursuance of law, and of the requisition of the President 
 of the United States, I do hereby give notice that volunteers will be received at the 
 city of St. Paul for one regiment of infantry, composed of ten companies, each of 
 sixty-four privates, one captain, two lieutenants, four sergeants, four corporals and 
 one bugler. The volunteer companies already organized, upon complying with the 
 foregoing requirements as to numbers and ofticers, will be entitled to be first 
 received. The term of service will be three months, unless sooner discharged. 
 Volunteers will report themselves to the Adjutant-General, at the Ca,>itol, St. Paul, 
 by whom orders will be at once issued, giving all the necessary details as to enroll- 
 ment and organization. . 
 
 *' Given under my- hand and the great seal of the State, at St. Paul, this six- 
 teenth day of April, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight. hfindred and sixty- 
 one. , 
 
 " Ignatius Don-nellt. 
 
 " Governor «(? /y?^i?/'u;^. 
 "By the Governor. 
 
 "J. H, Bakek, Secretary of State." 
 
SUJRBENDEnmG m A BODY. 37 
 
 ORr^ANIZINd TRK FlIlST REGIMENT. 
 
 The men came poming in with wonderful alacrity; the State 
 Capitol was a busy place in those days. Governor Donnelly dis- 
 played great executive ability ; he provided for the shelter and sup- 
 port of the men, and oi'ganized the regiment, all except the appoint- 
 ment of the officers. 'This Governor Ramsey reserved to himself, 
 having a shrewd eye to the political influence of those appointments 
 upon his own fortunes. 
 
 The difficulty was, that more men were offered than could bo 
 accepted, and there was a scramble to get into the regiment, which 
 afterward achieved such great renown on many a bloody battle- 
 field, and of whom but few ever returned to the State. 
 
 It was Governor Donnelly's fortune to act as Governor during 
 the organization of nearly all the regiments sent out by the State 
 during the war, and he received high praise for the energy and exec- 
 utive ability which he displayed in the work. He was strongly 
 opposed to any person plundering the Government, and insisted that 
 all supplies of clothing, or rations, should be'contracted for, after full 
 notice in the newspapers, and should then be given to the lowest 
 responsible bidder. 
 
 The Uj^ifoems of the First Regiment. 
 
 In a spicy correspondence which, some years afterward, oc- 
 curred between Governor Donnelly and Hon. Gordon E. Cole, the 
 Attorney- General of the State, and which created great amuse- 
 ment at the time. Governor Donnelly thus refers facetiously to the 
 contract for the equipment of the famous First Minnesota Regiment: 
 
 Surrendering in a Body. 
 
 " ' Bluff Aleck' [Governor Ramsey's nick- name] wrote me 
 one day to come at once to the State Capitol, as he was about to go 
 up the Minnesota Valley to the Indian payment, and would be gone 
 for a few days. I felt like that celebrated member of the Irish Par- 
 liament, Sir Boyle Roche, when he said, ' Mr. Speaker ! I smell a 
 rat! I see him 'floating in the air! But by the blessing of God I 
 will yet nip him in the bud ! ' 
 
 " I came to St. Paul. One ' shoddy ' contract had already been 
 consummated upon the First Regiment. The cloth of the pants fur- 
 nished was of such fine quality, it was said, that when the regi- 
 ment made a charge over a fence, there was such a display of white 
 flags that the enemy thought the regiment had surrendered in a 
 body. This naturally led to remonstrances, and some of the sol- 
 diers were profane, my dear Cole. They thought it more important 
 to protect their 'rear 'than to keep open their lines of communication. 
 
 '' As soon as I reached St. Paul I discovered that a new con- 
 tract was about to be made for some more of those valuable goods, 
 and that it was to be done under my temporary administration! I 
 
38 BIOGRAPHICAL. 
 
 felt confident, of course, tTiat ' liliiff Aleck ' would come out, in case 
 any complaint was made, and assume the whole responsibility of the 
 transaction ! So, to save him, ' I put my foot down,' as good Mr. 
 Lincoln would say, and squelched the whole thing, and compelled 
 the publication of an advertisement for bidders, and the awarding 
 of the contract to the lowest bidder. " 
 
 The events here referred to, in this jocose way, created a great 
 deal of interest at the time. There was a determination on the part 
 of certain parties, Avho were looking for large profits, to use Gov- 
 ernor Donnelly as " a cat's-paw, to pull their chestnuts out of the 
 fire. " An immense pressure was brought to bear on the Governor 
 ad interim, but he resisted it well; as the following anecdote will 
 show: 
 
 Jacksoniai!^ Firmness. 
 
 The Adjutant- General of the State insisted that the contract 
 must be made at once without any previous advertising. To this 
 Governor Donnelly strenuously objected. He refused to sign the 
 contract. The following spicy dialogue then occurred : 
 
 Adjutant- General — " Do you mean to say that you will not sign 
 this contract ? " 
 
 Governor Donnelly — " No; I will sign no contract where there 
 is not a fair chance for all parties to bid ; and then the contract 
 must go to the lowest responsible bidder. " 
 
 Adjutant- General — "But Governor Ramsey is satisfied with 
 this contract." 
 
 Governor BonneUy — " Then let Governor Ramsey return home 
 and sign it. " 
 
 Adjutant- General — ^" If you will not sign it I will sign it myself, 
 as Adjutant- General of the State." 
 
 Governor Donnelly — " If you attempt anything of the kind I 
 shall remove you from your ofQce so quick that it will make your 
 head swim." 
 
 And the Adjutant- General subsided. 
 
 It is easy to see that this kind of a man — who could neither be 
 bullied nor bought nor fooled — was not the kind of person that was 
 wanted at the head of affairs, in a condition of things when 
 plunder was the great object of the politicians and public life was 
 full of moral rottenness. Every step Governor Donnelly took in 
 defense of fair play and honesty accumulated more and more enemies 
 against him, until at last they drove him out of public life. 
 
 Fighting the Battle oe the Debtors. 
 During Mr. Donnelly's term as Lieutenant-Governor he show jd 
 the same disposition to work for the unfortunate that has been appar- 
 ent in all his later career. There was at that time no limitation 
 upon the price that could be charged for the use of money, and three 
 per cent, per month, and five per cent, per month after maturity, as 
 
THE BEAU AND THE BEES. 39 
 
 I have shown, were the usual rates. When the crisis came, while all 
 property was flattened out, these rates continued to run, and they 
 were bankrupting all the business men of the countiy. Governor 
 Donnelly began a series of letters in the Minnesotiun, then the 
 leading Republican paper, published by his friend Doctor Foster, 
 which showed up the enormity of the system and led to a decision 
 by the Supreme Court, which swept away the five per cent, per 
 month after maturity extortion. As indicating the spirit in which 
 Governor Donnelly looked upon these matters, I quote the following 
 fable, from his pen, wliich appeared, at that time, in the Minnesotian: 
 
 The Bear axd the Bees — A Fable Adapted to the Times. 
 
 ' ' Once upon a time a certain bear made his home in a small piece of ■woods. 
 A swarm of bees, entering: the same, proceeded to build their hive in a hollow log. 
 The bear visited them, and, after informing them that he was the owner of the 
 woods thereabouts, claimed that if they remained they must pay him a certain 
 amount of honey, in the nature of rent." To this the bees readily consented, pro- 
 vided, however, 'that they were not to be called upon for the first "installment until 
 the end of the autum months. 
 
 "When the time appointed arrived the bear called for his rent. The bees 
 infonned him that they had had a very stormy, unpropitious summer ; that their 
 hive had been very imperfect, and open to the rain and the wind; that many of 
 them had fallen sick and died, and that, on the whole, the utmost they had been 
 able to accomplish was to build their wax-cells and support themselves. " That con- 
 sequently they were unable to pay the rent as agreed upon ; but that they found 
 the woods around them full of flowers, and, if not driven out, they felt confi- 
 dent that they could, in the following summer, collect very large quantities of 
 honey, pay the rent, and have a handsome surplus left. ' 
 
 "The bear would not listen to this. He insisted that they agreed to pay a 
 certain amount of honey; that the time had arrived and they must pay it. And 
 forthwith he set to work upon the hollow log; and in a few moments the'fragments 
 of wax-cells were strewn over the ground ; and the poor bees might be seen wing- 
 ing their way to some more hospitable laud. 
 
 "Bruin — his teeth clogged with wax — stood for some time looking after 
 the retreating bees, and then fell into the following solemn meditations: 
 
 " ' True, I have driven them forth ; 1 have broken up their hive ; I am revenged; 
 but in what am 1 the gainer? I have neither honey in the present, nor the hope of 
 honey in the future. 1 have destroyed that which in time would have brought me 
 a settled income; and for it I have 'what? This torn log, these broken chips, this 
 defaced mass of wax. Alas! in unhousing them I have injured myself! Logs and 
 flowers are nothing without bees; and foolish indeed have I been to seek to en- 
 force the payment of honey by driving out those who made the honey.' 
 
 "Exit Bruin with a lugubrious countenance. 
 
 "Moral: The honorable creditors of the people of this State can neither re- 
 obtain their money, nor increase their security, by driving out the laborers of the 
 State. The State is people — not land. And land* is no more money than flowers 
 arc honey. Time and labor are necessary to produce either." 
 
 It is worth remembering that a fierce fight was made by- 
 interested parties to maintain the three and five per cent, a month 
 system; and it was urged that to oppose it would drive capital out 
 of the State and bring everything to destruction. This, by the way, 
 is the same effigy at present erected in every grain-field of the 
 West — powerless, except to frighten the weak and strengthen the 
 usurers. 
 
40 BIOGRAPHICAL. 
 
 A FoTJETH OF July Speech in Wak Times. 
 
 On the fourth day of July, 1861, Lieutenant-Governor Don- 
 nelly dehverecl an address at Northfield, Minnesota. As illustrating 
 the way in which things were looked at by him, in those momentous 
 times, now so rapidly receding into the dim past, I quote a few 
 extracts : 
 
 ' ' Fellow CITIZE^^s : We are assembled, in the midst of revolution, to cele- 
 brate the greatest of revolutions. For the first time in eighty years the anniver- 
 sarv of our nation dawns in storm and darkness. We can no longer turn back, in 
 exultation and pride, to contemplate the past ; our gaze must be fixed with trem- 
 bling solicitude upon the immediate future. ... 
 
 "And can we expect abatement in God's still greater work — the forward 
 movement of his creature, man? Will He fall asleep and wake up with new plans? 
 Will His schemes end like the Lost Kiver of Utah, in the sand— licked up by the 
 overcoming heat of the flames of civil war "? 
 
 "jSTo! The chords upon which the tempest now plays such discordant notes 
 reach back into the bosom of primeval night. ' You will find the fibrous roots of 
 this day's occurrences,' says Carlyle, 'among the dust of Cadmus and Trismegistus, 
 with Father Adam himself, and the cinders of Eve's first fire.' 
 
 ' ' In this contest Marston Moor is one of our battle-fields ; Milton's Defensio 
 Pojmli, one of our state papers; and every great efi'ort of the human understand- 
 ing, in behalf of human rights, has contributed to our certain success. God is 
 with us, and we need but be true to ourselves. . . . 
 
 "Among nations we stand alone. If our experiment of free government sur- 
 vives this great trial, no monarchy, no matter how popularized and palliated, can 
 out-last fifty years. 
 
 "Rival governments stand ready to snatch up our broken commerce and re- 
 joice over our destruction. Already the sneer is on their lips. 
 
 "They judge us by false parallels. This great people, in the full enjoy nient 
 of liberty, accustomed to self-government, and with a gi-eat measure of education, 
 can not be compared with either the people of England or France, bursting with vol- 
 canic force through the forms of centuries, and struggling, blindly and madly, after 
 a vague and ill-defined idea of liberty. . . . 
 
 "It will go hard if a people whose invention, ingenuity and adaptability have 
 illustrated every art and science, and widened the power and capacity of the human 
 mind, shall be 'una!)le to survive the throes and convulsions of their simple and 
 well-understood form of government. . . . 
 
 "The chief merit of our form of government is that, like the tent in the fable 
 of the Arabian, it can be made to cover a frontier settlement of a dozen families, 
 or it can be spread, wide as the canopy of the sky, over all nations and all 
 races. ... 
 
 " Let the Republic feel the full weight of the burden that rests upon her. 
 Let her awaken, in the language of Milton, ' rousing herself like a strong man 
 after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks.' It is indeed but a poor courage 
 which refuses to look danger in the face, or which ignores the difficulty by hiding 
 it from sight. 
 
 ' ' Once thoroughly imderstanding it, we shall have the fortitude to meet and 
 overcome it. . . . 
 
 "The flag which waves over our heads to-day represents not alone a name or 
 a war-cry, but all that advancing time has given of freedom to our race ; all that our 
 race can hope of freedom from the future." 
 
 Again Elected Lietjtenant-Goyeenor. 
 
 In 1861 Governor Donnelly was again nominated, almost with- 
 out opposition, for Lieutenant-Governor, and elected by an increased 
 majority. 
 
THE DA WNING OPPOSITION. 41 
 
 He is Elected to Congress. 
 
 Mr. Donnelly's career as Lieutenant-Governor had given great 
 satisfaction to those who had elected him, and even the Democratic 
 members of the Senate were loud in his praise. The St. Anthony 
 Neivs said : 
 
 '• As a parliamentarian, we are safe in asserting that he stands without a rival 
 in Minnesota. As an accomplished and highly successful presiding officer over a 
 deliberative assembly, we know of no superior in any of our sister States, east or 
 west. For three important sessions of the Legislature he has presided over the 
 deliberations of our State Senate, and through his intimate acquaintance with par- 
 liamentary usage and law, he has always greatly facilitated the public business. 
 No appeal icas ever taken ami sustained from any of his numerous decisions. His polit- 
 ical opponents, on the floor, always conceded to him the fii'st order of talent, and 
 were ready, at the close of each session, to join in the warmest expressions of 
 praise and approval." 
 
 This was in the year 1862 — the darkest year of the war. 
 There were but two Congressmen from Minnesota at that time (there 
 are now seven); and there was a general feeling, throughout the 
 district, in favor of the nomination of Governor Donnelly for Con- 
 gress. It was felt that it was necessary for the district, which 
 embraced the northern two -thirds of the State, and included the 
 larger cities, to put forth its best and ablest man. The result was 
 that when the Kepublican District Convention met, the sentiment 
 was so much in favor of Governor Donnelly that his only competi- 
 tor; Hon. James Smith, Jr., of St. Paul, withdrew; and he was 
 nominated by acclamation, amid great enthusiasm. Governor Don- 
 nelly acknowledged the honor in an acceptance speech from which we 
 take an extract or two : 
 
 " If, to-day, two parties are in the field, it is because of the existence among 
 the people of two phases of sentiment in relation to this war : — one, a determination to 
 sustain the government and preserve the unity of the nation at all hazards and at 
 all cost; the other, a desire to regard any and all side-issues as paramount to the 
 government and the Union. Tour organization to-day is rendered imperatively 
 necessary by the existence of another organization, already in the field, whose an- 
 nounced platform is simply a bill of grievances, and a catalogue of crimes, charged 
 against the government in this, the extreme hour of its peril. Tou can not, as 
 loyal men, permit the nation to fall under the control of those who would place it, 
 bound hand and foot, at the mercy of its enemies. . . . 
 
 " It is not necessary for me to enlarge upon the relations of this struggle to 
 the whole human family, here and in other lands ; to ourselves, and to our poster- 
 ity, and to all the countless generations of men. Your own minds have already 
 grasped this subject. Let us, then, rise to the emergency, as a chosen generation, 
 upon whose shoulders have fallen the toils and honors Vf a great era. Let us so 
 act that after ages will delight to revert to us, as one of tho shining examples of 
 history. Let u"s make our mark on the face of the world, that the blessings of our 
 work may live when we have all perished." 
 
 The Dawning Opposition. 
 
 It is true that even at this time Governor Donnelly's love for the 
 ■ Man as against the privileges of Power began to awaken hostility. 
 An examination of the newspapers of the day distinctly foreshadows 
 
42 BIOGT^APHICAL. 
 
 the fear, on the part of the incipient millionaires of the West, that 
 this young giant would yet prove a thorn in their sides. Already 
 the slowly-forming agencies of political destruction began to shape 
 themselves, and a newspaper man can readily detect the hand of 
 the schemer laying out the grave-digger's task, should Mr. Donnelly 
 continue in his independent course. 
 
 Joseph A. Wheelock. 
 
 The man who was to attempt to assume, in later years, the im- 
 portant task of grave-digger for Governor Donnelly — Joseph A. 
 Wheelock, now the editor of the chief organ of Plutocracy in Minne- 
 sota — at that time gave no sign of the prominence to which he has 
 since attained as the tool of monopoly. He was then in the last 
 extremity of poverty and sickness, and looked as if he would soon 
 he himself a proper subject for the grave-digger. He had com- 
 menced his career in Minnesota, away back in the fifties, as clerk to 
 Frank Steele, the sutler at Fort Snelling, and it was his business to 
 deal out whisky to the buck Indians, and calico to the squaws. He 
 afterwards took a number of the red men and women and traveled 
 through the East, giving exhibitions in the principal cities. Little 
 did the mobs who paid their ten cents each to look at the show 
 think that the cadaverous and badly-diseased youth, who was 
 showing off the fine points of his red brethren and sisters, would, in 
 the coming years, grow into a St. Paul aristocrat. But Mr. Wheel- 
 ock's financial ability was not equal to the task he had undertaken, 
 and at last, on Boston Common, the show broke up; Wheelock turned 
 tail on his exhibition and fled in unmanly haste, leaving the painted 
 warriors and wretched squaws to the tender mercies of the poor- 
 house; while he himself worked his way back to Minnesota ^ — God 
 only knows how — living during the whole trip, it is said, on a sin- 
 gle loaf of bread. Governor Donnelly found him in St. Paul, in 
 1860, in a garret of the old Fuller House, in a dirty room, full of 
 empty bottles and inhaling-apparatus, wrestling with death and 
 poverty. He saw that the man had ability, and his kind heart 
 pitie^ him, and he worked hard, and made personal appeals to his 
 friends, until he secured the passage of a bill creating the office of 
 Commissioner of Statistics (an office which the bankrupt young 
 State needed about as much as a cow needs an umbrella), with no 
 salary, but with an appropriation of $100 for "stationery.'' It 
 used to be jokingly said that Wheelock hved for a whole year " on 
 postage stamps aiid mucilage," that is, he sponged on the State offi- 
 cers for stationery and applied the $100 to keeping the spark of life in 
 his unhealthy body. Governor Donnelly kept him alive to sting 
 him continually for years afterward. It was the old story of the 
 countryman who put the frozen snake in his bosom, to warm it, and 
 lost his life as a reward for his generosity. If he had not, by his - 
 personal influence, secured for him that $100 of " mucilage and 
 
THE INDIAN OUTBREAK AND ITS CAUSES. 13 
 
 postage stamps," the fellow would undoubted!}' have perished. We 
 will see, as we go on with this narrative, how ho repaid this gener- 
 ous kindness of his friend, and how he blossomed out into wealth 
 and power as the servile tool of corporations and rings. 
 
 The Ixdian Outbreak axd its Causes. 
 
 The Congressional Convention which nominated Governor Don- 
 nelly met on the 30th day of July, 1862, and in the following month, 
 on August 18th, came that terrible outbreak of the Sioux Indians, 
 never to be forg-otten in the Northwest, in which one thousand inno- 
 cent settlers, men, women and children, lost their lives, victims to the 
 ruthless savages, fired to desperation by a long series of robbeiies, 
 practiced upon them ever since the first treaty made between them 
 and the United States Government. 
 
 At that time, Governor Ramsey, then Territorial Governor, and 
 Superintendent of Indian Aftairs, although he was treating with the 
 Sioux as an independent nation, took a large number of their recog- 
 nized chiefs and leaders prisoners, and, because they would not do 
 what he desired, deprived them of their chieftainships and of their 
 right to represent their peopie; and i)icked out dissolute and foolish 
 young men, to whom he gave ponies and blankets, and clothed them 
 with the powers of chiefs, and made a treaty with .them — his own 
 tools and instruments. It was a bold and most unheard-of outrage. 
 I. \'. L). Heard says, in his History/ of the Sioux War, page 35: 
 
 ■•The opposition of Red Iron, the principal chief of the Sissetons, became so 
 boisterous that he was broken of his chieftainship by Governor Eamser, Superin- 
 tendent of Indian Affairs, and one of the commissioners who made tiie treaties. 
 'An eye-witness has sketched the appearance of the chief on that occasion, and the 
 interview between him and the Governor, and -«hat afterward transpired. It took 
 phice in December, 1852. The council was crowded with Indians and white men, 
 when Red Iron was brought in, guarded hy soldiers.'^ 
 
 Imagine the United States and England attempting to negotiate 
 a treaty, and the English commissioners placing the American com 
 missioners under arrest and marching them into the council chamber 
 under a guard of English soldiers! We would, indeed, call it an 
 outrage unheard-of before in the history of the civilized nations of 
 the world. Mr. Heard continues : 
 
 ••He [Red Iron] was about forty years old, tall and athletic, about six feet 
 in his moccasins, with a large, well-developed head, aquiline nose, thin, compressed 
 lips, and physiognomy beaming with intelligence and resolution. 
 
 The following is an extract from the interview : 
 
 '^Governor. — 'At the treaty I thought you a good man, but since, you have 
 acted badly, and I am disposed to break you-^I do break you.' 
 
 ^^Sed Iron. — • Yoii hi-eak me / My people made me a chief. My people love 
 me. I will still be their chief. I have done nothing wrong.' 
 
 ''Governor. — 'Red Iron, why did you get your braves together, and march 
 around here for the purpose ofintimidating other chiefs, and to prevent their 
 coming to the council?' 
 
 ''Slid Iron. — 'I did not get my braves together: they got together themselves 
 to prevent hoi/s going to council to be made chiefs, to sign papers ; and to prevent 
 
44 BIOGRAPHTCAL. 
 
 single cliiefi? from going to couueil at niglii to be bribed t(^ sign papers for money 
 we have never got. We have heard how the Mdewakantons were served at 
 Mendota— that by secret conncils you got their names on paper and took away 
 their money.'" 
 
 Vast sums of money, over $400,000, ^Yhicll, by the terms of the 
 treaty, were to have been paid over to the Indians, were paid to the 
 traders, a desperate and unscrupulous set of men, who trumped up 
 bills against the Sioux, dating back for twenty years. All sorts 
 of tricks were resorted to. In two cases very large amounts were 
 paid to chiefs by placing the money on the tables before them, this 
 constituting technically a payment ; but, at the same moment, the 
 hand of some trader would reach in, from behind the chief, and 
 grab the money before the Indian could lay his hands upon it. But 
 at the same time the white witnesses were ready to swear that they 
 saw the money paid to the chiefs. The sum of $55,000 was appro- 
 priated by one Hugh Tyler, a stranger in the country, a Pennsyl- 
 vanian, who took it under pretense that it was to cover outlays in 
 getting the treaty through the United States Senate! The whole 
 matter was subsequently investigated by the United States Senate, 
 but, as usual, nothing was discovered, and everybody was white- 
 washed. Nevertheles's a great deal 'of bad blood remained and 
 rankled in the veins of the savages, until it broke out in the bloody 
 sacrifice of 1862. 
 
 At that time the Indians were called together to the annual pay- 
 ment. The money was to have been paid in greenbacks, the same 
 currency with which the Government paid its soldiers and all its other 
 creditors. But there was a large premium on gold, and the cunning 
 traders, who were sure, in the long run, to get most of the money, 
 persuaded the Indians to refuse the greenbacks and demand gold. 
 And so the greenbacks had to be shipped back and exchanged for 
 gold ; and in the meantime the traders refused to' let the Indians 
 have the goods. Says Mr. Heard, page 47: 
 
 " Here they remained for some time, all pinched for food, and several dying 
 of starvation. They dug up roots to appease their hunger, and when corn was 
 turned out to them, like animals they devoured it uncooked." 
 
 Little Crow, the Sioux leader, in a letter to General Sibley, 
 written after the outbreak (Sept. 7th), thus alluded to this matter: 
 
 "For what reason we have commenced this war I will tell you. It is on ac- 
 count of Major Galbraith " [the U. S. Indian Agent]. "We made a treaty with the 
 Government a beg for what little we do get, and then can't get it till our children 
 are dying with hunger. It was with the traders that commence. Mr. A. J. My- 
 rick told" the Indians that they would eat grass or their own dung."* 
 
 The wrongs inflicted upon the Indians by rascally ofi&cials and 
 traders have never been half told; and, unfortunately, the same 
 men who robbed the red men, as we shall see hereafter, controlled 
 the politics of the new State. In fact, these extortions could not be 
 carried on without friends at Washington; and both ^political 
 
 *The above is the Ena;lish of a half-breed amanuensis. — E. W. F. 
 
THE MAJOR'S STRATEGY, 45 
 
 parties tiierelbre fell under the control of what was known as " the 
 moccasin element, " that is, politicians wearing moccasins, many of 
 them " squaw-men. " A great part of Mr. Donnelly's political 
 career consisted of a continuous battle with these influences, which 
 finally overthrew him. He did not belong to the older generation 
 of Indian traders: he represented a newer civihzation. 
 
 GoYEENOPv Donnelly's Military Experience. 
 
 When the outbreak came, August 18, 1862, Governor Ramsey 
 called for volunteers to put it down; and a force, of about 1,500 
 men, was soon collected at St. Peter, and placed under the com- 
 mand of Gen. Henry H. Sibley, formerly Delegate in Congress from 
 the Territory, and first Governor of the new State. Governor Don- 
 nelly joined General Sibley at St. Peter, and accompanied the little 
 army to the relief of Fort Ridgley, on August 26th. It was sur- 
 rounded by thousands of the hostile savages. A night attack was 
 made on the fort after the troops had gained possession of it; and 
 on September 2d a detachment encamped at Birch Cooley, under 
 the command of Maj. Jos. R. Brown, which had been sent out to 
 bury the dead settlers, was surrounded, and a large part of the 
 force killed and wounded. 
 
 Governor Donnelly wrote a very interesting account of that 
 part of the Indian war which he witnessed, with many graphic 
 descriptions of the bloody and terrible pictures presented by the 
 ruined homes and slaughtered people. It was afterward published 
 by the Interior Department as an official document. If space per- 
 mitted, I would hke to quote from it. It was during all these excit- 
 ing events that Mr. Donnelly's first election to Congress took 
 place. 
 
 Major Cullen. 
 
 Governor Donnelly's Democratic competitor for Congress was 
 Maj. W. J. Cullen, formerly United States Indian Agent, and a 
 very shrewd, witty, good-natured Irishman. An amusing story is 
 told of his rex)ly to an acquaintance who one day asked him : 
 
 '' How does it happen, Major, that while your salary as Indian 
 Agent is only $2,500 a year, and you have held the office but for 
 four yearS; and you came here poor, yet you are worth to-dav : 
 $100,000 ? How did you save so much out of so little? " 
 
 '' I'll tell you, my friend," said the Colonel confidentially, with 
 a wink and a chuckle, " if you'll say nothing about it. We didn't 
 keep any hired girl ! " 
 
 The Major's Strategy. 
 
 The Colonel was a great wag. When his competitor for Con- 
 gress reached St. Peter, the little town was overrun with troops and 
 it was vcvy. difficult to. find a place to sleep; and the Colonel gallantly 
 invited Governor Donnelly to share his rude couch on the floor. 
 
46 BIOGRAPHICAL. 
 
 The invitation was gladly accepted, but when the Republican can- 
 didate for Congress rose the next morning, he found not only that 
 his Democratic opponent, had disappeared, but that his weapons of 
 war were gone with him ! 
 
 The troops were ro move out to the attack of the Indians that 
 day, and the Major thought that Governor Donnelly would not dare 
 to go out, on such an expedition, unarmed; and that if he showed 
 the white feather, he would be disgraced. But the Major didn't 
 understand the nature of his opponent. After making fruitless 
 efforts, in St. Peter, to purchase a rifle, or some other weapon, 
 Governor Donnelly moved out with the troops — in fact, at the head of 
 them — unarmed. He and Colonel Merriam, father of the present 
 Governor of Minnesota, a man of reckless courage, kept a mile or 
 two in advance of the troops, all the way to Fort Ridgely, despite 
 the aids -de- camp sent out by General Sibley to warn them of their 
 danger and call them back; for, as the attack shortly afterward 
 made at Birch Cooley showed, the country was swarming with liostile 
 savages. When the story got out that Major CuUen had spirited 
 away his competitor's weapons, and that the Republican candidate 
 for Congress had actually ridden, unarmed, in advance of the troops, 
 to the relief of the 3,000 settlers, men, women and children, shut up 
 in Fort Ridgely, the tables were completely turned on the Major, 
 and Governor Donnelly's vote was correspondingly increased. 
 
 He is Elected to Congress. 
 
 In the election Governor Donnelly had above 1,200 majority. 
 He took his seat in the House in December, 1863, as a member of 
 the Thirty-eighth C(mgress. General Garfield of Ohio, afterwards 
 President of the United States, and himself drew seats at the same 
 double desk. They were the two youngest members of the House, 
 General Garfield being a few days Mr. Donnelly's junior. They 
 became intimate friends and so continued ever after, as long as 
 General Garfield lived. 
 
 Mr.. Donnelly devoted himself zealously to the interests of his 
 constituents. There was a great deal to do. The country was all new. 
 New post-offices had to be established ; new mail routes organized ; 
 new land offices created, and at the same time there was a vast 
 amount of business growing out of the war and out of the Indian 
 troubles. 
 
 A member of Congress from Wisconsin, a Mr. Cobb, who repre- 
 sented a district largely settled by lead-miners, sat near Governor 
 Donnelly in the House, and one day he remarked to him : 
 
 " Governor, how comes it you get such piles of letters every 
 day? I do not receive more than one or two letters in a week. " 
 
 " Why," replied Mr. Donnelly, " my constituents are all on top 
 of the earth, not in it." 
 
STOPPING A SWINDLE. 4/ 
 
 STOPPiifG A Swindle. 
 
 We now come to an act of Governor Donnelly which had, per- 
 haps, more to do with shaping his whole future career than any 
 other one thing. 
 
 On the 2d of May, 1864, Governor Donnelly sent to Hon. 
 Thaddeus Stevens, Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means 
 of the House of liepresentatives, a letter of which the following is 
 a copy: 
 
 '^Hon, Thaddeus Stevens, Chairman Committee of Ways and Means, H. JR., Wash- 
 
 ington, D. C, 
 
 '*SiR: On the 27th iilt. there was referred to the Committee of Wars and 
 Means a letter from the Secretar}^ of the Interior, transmitting estimates of amounts 
 required to cany out the stipulations of the Chippewa treaty of March, 1863. 
 
 "Although the Indians referred to live altogether in the Congressional district 
 which I have the honor to represent in the House, and although the appropriations 
 asked for are verj large, 1 have never been notified that such steps were being 
 taken, or such appropriations asked for, and it was only by accident that my atten- 
 tion was called to the same. , 
 
 "1 feel that I would be false to the plainest dictates of duty if I did uot, re- 
 gardless of the consequences to myself, interpose an eai-nest protest against the 
 appropriatious asked foi-. It is proposed at this time, when the nation is struggling 
 for its very life, and Avhen every dollar of needless expenditure should be carefully 
 avoided, to pay $157,930 for wliat your committee have already estimated woulcl 
 be worth $7,600, being a difference of $150,330.* 
 
 "Some of these items are overcharges of the gi'ossest kind. Take the first: 
 " ' For breaking, clearing and grubbing three hundred acres of land, for 
 
 Mississippi Indians, per fourth article, treaty of 1863, $50 per acre . . . . $15,000 
 
 " Why grubbing ? Is it pretended that three hundred acres of 7»-a«'m land 
 can not be found in that region, but that land must be cleared and grubbed? 
 
 "The price asked is $50.00 per acre for ' breaking, clearing and grubbing.' In 
 the most densely settled parts of Minnesota the most valuable farm lands can be 
 bought — broken, fenced, and with buildings on them — for $25.00 per acre — one- 
 half what is here asked should be given for breaking, clearing and grubbing alone. 
 
 "There can be no ditficulty iu finding abundance of prairie land, and it can 
 be ' broken' for three dollars per acre, making, for the three hundred acres, $900, a 
 difference of $14,100. 
 
 "The next item which I particularly notice is this : 
 ' ' ' For railroad from Gull Lake to Leach Lake $15,000 
 
 "I am at a loss to understand this, and suppose it to be a misprint. Surely 
 the Government is not about to build a railroad for those Indians! If it means 
 the construction of a wagon road the amount seems to me to be enormous, and I 
 think it will be so considered by any frontier people, t 
 
 ' ' The next item is as follows : 
 " ' For removing agency to new location $25,000 
 
 " What can this refer to ? If it means the bodily removal of the buildings of 
 the present agency to the new agency, it is an unnece'ssary absurdity. If it means 
 the removal of the agent and his family, books, chairs' and tables, it is a gross 
 fraud. If it means the construction of new buildings, at the new agency, it is an 
 enormous overcharge. The sum of $25,000 would rather build a palace than an 
 agency. 
 
 *The treaty itself fixed the amount to be spent, in carrying out its provisions, 
 at that figure— $7,600.— E. W. F. 
 
 tAt this time there were not one hundred miles of railroad in the whole Stale 
 of Minnesota.— E. W. F. 
 
48 BIOGBAFHIGAL. 
 
 "The next item is as follows: 
 " ' Transportation and subsistence to their new homes, 2,000 Indians, at 
 
 $10 per head $20,000 
 
 "How do Indians travel? With their ponies carrying their tents and luggage, 
 the women on foot, canying their infants on their backs, and the men and half- 
 grown children on foot. In this way they will make journeys of hundreds of miles. 
 The average distance to which they are to be removed is, I am informed, but about 
 one hundred and fifty miles. Is it proposed to furnish stages and ambulances for 
 them? Certainly not. They will make the journey in the same manner in which 
 they have traveled from time immemorial, and the United States, out of a depleted 
 treasury, is asked to pay $20,000 to the men who superintend this movement. 
 
 " The next and last item is as follows : 
 " ' Subsistence for 2,000 Indians for six months, at fifteen cents per head, 
 
 each day $54,000 
 
 "It is hard to analyze this item, as it is impossible to say what kind or amount 
 of food will be furnished them, but the sum charged is very large, and I have no 
 doubt the same number of Indians, part of them being children, could be supported 
 for six months for one-half that sum. 
 
 "I would therefore ask that every item of this account should be duly 
 scanned, and not one dollar appropriated that is not just and right. Such claims, 
 while they take from the treasury that which is not due, benefit neither the State 
 nor the Indians. 
 
 ' ' I have the honor to be very truly and respectfully yours, 
 
 "Ignatius Doif nelly." 
 
 This letter ended that " steal." The Secretary of the Interior 
 wrote a letter to Governor Donnelly, thanking him for the exposure 
 of a great fraud. The knaves were overwhelmed. Their advance 
 on the United States Treasury had been blocked. Many of the 
 leading newspapers of the State expressed their thanks to the bold 
 Congressman for his course. 
 
 The leading Eepublican paper of Faribault said : 
 
 "We tender Mr. Donnelly our sincere thanks for this, we hope, timely ex- 
 posure of a most audacious, barefaced attempt to swindle the Government, in the 
 name of the Indians, for the benefit of a few individual ofiice-holders in the Indian 
 Department, and we deeply regret that the balance of the Minnesota delegation 
 have not been equally prompt in rebuking the avarice and fraudulent purposes of 
 the getters-up of this swindle. 
 
 " "There is not a representative from this State, in the Senate or the House, 
 who does not know that the best agiicultural lands in the best settled and best cul- 
 tivated portions of the State, with good buildings and improvements, can be 
 bought for one-half the money asked for to break and grub some lands for these 
 Indians, where no grubbing is necessary. No man, better than Alexander Eamsey, 
 knows that there are thousands of acres of prairie in the country assigned to these 
 Chippewa bands, and to which, by the treaty he made with them, they are to be 
 removed, that can be broken, as Mr. Donnelly says, for $3.00 per acre. 
 
 " It is no pleasant task to expose the rascality of men who will thus strive to 
 plunder the country. It is no credit to the State that beings in the human form 
 can be found in it, and are elevated to very prominent ofiicial situations, claiming 
 to be citizens of the United States, loyal men and warm friends of the administra- 
 tion, who are so lost to the noble sentiments of patriotism and manhood, so re- 
 gardless of their reputation and the good opinion of decent men, that they will, m 
 such a crisis in the country's history as the present, deliberately plan and apply to 
 Congress for aid to carry out %o audacious and bold a piece of villainy as that pro- 
 posed in xeierence to this .swindling Chippewa treaty. But justice, patriotism, ana. 
 
THE WAB OPENED ON GOVERNOR DONNELLY. 49 
 
 common decency imperatively require that all such schemes and schemers should 
 be exposed, and Mr. Donnelly's prompt exposure should be commended by every 
 true friend of the country." 
 
 The War is Opened on Governor Donnelly. 
 
 This was the keynote to ^Ir. Donnelly's career, and the buj^le 
 call to his enemies. From this moment Mr. D(mnelly was a doomed 
 man. No power, no genius, no manhood could rise above the 
 secret engineering of the dominant i)oliticians, until the trumpet 
 sounded for the dawn of a new and tremendous revolution in the 
 political history of the world. 
 
 The St. Paul Press, the leading Republican paper of the State, ' 
 substantially the same as the present Pioneer-Press, which is owned 
 by the same men, Joseph A. Wheelock and F. Driscoll, rushed to the ■ 
 defense of the Indian Ring, and took up the cudgels in behalf of the ; 
 proposed appropriations. The nature of its attacks will be shown ' 
 by the replies made to it by other newspapers. 
 
 I make one or two extracts, from the State papers, to show the 
 spirit of the contest. 
 
 The St. Paul Pioneer, the leading Democratic paper of the 
 State, said, Jane 15th, 1864: 
 
 "Mr. Donnelly has been guilty of a species of treason which makes him worse 
 than a copperhead — in the estimation of the Press. "What the effect will be on the 
 personal fortunes of Mr. Donnelly, or of the Indianocracy, we knowlittle and care 
 less." 
 
 The Daily Bepublican, of Winona, of July 8th, 1864, said : 
 
 "For the purpose of making capital against Mr. Donnelly, the St. Paul Presa. 
 which is the organ of the clique of Indian agents and others, whose instincts for 
 plunder are well-developed, took occasion to denounce that gentleman, in an un- 
 warrantably severe manner, on account of his protest against the proposition to 
 swindle the Government by expending $150,000 in the removal of theChippewas to 
 their new reservation. It was discovered, however, that this method of making 
 war would uot prove successful, and, after learning that Mr. Donnelly's protest had 
 caused the withdrawal of the estimates, and called from the Secretary of the In- 
 terior a letter of thanks to Mr. Donnelly, for the services he had rendered the 
 country, the Government and the Department, the open attacks upon him ceased, 
 and now the warfare is being conducted in the manner familiarly known among 
 the Indian agents and their dependents as the 'still hunt.'" 
 
 The Hastings Independent said : 
 
 "We can not see on what the Press predicates its ability to injure Mr. Donnelly, 
 but we believe it will be futile, before a pure and honorable constituency. lu mauy 
 of the sparsely-settled counties of the State these contractors have their agents 
 and employes; these men are the men who will control the primary meetings and 
 be elected as delegates to the State Convention, and these the Press hopes to use tc 
 defeat the nomination of Mr. Donnelly, Thus it will be seen that the Press looks 
 to the corruptionists to carry out its schemes," 
 
 To the attacks of the St. Paul Press Governor Donnelly re- 
 phed, In a letter dated Washington, May 30, 1864, as follows : 
 
 ^'■Editors Press: .... I was aware that the man who exposes fraud and cor- 
 ruption must be prepared for the resistance and maligant opposition of those he 
 
50 BlOGEArillCAL. 
 
 thwarts of thoir expected prey, and 1 therefore desired to lay all the facts, in this 
 case, plainly before the people. Neither was my action precipitate. My sense ot 
 duty compelled me to resist the consummation of so great a fraud, but, ai the same 
 time, I deliberately weighed all the consequences to myself and accepted them. 
 
 " I have saved the people of the United States the expenditure of $153,000. 
 I am satisfied I have done my duty. The Secretary of the Interior, upon the 
 receipt of a copy of that letter, withdrew his communication to the Committee of 
 Ways and Means, and personally thanked me for the services I nad rendered tlm 
 department 
 
 "Surely no sensible man would believe that to transport 2,000 men, women 
 and chilurcn, 150 miles, in canoes and on foot, would cost the Government $20,000, 
 when, by your own showing, it is impossible to transport them on wagons, and 
 they have to move themselves. It is a little too much of a good thing to require 
 an Indian to walk and paddle 150 miles, through the wilderness, and then charge the 
 Government $10 for carrying him ! . . . 
 
 ■'Nor can I see the propriety of expending $15,000 in con^tructing a wagon 
 road, in the midst of an impassable wilderness of swamps, for the accommodation 
 of those who travel in canoes ! . . . 
 
 " You ask me to persevere in uprooting this matter. I shall do so. I have 
 faith to believe that the people will strengthen the hands of the man who seeks to 
 serve them. If God spares my life, I shall rip open this whole Indian system, and 
 let the light of day into its dark places. The evils can be remedied. It can not bo 
 to the interest of the white man to perpetually degrade and brutalize and impover- 
 ish this Avretched race, dependent upon him. It Avould be more merciful to let 
 loose, fire and sword at once and sweep him from existence. It is not the fault of 
 the American people, for they are Christianized and humane; it is not the fault of 
 the Government, for it annually wastes its millions upon the Indians; but it is the 
 fruit of the system, which leaves an ignorant, savage and helpless race at the mercy 
 of a few able, unscrupulous and irresponsible men." 
 
 Reelected to Congress. 
 
 The battle raged fast and furious to prevent Governor Don- 
 nelly's reelection to Congress. He was a hindrance and an oflense. 
 He must be defeated. He must be got out of the way. Joe. 
 Wheelock, in the St. Paul Press, _ led the fight, but many of the coun- 
 try papers stood by Governor Donnelly nobly. Their articles make 
 interesting reading. They show that the Indian King was at the 
 bottom of the opposition. 
 
 But when the district convention assembled in 1884, Governor 
 Donnelly was renominated by acclamation, the following resolution 
 being adopted by a unanimous vote : 
 
 " Mesohed, That we have watched with admiration the bold, manly and patri- 
 otic course of Hon. Ignatius Donnelly in Congress ; that we recognize in him a 
 faithful public servant, ever alive to the true interests of his constituents and of the 
 nation ; and that we now renominate him by acclamation for the position he so 
 worthily fills." 
 
 In his speech of acceptance. Governor Donnelly alluded, in a 
 courteous spirit, to the opposition that had been made to him, as 
 follows : 
 
 " I trust, however (and I say this in the kindest spirit), that the remarkable 
 unanimity of your action will be accepted everywhere as an indication that the 
 people are resolved that the strictest economy and honesty shall prevail in the 
 administration of every department of the Government. ("Great applause.] 
 
CONGBESSIONAL CAREER. 51 
 
 " It is, indeed, a great point gained when a community makes it manifest, as 
 vou have done, that the path of political safety lies on the side of official honesty. 
 1 irust the verdict you have this day rendered will stand unimpeached for a genera- 
 tion, for surely no subject can touch your own welfare more nearly. Without 
 honesty among othcials and vigilant watchfulness among the people, popular insti- 
 tutions must inevitably sink in a sea of corruption and profligacy, and the fairest 
 hopes of mankind be destroyed."' 
 
 Ill the course of his reaiarks, alluding to the war then raging, 
 he said : 
 
 •• Let us rise, then, to the highest plar.e possible. Let us remember that the 
 question at issue is not the safety of our party, but of our country: and that if we 
 would be able to exercise our party preferences in the future, we must save the 
 nation in the present. . . . 
 
 ••On the battle-field, under our flag, men stand shoulder to shoulder, who 
 represent every shade of loyal political ijcntiment. Does not their blood, com- 
 mingling its crimson currents, send up a voice of reproach from the ground, against 
 political intolerance among the people for whom it is shed? Shall we. who may 
 difler as to detail, not stand shoulder to shoulder in this army-behiud-the-army. in 
 tiiis reserve force of national sentiment, and so do as unanimous a work in the' war 
 of opinions as they are doing in the strife of the battle-field? [Hear, hear.] 
 
 ••Politics are principles. Over the lesser details, the eiFervescences. the 
 excrescences of the surface, men diifer. The great undercurrents of humanity and 
 (iod-head are the centrifugal and centripetal pri nciples of natui'e, and upon them 
 rest all politics. 
 
 "Truth is not a violence. It does not take its votary by the throat. It never 
 got into any man in that way. It is a figure, standing upon the pedestal of the 
 M'orld — a les^^er (xod — the shadow of the one creative God. Men walk past and 
 look up to it. To one, it seems cold ana lifeless, and shrouded in leaden mists. 
 To another, it stands with the glory of the world upon its brow, the gentleness of 
 heaven in its eyes, its hnnd pointing the undoul)ted way to life. 
 
 ••Truth will live though we all die. Galileo muttered, as he signed his 
 recantation of the doctrine of the earth's motion. 'But it does move.' Pen and ink, 
 prison and chains, bread and water could not stop it; the monks had no lever that 
 could pry it from its orbit; it kept on moving until all Christendom was ready to 
 speak aloud the muttered words of Galileo. • But it does move.'" 
 
 Speaking of the American flag coming triumphantly out of the 
 civil war, he said : 
 
 •'To our children and our children's children, it will represent all this, and 
 more, much more ; it will represent a great schism and rebellion overcome and 
 subdued; it will represent a larger period of history and a wider experience of man : 
 its clustering constellation will be crowned with a hundred stars, and its bright and 
 bL'autiful lines will glitter the protecting genius of regions and races which now 
 know them not — everywhere preaching'of peace and freedom, evei-j^where testi- 
 fying to love for man and faith in God." 
 
 I think it will be conceded that this was ceitainly an extraordi- 
 nary kind of speech for a triumphant politician to make, just re- 
 nominated to Congress, and in the midst of the passions of the most 
 leri'iblc civil war of modern times. 
 
 CONGKESSIOXAL CAEEEH — IMMIGRATION. 
 
 In the first session of the Thirty-eighth Congress, Governor 
 Donnelly made several important speeches. On Feb. 27, 1SG4, he 
 delivei ed an address on immigration, taking for his text the recom- 
 mendation of President Lincoln in his annual message. It was a 
 
52 BIOGBAPHICAL. 
 
 period when immigration was extremely desirable. He showed how 
 largely foreign immigration had contributed to the growth of our 
 population and wealth. He showed that ^' the immigrants arriving 
 in the United States, since the foundation of the government, were 
 1,259,449 more than the total population with which we commenced 
 our career as a nation. " He said : 
 
 " This, then, Mr. Chairman, is the explanation of the almost fabulous rate of 
 growth which we have enjoyed. This is the source of the incalculable resources 
 Ave have been enabled to pour forth in the face as an astonished world. This is the 
 womb from which have gone forth those countless hordes of armed men, beneath 
 whose tread the earth seems to tremble."' 
 
 He introduced a bill for the establishment of a Bureau of Immi- 
 gration, the chief purpose of which was to protect the immigrants 
 from fraud and robbery. 
 
 He concluded his speech with these words : 
 
 ' ' With nearlj one billion acres of unsettled lands on one side of the Atlantic, 
 and with many millions of poor and oppressed people on the other, let us organize 
 the exodus which needs must come, and build, if necessary, a bridge of gold across 
 the chasm which divides them, that the chosen races of mankind may occupy the 
 chosen lands of the world." 
 
 During the twenty- seven years which have elapsed since that 
 speech was delivered, the vast immigration which he foresaw would, 
 after the war, flood our shores, has been realized, and we have now 
 reached a new era when the question arises whether we should not 
 put some restraints upon the great migration, at least so far as to 
 separate the good from the bad, and divide the chaff from the wheat. 
 
 The Civil Wae. 
 
 On the 2d of May, 1864, Governor Donnelly dehvered a speech 
 upon the pending war and the reconstruction of the South. It 
 takes the ground that slavery must perish, that the safety of the 
 nation and the welfare of the whole people. North and South, requires 
 it. He concludes with the following thoughts on Truth: 
 
 "And who will dare to say that in the long fight of the centuries error is not 
 hourly losing blood and strength and life ; that truth is not each day arming itself 
 with new and more formidable weapons, shining each day with more glorious and 
 more effulgent radiance. 
 
 ''Let us take to ourselves the consolation aiforded by this thought — that 
 truth is imperishable, and that no human power is suflacient to destroy it. It is a 
 subtle essence — the soul of the material world. The heavens and the earth may 
 pass away, but truth shall not pass away. We have seen it in all the past liberated 
 by the blows aimed at its destruction. We have seen it passing, upon golden 
 wings, out through all the meshes with which the preverted skill of the human 
 mind sought to entangle it. 
 
 " Let us remember, then, that, in so far as we contribute, however humbly, to 
 the cause of truth, we are identifying our temporary existence with an eternal work. 
 This is a posterity which shall never die ; this shall live and brighten and keep 
 green our memories when the descendants of our bodies have disappeared from 
 among the things of the world. 
 
 ' ' For myself, I can see the welfare of my country only in those things which 
 widen the opportunities and elevate the dignity of mankind. I cannot perceive the 
 advantage to any man of the degradation of any other man, and 1 feel assured of 
 
THE CIVIL WAR. 5:? 
 
 the greatness aud perpetuity of my (rountr}' ouly in so l;ir as it ideutilies itaelf with 
 the uninterrupted progress 'and the universal liljerty of mankind."' 
 
 This was a remarkable speech to liavc been delivered i;i the 
 midst of a fierce civil war. There was no iuvective in it and no 
 denunciation of the South. It discussed the issues of the war from 
 a high aud generous platform. 
 
 The Thirty-ninth Congress.— The State of Lincoln. 
 
 On December 13, 1865, Mr. Donnelly introduced a resolution, 
 which was adopted, directing the Committee on Territories to in- 
 quire into the propriety of affixing the name of Lincoln to some 
 one of the Territories of the West. It is a pity this suggestion has 
 not been carried out. 
 
 Universal Education. 
 On December 14, 1865, Governor Donnelly introduced the fol- 
 lowing resolution: 
 
 '•Whereas, Kepublican institutions can find permanent safety only upon 
 the basis of the universal intelligence of the people ; and whereas the great disas- 
 ters which have afflicted the nation and desolated one-half of its territory are 
 traceable, in a great degree, to the absence of common schools ancl general educa- 
 tion among the people of the lately rebellious States; therefore, 
 
 ''Besolved, That the Joint Committee on Reconstruction be instructed to in- 
 quire into the expediency of establishing, in this Capitol, a National Bureau of Edu- 
 cation, whose duty it shall be to enforce ecUication, without regard to race or color, 
 upon the population of all su-^h States as shall fall below a standard to be estab- 
 lished by Congress, and to inquire whether such a bureau shall not be made an 
 essential and permanent part of any system of reconstruction." 
 
 There was quite a battle over this resolution. Mr. Philip John- 
 son, a member of the House from Pennsylvania, moved to lay it on 
 the table. Tellers were appointed, and the motion to lay on the 
 table was defeated, by a vote of 37 ayes and 113 nays; and the reso- 
 lution was then adopted. 
 
 It is to Governor Donnelly's honor that, while many of his pohtical 
 associates were clamoring for vengeance on the prostrate South, he 
 was simply anxious to give the whole coimtry universal education. 
 
 This was the first suggestion of a Bureau of Education, as part 
 of the General Government, ever made in Congress, and after a long, 
 fierce battle Mr. Donnelly, aided by General Garfield, secured its 
 establishment, and it stands to this day a monument of his foresight 
 and patriotism. His speech on the subject of education was the 
 marked feature of the Thirty-ninth Congress. 
 
 Opening up a New Empire. 
 
 On January 26, 1866, Mr. Donnelly introduced a resolution 
 which was adopted and was the forerunner of the Northern Pacific 
 Kailroad, and of the settlement of the great region of country now 
 occupied by the States of North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, etc. It 
 was as follows : 
 
 " "Wheeeas, the development of the gold-producing regions of the country is of 
 
M mOGBAPHICAL. 
 
 the iitnLOst importance to the financial success of the nation ; and whereas, commu- 
 nication bot\veen the northern tier of States and the gold fields of Idaho and Mon- 
 tana is BOW possible only hy a long detour to the southward, as far as St. Louis ; 
 therefore, 
 
 '■'■Resolved, That the Committee on Military Affairs be directed to inquire into 
 the expediency of directing the Secretary of War, by bill or otherwise, to establish 
 a line of military posts, from the western boundary of Minnesota to the Territories 
 of Montana and Idaho, by the most direct and advantageous route ; and to facilitate 
 communication along said route by the construction of a military road, with proper 
 bridges over the water-courses." 
 
 This line efforts and military bridges was soon flfter established, 
 and the result was the opening up and settleroent of a region of 
 country ten times as large as all New England. 
 
 Tkue Statesmanship. 
 
 Governor Donnelly's far-sightedness and liberality of spirit was, 
 however, most plainly shown in his speech delivered Feb. 1st, 1866. 
 He had offered an amendment requiring the Commissioner of the 
 Freedman's Bureau to provide a common school education to all 
 refugees and freedmen who should apply therefor. In the course of 
 his remarks, he said : 
 
 "It is a subject of congratulation that we have passed beyond those old and 
 bitter days when revenge and intolerance were the guiding principles of govern- 
 ments. As victors in the mighty struggle which has but lately terminated, and as 
 -we claim tj be the superiors of the South in enlightenment and Christianity, we 
 can afibrd to be magnanimous to thfe highest degree compatible with public 
 safety. That alone should be the limit of our generosity, and beyond that we 
 should not go a hair's breadth. 
 
 '•We must cultivate an enlarged national spirit. We are, and must always be, 
 one people. We cannot advance the nation hij despoiling any j^ar^ of it. We cannot 
 strengthen liberty here by inaugurating oppression elsewhere. We must hasten 
 that day when we will be, in mutual regard, as we are in name, one people. . . . 
 
 "The spirit of humanity cannot be illiberal. Reform cannot work injustice. 
 'The right wrongs no man.' In all this we shall bless and benefit the South and 
 lift her up to a higher plane of prosperity and greatness. It will be a work of 
 mercy. To do otherwise would be to leave her a prey to the misgove-rnment which 
 has already blasted her fair fields and filled her habitations with mourning. " 
 
 Universal Education. 
 
 Again, in the same speech, Governor Donnelly spoke out in be- 
 half of popular enlightenment. He said : 
 
 " The best laws will not save an unworthy people from ruin, as is seen in the 
 case of the South American republics. The worst form of government will not pre- 
 vent a clear-headed race from struggling up to prosperity, as is seen in the history 
 of England. You may have as many constitutions and as perfect as the fertile 
 Sieyes kept in the pigeon-holes of his desk, but they will prove of no avail if the 
 people are not fit to receive them. Grentlemen demand that the ballot shall be 
 universal. They must go further ; they must insist that capacity to properly direct 
 the ballot shall be likewise universal. 
 
 "Let us inquire, what is education ? 
 
 "It is a means to an end— the intelligent action of the human faculties. He 
 who is opposed to education is opposed to the enlightenment of the people, and 
 must necessarily be their enemy, since he seeks to obtain for himself some advan- 
 tage out of their ignorance, and strives to obscure their judgment that he may the 
 better mislead them. 
 
UNIVEBSA h m) VCA TJON. '^ 
 
 "ItisTiot.nccossarvlodciiioiistralcIlK iiiiix.rliUK'o of odncatiou. Tho ronimon 
 rtciispoC mankind apprun>s it ; the siu-rcss «,t(.;!r nation attests it; !i million hiippy 
 homes in onr midst proclaim it. Education Jias hiMo fused all nations into one ; it 
 has obliterated prejudices; it has dissolved falsehoods; it has auuouuced groat 
 truths- it has tlum;- open all doors; and, thank God, it has at last broken all the 
 shackles in the land ! The rebellion sprang- from popular ignorance ; its suppression 
 came from popular education. When the Englishman described tho North as a 
 laud ' where every man had a newspaper in his pocket," ho touched at once tho vital 
 point of our greatness and tho true secret of our success. 
 
 " Let the great work go on. Its tasks arc but half completed. Lot it go on 
 until i"-noranee is driven beyond our remotest borders. This is the noblest of all 
 humai'labors. This will bu'ild deep and wide and imperishable tho foundations of 
 our (Jovernmeut; this will raise up a structure that shall withstand the slow 
 canker of tim(> and the open assaults of violence. The freedom of the people resting 
 ui)on tho intelligence of the people ! Who shall destroy a nation founded upon this 
 rock?" 
 
 Governor Donnelly proceeded to give some striking statistics, 
 showing the vast number of illiterate persons in the United States, 
 according to the census of 1860. 
 
 This speech created a great sensation and fixed Governor Don- 
 nelly's position as one of the leaders of the House. It was a princi- 
 pal cause of the establishment of the Bureau of Education, which, 
 as I have said, is still a part of the National Government. 
 
 A Philadelphia newspaper said : 
 
 " Mr. Donnelly will bo remembered by this wise and noble measure long after 
 his part in transitory politics is forgotten."' 
 
 The Anoka Union (Minn.) said: 
 
 " This movement will immortalize his name, whether he is permitted to wit- 
 ness the consummation of his desires or not. His scheme, as has been well said, 
 will nationalize America." 
 
 George Alfred Townsend (" Gath ") wrote to the New York 
 
 Tribune : 
 
 '• He [Mr. Donnellv] is a smooth-faced, auburn-haired young man — tho young- 
 est member of the House; and his speech for the Educational Bureau bill was an 
 ardent and intelligent argument, conceived in gratitude [to the public-school sys- 
 tem] and confirmed by conviction. He belongs to a singularly gifted family." 
 
 And yet, strange to say, the officers of the Bureau of Education, 
 from the day of its establishment to this hour, have never recoguized 
 Governor Donnelly's connection with that work, while awarding 
 great praise to others who either did nothing in the matter or very 
 little. As soon as the bureau was established, Governor Ramsey, 
 then a member of the United States Senate, secured the appoint- 
 ment of Commissioner for one of his Minnesota friends, and about 
 one-half of the first report consisted of praises of Ramsey, who had 
 no more to do with the estabhshment of the bureau than the man 
 in the moon. And this illustrates the dilTerence between a states- 
 man and a politician. One saw an opportunity to benefit the whole 
 people for all time ; the other saw an opportunity to obtain an ap- 
 pointment for a follower. One labored for mankind; the other 
 worked for himself. 
 
56 BIOGBAPHIGAL. 
 
 Blaise's Indorsement. 
 
 Hon. James G-. Blaine, commenting upon this debate, in Ms 
 great work, Twenty Years of Congress, vol. II., p. 167, says : 
 
 " One of the most striking speeches made in the House upon this subject was 
 by Mr. Ignatius Donnelly, of Minnesota. He had carefully prepared for the debate, 
 and dwelt with great force upon the educational features. 'Education,' he said, 
 'means the intelligent exercise of liberty, and surely, without this, liberty is a 
 calamity, since it means simply the unlimited right to err. "... 
 
 After quoting still further from the speech, Mr. Blaine says : 
 " It is worthy of remark that the question so cogently presented and enforced 
 by Mr. Donnelly — that of the connection between education and suffrage— dis- 
 closed the general fact that even among the Republicans there was no disposition, 
 at this period, to confer upon the negro the right to vote." 
 
 Teee-Planting. 
 
 Governor DonneUy was the originator of another great move- 
 ment. 
 
 On May 18, 1866, by unanimous consent, he introduced the fol- 
 lowing resolution, which was adopted : 
 
 '' Besolved, That, in view of the almost complete absence of woods and forests 
 in the interior regions of the continent, and of their paramount importance in the 
 settlement and occupancy of the country, the Committee on Public Lands be di- 
 rected to inquire whether a system cannot be devised whereby the planting of 
 woods and forests may be encouraged in regions destitute of timber, by liberal 
 donations of public lands, in alternate sections, to individuals or corporations, and 
 the reservation of the adjoining sections by the Government, at an increased price, 
 as in the case of railroad grants ; the lands so granted, or a proportional part 
 thereof, to be planted with trees adapted to the climate and the needs of the com- 
 munity." 
 
 This suggestion, while it set thoughtful men all over the country 
 to thinking, and eventually resulted in the passage of the Timber- 
 Culture Act, under which hundreds of thousands and perhaps mil- 
 hons of acres of land in the treeless parts of the United States have 
 been planted with trees, was hailed with great shouts of ridicule by 
 Mr. Donnelly's enemies in Minnesota. The leadiog Democratic 
 paper, the St. Paul Pioneer, pubhshed an article in which it inserted 
 a number of little wood-cuts of trees — the kind used for advertising — 
 and underneath them, in large cajjitals, it placed the words: 
 
 "These Aee the Tkees Do^^nelly Proposes to Plant on the Praieies!" 
 
 In Western Minnesota one is hardly ever out of sight, to-day, 
 of beautiful groves, in regions that previously did not possess a 
 single tree, and which were planted under the impulse of the laws 
 which grew out of Mr. Donnelly's resolution and speeches. The 
 recent repeal of the Tree-Culture Act is to be regretted. It was 
 probably due to the fact that the land-grabbers and the lumber- 
 thieves "^saw no way under it of stealing the public domain. The 
 law should be reeuacted with such alterations and safeguards as 
 experience has suggested. 
 
ANOTHER HUMANE WORK. 57 
 
 Another Humane ^^'()RK. 
 
 On the first of May, 1800, Mr. Douuelly made a speech in oppo- 
 sition to a hiotion of Mr. Chanler, of New York, to strike out section 
 14 of an act to regulate immigration. Mr. Donnelly urged that the 
 section should be retained, so as to prevent the overcrowding of 
 emigrant ships and the consequent loss of life to the immigrants, as 
 well as the importation of pestilence into the country, as in the case 
 of vessels that had recently reached New York and Halifax. His 
 views prevailed, and Chanler's amendment was defeated. 
 
 The Bureau of Education Again. 
 
 On June 5, 1860, Governor Donnelly spoke at length in favor of 
 the establishment of the Bureau of Education. I regret that I can- 
 not, for hick of space, quote extensively from this great speech. It 
 was largely instrumental in securing the passage of the bill in the 
 House. Mr. Donnelly said: 
 
 "What pressing necessity results from these two great facts? Education — 
 education for the white man of the South, that he vaar so wisely and liberally judge 
 as to love the great Nation which lifts him up, and the flag wliich is the symbol of 
 the noblest and broadest liberality in all this world. Education for the black man, 
 that the new powers conferred upon him may not be merely brute forces, reacting 
 against himself, but may be wisely directed to his own advantage and the glory of 
 his country. Education for the country itself, that the entire population may rise 
 to the level, and above the level, of the most favored localities, and that, as we are 
 the freest, the bravest and the most energetic, so also we may become the most 
 enlightened people npon the face of the earth, the foremost instruments in what- 
 ever good Cxod may yet design to work out upon the globe. 
 
 '•Is it not a shame, Mr. Speaker, that this nation, which rests solely and 
 alone upon the intelligeure of its citizens, without which it could not exist for 
 an hour, should thus far have done nothing, either to recognise or enforce educa- 
 tion ? As John Adams said, 'The despotisms have stolen a march upon this Re- 
 public in the liberal ])atronage of that education upon which a Republic is based.' 
 . . . But the United States, whose theory of government is that if the people are 
 ignorant they are necessarily unwise; if they are unwise they are necessarily mis- 
 governed, and if they are misgoverned, every interest dear 1o tKe citizen is neces- 
 sarily put in jeopardy; the United States, I say, whose very corner-stone is the 
 enlightened judgment of each individual citizen, has allowed despotism to build up 
 mighty systems in behalf of education, while in this, its capital, not a department, 
 not a bureau, not even a clerkship, is to be found representing that grandest of all 
 interests. . . . 
 
 " Then let us eliminate that which is more dangerous than slavery — ignor- 
 ance. Let us labor to make every man who votes an intelligent, self-conscious, 
 reasoning, reflecting being. Then the true Republic will be realized. Then the 
 struggle of parties will be, not to hold back the world, not to throw blocks before 
 the car of progress, but to strike down every wrong, eveiy error, every injustice. 
 
 " Pass this bill, and it will give education a mouth-piece and a rallying-point. 
 While it will have no power to enter into the States and interfere with their system, 
 it will be able to collect facts and report the same to Congress, to be thence spread 
 over the entire country. It will throw a flood of light upon the dark places of our 
 land. It will form a public sentiment which will arouse to increased activity the 
 friends of education everywhere, and ignorance will fly before it. It will press for- 
 ward in its work, from the bright villages of the North, down to the lowly huts of 
 the poor whites and poorer freedmen in the South ; down to the bayous of Loui- 
 siana, down to the everglades of Florida, down to the very shores of the Gulf. And 
 
58 mOGRAPmCAL. 
 
 in its train what a glorions assemblage shall pour forward; — the newspapers, the 
 pnblie libraries, the mnltipljing railroads, the improved machinery for agrienltnre, 
 the increased comforts for the home; with liberality, generosity, mere}', jnstice and 
 religion. . . . This is the foundation upon which time and our enormous 
 national growth will build the noblest of structures. The hoi)e of Agassiz may here 
 be realized; or even that grander dream of Bacon, — that university Avith unlimited 
 power to do good, and with the whole world paying tribute to it! . . . 
 
 "I can say, sir, with truth, that I press this measure with no unkind feeling 
 toward the people of that unfortunate region [the South]. 1 will do all in my 
 power to alleviate the sufferings they yet endure; their prosperity is identical with 
 that of the country, and their elevation essential to the j)ermanence of the nation. 
 I press this measure because it is just to all, and Avill be beneficent to all. 
 
 " As war dies let peace rise from its ashes — white-winged, white-robed and 
 luminous with the light of a new morning — a morning never to pass away while 
 the world shall stand. Then may be said, in the language of one of oui' writers : 
 
 " ' How they pale, 
 Ancient myth' and song aiid tale, 
 
 In this wonder of our day; 
 When the cruel rod of war 
 
 Blossoms white with righteous law, 
 And the wrath of man is praise.' " 
 
 One cannot help but experience a feeling of sorrow, when read- 
 ing this speech, that such a man should be driven out of pubhc hfe 
 by a gang of greedy Indian-ti'aders and thieving corporations — in 
 fact, that for twenty-five years he should be compelled to make that 
 farm-home at Nininger famous even through his literary labors, only 
 by the irrepressible power of genius to force itself to the light. 
 
 Safety for the Frontiers. 
 
 On December 6, 1886, Mr. Donnelly introduced a preamble and 
 resolution declaring that it was '^ a reproach to our government that 
 its citizens cannot pass from one portion of the national domain to 
 another without danger to life and property, at the hands of a few 
 thousand savages, " therefore resolving that the Secretary of War be 
 required to ^' thoroughly protect communication by two great routes 
 across the continent, ■ ' one by the line of the Union Pacific Eailroad, 
 the other by the future Northern Pacific Eailroad, etc. The resolu- 
 tion was agreed to. 
 
 Universal Suffrage. 
 
 On January 18, 1867, Governor Donnelly delivered another 
 speech which attracted great attention at the time. It was upon 
 the question of universal and impartial suffrage. I have space for 
 but a passage : 
 
 "The purpose of government is the happiness of the people — therefore, of the 
 wlwle people. A government cannot be half a republic and half a despotism — a re- 
 public, just and equable to one class of its citizens; a despotism, cruel and destruc- 
 tive to another class. It must become either all despotism or all republic. 
 
 "If you make it all republic the future is plain. All evils will correct them- 
 selves. Temporary disorders will subside ; the path will lie wide open before every 
 man, and every step and every hour will take him farther- away from error and dark- 
 ness. Give the right to vote, and you give the right to aid in making the laws. 
 The laws, being made by all, will be for the benefit of all ; the improvement an^ 
 
BENOMIJSfATED FOB CON GUESS. 50 
 
 advaurement of each niomber of the commuuity will be the improvement and ad- 
 vaucemeut of the whole community. . . . The earth is (Tod's, and all the children 
 of God have an equal right upon its surface. And human legislation which would 
 seek to subvert this truth merely legislates injustice into law, and he who believes 
 that injustice conserves the peace, order or welfare of society has read history to 
 little pui-pose." 
 
 The New York Tribune referred to this speech as an able argu- 
 ment, and stated that, at the close of it, Mr, Donnelly received the 
 congratulations of many of the leading members of the House. 
 
 Kexominated for Congress, 1866. 
 
 The Congressional District CouYentiou for the Second District of 
 Minnesota was held at St. Paul September 20, 1866. A fierce fight 
 had been made against Governor Donnelly's renoraiuation, headed 
 by his old enemy, the St. Paul Press, and the famous " Bill King," 
 publisher of the Minneapolis ^f/a5. The great warfare of Aristoc- 
 racy against the Commoner now began in earnest. The battle 
 raged in every county in the district, embracing two-thirds of the 
 territory of the new State, a sparsely-settled region, larger than all 
 New England. But when the convention assembled Mr. Donnelly 
 was renominated on the first formal ballot, receiving forty votes, 
 against twenty-eight, divided between three other candidates. The 
 great combine against the people was not yet all-powerful. It had 
 not ripened. I quote an extract or two from his acceptance speech: 
 
 " It is my hope and belief that I shall never, in the future, say or do aught 
 that shall lower the standard of human progress a hair's breadth, or that shall 
 strengthen the arm of injustice or add a single pang to the sufferings of the op- 
 pressed. By this light I have sought to interpret constitutions, politics, parties 
 and laws. The right wrongs no man; and equal rights, equal opportunities and 
 equal laws are a platform which cannot be resisted, since God and man alike ap- 
 prove them. If I can know at the end of my public career, however long or how- 
 ever short it may be, that the world has been benefited, in any degree, by my hav- 
 ing lived, I shall feel that I have not existed in vain. . . . 
 
 " I have striven not to degrade my constituents, but to be the mouth-piece and 
 exponent of all that was best and truest and noblest in their thoughts and aspira- 
 tions." 
 
 The Declaration of Independence. 
 
 "There is," he continued, "in the Patent Office at Washington, a timeworn, 
 discolored, rudely-written parchment. The signatures are faded; the illustrious 
 men who penned them have long since perished fnto dust. But the principles written 
 there have not faded. They are to-day inscribed in ineffaceable characters in 
 millions of brains ; millions o'f hearts dilate when they are uttered ; millions of breasts 
 are bared to the deadly hail of battle when they are imperiled. The emigrant 
 hails them afar off, his face shining with promise ; to them the dusky freedman 
 looks up as to the everlasting stars of the sky ; — they are that consummation and 
 crystalization of the Sermon on the Mount, contained in the august declaration of 
 the inalienable right of a^^ men to life, liberty and happiness." 
 
 The Debate with Colonel Robertson. 
 
 In this campaign a prominent and able Democrat, Col. D. A. 
 Robertson, of St. Paul, challenged Governor Donnelly to a public dis- 
 cussion. The result was so overwhelming that no man in Minnesota 
 
60 BIOGBAPHTCAL. 
 
 has siuce had the temerity to follow his example. Even Mr. Don- 
 nehy's old enemy, the St. Paul Press, though usually bitterly hostile 
 to Mr. Donnelly, could not refrain from saying, in its issue of Nov. 
 24, 1886 : 
 
 " His speech was the ablest and most powerful effort of campaign oratory ever 
 delivered in this city, and in this Ave but express the general opinion of those who 
 heard it. We give elsewhere a pretty full report of his speech, though no report 
 can do full justice to the keen and incisive force of his arguments, or the telling 
 home-thrusts with which it abounded. Every argument or statement of his 
 opponent was met and refuted with an irresistible cogency that elicited bursts of 
 uproarious and prolonged applause from the audience. The blank, spell-bound 
 silence of the numerous Democrats present, no less than the exultant and respons- 
 ive enthusiasm of the Kepublicans, was an eloquent testimony to the unanswerable 
 logic of Mr. Donnelly's exposition of the great principles at issue." 
 
 Eeelected to Congress. 
 
 Despite the continued opposition of the St. Paul Press, which, 
 by all sorts of insidious arguments, sought to slay Mm, Mr. Donnelly 
 was reelected by an increased majority. His opponent was Colonel 
 Wm. Colville, a strong Democrat, with a brilhant war record. He 
 received 7,754 votes, while Mr. Donnelly received 12,022 — a major- 
 ity of 4,268. 
 
 The Old Bond Swindle. 
 
 During the year 1867 Mr. Donnelly became involved in the fierce 
 battle which was raging about the payment of nearly two and a half 
 million dollars of State bonds which had been issued at the time of 
 the admission of the State into the Union. The original law was a 
 trick and a fraud practiced upon the people of the State. Under its 
 terms that vast indebtedness was saddled on the new State for the 
 grading of road-beds of railroads alone, and at the rate of $10,000 
 per mile, while the grading actually cost from $300 to $500 per mile ! 
 The result was that the peox)le found themselves involved in a debt 
 of vast amount, without a mile of iron, or railroad, or a single car to 
 show for it. It was a base and intentional swindle, and the Eepub- 
 lican party first came into power in the State, in 1859, on the plat- 
 form of repudiating the debt caused thereby. 
 
 Mr. Donnelly had taken no part in this battle, but was at length 
 dragged into it, by an attack in the St. Paul Press, and in reply he 
 took ground against the pending proposition in a letter to the Press. 
 And his arguments were so cogent and conclusive that the people 
 voted the proposition down by an overwhelming vote. Since then 
 the persistent holders of the old bonds have effected a settlement 
 with the State, whereby they secured State bonds, bearing 4i per 
 cent, interest, for nearly four million dollars, with 500,000 acres of 
 land, worth $2,500,000, as security for a debt which originally cost 
 them about $300,000 or $400,000 ! The whole history of the State of 
 Minnesota has been written in fraud and corruption, and this great 
 State debt remains as one of the colossal monuments of its history. 
 
THE FORTIETH CONGRESS. 61 
 
 The Fortieth Congress. 
 
 We come now to the record of the last term o^f. Congress in which 
 Mr. Donnelly ever served. '% 
 
 And here we come to a story as strange and terrible as any ever 
 known in the history of politics — its parallel can hardly he found 
 in the pages of fiction. 
 
 Bill King is Elected Postmaster. 
 
 Bill King had opposed Governor Donnelly in the Congressional 
 contest of 1866. When the House assembled in December, 1867, 
 King was on hand as a candidate for postmaster. He found, however, 
 that, as Governor Donnelly represented the district in which he 
 lived, he could not succeed without his support. He sent Mr. Win- 
 dom. Governor Donnelly's colleague in the House, to liim, to beg 
 him not to fight King. Mr. Windom made a personal appeal to 
 Governor Donnelly. He said he had loaned money to King, and had 
 indorsed his paper, and if King did not get the office of postmaster, 
 he would lose every cent of it. He begged him as 7^/5 friend, and as 
 a favor to Mm, not to oppose King. Then King came to Donnelly, 
 and, with tears in his eyes, implored him to help him. He said he 
 was sick and poor, he had been unfortunate in some New York spec- 
 ulations, and he and his family would suffer greatly if he did not 
 get the place. He said the poor-house stared them all in the face. 
 Mr. Donnelly could not stand the tears, and at last, with that mag- 
 nanimity which is almost a weakness of character with him, he 
 agreed to vote for King in the Eepubhcan caucus. But he said : 
 " King, for Windom's sake, I shall vote for you; but do not send any 
 member of the House to me to recommend you, or I shall be cer- 
 tain to tell them that you are the biggest rascal in America ; but if 
 my single vote is of any use to you, you can have it." King was 
 profuse in his thanks. The caucus was held. Governor Donnelly 
 voted an open ballot for King (Windom was one of the tellers), and 
 King was nominated for postmaster hy just one majority. Gov- 
 ernor Donnelly's vote had given him the victory. But it was an un 
 fortunate vote for Donnelly — the most unfortunate he ever cast. 
 
 King's Gratitude. 
 
 Immediately after the vote was taken King met Governor Dol' 
 nelly in one of the lobbies ; he threw bis arms around his neck, and 
 blubbered over him, and said : '^ Donnelly, you have treated me a 
 thousand times better than I deserved; and all the rest of my life 
 shall be devoted to proving my gratitude. You have saved me and 
 my family from ruin. " 
 
 Ho^He Proved His Gratitude. 
 
 In January, 18891, the election of United States Senator from 
 Minnesota came oft' at St. Paul. Shortly before it was to occur, in 
 
62 , ^^^^ JBIOGBAPHICAL. 
 
 December, 1688^ King came to G-overnor Donnelly in Washington, 
 and said to him : 
 
 " Governor, a year ago you saved me from destruction. I told 
 you then that the rest of my life should be devoted to i^roving my 
 gratitude. The time has come to do so. I am going to St. Paul 
 to-morrow. I shall take a suite of rooms, and shall do my utmost to 
 make you United States Senator." 
 
 Governor Donnelly thanked him and said: " While I am grate- 
 ful to you, I do not think it right that you should go to that expense 
 on niy*^ account. Let me give you money enough to pay your travel- 
 ing and hotel expenses." 
 
 " Never mind that," rephed King; " we can settle all that after 
 you are elected." 
 
 Governor Donnelly afterwards learned that at that very mo- 
 ment King had three tJiousand dollars of Bamsey^s money in Ms 
 pocket. 
 
 When Mr. Donnelly reached St. Paul, King called on him at 
 once, professing the most earnest friendship, and Mr. D., incapable 
 of believing that any man could be guilty of such infinite baseness,, 
 told him all his secrets, and from day to day King called and Don- 
 nelly unbosomed himself to this tool of his enemies. 
 
 The MiDifiGHT Visit. 
 
 And so the work of deception continued until the senatorial fight 
 drew very near to a ballot. Governor Donnelly's room was in the old 
 Merchants', then a frame building. The next room was occupied 
 by Mr. Abne-r Tibbetts, a member of the House from Lake City, and 
 Governor Donnelly's principal advocate in the senatorial fight. The 
 partition between the two rooms was very thin, and one night, after 
 miduight, Mr. Donnelly was awakened by a great uproar in Tib- 
 betts' room; he heard voices high in argument, and violently profane 
 language, which he thought he recognized as King's. The next 
 morning Tibbetts explained it all. He said that King had come to his 
 room at midnight and told him that the time had come to throw off 
 the mask; that he, King, had been fooling Donnelly all along, but 
 that he was now doomed, and 'that Tibbetts must tu)-n in and vote 
 for Eamsey. Tibbetts refused to do so. And King went back to 
 the Ramsey headquarters and boasted of how he had deceived and 
 &pied upon the man who had saved him from ruin. 
 
 A FuETHER Depth of Villainy. 
 
 Subsequently King tried to destroy the character of the man 
 he had so treacherously used, and in the great libel suit, of which I 
 shall speak hereafter, took the stand and swore that in the senator- 
 ial fight he and his brother Dana were not supporting Governor 
 Donnelly, and that on his first visit to Governor Donnelly, on his 
 arrival in St. Paul, Governor Donnelly had offered him. King, 
 
THE FOUTIETH CONGRESS, 63 
 
 $3,000, with which to bribe his brother Dana, who was then a 
 member of the Legislature, to vote for him, Donnelly, for Senator. 
 But, on cross-examination, certain old letters of King and his 
 brother, written in 1868, were submitted to him, which showed the 
 true state of the case, and thereupon King adapted himself to what 
 could not be denied, and swore that he and Dana were both earnest 
 and ardent supporters of Governor Donnelly in that senatorial con- 
 test as long as he was a candidate : forgetting that this admission 
 gave the lie to the charge of attempted bribery, for if Dana King 
 was always a supporter of Governor Donnelly, "there was no reason 
 why he, Donnelly, should offer Bill King $3,000 with which to bribe 
 Dana to support him ! Even the most experienced villain some- 
 times slips up when brought face to face with evidence which he 
 supposed was destroyed. 
 
 But I do not think the whole history of human rascality can 
 present a more terrible instance of ingratitude, duplicity, treachery 
 and wickedness than that of this man toward his generous and 
 kind-hearted benefactor. Judas, it is true, betrayed Christ with a 
 kiss, but it was a momentary treason, and he expiated his crime, 
 the next day, by hanging himself; but King still flourishes, with 
 unabashed and brazen face, glorying in his iniquity, and ready to go 
 into court, twenty-two years afterward, and attempt to swear 
 away the character of the man he had betrayed and destroyed, and 
 who had been his friend at the most gloomy point of his ifortunes. 
 It is a shocking narrative, and we record it here, not out of any 
 malevolence toward King, but simply to show this generation aud 
 posterity the character of the men and the influence which drove 
 Ignatius Donnelly out of public life. 
 
 Sauce for the Goose is Sauce for the Gander. 
 
 On the 11th day of March, 1867, Mr. Donnelly introduced the 
 following xH-eamble and resolutions, which explain themselves : 
 
 '■ Whereas, the government of Great Britain did, so soon as an armed rebel- 
 lion appeared within the limits of the United States, hasten to accord to the rebels 
 belligerent rights, and, thereafter, during the whole course of the war, continued 
 to give moral and material aid to the same, furnishing them with arms, munitions 
 and vessels of war, inflicting thereby incalculable injury npon our foreign com- 
 merce, aud greatly increasing our sacrifices of men and monej-, in the suppression 
 of the rebellion. 
 
 And u-hereas, the said government of Great Britain has hitherto refused to pay 
 the government of the United States for any part of the enormous damage so in- 
 flicted upon the commerce of the United States. 
 
 And vhereas, the Irish people, after having suffered for centuries the burdens 
 of an lieroditary aristocracy, an established church, and a system of laws designed 
 expressly for their impoverishment, have at last risen in rebellion, and are now 
 waging a gallant, though unequal, contest with the government of Great Britain : 
 Therefore, 
 
 '^ Resolved, That the profoundest sympathies of the American people are en- 
 listed in behalf of the people of Ireland, in their efforts to establish a republican 
 government m Ireland, upon the basis of uiiiversal suffrage ftud a total separation 
 \)\' ('hnrch and State. 
 
64 BIOGBAPHICAL. 
 
 "■ Besolved, That the Committee on Foreign Affairs, is hereby instructed to 
 report to this House what legislation, if any, is necessary to enable the executive 
 of the United States to accord to the people of Ireland helligerent rights, and 
 generally to enable the executive to follow in every parti ciilar the precedents es- 
 tablished by Great Britain during the late rebellion." 
 
 Hon. Thaddeus Stevens^ of Pennsylvania, objected to the intro- 
 duction of iLie resolution. Mr. Donnelly moved to suspend the rules. 
 There was great alarm among the English party, and to prevent a 
 test vote, Mr. Bingham, of Ohio, moved that the House adjourn, 
 and the motion prevailed. Unfortunately for Mr. Donnelly, the 
 Irish insurrection collapsed before the House met again. If it could 
 have organized and held possession of even a small strip of territory 
 and maintained the forms of government, Mr. Donnelly's resolution 
 would have been adopted, and it would have been the most laughable 
 incident of the century to have seen England's precedents applied 
 to England's own case, and the seas swarming with American priva- 
 teersmen, under the Irish flag, playing hob with the commerce of 
 Great Britain, as she had played hob with ours. 
 
 Feee Schools in the South. 
 
 Mr. Donnelly continued to work away on behalf of education. 
 On the 25th of March, 1867, he presented the following, which was 
 adopted : 
 
 "Wheeeas, 'Religion, morality and knowledge are,' in the language of 
 Jefferson in the Ordinance of 1787, ' necessary to good government and the happi- 
 ness of mankind,' therefore schools and the means of education should be every- 
 where established ; and irhereas, from various causes, the interests of popular edu- 
 cation liave been so greatly neglected, in the States lately in rebellion, that nearly 
 one-half of the voting population there are, at the present time, unable to read and 
 write ; and ivhereas, such a state of things cannot long continue with safety to the 
 nation or to the best interests, prosperity and happiness of the people of the States ; 
 therefore, 
 
 ^^Be^olved. That this House expresses its earnest hope that the people of 
 the States lately in insun-ection will, in reorganizing the same, in accordance 
 with existing laws for that purpose, insert in their respective State Constitutions 
 a provision requiring the legislature to establish and maintain a system of free 
 schools which shall afford adequate opportunity for the public education of all the 
 childi-en of the State." 
 
 This resolution, which was unanimously adopted by the House, 
 had an excellent effect in calling attention to a great question, and 
 its suggestions were carried out throughout the Southern States with 
 the most excellent results. 
 
 Eelief eor the South. 
 
 While Governor Donnelly naturally and properly shared in the 
 feehngs of the North as to the rebellion and the civil war, he lost no 
 opportunity to show that his heart was generous enough to sympa- 
 thize with the people of the South in their misfortunes. On the 13th 
 of March, 1867, a joint resolution (No. 16) came up for consideration 
 in the House, which proposed to appropriate a million dollars to 
 
BELIEF FOR THE SOUTH. (Jo 
 
 purchase supplies of food to be distributed, by the Secretary of War, 
 " in those Southern and Southwestern States where a failure of crops 
 and other causes have occasioned wide-spread destitution." Hon. 
 Fernando Wood, the famous Democratic leader of New York City, 
 opposed the grant vigorously. He was followed by Hon. WiUiam 
 Williams, of Indiana, a Republican member. He was "opposed," 
 he said, " to taxing the one-armed and limbless soldiers of the Re- 
 public to pay money to the women and children of rebels, who, with 
 malignant hatred, spat upon our soldiers, wounded and weary in 
 their march to the sea." He was followed by Mr. Chanler, of IS'ew 
 York, Democrat, who also opposed the passage of the grant. It was 
 a time of fierce passions ; the civil wrfr had just ended. General 
 Butler moved to amend that the milhon dollars should go to the 
 widows of those who were starved to death in the rebel prisons of 
 Andersonville, Libby, etc. General Logan also opposed the resolu- 
 tion. Mr. Boyer, of Pennsylvania, Democrat, supported the grant. 
 Mr. Bingham, of Ohio, Republican, also spoke for it. So, also, did 
 General Garfield. Men divided according to their instincts, and 
 party lines were forgotten. John Covode, of Pennsylvania, in a 
 speech worthy of the time of Oliver Cromwell and the Long Parlia- 
 ment, cited the case of King Ahab, told of in the Old Testament, 
 who was instructed by the Lord to go out and make war upon the 
 Assyrians, under King Benhadad, and when he had conquered 
 them, to utterly exterminate them. But King Ahab, after he had 
 slain 100,000 Assyrians, thought he had done enough to satisfy the 
 wrath of God, and he pardoned Benhadad, the king, and therefore 
 King Ahab and all his sons were slain by the Lord. " Now, I ask, 
 gentlemen," John Covode said, in conclusion, " if they suppose the 
 Lord is done with punishing the rebels of this country?" And 
 therefore he was opposed to the Government feeding the starving 
 women and children of the South. 
 
 It is pleasant to turn from such a screed of fanaticism and 
 hatred to the utterances of Governor Donnelly. He took a leading 
 part in the discussion. He made three speeches and secured an 
 amendment providing that if the million dollars appropriated were not 
 sufficient " to save men, women and children from death by starva- 
 tion," then any other further sum was to be expended by the War 
 Department. I make two Or three extracts from his remarks on 
 this question. I would note that the joint resolution finally passed 
 by a vote of 98 to 31, and there can be no doubt that Mr. Donnelly's 
 efforts very greatly contributed to that end : 
 
 '•The war is at an end. The bitterness and acrimony that accompanied it 
 should die with it. We must base this Government of ours' upon the love of the 
 people. We cannot permit the now empty seats, upon the other side of this cham- 
 ber, to be filled by a race cf men who will be the hereditary enemies of the land 
 they assist in governing. This Government, as it must rest upon the free will of 
 the people, must rest also upon the love of the people. . . . 
 
 " I am sorry to hear these appeals made to the natural prejudices and natural 
 bitterness which exist in our hearts. 1 am sony to hear these references to Ander- 
 
 5 
 
66 BIOGBAPHICAL. 
 
 sonville and Libby prisons. Let us recollect that if we, the representatives of the 
 American people, after having been brought face to face, by oflQcial proof, with 
 the knowledge of this starvation in our land, now withhold the hand of relief, 
 then, in the eyes of the civilized world, we will have placed ourselves on a level 
 with the very rebels who starved our men to death. . . . 
 
 "The chronicles of England preserve the memory of an Anglo-Saxon bishop 
 who, in a time of famine, took the gold and silver ornaments from the altars of his 
 churches and the decorations from "their walls, and sold them to purchase food for 
 the starving multitudes. And when one, who looked rather to the letter than to 
 the spirit of religion, would have rebuked him for his act, he made a noble 
 answer, which will live through all time : ' That it was better that the living 
 temples of the Lord should be fed, even though the dead temples of the Lord should 
 go empty.' . . . 
 
 "1 have somewhere read of a gallant Swede, of the army of Charles XII., who, 
 at the close of one of the great battles fought by that sovereign, sought to assist a 
 wounded and dying enemy, giving him water to drink, from his own 'canteen. In the 
 very moment that he was thus aiding him, the dying man. still full of the rage of the 
 battlefield, attempted to take the lite of his benefactor. The gallant soldier never- 
 theless stayed his hand, and aided, with others, to bear him to a place of safety. 
 When the King heard of the noble act he sent for the soldier and rewarded his 
 humanity by promotion. He asked him, however, how it came that he did not 
 strike an enemy who thus sought to take his life even while he was relieving him ? 
 ' Sire, ' he replied, ' my heart would not permit me to strike a prostrate and helpless 
 man.' 
 
 " So I say now, in the presence of this suffering and this death, I have not the 
 heart to remember anything save only that these people are human, and, ' being 
 human, pitiable. ' " 
 
 Settleks on Public La:nds. 
 
 On the .]-5th of January, 1868, Mr. Donnelly made a speech in 
 favor of a bill, introduced by his colleague Mr. Windom, to permit 
 settlers on the pubhc land^ to make the necessary proofs before the 
 clerk of the nearest court, without being obliged to travel, perhaps, 
 hundreds of miles to the land office, at heavy expense, which the 
 poor frontiersmen could ill afford. Mr. Elihu Washburne, of Illinois, 
 who perceived that Mr. Donnelly was rapidly advanciug to the fore- 
 most ranks otthe House, and that, if he was not crippled in some 
 way, his brother Wilham, who resided in Mr. Donnelly's Congres- 
 sional district, could never come to Congress, proceeded to make a 
 fierce fight upon this just and humane measure. But he was de- 
 feated, the bill passing by a vote of 81 to 15. All this was very irri- 
 tating to Washburne, "and helped precipitate the storm which soon 
 after burst on Mr. Donnelly's head. 
 
 SOTJTHEEN RAILEOAD GRANTS. 
 
 On January 29, 1868, Mr. Donnelly made a speech in favor of 
 the Government reassuming possession of five million acres of land, 
 held by railroad companies, in the South, that bad forfeited the 
 same by not complying with the terms of their grants. He urged 
 that these lands should be restored to the pubhc domain and given, 
 under the Homestead Act, to the people of the South, white and 
 black, in tracts of forty acres each, thus making homes for more 
 
THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AGAIN. (37 
 
 than six hundred thousand poor people. In the course of the debate 
 he said: 
 
 "I do not believe there is, any reasonable legislation the reconstructed States 
 of the South can ask at the hands of the North which the North will not willingly 
 and promptly grant. Being once back in the Union, it will be our pleasure and 
 delight to nourish them iuto prosperity and do ever}'thing in our power to devel- 
 op that entire Southern country. " 
 
 The money of the wealthy corporations who owned these roads 
 was too potent to he overcome in the interest of the people, and 
 the bill was eventually defeated. 
 
 Eights of American Citizens in Foeeign Countkies. 
 
 On January 30, 1868, Mr. Donnelly made a speech, in the House, 
 and took strong ground against the imprisonment of American 
 naturalized citizens by foreign governments, then being practiced 
 in Europe. He declared that Congress should announce its ulti- 
 matum that any such act was "just ground for war," and let 
 European nations understand that if they imprisoned our citizens 
 they had got to fight for it. 
 
 The Department of Education Again. 
 
 A lively battle occurred on February 12, 1868. Elihu Wash- 
 burne, acting chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, 
 probably because Mr. Donnelly was largely instrumental in secur- 
 ing the passage of the act establishing the Bureau of Education, 
 contrived to have the appropriation for the support of the bureau 
 left out of the appropriation bill, and Mr. Donnelly moved to rein- 
 state it. Washburne fought it hard, and in a very unfair and tricky 
 way. Mr. Donnelly showed, in an exceedingly courteous manner, 
 that Washburne had grossly misstated the facts in several particu- 
 lars. He showed that the appropriation asked for amounted to 
 one- thirty-fourth part of a cent for each inhabitant of the United 
 States. In fact he squelched Mr. Washburne complete>y. He 
 wound up with these pregnant sentences: 
 
 "We cannot pay too high a price for the national safety or the national life. 
 School-houses in this generation ivill prevent tvars in the next. Education, in the long 
 run, is always cheaper than ignorance.''^ 
 
 Fernando Wood, as was to be expected, came to the help of 
 Elihu Washburne. General Garfield held up the hands of Mr. Don- 
 nellv. He showed that the bill had passed, in the previous Congress, 
 by a vote of 80 to 44 — by a strict party vote — while Washburne, 
 with his usual mendacity, had stated that it had only one or two ma- 
 iority. He also showed^that the example of Congress, in estabhsh- 
 ing the Bureau of Education, had been most favorably commented 
 on by foreign nations, and that — 
 
 "One of the Ujiditig inenilxis ( fllic Eiiglisli [•arliamciit. on the 2d of Decem- 
 ber, 1867, had moved that a siniilni- department be created, and that a Minister (.f 
 Education should have a seat iu the cabinet as one of the counselors of her Maj- 
 
68 BIOGBAPHICAL. 
 
 estj." . . . '' TJie bill establishing the departmerLt," he continued, "has been no- 
 ticed in all the nations and languages of Europe, as a step in the direction which 
 nations must take to secure the liberty of the people and the safety of the Gov- 
 ernment." 
 
 Washburne's opposition, supported by Fernando Wood, pre- 
 vailed for a time, and the appropriation for the support of the Bureau 
 of Education was killed. The Senate, however, refused to accede to 
 this contemptible action and preserved the bureau. But all this 
 showed how Washburne was writhing under the general recognition 
 of Mr. Donnelly's ability. 
 
 Settlees on Indian Lands in Kansas. 
 
 On March 6, 1868, Governor Donnelly secured the passage of an 
 amendment, offered by him, to the bill in reference to the Osage 
 Indian lands in Kansas, whereby both the odd and even numbered 
 sections should be sold at public sale, to actual settlers, so that the 
 settlers should have the right to pay for them in installments, where 
 they could not pay all cash. Thus the speculators were shut out and 
 the settlers enabled to secure their homesteads. 
 
 He Canvasses Connecticut and New Hampshiee. 
 
 In the spring of 1868, Governor Donnelly, at the request of the 
 State committees, made a canvass of the States of Connecticut and 
 New Hampshire, in behalf of the Eepublican ticket, holding immense 
 meetings and doing very effective work, for which he was warmly 
 thanked by the leading men of those States. 
 
 The Evils of Land Grants. 
 The injurious influences which flow from land grants to rail- 
 road companies, and which are now, after the lapse of a quarter of 
 a century, so plainly apparent to every one, were foreseen by Gov- 
 ernor Donnelly, and he labored to prevent them. He acknowl- 
 edged the importance of railroads to such vast regions of country as 
 are embraced in the West. He said, in a speech delivered in the 
 House May 7, 1868 : 
 
 " The importance of the railroad system to the West can not be overestimated. 
 The grain raised upon land forty miles from a railroad or any great water course 
 is almost valuelesss, save for home consumption, and a people so situated must 
 continue in a poor, primitive and unprogressive condition. Unable to exchange 
 the surplus productions of their soil for agricultural implements, manufactured 
 goods, or the manifold necessities or luxuries of life, they lapse, in a generation 
 or two, into a semi-barbarous and Avretched condition." 
 
 I firmly believe that water-navigation and intercourse would 
 lead to greater and better results than the railway system, and that 
 the statistics of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan demonstrate 
 the proposition. Governor Donnelly's speech exhibits his liberality 
 upon these issues, and his willingness to accord credit where doubt 
 exists. 
 
riJK EVILS OF LAND GBAXTS. (>9 
 
 He oven admitted that railroads could not have been built, 
 (it that time, without the aid of land grants, and perhaps in that 
 respect he was right. 
 
 But he further said: 
 
 " I am of the opinion that we should resort to all measures which will tend 
 to lessen the evils which are necessarily incident to such gigantic corporations. The 
 greatest of these is the Avithdrawal of'large bodies of public land, along the line 
 of the roads, from settlemout.'' 
 
 He, therefore, advocated a bill, H. F. 370, introduced by Hon. 
 George W. Julian, which provided that all grants of lands to railroad 
 companies (the odd-numbered sections) should be placed in the 
 hands of tlie States in which the lands are situated, as trustees for 
 the corp(n-ations, and the States should sell the lands to actual settlers, 
 at a fixed price, and deliver the proceeds to the railroad companies. 
 He said : 
 
 •' The conversion of lauds into farms and the construction of the railroad 
 would proceed side by side; the farms would furnish business for the road ; the 
 road would furnish an outlet for the productions of tlie farms. Thus commerce 
 and agriculture would meet on equal terms and mutually assist each other. It is 
 in this marriage of the wisdom of legislation with the Avants ami necessities of the 
 })(.'ople that the highest statesmanship will be found to exist . . . 
 
 " We, cannot overrate the importance of the subdivision of the land among 
 the people. Being the original parent of all wealth, its blessing should be wide- 
 spread and should reach as many as possible ; otherwise it will concentrate in a few 
 hands, and then will follow plethora for the few and pauperism for the many, until 
 at last we realize the pitiful and lamentable condition of Europe, where the blood 
 ami tears and sweat of the afflicted cry from the earth like the blood of Abel. 
 
 " Now, Mr. Speaker, we owe to every man who desires to possess it a reason- 
 able portion of the unoccupied land of the nation. The right inheres in him and 
 it inheres in the great mass of his fellow-men, because he and they are alike to be 
 beneiited, he directly, they indirectly. That right the homestead law recognizes 
 and protects." 
 
 Speaking of the poor laborers of Europe, he said : 
 
 "How pitiful, Mr. Speaker, is the condition of those populations? They lie 
 at the base of a column of injustices heaped high above them. How desolate is the 
 cry which their wretchedness, their misery, their very sinfulness, sends up to 
 heaven ? How pale, how bloodless are their poor faces as they gather in the fetid 
 alleys of the great cities of the Old World, or sit down patiently to their insutii- 
 eieiit food in miserable cabins ? The Avhole past of the human family seems to rest 
 crushingly upon them. Conquests a thousand years old yet press upon their 
 shoulders'. The distinctions of race and caste and religion, and all the million 
 forms of injustice growing out of these, yet hold them under their feet. They look 
 to the laws, and they are against them ; they look to the land, and it is occupied; 
 they can only hope by the most cruel and unceasing toil to snatch a living more 
 scant, more precarious than that which the gaunt wolf gathers in the depths of the 
 forest." 
 
 Protecting the Eights of Actual Settlers. 
 
 On June 4, 1868, Governor Donnelly reported back and secured 
 the passage of an act. House bill No. "23, to prevent the entry of 
 more than three sections of pubhc lands in any township by means 
 of agricultural college scrip. He showed that in some sections whole 
 
70 BIOGMAVmCAL. 
 
 townships were being seized upon by speculators — the purchasers 
 of that scrip — to the exckision of actual settlers. 
 
 Mail Sekvice to Moe^taina and Idaho. 
 
 On the 19th of June, 1868, there was a lively contest over a bill, 
 asked by the Postmaster- General, to increase the mail service be- 
 tween Fort Abercrombie and Helena from " pony service '' to " stage 
 service; " at an additional cost of $50,000, thereby saving a distance of 
 a thousand miles in the transportation of mails and passengers. A 
 very illiberal opposition was made to the bill by some Eastern 
 members, probably in the interest of the Union Pacific Railroad, led 
 by Hon. Hamilton Ward, of New York. The bill was finally passed, 
 after a hard fight, by a vote of 57 yeas to 50 nays. In the course of 
 the debate the following passage-at-arms took place: 
 
 Mr. Ward. " How do we know that it is a just and righteous .measure if we 
 do not find it out through the instrumentality of the committee appointed for the 
 purpose of ascertaining the facts ? How do we kaow 1 " 
 
 Mr. Donnelly. "By that common sense and judgment with which God has 
 endowed most men." 
 
 Mr. Ward. "The gentleman has more than his share, and I was inquiring 
 for a little of his." 
 
 Mr. Donnelly. ' ' I should be happy, if time permitted, to fully enlighten the 
 gentleman — hut it would take time ! " 
 
 It is unnecessary to state that Mr. Ward discovered the House 
 convulsed with laughter — at him. 
 
 The Puechase of Alaska. 
 
 On July 1, 1868, there was quite a conflict in the House over the 
 appropriation of $10,000,000 for the purchase of Alaska. Mr. Don- 
 nelly said : 
 
 " I shall vote for this bill because I consider it one of the necessary steps in 
 the expansion of our institutions and nationality over the entire domain of the 
 North American continent. From both North and South the territory and the peo- 
 ple of the continent gravitate inevitably toward us, drawn by our steadily increas- 
 ing greatness, the benignity of our institutions, and the individual prosperity 
 manifested everywhere throughout all our broad expanse. . . . There is no reason 
 why those institutions should not extend, on the one hand, to that thread of land 
 which ties together the Northern and Southern continents, and, on the other hand, 
 to the extreme limits of human habitation under the frozen constellations of the 
 North. ... 
 
 ' ' "When the traces of the great rebellion shall have passed away, when the 
 debt incurred in its suppression shall have been extinguished, or shall have been 
 dwarfed into insignificance, compared with the vastness of our population and the 
 magnitude of our wealth ; when our institutions shall have been pm-ified from 
 evexy taint of the old and the cruel past, and shall be sublimated and refined into 
 the very perfection of human justice and Christian benevolence, and when our 
 nationality shall have expanded until it fades out beneath the fire of the tropics, 
 on the one hand, or disappears along the margin of the eternal snows, on the other, 
 we- shall present to the world the aspect of a nation greater, mightier, wiser and 
 happier than any ever known before to man in the whole tide of time. We will 
 be a nation that by the mere power of its moral influence shall compel justice and 
 destroy injustice in all the lands of the earth." 
 
THE TllO UBL E WITH THE WA SHB UBN FAMIL Y. 71 
 
 The chief opponent of the purchase of Alaska was C. C. Wash- 
 burn, of Wisconsin. He declared that the country was worthless, 
 that there were no fur-bearing animals in it, etc. He was assisted 
 by the " liberal-minded " Elihu, his brother, who voted against the 
 ])urcbase. But the bill passed. Tho seal fisheries have turned out 
 to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and there is no conceiv- 
 able sum for which the United States would to-day sell the Terri- 
 tory of Alaska to any foreign nation. As Mr. Donnelly said, in the 
 course of the debate: 
 
 •'With OUT great nation on the south and our new acquisition resting upon 
 the north, British domination will be inevitably pressed out of Western British 
 America. It Avill disappear between the upper a'nd the nether mill-stones. These 
 jaws of the nation will swallow it up." 
 
 The Trouble With the Washburn Family. 
 
 I have shown that trouble was brewing between Mr. Donnelly 
 and Ehhu Washburne. For four years Mr. William D. Washburn, 
 brother of Elihu, had been a candidate for Congress against 
 Mv. Donnelly. 
 
 He failed in 1864, because he insisted that all the other candi- 
 dates in the district must withdraw and unite on him, and defeat 
 ;Mr. Donnelly in that way. Each of the other candidates preferred 
 himself to Mr. Donnelly, but preferred Mr. Donnelly to any of 
 the rest, and so Mr. Donnelly was renominated. 
 
 In 186G he adopted a different plan. He urged some one prom- 
 inent man in each principal county to be a candidate for Congress, 
 and to bring his delegation to the convention, intending, when he 
 got them there, to unite all the opposition in his own behalf. But, 
 when that point was reached, again Mr. Donnelly was the choice 
 of so manv delegates that he was renominated, and on the first 
 ballot, by a vote of 40 to 28. 
 
 Since 1866 Mr. Donnelly had been steadily rising in the estima- 
 tion of the people both in Minnesota and throughout the whole 
 country; his reputation was becoming national. The Washburn 
 family were in distress, and the Washburn family carried the armor 
 of modern plutocracy ! They knew not what to do. William must 
 come to Congress — it was the Heaven-appointed destiny of the 
 family — but how was he to get there while that able and indus- 
 trious man stood in his way? Donnelly m^«5^ be got rid of. But 
 how ? It was evident he could not be defeated in the Congressional 
 conventions. It w\as therefore decided that the great Elihu — the 
 head of the family — -must jump upon and crush him to death. 
 Everything favored such a scheme. It w'as evident that the victor- 
 ious Union General, Ulysses S. Grant, w^as certain to be President. 
 Washburne lived in Grant's town. Galena, and he was generally 
 supposed to be Grant's right-hand man — the power behind the 
 throne. Presuming on this fact, Washburne played the dictator in 
 
72 BIOGBAPHICAL. 
 
 dongress. A man of very little intellect (for none of the family were 
 intellectual), but of great energy and force, lie felt the full prestige 
 of his accidental position. He was surrounded by all those cringing 
 ruultitudes that always gather around men who are supposed to pos- 
 sess power and patronage. Mr. Donnelly was a young man, without 
 powerful family connections, without wealth, without church or any 
 other kind of influence to sustain him. Elihu Washburne reasoned 
 that if he assailed and denounced Mr. Donnelly from the height of his 
 position, <is the supposed premier of the incoming administration^ it 
 would absolutely destroy him; and if, in addition to this, he corfld 
 blacken his reputation, he would ruin him as a man and citizen, and 
 so end him. It was necessary not only to kill him oft" as a Congress- 
 man, but as a politician. William must come to Congress over his 
 corpse. 
 
 Mr. Donnelly's relations with Elihu Washburue had always been 
 pleasant, if not cordial, as they were with every member of Congress. 
 It was necessary that Washburne must pick a quarrel with him to 
 justify the ouslaueht he was about to make. Mr. Donnehy, in his 
 speech in Congress May 2d, 1868, tells how this was accomplished : 
 
 "Mr. Speaker, on the 20th of March hast, I asked, in this House, nnanimous 
 consent to introduce a bill for a land grant, to aid in the construction of a railroad 
 from the town of Taylor's Falls, in the State of Minnesota, by the way of St. Cloud, 
 to the western boundary of the State; and asked that it be referred to the Committee 
 of Public Lands and printed. An objection was made by the gentleman from Illinois 
 (Mr. Washburne). I did not hear any other objection at the time. Itseems, howoyer, 
 that the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Holman) had also objected. I immediately 
 went to the gentleman from Illinois, and said to him that I was about to leave the 
 city, to go to the State of Connecticut, to labor in behalf of the Kepublican party in 
 that State, that I must leayo the next day, and that I would be obliged to him. as a 
 personal favor, if he would withdraw his objection and permit me to introduce the 
 bill. His answer to me was, 'Air. Holman has objected.' Taking it for granted 
 that he meant that he would not press his objection, I went to Mr. Holman. I made 
 the same statement to him, and, although opposed to me in politics, he was gentle- 
 man enough to say that he would not interfere with the mere introduction of the 
 bill, and he rose, as you will recollect, Mr. Speaker, and said that, although 
 opposed to land grants, he was not opposed to the introduction and reference of 
 the bill, and withdrew his objection. [There was really scarcely any public land on 
 the proposed line, but the citizens of Taylor's Falls wanted the bill simply for 
 the charter. E. W. F.] The Speaker again put the question, and stated that the 
 bill would have its first and second readings, when the gentleman from Illinois 
 rose in his seat and said : ' 1 also object ; ' and it was impossible for me to intro- 
 duce the bill. I was filled, as any gentleman would l^e, with indignation at 
 this course, at this seeming ill faith, and I sat down and wrote a letter to the 
 gentleman in Minnesota most interested in that project, and who had written to 
 me upon the subject, and stated merely the facts. I send the letter to the clerk's 
 desk to be read : 
 
 '"jSb?i. W. H. G. Folsom, Taylor'' s Falls, Minnesota: 
 
 " ' I have carefully prepared a bill for a grant of lands to the State of Minnesota, 
 to aid in the construction of a railroad ' ' from Taylor's Falls, via St. Cloud, to the 
 western boundary of the State," as will appear by a copy of the Globe which I will 
 send you to-morrow. Mr. E. B. Washburne, of Illinois, twice objected, and pre- 
 vented its introduction and reference to the Committee on Public Lands. As 
 unanimous consent was necessary, the objection made by Mr. Washburne has de- 
 
THE GUEAT AKTT-WASHBVltNE SPEECH. T.\ 
 
 laved for the present all actiou upou tlic bill. T fear that tlii.s delay will 11in«\v the 
 bill forward to a very late period in the session. 
 
 ••'The introduetion and refereuee of bills are so mueh ''matters of course, " 
 in parliamentary proceedings, that 1 am at a loss to account for this action of Mr. 
 Washburne. 1 should regret to think tluit his continued opimsition to every meas- 
 ure of a public or private nature in which T api)ear to be interested is due to a desire 
 to utterly impair my ability to serve my constituents. I can scarcelv think it 
 possible that any respectable gentleman would indulge in such an illiberal and 
 ungenerous policy, but this fact remains, that he seems determined to resist in 
 every way every measure which I deem important to my constituents. I propose 
 to do my Avhole duty, in spite of his opposition. Trulv your friend, 
 
 '•'Ignatius Donnelly.*" 
 
 It was cousidered by the Eepublicaus that the States of New 
 Hampshire and CouDecticut, holding their election in the spring of 
 1868, would have a great inftnence npon the presidential election to 
 he held in the fall of that year, and tbey therefore urged the great 
 speakers of the party, from all over the country, to come to their help 
 in the canvass of those States. A delegation from the Republican 
 committees of New Hampshire and Connecticut came to Washing- 
 ton and urged Mr. Donnelly (as I have already stated) to make sorae 
 speeches for them. This he relucta*utly consented to do. It was 
 while engaged in this very important and laborious work in behalf 
 of the Republican party that Mr. Washburne, a leader of that party, 
 sought the opportunity to destroy his character, by sending for pub- 
 lication to Mr. Donnelly's ancient and villainous enemy, the St. 
 Paul Press, a letter which Mr. Donnelly fitly characterized, in 
 his speech on May 2d, as '^ without a parallel in the history of 
 any parliamentary body on the face of the earth ; so shocking, so 
 abusive, so outrageous in its character and in all its parts." In 
 addition to attacking Mr. Donnelly's course in Congress at every 
 possible point, it charged that he ^' had left the city of Phila- 
 delphia between two days, under suspicious circumstances." 
 
 On Mr. Donnelly's return to Washington from the State of Con- 
 necticut, he was shown by his friends a copy of the Press containing 
 this infamous attack. He deliberated for some time whether it was 
 not his duty to shoot Washburne. He finally decided to reply to his 
 assailant, not in a remote newspaper, but on the floor of Congress. 
 
 The GtKeat Anti- Washburne Speech. 
 
 It was not until the 2d of May, the House being then busy / 
 attending the impeachment of the President, Andrew Johnson, that '\ 
 he could obtain the floor. On a Saturday afternoon, just as the '. 
 House returned from the Senate, he rose in his seat, the galleries 
 being nearly empty, and delivered a speech that was in many re- 
 spects the greatest and most famous ever made in Congress since 
 the estabhshment of the Oovernment. The news spread; the gal- 
 leries filled up ; the excitement on the floor of the House became in- 
 tense. Washburne had terrorized the House ; he was almost uni- 
 versally hated and despised, but at the same time feared; and when 
 
?4 mOGHAPmCAL. 
 
 one man, and he the quietest gentleman in the House^ rose to 
 impale him and flay him alive, the joy of the members knew no 
 bounds. They cried out, " Give it to him !" " Hit him again !" and 
 the applause and laughter were unbounded. When Mr. Donnelly's 
 hour had expired he was about two-thirds through his speech. Hon. 
 Wm. D. Kelley, of Pennsylvania, the famous '* Pig-iron Kelley " as he 
 was called, one of the foremost and ablest men of the House, rose 
 and moved that Mr. Donnelly's time be extended tvitlioiit limit , and 
 this extraordinary motion was unanimously agreed to ! 
 
 The first part of Mr. Donnelly's speech was devoted to a de- 
 fense of bis Congressional acts, and he completely wiped away every 
 charge made by Washburne ; he showed that they were disproved 
 by the official record of the votes he had given. He then took up 
 the personal charges. He said : 
 
 Washburne's Slanders. 
 
 " I left the city of PMladelphia on the 15th of May, 1857, in broad daylight, 
 from the depot of the Pennsylvania Central Kailroad, accompanied to that depot by 
 crowds of friends. For months befor^ my departure I had advertised in the papers 
 of that city that I would leave about the 1st of May, and that all persons having 
 claims against me must present them." 
 
 He quoted an advertisement from the Philadelphia Public Ledger 
 of May 12, 1857, in which a society of which he was a member unani- 
 mously thanked him lor his services, and said that "be bears with 
 him to his new home the best wishes of the members of this associa- 
 tion for his prosperity and success." 
 
 Mr. Donnelly then bad read the following letter from Hon. 
 Benjamin Harris Brewster, tben Attorney- General of the State of 
 Pennsylvania, since Attorney -General of the United States — a letter 
 of which any man might be justly proud. 
 
 Mr. Brewster's Letter. 
 
 Mr. Donnelly said : 
 
 ' * Mk. Speaker : I now send to the clerk's desk and ask him to read a letter — a 
 letter from a gentleman well known to many members of this House personally, 
 well known, I think, to all of them by reputation, the distinguished Benjamin 
 Harris Brewster, of Philadelphia, a man whose learning, genius and character have 
 illuminated the profession of the laAv in that State, of wliich he is now Attorney- 
 General — the man under whom I studied law, and who knew mefrommy boyhood 
 up. I ask the clerk to read what he says in answer to this slanderer." 
 
 The clerk read as follows : 
 
 " Commonwealth of Pen^-sylvania, 
 " Office of Attorney-General, 
 
 " Haeeisbfrg, April 28, 1868. 
 " My Dear Me. Donnelly: Tour letter of yesterday is now before me. 
 It is a surprise to me that any one should be so hardy as to assail your good name 
 for acts done while a resident here. 
 
 " To me you have been known for nearly twenty years. You were my stu- 
 dent, and from 1849 to 1853 you were daily with me, and down to 1857 there was 
 not a week that we were not in constant intercourse. For a year before jou left it 
 
Mlf. BUEWSTEB'S LETTEJR. 75 
 
 was publiclj' notorious that you woro arrangiufx vour affairs lo go west aud icsido 
 there. Your departure was open, public, eoiispicuouslv public. You made a 
 formal call on me to bid me good-by. 
 
 " Your character from your boyhood up was well known tome ; your business 
 affairs were known to me, as you advised with me, and from other sources my 
 means of information were exact, and you were regarded by me, as br others in- 
 deed, by all who ever spoke to me of you, as a man of uncommon energy, skill 
 and strict integrity. 
 
 "After you had been absemt for some years, and on an occasion when you 
 were present in Philadelphia — my recollection is that it was in 1863 — you came to 
 me, and, to my surprise, you advised me that some person of the name of Porter 
 had charged you with a conspiracy to defraud. As your counsel, the whole matter 
 was c(nnmitted to my exclusive charge. The case was heard before the magistrate, 
 in my presence, and he discharged you, there being no proof of any kind 
 against you. 
 
 •• Mj' recollection is distinct ; there was not the shadow of proof against you. 
 The conviction inipressed on my mind then was, and still is, that it was an attempt,' 
 under color of criminal proceedings, to frighten you into the payment of a debt 
 von did not owe. and that there was also some personal and political ill-feelino- at 
 the bottom of the affair. " 
 
 •'In that transaction you acted like a man of courage and high honor. You 
 refused to plead the statute of limitations, and you also refused to plead your privi- 
 lege as a member of the House of Representatives ; and that refusal was publicly 
 announced by me in open court, before the magistrate and all the bystanders. You 
 also, being present, announced, through me, that no technical defense of any kind 
 would be set up ; that you challenged any one to come forward and make a charge, 
 if they had any to make; and, as representing you, I further said that, if no- 
 tice were sent to me at any subsequent day, when you were absent, that you would 
 forthwith be produced by me, at any time' and from any distance; that you had 
 been honored, by a respectable constituency, with a responsible office, and that 
 you owed it to their honor and to your own" honor to confront all accusers at all 
 times and meet all such charges on their merits. 
 
 " For my part, to me you have ever been dear as a friend and a pupil of whom 
 I am proud. 
 
 " You are known by me to enjoy a character for stern integrity, and by me 
 you would be trusted to the utmost limit of human confidence. 
 
 " Truly, as ever, more and more, your friend, 
 
 "Benjamin Harris Brewster. 
 '•Hon. I. Donnelly, House of Beprese7itatives, Washington, D. C." 
 
 Continuing, Mr. Donnelly said : 
 
 "The gentleman's brother [W. D. Washburn], four years ago, contesting 
 with me the right to a seat in this House, used these slanders upon the streets of 
 St. Paul, until I was forced to come out, in a card in the public papers of the State, 
 and say that, if he could prove anything against my honor, I would withdraw from 
 the contest for Congress, and resign my seat in this "body. I had thought, knowing 
 the source from which these things spring, that that denial would have ended the 
 matter. 
 
 " I shall not stop to amplify that splendid passage from Shakespeare which my 
 friend from Iowa [Mr. Price] was compelled the other day to quote against the 
 gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Washburne] : 
 
 " Who steals my purse steals trash ; ' tis something, nothing; 
 'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands; 
 But he that filches from me raj good name 
 Robs me of that which naught enriches him, 
 And makes xae poor indeed." 
 
 " Why, Mr. Speaker, the cringing sneak-thief who picks your pocket, or steals 
 your overcoat, is a Christian gentleman compared with that monster who would 
 rob you of the precious mantle of your reputation and leave you shivering before 
 the contempt of the world. The assassin who strikes you down in your blood 
 
TT) BTOGBAVmCAL. 
 
 l(?aves at least your toeuiorysacrcl ammvij: iiDen, and }'our grave may be bedeAved hy 
 the tears of affection; but ho who wouhl assassinate your reputation, he who 
 would strike at the life of your character, he who would befoul you, who would 
 cover you all over with night-soil, is a Avretch whom ' it were base flattery to call a 
 coward.' Beside such a man the memory of the assassin Booth grows respectable.' 
 
 Caerying the War into Africa. 
 
 Having closed the defense of himself^ Mr. Donnelly then " car- 
 ried the war into Africa." He attacked Washburne in a terrible 
 philippic, winding up with this summary : 
 
 " What great measure, in his sixteen years of legislation, has this gentleman 
 ever originatexl 1 What liberal measure has ever met with his support 1 What 
 (uiginal sentiment has he ever uttered? What thought of his has ever risen 
 above the dead-level of the dreariest platitudes ? If he lay dead to-momnv in this 
 chamber, what heartin this body would experieiice one sincere j^cuiff of sorrow ? . . . 
 He has soiight to build himself up upon our dishonor ; to glorify himself in our 
 disgrace; to pollute and befoul and traduce the very body of which he is a mem- 
 ber." 
 
 In the following pages several extracts are given of this great 
 speech. It was widely copied all over the United States;' it was re- 
 printed in English boolis and in the Paris newspapers. It created 
 an immense sensation throughout the whole country. It ^practically 
 ended EUhu Washburne as a public man. He desired to be a mem- 
 ber of Grant's cabinet, and Grant permitted him to serve as Secre- 
 tary of State for two or three days, and then exiled the ambitious 
 Warwick to France. 
 
 The Effect of the Speech. 
 
 The Washington correspondent of the Chicago Times ex- 
 pressed the general feehng when he said : 
 
 " Donnelly has completely wiped out Washburne as a radical leader." 
 The New York Herald spoke of — 
 
 " The vein of genius, . . . the thunderbolts of powerful invective and genu- 
 ine wit amid the storm and flood of Billingsgate." 
 
 The Philadelphia Telegraph said : 
 
 " While Mr. Donnelly's language is almost inexcusable, yet his provocation 
 was great. The statements made by Mr. Washburne as to his character are utterly 
 and entirely false. " 
 
 Mr. Donnelly was told when he lectured, years afterward, in 
 Madison, Wisconsin, during the session of the legislature which 
 had just refused to elect Cadwalader C. Washburn to the United 
 States Senate, that his great speech had been republished in nearly 
 all the Wisconsin papers, during the recent campaign, and that it 
 had materially contributed to C. C. Washburn's defeat. 
 Mr. Do:n^nelly's Ovation. 
 
 But to resume our narrative. Mr-. Donnelly was boarding at the 
 time at the St. James Hotel, and that night and all of the next day 
 (Sunday) he was the subject of a perfect ovation. He was called 
 upon by hundreds of leading men, including a great many Congress- 
 
MR. DONNELLY J)EMANDS AN INVESTIGATION. 11 
 
 men. ' The entire delegation from Illinois (with the exception of 
 Washburne) called in a body, with United States Senator Richard 
 Yates, the great war Governor of Illinois, at their head ; and, com- 
 ing up to him, laughing, and holding out his hand, Senator Yates 
 said : " Of course you can not expect us to rejoice in your castiga- 
 tion of our colleague ! " The officials of the House called also, 
 in a body, and said they intended to take up a collection and pre- 
 sent Mr. Donnelly with a service of plate. ]\Ir. Donnelly begged 
 them not to do so ; not that he would not highly appreciate such a 
 gift, but that he knew Washburne's vindictive nature, and that he 
 would follow them up, and persecute them, individually, for the rest 
 of their lives. 
 
 As I said before, the affair ended Washburne's political career. 
 After his return from Paris he sought to be elected again to the 
 House, but could not succeed. Then he tried to be United States 
 Senator, and had but a small support. Then he even aspired to the 
 nomination for President, and received two or three votes. He will 
 be remembered in history only by Mr. Donnelly's philippic. Mr. 
 Donnelly said at the time : "I have embalmed him for posterity — 
 like a bug in amber. " 
 
 Me. Donnelly Demands an Investigation. 
 
 Mr. Donnelly demanded a committee of investigation to inquire 
 into the truth of Washburne's charges. He was determined to give 
 Washburne a chance to prove his shmders, if he could. Mr. Win- 
 dom, his colleague, made the motion at his request, and the com- 
 mittee was appointed. The committee met May 15th. Mr. Wash- 
 burne had been invited by the chairman to be present and prove 
 his charges. He did not attend. In the meantime he had the clerk 
 of his standing committee busy in Philadelphia, seeking for any possi- 
 ble shadow of evidence to sustain his slander. The committee met 
 again May 16th. Mr. Washburne appeared, and stated that his let- 
 ter to the St. Paul Press did not contain amj charges of crime or cor- 
 ruption against Mr. Bonnelhj ! Then he sought to intimidate the 
 committee, by declaring that he wanted " fifty or more witnesses " 
 — not from Philadelphia, but from Minnesota, while none of Mr. 
 Donnelly's pretended ottenses had been committed in Minnesota. 
 Then, at his request, the committee adjourned over, for about ten 
 days, to enable his clerk to finish his researches in Philadelphia. 
 
 A telegram to the Chicago Republican of May 28th says: 
 
 "Mr. Washburne made a sad mistake when he attacked the Minnesotian, and 
 is now put to his trumps to find any evidence whatever to support his charges. He 
 will probably have to back out as best he can.'' 
 
 Then, on the 27th of May, 1868, Washburne wrote a letter to 
 the committee from which I make these choice extracts : 
 
 '• After extraordinary provocations, unknown to the committee or to the House 
 of Representatives, and extending through a series of years, 1 wrote the letter which 
 has been made the subject of investigation." 
 
78 BIOGMAPHICAL. 
 
 Mr. Donnelly stated to the committee that this allegation was an 
 absolute and abominable falsehood : that he had never given Wash- 
 burn the slightest provocation for his course ; and he challenged him 
 to name a single instance of the kind'. 
 
 Washburne Backs Down. 
 
 Washburne goes on to say in his letter : 
 
 "In the letter there is no charge touching the gentleman's oflS.cial character as 
 a member of the House ; and no allegation of bribery and corruption as stated in 
 the preamble." 
 
 And this in the face of the fact that he had in that letter 
 charged Mr. Donnelly with having been " seen" — that is, bribed, — 
 upon the vote on the bill to legalize a bridge across the Mississippi 
 at Clinton. 
 
 The committee in their report say : 
 
 " On behalf of Mr. Washburne it was claimed that the charges or statements 
 in the letter, having reference to the conduct and character of Mr. Donnelly, an- 
 terior to his election to Congress, were no breach of the privileges of the House or 
 of Mr. Donnelly as a member, and that therefore the House had no proper juris- 
 diction to direct an investigation as to their truth or falsity." 
 
 Mr. Washburne was in this dilemma : He had made charges 
 which he could not prove; which he knew were unjust to a fellow 
 member, and false; but, instead of coming forward, and, in a manly 
 way, making a proper retraction and apology, he withdraws alto- 
 gether so much of the charges which affected Mr. Donnelly's char- 
 acter as a member of the House, and which the House would com- 
 pel him to prove or retract, and then he urges that, as to the other 
 charges, the House has no right to investigate them, because they 
 referred to events which transpired before Mr. Donnelly's election 
 to Congress. 
 
 Washbuene's Baseness. 
 
 It is difQcult to conceive of greater baseness. To make terri- 
 ble charges against a gentleman, and then refuse to attempt to 
 prove them, and argue that the assailed party could not be per- 
 mitted to disprove them himself! The committee say : 
 
 " Mr., Washburne, in his written communication before, referred to, and also 
 verbally before the committee, stated that he did not appear before the committee 
 as a prosecutor, and declined to assume the affirmative of attempting to sub- 
 stantiate his charge against Mr. Donnelly by proof. " 
 
 The committee further say: 
 
 " Mr. Donnelly constantly and persistently urged upon the committee that 
 they should proceed to investigate the truth or falsity of the' allegations against 
 him, and avowed his entire willingness to assume the affirmative, and to disprove 
 them, and to pay the expenses of witnesses for that purpose. " 
 
 But the committee were constrained to follow the parliamentary 
 rule, and took the ground in their report that they had no right to 
 inquire into the acts of members prior to their election. But the 
 
THE EFFECT IN MINNESOTA. 79 
 
 whole matter leaves Washburne in the most shameful and degraded 
 light for the contemplation of posterity. He interfered, without 
 provocation, discourteously in the business of another member, and 
 then, when that member, obliged to explain the cause of the delay 
 in introducing the bill to those interested, stated the facts without 
 abuse or denunciation, he enters his district and, in the leading- 
 paper of the State, covers him with charges of corruption and crime; 
 and then, when an investigation is ordered into the truth of his 
 charges, he withdraws so much as he would be compelled, by par- 
 liamentary law, to prove, and interposes an objection to the assailed 
 party proving his innocence, at his own expense, of the remainder 
 of his base slanders. 
 
 The Effect in Minnesota. 
 
 Of course, all this battle produced an immense sensation in Min- 
 nesota. The papers were filed with it, pro and con, for weeks. An 
 attempt was made, by preliminary telegrams, to represent that the 
 speech made by Mr. Donnelly was exceedingly vulgar and profane; 
 but the speech soon circulated and was read by everybody, and this 
 charge fell to the ground. 
 
 Mr. Donnelly's Return Home. 
 
 On Mr. Donnelly's return to the State he spoke to an immense 
 meeting in Ingersoll's Hall, then the largest hall in the city. The 
 speech was long remembered. He attacked his enemies with elo- 
 quence, ridicule and facts. 
 
 The Democratic paper, the St. Paul Pioneer, of Aug. 2, 1868, 
 said : 
 
 " The reading of these extracts presented the richest scene, we presume to say. 
 ever witnessed by any person in St. Paul ; and the audience laughed and laughed 
 and laughed, till old men and young men were compelled to wipe the tears from 
 their eyes. Such yelping and shouting and slapping each other on the back as was 
 witnessed there last night has seldom been seen. . . . During all this portion 
 of Mr. Donnelly's speech his remarks were interrupted continually by cheering, clap- 
 ping of hands, laughter and eveiy conceivable indication of satisfaction. There is 
 no possible way to present the scene to our readers ; the speaker's points, during 
 the whole of these last remarks, -wqyq so sharp, so pointed and so perfectly ludi- 
 crous. " 
 
 The St. Paul Dispatch of Aug. 2d said : 
 
 " The scene witnessed in Ingersoll's Hall Saturday night was unparalleled in 
 the history of the State. It was a spontaneous outpouring and outbursting of the 
 people to do honor to a faithful public servant and show disapproval of the malic- 
 ious opposition to him. . . . From his entrance into the hall until his exit, un- 
 bounded approbation was manifested toward him. His appearance upon the stage 
 called forth a greeting such as was never before tendered a public speaker in this 
 city. For five minutes the very building shook with applause. Cheer after cheer 
 pealed forth, hundreds rose to their feet, hats were to.?sed high in the air, and the 
 most indescribable enthusiasm prevailed. " 
 
 In thi-^ speech, not content with the evidence he had furnished 
 as to his private character in his reply to Washburne, Governor 
 
80 BIOGBAFHICAL. 
 
 Donnelly i3roduced receipts, or sworn certificates, from a dozen par- 
 ties, showing that, before leaving Philadelphia, he had settled up all 
 his accounts in the most honorable manner. 
 
 Defeated for Congress. 
 We have very little heart to follow this narrative of events 
 farther. By a series of high-handed measures that would have dis- 
 graced the South during the carpet-bag days, Mr. Donnelly's ene- 
 mies, plentifully supplied with money by the wealthy and desi^otic 
 aristocracy of the district, who are believed to have spent $50,000 
 in the fight, defeated him and elected the Hon. Eugene Wilson, 
 a Democrat, from a district which, two years before, had given over 
 4,000 majority. To do this, men took possession of the hall where 
 the Congressional convention was to be held, placed armed police- 
 men on the stairs, to keep out the delegates favorable to Mr. Don- 
 nelly, split the Kepublican party in two, nominated General Hub- 
 bard as their candidate against Mr. Donnelly, and when General 
 Hubbard withdrew, apparently secured a man named Andrews, 
 with the use of $7,000, in some peculiar manner, and the prospect of 
 a ministership abroad, to run as candidate, and draw off enough 
 Eepublican votes to give the district to a Democrat. Andrews was 
 appointed Minister to Stockholm, by E. B. Washburne, during his 
 three or four days' incumbency of the Secretary of State's office, as 
 a reward for defeating Donnelly and sending a Democrat to Con- 
 gress from a Kepublican district. 
 
 The Senatorial Battle of 1869. 
 Senator Ramsey (the same man who had made the Indian 
 treaties to which I referred in the early pages of this biography) 
 had been one of the chief factors in the battle against Governor 
 Donnelly, simply because he feared that if the latter was not killed 
 off he might become a candidate for Senator. In the Legislature 
 which was to elect a United States Senator, and which met in January, 
 1869, succeeding Governor Donnelly's defeat, a large majority of 
 the members-elect were opposed to Ramsey. But Ramsey's strikers 
 had shown a number of them the usual potent arguments used in 
 such contests and converted them. In Wabasha County the three 
 delegates had been instructed to vote against Ramsey, but he 
 managed to procure two out of the three. One of them was known 
 
 ever afterward by the name of " Seed- wheat ," because, 
 
 when seen coming out of Ramsey's headquarters, in the midst of 
 the fight, at a suspicious hour, he said he had been in there to see 
 a man " who had some seed- wheat for sale ! " Another member of 
 the delegation had received, it was alleged, $3,000 ; he was in poor 
 health, and the exposure which follo^yed was so crushing that he 
 died soon after the session closed. Governor Donnelly's friends 
 were supporting him for United States Senator, against Ramsey, 
 but when he saw how his men were being captured he withdrew 
 
AN AMUSING NAUEATIVE. 81 
 
 from the oontest. He had neither the money nor the incHnation tfo 
 make such a fight. 
 
 An Amusing Naerative. 
 But there were others who were not wilHug to see the Ramsey 
 party sail oft" with the prize without a battle. Tliey beheved that 
 it was legitimate to " fight the devil with fire." A bold man, with 
 ])lenty of money, who was supporting another candidate, took man 
 after man aside, and a conversation something like this followed ; 
 
 1. " You came here opposed to Eamsey." 
 
 2. "Yes." 
 
 1. " You have been paid by his friends .$3,000 to support him." 
 
 2. " Sir ! Do you mean to insult me " 
 
 1. '' Tut, tut; let's talk business. Now, wouldn't you like to 
 make $2,000 more, if vou can do so without being found out? " 
 
 2. "Howf " 
 
 1. " The vote in the caucus is to be by ballot. If we furnish 
 you with a ballot that will look exactly like the Ramsey ballot, but 
 will contain another name, and you vote it, and the party we repre- 
 sent is elected, I will guarantee you $2,000 more. You will then 
 have $5,000 instead of $3,000, and you can swear by all the gods 
 that you voted for Ramsey, and no one can ever show that you did 
 not. Others will vote the same way, and our man will be elected." 
 
 And so a bargain was struck, and so the ingenious manipulator 
 of men passed from member to member until he had about secured 
 all the men w^ho had been bought by the adherents of the other 
 side. 
 
 Diamond Cut Diamond. 
 
 Now, the editor of the opposition paper to Ramsey, Mr. H., a 
 very shrewd, energetic gentleman, had in his employ a young 
 printer who had a brother working in the Press office. And Mr. 
 H. said to his emplo^'e: '^ if you will procure for me one of the 
 tickets printed in the Press office for the Senatorial caucus to- 
 morrow night — Ramsey's tickets — I will give you $10 for it. " And 
 thereupon that young man hied him to his brother in the Press 
 office, and repeated the offer made him. 
 
 But the publisher of the Press, Fred. Driscoll, who had as 
 much honesty as a rat, and a good deal more cunning than a fox, 
 knew" that a certain ]3rinter working for him had a brother in the 
 office of the rival paper, and he anticipated the tactics of the enemy, 
 and so he said to his young man : " Print me five hundred tickets on 
 white paper, after this form : 
 
 FOR UNITED STATES SEXATOE, 
 
 ALEXANDER RAMSEY. 
 
 And print them at once." And that young man thought fortune 
 
 6 
 
82 BIOGRAPHICAL. 
 
 was pouriug her favors iuto his lap; and he printed the tickets, and 
 an extra one for Mr. H., and in a little while his brother had the 
 $10 and Mr. H. was happy. 
 
 But at the dead hour of midnight, " when graveyards yawn 
 and graves give up their dead," the foxy Mr. Driscoll goes to his 
 office, and in a little room, all by himself, he himself prints off five 
 hundred tickets for the caucus the next night, on stiff, red paste- 
 hoard! 
 
 The Ked Pasteboaed. 
 
 The next day, about noon, a thunder-clap fell out of a clear 
 sky when the jubilant Mr. H. saw for the first time, one of the real 
 senatorial tickets. He grabbed his hat and rushed to the nearest 
 'stationery store. 
 
 " Have you any red pasteboard like this? " 
 
 '' I regret to say that Mr. Driscoll called yesterday and bought 
 every scrap of it we had." 
 
 Consternation ! 
 
 Mr. H. darted off to the next store. 
 
 The same question, the same answer. 
 
 The next store. 
 
 The same question, the same answer. 
 
 That Irish fox, Fred. Driscoll, had bought every piece of red paste - 
 J)oardfor sale in the city! 
 
 Brother H. tore his hair. 
 
 But a bright thought struck him. David Ramaley had been in 
 the job-printing business for a long time. He might have some of 
 the coveted article among his old stock. A diligent search revealed 
 the treasure I 
 
 In a little while there were a lot of stiff, red pasteboard tickets 
 in the pockets of certain honest men, of the same size, sbape and 
 color as the Ramsey ticket, but without Ramsey's name on them. 
 
 All but one of the virtuous men had them. He, in the hurry, 
 had been furnished by somebody with a ^' sticker," with the otlier 
 candidate's name on it, to paste over the name of the Indian treaty- 
 maker; but he was so closely watched, properly enough, by the fel- 
 lows who had bought him, that he got no chance to paste it on until 
 he found himself in the caucus; and then he tried to stick it on by 
 wetting his thumb and applying it to the ticket in his pants 
 pocket! But he made such clumsy work of it that the sticker came 
 pff, and was found by the tellers, rolled up in a pellet, in the hat. 
 
 Those who were present have said that it was one of. the most 
 amusing sights in the world to see Driscoll, checking off the red 
 tickets, with a complacent smile on his face, as they were dropped, 
 face downward, in the teller's hat, and then to see the same Driscoll 
 with his eves " hanging out of his head " when the red tickets 
 came out of the hat, face uppermost, with another man's name on 
 them ! 
 
IN FBIVATE LIFE. 83 
 
 Ramsey was nominated by one majority witliout counting the 
 " sticker." If the opposition had had the sense to insist that that 
 also was a ballot, as it was, there would have been a " tie ; " and if 
 tliere had been Ramsey would^»liave been re-elected to the Senate, 
 for several men had been forced into voting for him under the belief 
 that he had a " sure thing " without them. 
 
 In Private Life. 
 
 Ever since that year, 1868 — twenty-three years ago — Governor 
 Donnelly has lived upon his farm in private life, except during his 
 service in the State Legislature. From 1874 to 1878, inclusive — five 
 years- — he was an independent member of the State Senate, from 
 Dakota County — the county where he had settled in 1856. In 1886 
 he was elected by the Alliance, for two years, to the House of Rep- 
 resentatives of the State, and in 1890 he was elected again, by the 
 Alliance party, to the State Senate, of which he is now a member. 
 
 His Politics. 
 
 It has been charged all over the United States that Governor 
 Donnelly has been, politically, " everything by turns and nothing 
 long; " that he has been, " in the course of one revolving moon," 
 Democrat, Republican, Anti-Monopolist and Greenbacker. 
 
 This is false. After his defeat for Congress, in 1868, he contin- 
 ued to act with the Republican party until 1870. In that year, with- 
 out any solicitation on his part, he was reciuested, in petitions, signed 
 by 3,500 Re[)ublicans, to run for Congress, on a low-tariff platform, 
 as an independent Republican. And on September 15, 1870, the ' 
 Democratic district convention met and resolved not to put a Demo- ^ 
 cratic candidate in the field, but to support Mr. Donnelly " as an 
 iiulependent candidate for Congress." This surely did not make 
 him a Democrat. In 1872 he supported Horace Greeley for Presi- 
 dent, as against Ulysses Grant, whose administration had been be- 
 fouled with whisky-rings and corruptions of all kinds. With thou- 
 sands of others he suppoi'ted Greeley as a Libei'al Republican. In I 
 1874 he started " The Anti-AIonopoiy Party of Minnesota," and on i 
 July 16th of that year he established the Anti -Monopolist news- j 
 paper to advocate and defend it ^ 
 
 From that hour to this he has remained an Anti-Monopolist. 
 As such he cooperated with the advocates of the remonetization of 
 silver and the defenders of the greenback currency, which the 
 national banks sought to destroy. As an Anti-Monopolist he is now 
 a member of the IVople's Party. The doctrine which the People's 
 Party is now advocating he has been preaching, on the stump and 
 in the press, for twenty years past. He may justly claim to have 
 been the father of tlie whole independent movement in the United 
 States. The following pages of this work will show how early he 
 advocated its distinctive principles. In defense of these principles 
 
84 BIOGBAPHICAL. 
 
 he has made a dozen campaigns, and led a half-dozen " forlorn 
 hopes;" sometimes his independent forces formed temporary alli- 
 ances with the minority party, the Democracy, and at other times, 
 in local matters, the Eepublicans supported them ; and at still other 
 times they fought both the old parties, with the leaders united by 
 "the cohesive power of public plunder." Sometimes they were 
 successful, and many times they were defeated. But after every 
 defeat Mr. Donnelly rose, with indomitable resolution, and renewed 
 the battle for popular rights. 
 
 The Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 On the 16th day of July, 1874, he published the first number of 
 his weekly newspaper, The Anti-Monopolist ^ in the city of St. 
 Paul, Minnesota. He chose for the motto of his paper the text of 
 Scripture : 
 
 " Speak to the children of Israel that they go forward. " 
 
 The whole purpose of the paper was to educate the people in 
 what he believed to be the truth. His great drawback, from the 
 first, was lack of capital. He had not the means to employ a suffi- 
 cient force to help him. He had to write the editorials, keep the 
 books, collect the subscriptions, look after the advertisements, read 
 the proofs, and for a time mail the paper to the subscribers. And all 
 this while he was managing a farm of about 1,500 acres, and traveling 
 backward and forward from St. Paul to Donnelly, in Stevens County, 
 and from Donnelly to his home at Mninger, occasionally rushing 
 ott" to make speeches at ]mblic meetings, county fairs and i)olitical 
 conventions. And yet, despite all this, he managed to make one 
 of the liveliest, most readable and best-edited papers ever published 
 in the United States. 
 
 As soon as the first number appeared his swarming opponents 
 assailed him like a cloud of hornets; but they did not know what 
 they were undertaking. It was one thing to attack Governor Don- 
 nelly without a single newspaper in the State that would defend 
 him, and quite another to assail him with his own newspaper to re- 
 ply through. He opened a column of " Eecalcitrations,^^ ov " licl- 
 ings-hacktvard, " in which he answered his enemies in short, pithy, 
 pointed articles, that stung like the sting of a wasp. Very few 
 showed any desire to assail him the second time, and after a while 
 he was forced to complain that he would have to abandon his " Be- 
 calcitrations^^ for lack of opponents to recalcitrate upon. In the 
 following pages some extracts are given from these retorts. 
 
 The Poweh of the Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 \ The Anti- Monopolist wielded a large influence in the State and 
 
 I possessed an extensive circulation. At one time its subscription li-t 
 
 I ran up to 17,000, a very large one for a new and small State. In 
 
 the fall of 1878 Mr. Donnelly found his labors greater than he could 
 
MB. DONNELLY'S LEGISLATTVE CAUEEB. s., 
 
 jxu'form, aud he sold it out, but it did not live loug after lie with- 
 drew IVou] it. It contributed very materially to lay the foundation 
 in men's miud.s of the strong public sentiment on which the People's 
 Party rests to-day iu Minnesota. 
 
 Mr. Donnelly's Legislative Career. 
 
 In his career as State Senator aud member of the House of Rep- 
 resentatives of the State of ]\Iinnesota, Governor Donnelly showed 
 the same disposition to work for the good of the oppressed and the 
 inifortunate which had been so inarked in his course in Congress. 
 Me championed every measure which tended to improve the condi- 
 tion of the people, regardless of the abuse and persecution of the 
 men whose robberies he was interfering with. 
 
 Cheap School Books. 
 
 One of the questions to which Mr. Donnelly addressed himself, 
 as a member of the ^tate Senate, was that of the text-books used in 
 the public schools. The Governor of the State, Governor Austin, 
 iu his message addressed to the Legislature, in 1874, thus referred 
 to the subject : 
 
 "It is estimated by those most thoroughly informed that the people of the 
 State haA'e paid the past year $250,000 for school books used in the public schools, 
 aud that the amount thus expended increases at the rate of ten per cent, per 
 annum, that being the supposed increase of our population in the future. lam 
 informed that the average i)rofit of the publisher, as he wholesales to the jobber 
 and retail dealer, is about one hundred per cent.; that the original cost of the read- 
 ers that are sold to us at one dollar each is but fifty cents, and of a speller, small 
 arithmetic or geography, for which we pay twenty five cents, is but ten cents. 
 Thus it Avill be seen that the first cost of the books for which our people have paid 
 $250,000 during the year was but $125,000, and that we should have saved, had 
 they been supplied to us at cost, an annual tax of $125,000. 
 
 '' 1 apprehend there is no good reason to suppose that we shall receive any 
 better terms iu the future than the past, without a radical change of policy. The 
 I)rices are irrevocably fixed by a convention of the craft, and it matters not whether 
 the publishers are few or many, the cost to the people is the same. ' Where com- 
 bination is possible, competition is impossible.'" 
 
 Governor Donnelly's own experience confirmed these views of 
 the Governor of the State. He knew that the evil com])lained of 
 was a great one. It was not only the increased price of the books, 
 but many of the county superintendents of schools were in the habit 
 of combining with the publishers and receiving a large commission 
 on all sales made in their county. The result was that every few 
 months the books were changed, and those which the scholars had 
 been using were thrown aside, and the parents had to buy complete 
 sets of new ones. This became an onerous burden on the poor, and 
 as a result children were in many instances kept away from 
 school and grew up in ignorance, because their parents were unable, 
 out of their small earnings, to purchase the necessary text-books. 
 
8G BIOGRAPHICAL. 
 
 Effoets to Stop a Eobbert. 
 
 AVith Mr. Donnelly, to hear of an abuse \Yas to move for its cor- 
 rection, and so he set "to work to reUeve his beloved popular educa- 
 tion of this heavy burden. He first proposed that the State should 
 employ scholars to prepare arithmetics, grammars, etc., and set the 
 boys in the Eeform School to learn printing and print them; and 
 then furnish the books to the people fiee or at cost. But to this 
 scheme the frieuds of the Book Ring made a hundred objections. It 
 was impossible ; men could not be found learned enough to prepare 
 a spelling-book, etc. The struggle lasted through two or three 
 years. Twice Mr. Donnelly secured the passage of a bill through 
 the Senate, of which he was a member, only to have it defeated in 
 the House. At last, in 1877, a bookseller of St. Paul, Mr. D. D. Mer- 
 rill, came forward and offered to furnish the necessary text-books 
 for one-half the then prices, to furnish equally good books of the 
 same sizes and cpiality, if the State would make a contract with him 
 that he should have the furnishing of all the books used in the State 
 for fifteen years. Such a law was passed, and it stated, in the very 
 law itself, that the book that had cost 20 cents should be furnished 
 by Mr. Merrill for 10 cents, the book that had cost 45 cents should 
 be had for 20 cents, the book that had cost 90 cents should be 
 furnished for 40 cents, etc. And a contract was entered into 
 with Mr. Merrill that he should furnish his books at these prices 
 for fifteen years. The School-book Ring of the United States had 
 entered into a combination to control the book trade of the whole 
 country, and had given bonds to each other not to cheapen prices; 
 but the Minnesota legislation broke the back of the ring, and the 
 next year the prices of school books fell all over the United States. 
 The number of scholars entitled to apportionment in 1878 was 157,- 
 476; in 1890 the number was 221,186. If we will average this for 
 the fifteen years during which the law has stood, we will have 189,- 
 331 scholars per year. According to Governor Austin's estimate, 
 the book ring took from the people each year $125,000. If we will 
 multiply this by 15, for the fifteen years of the contract, then 
 the sa\ing to the State has been $1,875,000 — that is to say, there 
 are $l,87o,000 left in the pockets of the people of Minnesota that 
 would not have been there but for the passage of this act; and this- 
 on the basis of the number of scholars seventeen years ago. But as 
 the text-book act reduced the cost of the books one-half, and as 
 there have been an average of 189,331 scholars during the life of the 
 contract, we have but to call the saving to each scholar $1.00 per 
 year (a very moderate estimate), and the text-book act has saved 
 the people of Minnesota the great sum of $2,839,965 in fifteen years. 
 In other words, the State is that much better off from Governor Don- 
 nelly having lived in it. 
 
 This is practical statesmanship. But it was not accomplished 
 except after a dreadful fight. The Book Ring of the United States 
 
THE INDIGNATION OF AN HONEST MAN, 87 
 
 sent imscriipulous a,<;(Mits, witli ])l(inty of money, to St. Paul, to kill 
 the incasuro. The Ibllowin.i^' aimisinLi story is told, as happeniug 
 at one stage of the contest : 
 
 The Ixdigxation of an Honest Man. 
 
 A necessary amendment to the act was pending in the House. 
 The Lljok King had bought just enough votes to kill the bill. To 
 kill that amendment Avas practically to kill the whole reform. Their 
 representative stood in the lobby, checking oil" the names of mem- 
 bers as they voted. Just at this point a 'member who had not yet 
 voted, and was about to vote against the bill, turned to his neigh- 
 bor, and said, in a whisper : 
 
 " How much did you get for your vote ? " 
 
 '' Twenty-five hundred dollars, " was the reply, also in a whisper. 
 
 " You did ? " said the first party. " Why, I only got $500. " 
 
 *' Oh, " said the other, " there is no use of lying to me ; you got 
 $'2,500. I was in the headquarters of the King and saw the list of 
 names, and got $2,500 for you. " 
 
 " He did ? " said the first member, thoroughly aroused. " Why, 
 
 that d d rascal has pocketed $2,000, and given me but $500. 
 
 ril show tJ/e ring that I cfinH be bought in that ivaijl " 
 
 And when his name was called he voted for the bill and it was 
 carried, by one vote! \\y. Donnelly was in the hall of the House 
 at the time, and he saw, by the consternation of the Ring, that some- 
 thing unexpected had happened; and so he got the "clerk of the 
 House to return the bill to the Senate at once ; "and he had the Sen- 
 ate act upon it at once, and he hurried it instantly to the Governor, 
 who was ready to sign it. In a few minutes the agent of the Ring had 
 " fixed" things to the satisfaction of the indignant member ; it was 
 moved to reconsider the vote by which the bill had passed ; and the 
 House requested the Senate to return the bill ; and the Senate polite- 
 ly informed the House that the bill was in the hands of the Gov- 
 ernor and refused to recall it. And so this one man's honest (!) in- 
 dignation has saved Minnesota $2,839,965, 
 
 The Usuey Question. 
 
 Another subject very dear to Mr. Donnelly's heart is the protec- 
 tion of the people from excessive rates of interest and usurious 
 practices. Ho argues, in Ccesafs Column^ that interest on money 
 should be abolished altogether. He holds, with the early Christian 
 church, that, as an abstract proposition, it is a crime for " money to 
 breed money." 
 
 When he was elected to the State Senate in 1874, the rate of 
 interest was twelve "per cent, 'per annum — and there was, practically, 
 no law asjainst usury — but borrowers paid twenty, fifty, one hundred, 
 two hundred per cent, per annum. He fought for five years, until he 
 secure;! the passage of an act which declared the forfeiture of princi- 
 
88 BIOGRAPHICAL. 
 
 pal aud interest whenever more than the legal rate of interest was 
 taken. The Supreme Court of the State, for a time, ruled against tbo 
 law, in such a way as to make it practically inoperative ; but latterly 
 their decisions have been on the side of the people, and the law is 
 having an excellent effect in preventing usury. Last winter there 
 was a terrible battle to repeal the forfeiture clause, and but for the 
 help of the Alliances, who nobly sustained Mr. Donnelly by hundreds 
 of petitions, the money-lenders would have succeeded. As it is, 
 the great fight then made has brought the knowledge of the for- 
 feiture clause home to the#farmers, and the result is, in many parts 
 of the State, that usury has substantially ceased. The bankers, how- 
 ever, have been able to prevent the reduction of the rate of interest 
 from ten per cent, (at which it was fixed in 1879) to eight per cent ; 
 but the Alliance hopes to accomplish this reform at the next ses- 
 sion of the Legislature. It is impossible to estimate the number of 
 millions of dollars taken from the producing classes of Minnesota by 
 usury, or to tell of the thousands of families that have been 
 reduced to poverty by this means. 
 
 An Age of Corruption. 
 
 It is no wonder that Governor Donnelly wrote Ccesar^s Column. 
 His convictions as to the future, expressed in that book, were forced 
 home upon him by his knowledge of the conditions of Minnesota 
 politics. We cannot convey to the reader in other lands any con- 
 ception of the bottomless abyss of corruption in which the affairs of 
 this State have frJlen during the last twenty-five years. 
 
 The admissions and charges of the leading newspapers of th:) 
 State throw some light on this dreadful condition of affairs. 
 
 The St. Paul Press, the leading Eepublican paper of Minnesota 
 made in 1871 the following charge against the St. Paul Pioneer, 
 the leading Democratic paper of the State : 
 
 " And tlio Press begs to express the further opinion that it can very well afford, 
 the resuscitation of the stale and exploded falsehood that it was ever brought to 
 support the claims of political candidates, l)^ the publisher of a journal Avho, last 
 fall and winter, exacted and obtained from a notorious Republican corruptionist a 
 bribe of twenty thousand dollars, on the condition that it should not support the 
 claims of Mr. Donnelly, the Democratic candidate for Congress." 
 
 And I find the St. Paul Dispatch of July 21, 1871, referring to 
 the fact that the St. Paul Press (the Kepublican organ) had con- 
 fessed that it blackmailed the Northern Pacific Railroad's construc- 
 tion company out of $30,000, as the price of its support of Hon. Wm. 
 Windom for United States Senator. 
 
 The most amusing part of this quarrel (if anything so terrible 
 can be amusing) between the editor of the St. Paul Press, Mr. 
 Joseph A. Wheelock, and the editor of the Democratic sheet, 
 the St. Paul Pioneer, Mr. Henry L. Carver, is that Carver defied 
 Wheelock to show that he. Carver, had been paid $20,000 as a 
 bribe to help the Republican candidate and defeat Mr. Donnelly, 
 
, H. L. GOnnOX A XI) THE .^.VtO. 89 
 
 who bad tlu.' iiidorjsonicnt of llic Democratic parly; Carver well 
 knowing- that Wheelock could not sul)si;intiale his charge with- 
 out rendering the Kepublican Congressman-elect, who was said to 
 have paid the money, liable to expulsion from his seat for bribery. 
 And thereupon Wheelock replied that if Carver would agree to the 
 appointment oi referees, who would report their conclusions, hut not 
 the evidence, he would go before the referees and prove the truth of 
 his charge! It is laughable to read the debate betv>^een these polit- 
 ical prostitutes, and the efifort to blacken each other without giving 
 away party secrets to the people. But two such kindred institutions 
 as the Press and Pioneer could not be long kept apart, and the re- 
 sult was they were eventually merged into one and became the Pio- 
 neer-Press, which to-day holds up, in splendid shape, the reputation 
 of both the original contracting parties. 
 
 H. L. GOEDOX AND THE $500. 
 
 I have heard Mr. Donnelly tell of the first appearance of cor- 
 ruption in the politics of the State. — for all these terrible conditions 
 have been of recent growth. 
 
 It was, I think, in 186J:; Mr. Donnelly was a candidate for re- 
 election to Congress ; and the convention was in his favor. Among 
 the delegates was the Hon. H. L. Gordon, a young man, a lawyer of 
 ability and a man of honorable instincts, besides being a gallant sol- 
 dier. Mr. Gordon represented, with three or four others, the county 
 of Wright in that convention, and was an ardent friend and suppor- 
 ter of Governor Donnelly, as he is to this day. • 
 
 It seems that two very prominent Republicans, one from Henne- 
 pin County, and the other from 8t. Paul, came to Mr. Gordon, and 
 one of them said : 
 
 " See here, Gordon, can you conceive of anything that would 
 iiKluce you to oppose Donnelly ? " 
 
 "dh, yes, " said the wily young man, "I can conceive of a 
 great many things that would have that effect." 
 
 "Gordon," said his visitor, "will the rest of your delegation 
 vote as you do ? " 
 
 " I have no doubt they will, " replied Gordon. 
 
 " Gordon, would you like to have five hundred dollars?" 
 
 " I never saw the time yet," replied Gordon, " that I would not 
 like to have five hundred dollars." 
 
 And thereupon they handed him that sum. 
 
 This was just before the convention assembled. Gordon, a few 
 moments later, rushed up to Governor Donnelly. 
 
 " Have you a revolver f" he asked. 
 
 " No; what do you want with a revolver?" 
 
 " See here," he said, pulling out a great wad of greenbacks, " I 
 have been paid $500 to sell you out. If you are nominated, I shall 
 say nothing; but, if you are defeated, I shall rise in the hall and 
 show this money, and there will be a free fight." 
 
90 mOGnAPHICAL. 
 
 And with this he rushed down the street to a mim-shop. 
 
 Fortunately, Governor Donnelly was noniiuated on the lii-st bal- 
 lot, and the " free fight " did not come off. The next day Gordon sent 
 the $500 to good old Doctor Foster, chairman of the Eepublican 
 district committee, with a note in which he said the money had been 
 handed him by two prominent Repubhcans, without any instructions 
 as to its use, and he desired that the committee should use it to help 
 the re-election of that gallant representative, etc., Governor Don- 
 nelly. Doctor Foster published the letter, but subsequently, at 
 Governor D.'s suggestion, returned the money to the humiUated 
 men who had given it to Gordon. 
 
 This was the first blossoming of the upas tree which has since 
 covered Minnesota with its deadly growth. But it was as nothing 
 to what has followed. 
 
 A CoKDUROT Railway. 
 
 Bill King and eleven associates got a contract about that time, 
 for political considerations, to build the Northern Pacific Railroad 
 from Lake Superior to the Mississippi River, about 150 miles, and 
 they made $1,200,000, or $100,000 each, out of it! The road ran 
 through a swampy country, and they built it by laying down logs 
 and brushwood on the swamp and placing the track on top of it, and 
 in several places the road soon after sank down into the bottomless 
 marsh and had to be rebuilt by driving piles, at great cost to the 
 plundered company. And this is the construction company which 
 the Dispatch says was blackmailed by the editors of the Press. 
 
 "Bill King." 
 
 The master-spirit of this terrible epoch was William S. King, 
 of Minneapolis, called " Colonel " King, although he had never been 
 in the armv or smelted gunpowder, but he had been postmaster of 
 the House of Representatives at Washington for years, and was one 
 of the most notorious lobbyists that had ever been seen in Washing- 
 ton. That he made immense sums of money and brought it home 
 with him to purchase real estate, and to use it in the politics of 
 Minnesota, has been asserted time and again, and never denied, and 
 his career seems to sustain the charge. It was alleged that at one 
 time he returned toMinneapohs, at the end of a session of Congress, 
 with $250,000 in his pocket. No argument, or eloquence, or ability, 
 or honesty could avail anything against the power of such a man. 
 
 He was Mr. Donnelly's chief est enemy, and has continued such 
 to this day. He is a man of desperate recklessness and great 
 energy. But he was not content to play the Warwick or King- 
 maker. He had dealt in politicians, as he had in high-priced bulls, so 
 long that the idea finally entered his head that, instead of merely 
 making statesmen, he should become one himself. It occurred to 
 him also that if he had been able to wield such great power as a lob- 
 
THE EMPTY CHAtUS. 91 
 
 byist, while holding the inferior place of postmaster of the House, he 
 woultl exercise ten times as much influence if he could walk the floor 
 as a full-blown member and an honorable law-maker. And so he 
 set himself up for Congress. And then followed a tremendous battle 
 of the mouey-bag's. The St. Paul Press was disgusted and enraged. 
 It had ruled the roost for years, but now came a bigger rascal than 
 itself, with more money and more recklessness. And this is the 
 grai)hic way in which the Press, aroused at last to virtuous (!) in- 
 dignation, describes Bill King's campaign of 1874 : 
 
 "The recent Congi-essional campaign in this district is likely to pass into his- 
 tory as the most rotten and disgraceful one which ever stirred the slimy depths of 
 political corruption. No such unblushing and systematic ettbrt was ever made to 
 debauch the primaries and purchase votes and delegates into open bribery as has 
 been Avitnessed in various parts of this district during the last few weeks. It has 
 become such a loathsome and sickening scandal that all honest men turn away 
 from it in disgust. If not an entirely new feature in our politics, it has heretofore 
 been veiled in prudent secrecy. But now the strHmi)et of comiption strides in naked 
 horror over the district and opens her shameful market at every caucus and convention, 
 and buys men for the herd, like cattle and sheep."' 
 
 But, in spite of this terrible Indictment, perhaps because of it, 
 King w^as elected to Congress to represent the Fifth District of 
 Minnesota. 
 
 The Empty Chair. 
 
 But during a great part of his term as Congressman King's 
 chair on the floor of the House of Representatives at Washington 
 stood empty. 
 
 Was King sick ? No, he was out of the country. He had gone 
 to Canada. He had been indicted by the grand jury of the District 
 of Columbia for perjury ! How did it happen f 
 
 It is a disgraceful record for Minnesota, and we do not quote it 
 now out of any hostility to King — for we never saw the man — but 
 as a historian, to show the dreadful influences which have brought 
 Minnesota to the condition she is now in, when her people find them- 
 selves powerless in the hands of the coiTuptionists, their members 
 and Senators bought up year after year, in spite of all party pledges, 
 to refuse the people — the self-goveining people (!) of this State — 
 the reforms which they demand at the ballot-box. The awful spec- 
 tacle and memory of that empty chair should be branded forever in 
 the mind of every voter in this State, for all generations to come, and 
 should stand there as an incentive to higher and nobler sentiments 
 in politics. 
 
 The Pacific Mail Steamship Company. 
 
 The matchless audacity of King is shown by the fact that at 
 the very time he was running for Congress, in the Third District of 
 Minnesota, an investigation had been commenced in Congress into 
 one of the most gigantic frauds ever perpetrated upon the American 
 people, and in which he had faken a conspicuous and shameful part. 
 
92 BTOGBAPmCAL. 
 
 The Pacific Mail Steamship Company, in the year 1872, had 
 expended about one million dollars in purchasing corruptly from 
 Congress an act, approved June 1, 1872, granting them a subsidy of 
 $500,000 per year for a term of years, for additional mail service be- 
 tween San Francisco, Japan and China. One man, named Richard B. 
 Irwin, of San Francisco, an agent of the company, received, It was 
 proved and acknowledged by him before an investigation commit- 
 tee, the sum of $890,000, of which he disbursed $750,000 and retained 
 for his own services $140,000. Irwiu swore (p. 463 of testimony) 
 that of the $750,000 named he had paid the sum of $125,000 to 
 William S. Kiiig, $10,000 in cash and $115,000 by a check. But, 
 long before this fact came out, on February 25, 1873, suspicion had 
 fallen on King, and he was the second witness called by the ccwn- 
 mittee to testify before it. He was at that time postmaster of the 
 House of Representatives. He swore, point blank, (p. 8, Report 
 No. 268, Second Session, Forty-third Congress) that he had not 
 received one dollar in behalf of the subsidy scheme — '' not one dol- 
 lar, directly or indirectly. " That he had no bank account and never 
 kept one. 
 
 But on December 28, 1874, less than sixty days after King was 
 elected to Congress, George S. Coe, president of the American Ex- 
 change Bank of New York, came before the same committee of in - 
 vestigation, and testified, under oath, that on the 29th of May, 1872 
 ^nearly a year before King testified that he had never received a 
 dollar from any one in behalf of the subsidy scheme), a man came to 
 his bank and presented a check drawn by R. B. Irwin, to bearer, 
 for $115,000, the man refusing to be identified or to sign his name 
 on the check, and when the bank paid him the $115,000 they sent a 
 detective to shadow him to find out wbo he was, and the officer 
 found he was William S. King. And this was confirmed by Dumont 
 Clarke, the assistant cashier, who also swore that King came into 
 the bank a year afterward with another check, accompanied by a 
 gentleman who came to identify him, but Clarke said: " Mr. King 
 does not need any identification — we remember him," and King 
 replied, " It is not always well to have too long memories !'' It also 
 appeared that this R. JB. Irwin was the same agent for the Pacific 
 Mail Steamship Co. who disbursed $890,000 to corrupt Congress, and 
 this $115,000 check was the same which he swore he paid King, be- 
 sides $10,000 in cash. And so King's testimony ran bull-headed 
 plump up against the sworn oath of two respectable and disinterested 
 parties. 
 
 And it was also shown that King's statement that be had never 
 kept a bank account was absolutely false, as he had kept a bank 
 account with Jay Cook & Co. at the very time the $125,000 was paid 
 to him. 
 
 And the committee of Congress reported in favor of placing the 
 testimony against King in the hands gf the grand jury of the Dis- 
 trict, which was donC; and King was indicted for perjury. In the 
 
3IR. DONNELLY BECOMES A FAUMEB. UJ 
 
 meautime he had made his escape to Canada, and many months 
 afterward the prosecution was dropped and King permitted to re- 
 turn home. 
 
 And this is an illustration of the kind of men who have ruled 
 the pohtics of Minnesota for twenty-five years past. Kin^- was no 
 worse than many others. He simply carried on business more boldly 
 and on a larger scale. Some of those who were fighting him were 
 bigger rascals than he, with fewer redeeming features of character, 
 but they lacked King's nerve and money. But as a chapter in the 
 history of free government, in a new country, in one of the States of 
 the American Union, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, 
 this dreadful picture can be studied with advantage by all subse- 
 quent generations. And it must not be thought that this is an inci- 
 dent or a condition peculiar to the past. The same terrible corrup- 
 tion is on us now. and not in Minnesota alone, but in every part of 
 the United States, and it means — if there is not virtue enough 
 among the people to check it by political revolution — it means a 
 bloody catastrophe like that depicted in Ccesafs Column. 
 
 Governor Donnelly Becomes a Large Farmer. 
 
 In 1876 there was an opportunity to buy cheap land in Minne- 
 sota. The old " St. Paul and Pacific Railroad Company " was bank- 
 rupt, and its bonds were selling in Holland for the interest due on 
 them ; and these bonds were exchangeable for land, at rates that 
 made the land cost about one dollar an acre. Mr. Donnelly's two 
 sons desired to secure lands on which to make homes, and the re- 
 sult was that Mr. Donnelly and a number of his friends secured 
 several thousand acres of land in the western part of the State, in 
 Stevens County, forty miles from the Dakota line, around the town 
 of Donnelly, and proceeded to colonize on them and build homes 
 and open up farms. Here for several years they all worked hard 
 and lived poor. They raised large crops, and the railroads and 
 wheat rings, as I shall show hereafter, stole the profits, and the 
 harder they worked the poorer they got. All this helped to open 
 Governor Donnelly's eyes to the iniquities of the present system. 
 After '^ breaking up " about fifteen hundred acres for himself and 
 sons and building several houses and fences, planting trees, etc., he 
 was forced to give up the enterprise at very great loss. One of his 
 sons became a doctor, and the other a lawyer ; and more than ten 
 thousand acres in that county of Stevens, ui that neighborhocnl alone, 
 which had once been cultivated fields, relapsed into the wilderness 
 condition again, and the people were driven oft' to seek livelihoods 
 elsewhere. It is true that during two years the grasshoppers largely 
 destroyed the crops, but the principal cause of these results (and 
 they were typical of like results occurring all over Minnesota, and, 
 in fact, I might say, all over the great West) was the robberies of 
 the Wheat Ring aiid the exactions of the railroad companies. 
 
94 BIOGRAPHICAL. 
 
 The Eea of Wooden Shoes. 
 
 The tendency of these thieveries was to redace the people to the 
 condition of peasants. In one of his speeches Governor Donnelly 
 foretold that if the treatment of the producers was not changed it 
 would not be many years until they reached the era of " wooden 
 shoes." His audience laughed, but within five years wooden shoes, 
 were to be seen hanging at the door of every store in the Red Eiver' 
 Valley. 
 
 About this time a prominent citizen, General T. H. Barrett, of 
 Grant County, formerly president of the State Alliance, and an old 
 soldier, with an excellent war record, and who had taken up a large- 
 quantity of the cheap lands andinvested over $100,000 in the country,, 
 had a discussion before a legislative committee, with a famous rail- 
 road magnate, who had made himself a many- times millionaire 
 by means of watered stock. In the course of the controversy the 
 followiug dialogue took place : 
 
 General Barrett. " 1 tell you, Mr. , that if we men, "who brought 
 
 money into that country, cannot get cheaper rates of transportation and better- 
 treatment, we "vrill have to leave it." 
 
 R. B. Magnate. " Leave it, d n you, and we will get men in wooden 
 
 shoes to take your places ! " 
 
 This conversation typifies the spirit of the Plutocracy. They 
 would like to see the intelligent American yeomanry, native or 
 adopted, driven oft^the soil, and their places taken by a horde of un- 
 reasoning peasants, in wooden shoes, incapable of self-defense. 
 
 He is Nominated for Congress Again. 
 
 In 1878 the farmers of Minnesota were in a desperate condi- 
 tion and a state of great excitement. Their chief crop was wheat, 
 and they produced immense quantities of it, of the finest quality 
 known in the world, out of which the very best and highest-priced 
 flour of commerce was made. This wheat, raised upon a virgin soil, 
 was of great strength and nutritive value, and, practically, nearly 
 all of the same quality. The Minneapolis millers had, however, 
 organized a society, whose ramifications reached all over the North- 
 west, to every railroad depot, and excluded all competition and 
 freedom of market, by driving out all other buyers, thus leaving it 
 in their own hands to say, not how much, but how little, they would 
 pay for the farmers' wheat. And of course it was to their interest 
 to beat down the price to the lowest possible figure, and yet leave 
 the poor producer just enough to induce him to raise another crop 
 for them to steal. Their chief officer stood every day, with his 
 finger on the telegraphic pedal, and dictated what price should be 
 paid for wheat in every town in Minnesota and Dakota Territory 
 (now the two States of North and South Dakota;, and 
 the farmers had to take what he said or not get anything, for 
 there were no other buyers. Not satisfied, however, with this whole- 
 
'^'HE SWINDLING BBASS KETTLE," 95 
 
 sale robbery, Tvhich iu auy other country except long-enduring 
 America would have bred an armed revolution, they declared that a 
 diflerence of a few ounces, or even, in some cases, of one ounce or a 
 fraction of an ounce, iu the weight of sixty pounds of wheat repre- 
 sented a difierence of five, ten, and, in some cases, fifteen cents per 
 bushel in the price, on account of a pretended difference in the hour- 
 making capacity of the wheat ; although in every case, whatever 
 grade they called the wheat, they exacted sixty pounds of wheat, 
 making first a large deduction for the dirt that might be in it. For 
 instance, if No. 1 had to weigh fifty-eight pounds to the bushel, 
 and the sample tested weighed an ounce less than fifty- eight 
 pounds, the farmer's whole load was called No. 2, at a loss of 
 fifteen cents per bushel, but when they weighed the load they 
 exacted not fifty- eight pounds to the bushel, but sixty pounds. 
 And thus they established swindling grades, in addition to 
 the swindling practiced on the farmers by putting an end to 
 all freedom of market in the whole State. And then, having estab- 
 lished these grades, they compelled their buyers to buy " number 
 one " for " number two," " number two " for " number three," and 
 " number three " for " rejected," on penalty ofhaving it graded back 
 on them, and they being made to pay the difference out of their own 
 pockets or being discharged from their service. But even this was 
 not enough. They went into the question of the genealogy of the 
 wheat, pretending that one kind of wheat would not make as good 
 flour as another, and hence, if they could detect a few grains of 
 Lost Nation or Blue Stem in a farmer's sack, his whole load was 
 condemned to the lowest grade, and he was robbed of 5, 10 or 15 
 cents per bushel. . 
 
 "The Swindling Bkass Kettle." 
 
 But even this was not enough. One would think that if the 
 weight of a bushel of wheat was to be ascertained the natural 
 course would be to weigh a bushel of wheat, stroked off to a water 
 level, on the scales. Instead of doing this, some ingenious knave 
 invented what became known as " the swindling brass kettle, " and 
 this was speedily adopted by all the wheat-buyers in the State. 
 This " little joker " held about one quart of wheat, and was so con- 
 structed — as was demonstrated before a legislative committee — 
 that an expert could make the same wheat yield three different 
 grades, according to the way in which the little vessel w^as filled. 
 As some one remarked, '- If a man sneezed over the kettle it would 
 make a difi"erence of a grade in the result!" Governor Donnelly 
 said in a stump-speech that " there had been enough money stolen 
 from the farmers of Minnesota by the Wheat Ring to pave the fioor 
 of all hell with gold ! " 
 
 Governor Donnelly w^as struggling away on his frontier farm, 
 suffering, in common with his brother farmers, from all these iniquit- 
 
96 BIOGBAPHICAL. 
 
 ies, his soul boiling within him with righteous indignation. He saw 
 the poor farmers, too poverty-stricken in many cases to even put up 
 at a hotel, compelled to camp by the roadside, in the midst of the 
 cold and snows, sleeping on straw in their buffalo robes, on their 
 way to sell their wagon-load of wheat to the swindhng agents of a 
 swindling King. 
 
 In tiie meantime, all the vast wealth thus appropriated from 
 the hands of a lumdred thousand farmers was transferred to the 
 pockets of the millers and the railroad men, and while the farm- 
 ers were sinking into poverty, their homes covered with mortgages 
 and their families insufaciently fed, cowering in arctic winters, in 
 smoke-blackened, wretched rooms, around fires of hay and 
 straw or weeds, the city of Minneapolis Avas growing at a 
 rate unheard-of in the previous histoty of the world. Great 
 mills, the largest then known, sprang up; mighty elevators 
 arose, holding millions of bushels of grain ; palatial homes 
 were erected, adorned with the paintings of the great European 
 masters; diamonds fit for kings Hashed on the breasts of adventurers 
 who had never added a dollar to tbe actual wealth of the w^orld, 
 and the politics of the State fell into the power of a lot of inhuman 
 knaves, who bought the honors of life as they bought their fast 
 horses and faster women. 
 
 In their great distress the farmers turned, as usual, to Governor 
 Donnelly as their champion, and he could not refuse to respond to 
 their call. 
 
 "The Brass Kettle Campaign." 
 
 The Eepublicans had nominated William D. Washburn, Mr. 
 Donnelly's old enemy, the real head of the Minneapolis millers, for 
 Congress in that district. He had, apparently, a clear field. The 
 district was overwhelmingly Republican. The year before, 1877, 
 Mr. John S. Pillsbury, another leading Minneapolis miller, the Re- 
 publican candidate for Governor, had about eleven thousand major- 
 ity in the counties composing that Congressional district. The 
 Democrats were hopeless. Washburn's election seemed a foregone 
 conclusion. 
 
 A convention of Independent Greenbackers, or Nationalists, as- 
 sembled in Minneapohs, September 5, 1878, adopted a platform of 
 principles, nominated Mr. Donnelly for Congress, and appointed a 
 committee to confer with the Democratic district convention, which 
 met the next day in St. Paul. The Democrats, in the face of that 
 11,000 Republican majority, knew they had no show for a candidate 
 of their own, so, after quite a battle, made in the interest of Wash- 
 burn, by hired Democratic clacquers, they indorsed Mr. Donnelly's 
 candidacy, and soon after he left his wheat-fields and entered upon the 
 canvass. That canvass will long be remembered in this State as the 
 most extraordinary campaign ever made in the United States. Mr. 
 Donnelly moved constantly from place to place over that vast dis- 
 
CONTElSTl^G WA^'SHBUliN'S ELECTIOI^. U7 
 
 trict, traveling twenty, thirty, fifty luiles a day, and i nailing, many 
 days, two speeches, and sometimes three. ' His campaign was 
 largely based on local issues ^ — wrongs sufl'ered by the farujers, the 
 robberies of the millers, the railroads, and, above all, the iniquities 
 of " the swindling brass kettle." At first Washburn lay back and 
 laughed; he relied upon that 11,000 majority. But gradually he 
 began to hear that jMr. Donnelly was creating a whirlwind of ex- 
 citement wherever he appeared, and converting whole counties to 
 his support. And so, as usual, the money beganto flow in unlimited 
 quantities, and the candidate and his friends were soon seen rush- 
 ing and hustling around the district, wild with terror, running 
 from one bank to another, summoning the faithful and disbursing 
 the sinews of war. 
 
 The result of the contest was that Mr. Donnelly, in the district 
 outside of Minneapolis, swept away that 11,000 majoritij and i^laced 
 750 majority on his own side. And he would have carried Minne- 
 apolis also, but the Ring had secured the passage of an act whereby, 
 in the large towns, the ballots of the voters were all numbered, with 
 the number of the voter on the poll list, and thus the employers of 
 labor could know exactly hovf their workmen voted. In tb is way 
 the labor vote was terrorized, and Minneapolis saved Washburn 
 from defeat, although Judges and the Attorney-General and the 
 County Attorney had all declared that the law was unconstitutional. 
 But, unconstitutional or not, the Eepublicans insisted on keeping it 
 in force. 
 
 He Co:ntests Washburn's Election. 
 
 Mr. Donnelly's friends insisted that he must contest Wash- 
 burn's election, and he reluctantly consented to do so, for he knew 
 too well the power of money. He proceeded to take testimony, act- 
 ing as his own attorney. The results are best stated in the follow- 
 ing extract from the report of the Committee of Elections, made 
 June 16, 1880, signed by Messrs. Manning, Sawyer, Armfield, Beltz- 
 hoover and Colerick, and assented to ^except as to one county 
 and as to the resolution to seat Mr. Donnelly — -by a majority of the 
 committee: 
 
 " The committee find that bribery was committed on behalf of the sitting 
 member, Mr. Washburn, by his friends, by members of his district committee, and 
 by personal, political and business agents ; that this bribery was not confined to 
 any portion of the district, or to any one town or county, but that it extended 
 throughout a region of country nearly 400 miles long and 100 miles wide; and they , 
 further find that in many cases the bribery has been traced home directly to Mr. 
 Washburn himself." 
 
 An Awful Eecord. 
 
 They then gave many instances in support of this conclusion. 
 Charles Ber'ens, of North Prairie, swore that he wrote and mailed a 
 letter, directly to Washburn himself] i^i which he said he would give 
 him his support for $50. Berens was a Democrat and Wash- 
 
 7 
 
98 BIO(^BAPHICAL. 
 
 burn a Republican. The R-epublican postmaster, Dr. Keith, of Min- 
 neapolis, a friend of Washburn, wrote to Berens, saying he was glad 
 " Berens would work that way, " and that he would give his letter 
 (thus showing that Washburn had received it) to one J. V. Brower, 
 a local Republican leader, who would attend to the matter. Brower 
 admits the receipt of $50 from Washburn or his committee, and 
 he called to see Berens and told him he should " work for Wash- 
 burn and he would see him all right ; " but he, Brower, was suspic- 
 ious of Berens' good faith, and so did nut pay him the $50, and so 
 advised Mr. Washburn. 
 
 This was only oue case out of a hundred. Elections were held 
 in moving railroad cars, with cigar-boxes for ballot-boxes. In one 
 case eighty or ninety wood-choppers were paid irom $1.65 to $2.20 
 each to vote for Washburn ; they did so vote, and the money paid 
 them was repaid to the party bribing them, by one Hale, the busi- 
 ness manager of Washburn, in Washburn'' s oivn office. (Page 800 
 of testimony.) In another case a warm supporter of Mr. Donnelly 
 was paid $5 and promised $36 by Washburn's business manager, the 
 same Hale, in Washburn's office, and in the presence of C. G. Wash- 
 burn, Ms brother, and a member of Congress from Wiscon.^in, with 
 whom Hale conferred in whispers before paying the money. (P. 15 
 of testimony.) In another case, Bernard Cloutier, a leading Demo- 
 crat of Mmneapolis, swore that he was promised $50 by Charles 
 W. Johnson, — now Secretary of the United States Senate ! • — then 
 Secretary of the Republican District Committee, if he would go out 
 and electioneer for Washburn; Johnson paid Cloutier $30 on the 
 street, so Cloutier testifies, and the witness called at Washburn's 
 office, and he swears that Johnson went into the next room and 
 talked tvith Washburn and returned and handed Cloutier tiventy dol- 
 lars more! 
 
 The whole record is an awful one. The committee find 291 
 cases where men were bribed to vote for Washburn, and the money 
 " paid by the sitting member or his business manager, or the clerk 
 of his Congressional committee, or some friend, and the parties 
 voted for Washburn. " 
 
 The committee say : 
 
 " The records of the contested-election cases of Congress will bo searched in 
 vain for a parallel to this case. It shows that the people of this Congressional 
 district were debauched to the last degree ; the witnesses, in many cases, defend 
 the practice of buying up voters to forego their principles ; the parties who re- 
 ceived the bribes in niany cases boasted to their neighbors of the money they had 
 received, and seemed to be proud of the high price for which they had sold them- 
 selves, and the sitting member (Washbu.rn) did not think it at all necessary to call 
 witnesses to deny or explain avxiy this overiohehnijig mass of corruption.'''' 
 
 The committee also find that — 
 
 ■•• There is^e-^'idence showing a wide-f.pread csnspiracr among the employers 
 (^f labor to corrupt, and, where they could mot corriipt, to intimidate their work- 
 ■^f'n. . . . The workmen were- intimidated, and believed that they would lose 
 taeir means of subsistence if they voted against Washburn," 
 
BILL KING APPEARS ON THE SCENE, 99 
 
 lu Minneapolis the Republicans persisted in uumberinL' the 
 ballots of the workingmen, as I have shown, although the District 
 Court of Ramsey County, the Attorney-General of the State and 
 their own law-officer had all advised them that such numberino- was 
 unconstitutional. - * 
 
 The committee say : 
 
 '• It will be observed that in nearly every one of these eases of bribery coni- 
 iintted throughout a region of country half as large as the State of New York the 
 uiouey paid IS traced l)ack to tJie city of Minneapolis, the residence of the sittiu-.- 
 member. From this i)oiut, as a common center, the corruption radiated in all di'~- 
 rections over the district, and when we come to Minneapolis all the testimouv 
 shows that it was a A^ery hotbed of bribery."' 
 
 Mr. Donnelly's speakers were bought up for $150 each to malic 
 Republican speeches ; Democratic newspapers w^ere bought up for 
 $12o each to denounce their own party ticket. The ofiftce of Charles 
 Johnson hterally swarmed with men coming for their purchase- 
 money. 
 
 The committee thus state the law as to bribery : 
 
 ' • It is a clearly established principle of law, both in England and tlu^ United 
 States, that bribery committed by the sitting member— -or by anv a'>ent of the 
 sitting member, with or without the knowledge or direction of his principal' — 
 renders the election void. In England bribery is an offense of so heinous a char- 
 acter, and so utterly subversive of the freedom of elections, that, when proved in 
 one instance only, the election will be absolutely void." 
 
 But in spite of this law and testimouv, Washburn kept his seat 
 How did he do it f I will show. 
 
 Bill King Appears ox the Scexe. 
 
 On the strength of this testimonv, and the fact that there was 
 no evidence to show that Mr. Donnelly had spent, or offered to spend 
 a smgle dollar for any corrupt purpose, the sub-coiumittee, to whom 
 this case had been referred, reported back to the Committee on 
 Elections in favor of unseating Washburn and seating Donnelly. A 
 great terror fell on the soul of the sitting member, and just then 
 mysteriously entjugh, the notorious Bill King reappeared on the 
 scene. He went to Willard's Hotel and took a room, witliout renis- 
 tering Ins name! He remained there during the greater ^Dart of 
 February, as Mi-. Donnelly SAvore, ''in hiding:" he saw him but 
 twice in a month. 
 
 The Ax6:n^ymous Lettee. 
 
 He left Washington March 4. 
 ^^.,,9^ ^^^ ^^^T '^^y lif' left the following letter was written to 
 Wilham M. Springer, chairman of the Committee on Elections a 
 
100 BIOGUAFHICAL. 
 
 Democrat, who, up to that time, had been strongly supporting Don- 
 nelly's claims to his seat : 
 
 House of Kepeesentatives, 
 
 Washington, D. C, March 4, 1880, 
 Hon. Wm. M. Sprhiger: 
 
 SiK — If you will keep Washburn in his seat, in spite of the Democrats, "vre 
 will pay Mrs. S. $5,000. 
 
 Get the thing squashed at once. 
 
 Respectfully. 
 
 There are several things about this letter which would show that 
 it was a hona fide proposal to buy Springer, or a memorandum of 
 some previous verbal agreement. The contested election might 
 have one of two issues: it might result in turning Washburn out 
 and putting Donnelly in ] or it might result in turning Washburn 
 out and not seating Donnelly, but referring the matter back to the 
 district for another election. If the latter course was adopted it 
 meant for Washburn another very expensive and hazardous cam- 
 paign, and he especially desired to avoid that conclusion of the 
 matter. If the letter had originated in a joke, by some outsider, he 
 would have said, " If you will keep Donnelly out of Lis seat, " or " If 
 you will beat Donnelly" or some such careless phraseology. But 
 here the $5,000 was to be paid upon a specific, clearly- defined con- 
 sideration — Washhurmvas to he kept in his seat. The writer was 
 evidently a man of good business talent. And he was anxious and 
 tired of the fight that was raging so fiercely; hewantedit" squashed 
 at once.^^ And the $5,000 was to be paid to Mrs. Springer. These 
 were all details of which an ordinary jester would not have thought. 
 
 And on the very day that the anonymous letter was written 
 Mr. Manning had distributed the printed reports a the Democrats 
 of the sub-committee, in favor of ousting Washburn and seating Don- 
 nelly (p. 65, report No. 395, 3d sess. Fortieth Congress), so that Mr. 
 Washburn then knew, for the first time, that the Democrats were 
 a unit in favor of turning him out of his seat, and the Democrats 
 had a large majority in that Congress. But the anonymous letter 
 was not mailed until March 8th. Springer was absent, in New 
 York. His wife opened the letter and showed it to Hon. George W. 
 Julian, and he showed it to Mr. Donnelly. Mr, Donnelly testified 
 subsequently that he believed it had been written by either Charles 
 W. Johnson (Washburn's paymaster in the recent campaign), 
 or Bill King, and he told Mrs. Springer so ; and he of- 
 fered to help Mr. Springer, when he returned from New 
 York, to find out the author of it ; supposing, of course, that 
 Mr. Springer, as an honest man, would lay the anonymous letter 
 before the Committee on Elections, of wliich he was chairman, and 
 have the whole rnatter investigated, as it referred to an attempt to 
 corruptly aff"ect the action of that committee. But Springer was 
 very angry that the existence of the letter had been revealed. He 
 said he would not have it come out for ten thousand dollars, and 
 
SPKINGEn FLOPS. 101 
 
 Ilia' if il (lid gcL out bo would charge that Henry H. Finley, one of 
 ,Mr. DoiiiH'Uy's couusd, had written it! The audacity of such a 
 charo-e is ast'onishino-. That Mr. DonneUy—or his counsel — seeking 
 to oiitnin Washbunrs scat, wotdd offer ^,000 to Springer to keep 
 W(!shl)urn in his scat! Only an extraordinary mind could have 
 conceived such a threat. He was going to punish Mv. Donnelly for 
 exposing an attempt to corrupt the chairman of a committee of 
 Conuress! As an honest man he should himself have published the 
 anonymous letter at once, and should have been grateful to Mr. 
 Donnelly for his offer to aid him in finding the author. 
 
 Springer Flops. 
 
 But at this very time Springer, who had been, up to that date, 
 earnestly supporting Donnelly, turned squarely around, and not only 
 labored 'to do what the anonymous letter suggested, " keep Wash- 
 burn in his seat in spite of the Democrats," but even labored with 
 other Democrats on the committee to get them to do the same thing. 
 If he had done this openly, one might have supposed that he hail 
 experienced an honest change of mind and heart on the question 
 involved, but he proceeded to slaughter Donnelly secretly, while 
 keeping up the appearance of supporting him. Gen. Van H. Man- 
 ning, M. C. from Mississippi, a Democratic member of the Commit- 
 tee on Elections, and a man of the highest courage and integrity, 
 testified that Springer made him believe, up to the last moment, 
 that he would support Donnelly; and General Manning even pro- 
 duced, befoi-e the committee of investigation, a scrap of an old 
 envelope on which Springer had written down, a day or two before 
 the final vote, his own name among the names of those tvho would 
 vote to seat Donnelly, and this scrap of paper "Springer admitted 
 that he had written. 
 
 An Extraordinary "Pair." 
 
 Springer also sent his clerk to tell General Manning to preside 
 in the committee during his absence, and to bring up the Donnelly- 
 Washburn case the next day, and that he was " paired" with Mr. 
 Calkins, a EepubUcan member of tlie committee from Indiana; and 
 Mr. Calkins subsequently, on the 5th of April, 1880, stated in debate, 
 in the House, the extraordmary nature of that pair (see Congres- 
 sional Record): 
 
 '' I am not able now to recollect the exact language used upon the occasion, 
 but the substance of it was, that if his (Springer's) vote was not necessary to de- 
 cide the seating of Donnelly he desired me to f pair 'all the way through with 
 him, hut if my vote was necessary to keep Donnelly from being seated he authorized me 
 to vote in the committee." 
 
 And Mr. Springer followed Mr. Calkins, by saying, on the floor 
 of the House, as the Congressional Record shows : 
 
 '■ The matter is siihstantially stated, as I understood it, hy Mr. CalMns." 
 
102 BIOGBAPHICAL. 
 
 This was a cmiidid confession of one of Wie most peculiar 
 pieces of work ever heard of in Congress. This Democrat " pairs '' 
 with a Repuhhcan. He gives it out, in his own handwriting, that 
 he is in favor of seating Mr. Donnelly ; and sends word to General 
 Manning that he is in favor of Donnelly and paired with Calkins, 
 and to call up the Donnelly case in his absence; and then he has a 
 secret understanding with his Republican friend, Mr. Calkins, that 
 this is only a bogus " pair," good only as long as it was of no im- 
 portance to the Democratic party or to Mr. Donnelly, but at an end 
 the moment Calkins' vote ivas necessary to defeat Donnelly! And all 
 this "duplicity," as General Manning justly called it, came into 
 play just at the very time some one wrote this eminent Democrat a 
 letter saying that Mrs. S. could have $5,000 if he (Springer) would 
 " keep Washburn in his seat." And Springer did keep Washburn 
 in his seat, despite the law as to bribery and all that overwhelming 
 testimony; and Bill King, who left Washington the day the 
 anonymous letter was written, reappeared in Washington March 25, 
 and left there for good April 1, the very day the final vote tvas taken 
 on the Donnelly- Washhimi case in the Committee of Elections, and 
 Mr. Donnelly was defeated. 
 
 These are the facts in the case. It certainly looked peculiar, 
 and an investigation seemed necessary. 
 
 An Investigating Committee. 
 
 And an investigating committee was appointed to find out who 
 wrote that letter, and, while some experts swore positively that the 
 anonymous letter was in Bill King's handwriting, others swore that 
 it was in Finley's natural, undisguised hand, and by the same mail 
 he had written Springer another letter, over' his own signature, also 
 in his own natural, undisguised handwriting, so that Springer could 
 compare one with the other, and tell just where the anonymous 
 letter came from! But Finley swore that he did not write the 
 letter, and, as his character for truth and veracity was unim- 
 peached, that, of course, ended the matter. But Expert Hay, of 
 Washington, prepared a copy of the anonymous letter, made up by 
 tracing letters out of Bill King's acknowledged writings, and the 
 copy was so exactly like the original anonymous letter that one of 
 Springer's experts testified upon it and criticised it for some time, as 
 the original letter, before he found out his mistake ! 
 
 Putting Springer's Face in Evidence. 
 
 But the marvel is that a great Democratic statesman should 
 " flop " precisely at the very time when $5,000 was ofiered to him 
 to have him " flop ; " and that Mr. Donnelly should promise $5,000 
 to Springer to keep his enemy, Washburn, in his seat ; and that 
 
OTHFAl LABORS. 103 
 
 Springer should do it! Mr. Donnelly said in a speech, in St. Paul, 
 after his return home : 
 
 " But it is claimed that I Icuew that Mr. Springer was a pure, saintly and vir- 
 tuous man, and that 1 had that letter written to him to rouse up his righteous in- 
 dignation against Washburn for attempting to bri))e him. God help us! Fellow- 
 citizens, you never saw Mr. Springer, or rou would not entertain that hypothesis 
 i"or one' moment. I could make ^proffer 'overt of this man's liead and face. The 
 small, restless, furtive eyes; the quick, shambling, uncertain shiftiness of his 
 bodv; the dints in the flesh of liis face, as if the devil had put mai^ks of identifica- 
 tion", with his finger, here and there, on the soft putty of his figure-head;— if you 
 c(ml"d behold that countenance, fellow-citizens, and witness that manner, yon 
 would not believe for one instant that any man — not a fool — Avould offer him. 
 $.5,000 in the hope of rousing up his soul to virtuous resentment against the rav- 
 isher of his honor. Oli no ! " Bill Springer is not built that way." 
 
 The End of the Swindling Brass Kettle. 
 
 But while Mr. Donnelly made nothing- by bis tremendous cam- 
 paign, ao-ainst such overwhelming odds of numbers and money, the 
 people profited bv it; for he literally drove " the little brass kettle " 
 out of use — with a residting benefit to the producers of millions of 
 dollars. 
 
 More than that, his terrific philippics against the Millers' Ring 
 caused those gentlemen to abate their exactions. Wliile they con- 
 tinued, and still ccmtinue to this day, to hold possession of the grain 
 markets of Minnesota, and exclude ;ill competition, the force of an 
 aroused public opinion has shaiued them into decency; and now 
 they make but two or three cents difference in the price of grades, 
 where formerly they made a difference of fifteen cents — or thirty 
 cents between number one and number three; when, probably, the 
 only difference between the two grades, in the question of the man- 
 ufacture of floury was that number three had a little more light chaff 
 and dirt in it than number one, and an allowance had been made, 
 in buying, for the dirt ! 
 
 Other Labors. 
 
 Of course, in a brief bi-^graphy hke this, I have been able to 
 give the record of but a small i^art of Governor Donnelly's labors for 
 the public welfare. I have said nothing about his fight in 1866 to 
 prevent the dishonest sale of the land in the Sioux Reservation, 
 Minnesota, out of v^hich many men made fortunes. Nor have I 
 time to more than allude to the great battle he fought, while a mem- 
 ber of the State Senate, in 1874, by which he broke up a corrupt 
 contract made by the Interior Department for the sale of all the pine 
 on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation, at one-third its real value, 
 and saved vast quantities of the school lands of the State from being 
 despoiled of the timber which gave them their only value. For this 
 o-reat work he was rewarded by the St. Paul Press and the other 
 Ring organs with the foulest and most unlimited abuse and slander. 
 In fact, during his whole career in public life the denunciations 
 
104 BIOGBAPHICAL. 
 
 which have been poured out upon him have been in exact proportion 
 to his services to the pubhc. He saved the people of Minnesota mil- 
 lions of dollars, but, as a consequence, before his great literary suc- 
 cess phiced him beyond the reach of his enemies, he' was so black- 
 ened by the abuse of a hireling press that a large portion of the 
 people of the State regarded him as one of their worst enemies. 
 Whenever he would attack a public wrong the thieves would attack 
 him, and the more good he did the more he was blackened by abuse. 
 The fact tliat he would not " sell out " was regarded by the plun- 
 derers as a crime worse than high treason. There was no getting 
 along with such a fellow. He had to be crushed. 
 
 "The Rebate oe- Wheat." 
 
 In 1884 the Minneapohs millers had invented a new rascality. 
 Not content with all the other thieveries which I have described, they 
 got up a scheme whereby any farmer who lived in any part of the 
 great territory south and west of Minneapolis, on the lines of the 
 Milwaukee and St. Paul Eailroad, could not ship his grain to Minne- 
 apolis by paying the freight on his grain to that city, but he was 
 compelled to pa'y the freight both to Minneapohs and Chicago, four 
 hundred miles further ! The farmers, or the buyers who bought 
 from the farnaers, at the local stations, might protest that they did 
 not want to ship their wheat to Chicago ; that it would, in fact, go 
 no further than Minneapolis as wheat, as it would there be manu- 
 factured into flour. It was of no avail; the farmer must pay the 
 freight to Chicago or he could not ship his wheat. They would give 
 him a receipt for the freight on the extra distance of 400 miles, and 
 he could take that receipt to Minneapolis and sell it, at a large dis- 
 count, to the miliars, who could use it, for its face value, inpayment 
 of freight on flour from Ilinneapolis to Chicago! In this way the 
 wretched fariners,'many of whom were struggling with extreme 
 poverty, were compelled to pay part of the transportation of the 
 mihers' flour. A more shameful and outrageous fraud never was 
 practiced on a free people. 
 
 In their distress the people turned, as usual, to Mr. Donnelly.' 
 Three conventions were held — an Alhance convention, an Inde- 
 pendent Repubhcan convention, and a Democratic convention, and 
 all three united in nominating Mr. Donnelly. Two years before,. 
 Major Strait, the Republican candidate, had carried the district by- 
 nearly 10,000 majority. The Democrats knew there was no chance 
 for one of their own men, and so they agreed to cooperate with the 
 other elements of opposition to Strait. Strait was himself a miller 
 and banker, and supported by the Indian Ring and even by many 
 leading Democrats, who had shared in Indian contracts and other 
 schemes of plunder. Mr. Donnelly, as usual, made a tremendous 
 canvass; he had but $600 with which to make the fight, while it 
 was believed that $50,000 was spent in behalf of his opponent. 
 
BECOMES A BOOK-MAKEB. 10" 
 
 Nevertheless, and despite consklerablc? Democratic disafifec- 
 tion, he reduced Strait's majority from nearly 10,000 to about 750. 
 He would have won the fight but for the opposition of some of the 
 leading Democrats. He had the satisfaction, however, of knowing 
 that he had forever broken up the villainous '^ rebate system," just 
 as he had abolished " the swindling brass kettle" by his campaign 
 in 1878; and he thereby saved the farmers of that section hundreds 
 of thousands of dollars annually, forever afterward. 
 
 A Great Book Promised. 
 
 But it would take a book as large as this whole volume to be- 
 gin to tell the story of Mr. Donnelly's active and useful life ; and 
 that book may some day be written, with thrilling pen-and-ink 
 sketches of his contemporaries, drawn to the life, for the instruc- 
 tion and amusement of posterity. 
 
 While, therefore, Governor Donnelly's labors have profited him 
 nothing, they have been of great value to the State of Minnesota. 
 A Repubhcan paper, the Blue Earth City Post, made, June 23, 
 1887, the following candid acknowledgment : 
 
 " The Post lias stated again and again what Donnelly has accomplished. He 
 has completely revolutionized the legislative sentiment of the State. He has made 
 it possible for laws to l)c enacted for the relief of the people. He has educated the 
 masses of the Republican party tip to his anti-monopolistic ideas, and forced the 
 lea,ders of that party to advocate his principles. He has put the politicians through 
 * a course of sprouts,' and won almost completely the battle he began, in favor of 
 the people, fifteen years ago ; but as a politician, himself, he has not been a suc- 
 cess." 
 
 No, and it is to his honor that he has not. 
 
 The Grange and the Alliance. 
 
 Neither have I the space or the time to enumerate Governor 
 Donnelly's labors in the old Grange, or in the later Alhance. He 
 has delivered hundreds of speeches in Minnesota and elsewhere, 
 without a penny of reward and generally at his own expense. He 
 has probably traveled as many miles as would circumnavigate the 
 globe, in these efforts to rouse up and defend the people. Neither 
 can I give any account of the efibrts to break him down in the 
 Alliance, or of his triumph, with the help of the Great West, over 
 his enemies, and his election in December, 1890, by an overwhelm- 
 ing vote, to the presidency of the Minnesota State Farmers' AUiance, 
 or of his labors in the House and Senate in behalf of the Alliance 
 and its principles. It is to his honor that during twenty years 
 spent in these conflicts he has never received a dollar of compensa- 
 tion from the Grange or the Alliance for his great services. He has 
 fought as George Washington fought, during the Revolutionary War, 
 without a salary, and at his own expense. 
 
 Mr. Donnelly Becomes a Book-Maker. 
 
 Governor Donnelly writes in his journal : ''In the winter of 
 
106 BIOGBAPHICAL. 
 
 1880-81 there was nothing left of me but the back-bone. T was 
 pounding my keel on the rocks. The very gulls had abandoned me. " 
 
 He had been driven out of public life by the corrupt power of 
 money; his crops had been devoured by corporations and grasshop- 
 pers; his newspaper, the Ant i- Monopolist, had been forced to 
 suspend pubhcation; he was covered with debts to the eye-lids. 
 Instead of taking to drink to drown his sorrows, or going out and 
 hanging himself, as some men would liave done under similar cir- 
 cunistances, he retired to " the shades of Nininger; " and there, in the 
 midst of the arctic cold and the deep snows of a very severe winter, 
 with the sheriff or the constable banging every day or two at tlie 
 door, to serve a summons or an execution, he sat quietly down to re- 
 create the history of man before the Deluge ; to add myriads of years 
 to the records of the human race; and to trace out the original par- 
 entage of the European alphabet. He wrote Atlantis. 
 
 He began then and there a wonderful literary career, which has 
 lifted him out of poverty and debt, and rendered his name famous 
 over all the world. We know of no more striking testimony of an 
 indomitable will and unshaken courage than this carving out of a 
 new career from the very depths of ruin. And just as soon, it 
 must be noted, as his new success gave him a vantage-ground to re- 
 new the fight, he commenced once more his fierce battle for the 
 rights of the people ; and ever since he has mingled the most ab- 
 struse studies of the library with his labors on the stump in behalf 
 of popular rights. And it must also be remembered, to his honor, 
 that in the darkest hours of his career he never cringed to the pow- 
 ers that controlled the State and dispensed fortune; he never 
 
 " Crooked the pregnant hinges of the knee 
 That thrift might follow fawning." 
 
 The idea of submission seems never once to have occurred to 
 him. It was not in the power of all his powerful enemies, com- 
 bined, to pound him into obedience or servility. 
 
 Atlantis was an immediate and great success. The Chicago 
 Times first called attention to it, devoting several columns to the 
 discussion of its theories. The book has passed through about 
 twenty-five editions in the United States, and this on its own 
 merits. It commands a larger sale to-day than it did eight years 
 ago. It has become one of " the standards " of Enghsh literature. 
 
 I quote some brief extracts from the press reviews, made at the 
 time it was iDublished : 
 
 "Mr. Donnelly's theory is an ingenious one, as well as fortified by arguments 
 drawn from geology and history, from prehistoric relics, from traditions, and from 
 manners, languages and customs of widely separated nations. His theory offers a 
 plausible explanation for many puzzling discoveries of the philosophers, and his 
 book will give a fresh impulse to historic and prehistoric research." — Philadelpkia 
 Inqxdrer. 
 
 ' '• Mr. Ignatius Donnelly has written a unique and interesting argument to 
 prove that the legend of Atlantis is based upon fact, and tliat it tells of the first 
 
''ATLANTIS.^' 107 
 
 and one of the greatest of civilized nations, which a terrible convulsion of nature 
 obliterated." — Vongreyationahst, Boston. 
 
 " All of this is very startling, but the author has made out a case which, if 
 not convincing, is at least interesting and wonderfully plausible. His book shows, 
 throughout, wide reading, logical clearness and careful thought, and the work can- 
 not fail to interest by the vast accumulation of out-of-the-way information it con- 
 tains." — Saturday Evening Gazette, Boston. 
 
 "This is a most remarkable book, entertaining, instructive and fascinating to 
 a degree. ... A l)ook well worth reading. The world will never tire of the 
 stor}' of the lost ,\.tlautis and of speculations in regard to it. It has been the theme 
 (»f the poet and the philosopher. Xow it is brought to the test of science.' — 
 Bfooklyii Union- Argus. 
 
 Atlantis has been republished by Sampson, Low & Co., in 
 England, and has gone through several editions there. It is read in 
 all parts of the civilized world. Governor Donnelly has received 
 letters of congratulation and commendation from Spain, France, Ger- 
 many, all parts of the British Islands, Australia, New Zealand, India, 
 Japan and China. Pohtically the ])ook was a great help to Governor 
 Donnelly, for, while the press of the whole world was sounding its 
 ])raises, it was impossible for the hireling newspapers of his own 
 State, working under the inspiration of the corporations, to convince 
 the people any longer that he was a base, low rufiiau and dema- 
 gogue, as they had very eftectually done before its publication. The 
 book was therefore a sort of resurrection for the proscribed friend 
 of the people. 
 
 Governor Donnelly may justly claim that he was the first man 
 in the world who thought to identify Atlantis with the antediluvian 
 worhl, the laud of Noah. In other words, he first found the link of 
 connection between the story told by the Egyptian priests to Solon 
 and the tale of the Deluge told in Genesis. He was also the first to 
 prove that the alphabet of the Phoenicians, from which our own 
 alphabet is derived, and the Landa alphabet, of the Mayas of Cen- 
 tral America, were both derived from one common source, the 
 alphabet of Atlantis. He was also the first to connect Plato's story 
 with the legends of the Greeks and other nations of antiquity, and 
 show that the gods of the pagan world had been originally the 
 kings and queens of Atlantis. 
 
 Among the many tributes paid to Mr. Donnelly's book, one of 
 the most gratifying was the following letter from Hon. W. E. Glad- 
 stone, the great English parliamentary leader and scholar : 
 
 "10 Downing Stkeet, Whitehall, March 11, 1882. 
 
 " Dear Sir : I thank you very much for your ' Atlantis,' a copy of which you 
 have been so kind as to present to me. Though much pressed by public affairs, 
 1 have contrived to read already an appreciable portion of it, with an interest 
 Avhich makes me very desirous to go through the whole. 
 
 " 1 may not be able to accept all your propositions, but I am much disposed to 
 believe in an Atlantis ; and I think 1 can supply you with another case in which 
 traditions have come down into the historic age' from periods of time lying far 
 away in the background of preceding ages. 
 
 "Homer unquestionably (I do not fear to say) believed in a sea-exit from the 
 Northern Adriatic, and imagined the north of Europe to be an expanse of water. 
 
108 BIOGBAPHICAL. 
 
 And this, geology, T helieA-p, assmes -as that it Avas, hut not -within A^hat atc hnvf 
 heretofore received as the limit of the memor}' of man. 
 
 " Three or four years ago the Duke of Argyle was at Yeniee, and saw on a lish- 
 stall a fish which he was familiar with on the west coast of Scotland, but which is 
 unknown in the Mediterranean generally. And, on further examination, he found 
 that the corner of the Adriatic corresponded, as to local fish, in a high degree, with 
 the Atlantic. This is a curious and, perhaps, a significant fact. 
 
 ' ' 1 am, dear sir. your very faithful and obedient 
 
 "W. E. Gladstone. 
 '■'■Ignatius Donnelly^ Esq., TI. S. A.'^ 
 
 I understand that Governor Donnelly has collected a vast mass 
 of new material since the publication of Atlantis, and that he will 
 soon publish another work on the same subject, which he thinks 
 will strongly corroborate his first book. 
 
 "Ragnaeok." 
 
 Mr. Donnelly's second book, Magnaroh, takes its name from the 
 most ancient legends of the Scandinavians, which contain a descrip- 
 tion of a Day of Judgment or destruction which once, in the remote 
 past, overtook the world, when a great conflagration swept the face 
 of the planet. The following review will give an idea of the nattire 
 of the work : 
 
 " The title of this book is taken from the Scandinayian sagas, or legends, and 
 means ' the darkness of the gods.' The work consists of a chain of arguments 
 and facts to prove a series of extraordinary theories, viz.: That the Drift Age, 
 with its vast deposits of clay and gravel, its decomposed rocks, and its great rents 
 in the face of the globe, was the result of contact between the earth and a comet, 
 and that the Drift-material was brought to the earth by the comet; that man lived 
 on the earth at that time ; that he was highly civilized ; that all the human family, 
 with the exception of a few persons who saved themselves in cav'es, perished from 
 the same causes which destroyed the mammoth and the other pre-ghacial animals ; 
 that the legends of all the races of the world preserve references'to and descrip- 
 tions of this catastrophe ; that following it came a terrible age of ice and snow, of 
 great floods, while the clouds were restoring the waters to the sea, and an age of 
 darkness while the dense clouds infolded the globe. These startling ideas are sup- 
 ported by an array of scientific facts, and by legends drawn from all ages and all 
 regions of the earth. 
 
 "There is nothing impossible or unreasonable in the theory of this singular 
 work. A hundred years ago it was believed that there were in space only suns and 
 planets. We now know that there are multitudes of asteroids or y'anetoids— > 
 bodies so small as to be scarcely perceptible in the telescope — and it is conceded 
 that the tails of comets consist of vast streams of stones, and that even the heads 
 of comets may be composed of great masses of rocks. It follows that there may 
 be, in space, great regions occupied by immense ck)uds of stones, gravel and dust. 
 This is coniirmed by the fact that annually, in November and August, the orbit of 
 the earth traverses portions of the heavens Avhence fall toward the earth millions 
 of stones, and it is known that these meteor-bearing regions correspond with the 
 paths of certain comets. 
 
 "If, in former geological ages, space contained greater quantities of this loose 
 and floating material, the earth would necessarily have received vast accessions to 
 its bulk from this source. In the course of time the planets have cleared the 
 space within the reach of their attractive power, by drawing in this loose material, 
 but to some extent the work is still going on. Professor Nordenskjold has recently 
 found that on the great snow-covered plains of interior Greenland, far removed 
 from volcanoes or mountain-chains, there is a constant shower of cosmic dust, and 
 
■' BAGNAliUK." 10!) 
 
 that this dust forms a clay-like deposit. If a small deposit of clay comes from the 
 heavens at the present time, is it unreasonable to suppose that in former ages sim- 
 ilar deposits may have fallen in greater quantities, and formed the ela3'-beds which 
 cover a large part of the earth's surface? And if this be true of clay, which is 
 granitic stones ground to dust, Avhy may it not be equally true of gravel, which 
 consists of stones in process of being ground to dust? 
 
 "Certain it is that geologists entertain widely different views as to the origin 
 of the Drift. One class holds that land ice or glaciers have no power to tear and 
 scorn- the surface rocks, or to break tiiem up and reduce them to gravel ; that, on 
 the contrary, ice is 'protective rather than erosive,' and that the atmospherically 
 wasted (?e<>77«,s* of a glacier bears no resemblance to the 'till,' and that the results 
 characteristic of the Glacial Age were due to floating icebergs; while, on the other 
 hand, another section claims that the mountains of New England, marked by the 
 glaciers to their very summits, have been constantly above the sea, since a period 
 ages prior to the coming of the Drift, and that the Drift gives evidence, in its non- 
 stratified condition, and in its absence of fossils, that it was not laid down in the 
 water, either fresh or salt. 
 
 '' Ragnarok supplies a new theoiy as to the origin of the Glacial Age, co- 
 herent in all its parts, plausible, not opposed to any of the teachings of modern 
 science, and curiously supported by the traditions of mankind. Jf the theory is 
 true, it will be productive of far-reaching consequences ; it will teach us to look to 
 eosmical causes for many things on the earth which we have heretofore ascribed to 
 telluric causes, and it will revolutionize the present science of geology.'' 
 
 Bagnarok was published by D. Appleton &; Co., of New 
 York. It proved a great success; five thousand copies (the first 
 edition) were sold in six months, and its theories were the cause of 
 wide-spread interest and discussion. The book is now published by 
 F. J. Schulte & Co., Chicago. It is in its twelfth edition. I quote 
 extracts from a few of the thousands of newspaper notices : 
 
 " The idea begins to draw upon the minds of men that this globe of ours could 
 not have rolled in space for hundreds of millions of years unaffected by the other 
 forms of matter which occupy space. And just as every November we pass through 
 regions from which showers of stones are attracted to the earth, burning as they 
 (!ome, and filling the heavens with celestial fireworks, so, in past ages, vaster and 
 denser bodies of matter, comets' tails or what you will, protected from combustion 
 by their own atmosphere of gases, may have struck the earth, covering it with 
 detritus, and scarring and tearing up its surface." — Loidsville Courier- JouDial. 
 
 "This stupendous speculator in cosmogony begins and ends with 'Drift,' on 
 the summit of which temporary pile of successive superincumbent ruins of Avorlds 
 destroyed by convulsions or by comets, at vast intervals of time, the human race 
 breathes out its moment of a life. ... A book which, with all its deliberate eccen- 
 tricities, is often eloquent and suggestive." — Loiidon Daihj News. 
 
 "It is a bold enterprise, and its very boldness gives it a peculiar fascination. 
 The vast range of the survey and the multitude of witnesses, of every age and 
 clime, which the author passes in review, yield the reader a decidedly new sensa- 
 tion, something like that of making a voyage around the earth in mid-air." — Home 
 Jonrnal. 
 
 • ' Mr. Donnelly can claim the credit of furnishing a theory which is consistent 
 with itself, and, as he evidently thinks, with the scientific requirements of the 
 problem, and also with the teachings of Holy Scripture. . . . The shifting opinions 
 of geologists in regard to this question,, and the fact that the latest theoiy is mani- 
 festly inadequate, afford, we must say, a fair presumption in the author's favor. 
 . . . This is just that kind of teaching which cannot be met with a sneer. . . . 
 The book is well worth studying. If it is true, it answers two very important pur- 
 poses — the first connected with science, and the second with prophecy. It gives 
 a reasonable account for the tremendous changes which the earth has'undergone, 
 
110 BIOGBAPHICAL. 
 
 and it shows how its dissolution, so clearly described in St. Peter's Second Epistle, 
 may be accomplished." — The Churchman, New York. 
 
 "In this remarkable volume Mr. Donnelly, with an originality and vigor of 
 which we had a taste in Atlantis, unceremoniously knocks in the head all the 
 elaborate theorizing as to the glacial period and other scientific forms of argument, 
 and boldly proceeds to prove that the world owes its various physical changes to 
 collisions with comets, more or less terrific in force, and to the calamitous and 
 long-continued visitations of snow, and flood, and fire, the result of the encoun- 
 ter." — Troy Times. 
 
 "The work will be read with curious interest by the learned, and, though it 
 draws perpetually on the treasuries of scientific and ethnic lore, the unlearned will 
 pore over its pages with eagerness and delight. . . Bagnarok is a strong and 
 brilliant literary production, which Avill command the interest of general readers, 
 and the admiration and respect, if not the universal credence, of the conservative 
 and the scientific." — Prof. Alexander Wixohell, in The Dial. 
 
 " In a few sharp, short and decisive chapters the author disposes of the theory 
 that the vast phenomena of the ' Drift' could have been produced by the action of 
 ice, no matter if the ice swept over the continent. His facts and their application 
 are certainly impressive. In fact, his book is very original '" — Hartford Times. 
 
 " It is one of the most powerful and suggestive books of the day, and deserves 
 respectful attention, not only from the general reader, but from the scientist." — 
 The Continent. 
 
 "No mere summary can do justice to this extraordinary book, which certainly 
 contains many strong arguments against the generally accepted theory that all the 
 gigantic phenomena of the Drift were due to the action of ice. Whether readers 
 believe Mr. Donnelly or not, they will find his book intensely interesting." — The 
 Guardian, Banbury, England. 
 
 "These two volumes are phenomenal. The author-, who has been known as 
 one of the most prominent political men west of the Mississippi, suddenly appears 
 before the public as a writer upon scientific subjects, and issues two volumes in 
 quick succession, one of which reaches the seventh edition m less than nine 
 months, and the other is m a fair way for a similar success." — American An- 
 tiquarian. 
 
 Confirmation of the Ragnarok Theory. 
 
 The truth of the theory set forth in Bagnarok has received 
 starthng confirmation in the fact that the leading astronomer of Eng- 
 land has, since its publication, presented the world with a powerful 
 work, in which he proves that the accepted theory of the formation 
 of worlds from matter in a gaseous condition is impossible. He 
 shows that space is full of vast streams of stones, similar to the 
 meteoric stones, and that wherever a center of attraction is estab- 
 lished among them, by any one stone being much larger than the 
 rest, a sun or planet is formed, by the rushing together of the 
 rocky fragments to the center of gravitation; and that the clash 
 and impact of the stones produces such intense heat that the body 
 becomes luminous, and a blazing world or star is formed.* 
 
 Bagnarok is probably the most original book ever written. 
 The whole cor) ception is perfectly novel; and th© linking together 
 of the wonderful legends of mankind with the latest conclusions 
 arrived at by the scientific world is a marvelous piece of work. 
 
 * The revelations of the spectroscope prove the truth of this theory. 
 
AUTHOBSmP OF THE SHAKESPEARE PLAYS. Ill 
 
 Tlie light the theory throws upon Genesis and the Fall of Man is 
 unique, and is accepted by many clergymen as true. 
 
 Since the publication of Eagnarok, Governor Donnelly has re- 
 ceived corroborations of his theory from scholars in all parts of the 
 world, and he hopes to some day publish a continuation of the work. 
 
 Francis Bacon's Authorship of the Shakespeare Plats. 
 
 It would take a volume much larger than the space assigned 
 for this biography to give anything hke a full account of the vast 
 labors of Governor Donnelly in the preparation of that which is, 
 perhaps, the chief literary work of his life — his book T/ie 
 Great Cryptogram. 
 
 The size of the book (containing a thousand pages) ; the im- 
 mense toil involved in its preparation, continued through fifteen 
 years; the difficulty of the working-out of the hidden cipher ; the 
 intense microscopic work of the cipher itself, all make the book 
 memorable in the annals of literature. 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette, of London, said : 
 
 " Mr. Ignatius Donnelly's Great Cryptogram is not a thing to be dismissed 
 in a moment. If it be a delusion, it is respectable by reason of its very magni- 
 tude. The labor represented by the two great volumes before us, and especially by 
 the second, is stupendous. America, the land of • big things,' has in Mr. Donnelly 
 a son worthy of her immensity."' 
 
 The London Telegraph (" the newspaper with the largest 
 circulation in the world") May 2, 1888, said : 
 
 '' Whether it is to be regarded as fatal to the personal claims of our sovereign 
 English genius, a piece of extraordinary special pleading for the long-delayed 
 recognition of his great rival, Bacon, carrying judgment and conviction with it, 
 or only a vast delusion, based on some remarkable freaks of chance, it will be for 
 specialists and the age to say. . . . 
 
 Such are a few of these strange ' finds ' of Mr. Donnelly, and, if he has not 
 allowed himself to be deceived, it is impossible to avoid the deduction that, for om 
 purpose or another, a ivo)iderfully intricate series of stories has been threaded through 
 the iveb of the great English' classic.''^ 
 
 Laboiicliere'' s Truth, the great independent iournal, of May 
 20, 1888, said : ' ^ i j ; j 
 
 ' ' I think every critic will say that the book is a monument of laborious indus- 
 try, such as has hardly ever been produced before outside of Germany, and that 
 some of Mr. Donnelly's results are very astonishing, while all of them are interest- 
 ing and curious. ... 
 
 The Opinion of Mathematicians as to the Cipher. 
 
 But some readers may ask: "Has not Mr. Donnelly, as 
 the London Telegraph suggests, deceived himself? Is not the 
 cipher an illusion ? " 
 
 I answer this by saying that the proof-sheets of the book were 
 submitted to two eminent mathematicians — one in England and one 
 in this country -- George Parker Bidder, Q. C, of London, and Pro- 
 
112 BIOGBAFHIGAL. 
 
 lessor Elias Colbert, of Chicago, author of well-known works on 
 astronomy, etc.* Both gentlemen took their time and thoroughly 
 examined the proofs submitted to them, and these are their verdicts; 
 
 Me. Bidder's Statement. 
 
 "House ob^ Commons, April 19, 1888. 
 
 ' ' My Dear Sie : I have given a good many hours to the examination of the 
 proofs of Mr. Donnelly's hook, so far as the method of the Cryptogram is dealt 
 with, and write to let you know the opinion 1 have formed. 
 
 ' ' In the first place, 1 am amazed at the stupendous industry and perseverance 
 shown, and the ingenuity with which Mr. Donnelly has followed up his 'dues. 
 The numerical coincidences, in the position of words which he has discovered in 
 the plays — notably of suggestive words such as ^Bacon,^ ^St. Albans,' etc. — are 
 very remarkable, so remarkable, in fact, that my own strong belief is that they 
 cannot possibly be due to chance. And considering this in connection with the 
 extraordinary peculiarities of the text, which he ppinfs out, both as regards typog- 
 raphy and paging, and as regards the unnatural introduction of words into the 
 text, I am further strorfgly inclined to the opinion that Mr. Donnelly is probably 
 right in his conclusions that there is a cipher interwoven — jjossibli/ several — and very 
 probably by Bacon.''' 
 
 Prof. Colbert's Statement. 
 
 '■'■I am obliged, to indorse the claim made by Mr. Donnelly that he has found a cipher 
 in some of the jylags. It can be intelligently traced by the aid of explanations given 
 by him, some of which' are only hinted at in the book. I do not say, nor does he 
 claim, that he has discovered the complete cipher, and I think it is quite probable 
 that some of the readings he gives will bear modification in the light of subse- 
 quent knowledge. But the cipher is there, as claimed, and he has done enough 
 to j^yove its existence to my satisfaction." 
 
 Opinions of Eminent Critics. 
 
 In addition to these statements, which should be conclusive, I 
 add a few other testimonials : 
 
 That distinguished scholar and author, Count Vitzthum 
 d' Eckstadt, wrote, from Paris, to a friend in London, under date of 
 May 18th, 1888 : 
 
 ''Will you be good enough to convey to Mr. Donnelly my sincerest congrat- 
 ulations. I do not know whether the opinion of an old diplomate may be of any 
 value to him. At any rate I give it to you. . . . Taking the first volume alone, 
 it is absolutely conclusive. It is a fair, scientific investigation, most skillfully 
 conducted and complete. I do not know which to admire niost, the industry, the 
 extreme ingenuity, or the strong power of reasoning shown in these volumes. The 
 style is perfect; terse, business-like, and always' to the point. The reader himself 
 assists in the inquiry. Every honest man, after reading the first volume, must 
 come to the conclusi('>n that the Shakespeare theory has no leg to sta)id upon. Those 
 who have not studied the book have no voice in the question. Mr. Donnelly may 
 safely appeal to posterity, as. Lord Bacon did. . . . It is certain the cipher exists, 
 though whether the actual key, by which it is to be unlocked, has been yet found, 
 may be doubtful. I can never believe that Bacon left this discovery to mere 
 chance; and- it has been a chance that a' man has been found, in the nineteenth 
 century, ingenious and persevering enough to find and to trace out the existence of 
 a cipher. I am convinced that Bacon left the MSS., together with the key, either 
 
 * Mr. Bidder was selected for the task of examining the proofs by Mr. Knowies, 
 the editor of the Nineteenth Century, the leading review of England, and Professor 
 Colbert was selected by Eon. Joseph Medill, editor of the Tribime of Chicago. 
 
OPINIONS OF EMINENT CBITICS. U3 
 
 t(, Percy, or Sir Tol)io Matthew, with authority to publish the secret after his death 
 rJut the civil war In-oke out, and the trustees may have thought that under the 
 rule of Cromwell and the Puritans the memory of Bacon, as a philosopher, would 
 ha^e been rmned It it were published that he was the author of the plays. In the 
 interest of their deceased friend they may have destroyed the MSS. of the dU.vs 
 together with the key." ' i'^".'''? 
 
 Mrs. Henry Pott, of LoDdoii, the author of that great work 
 l.hePromus,i\nL\ other hooks, and a hxdvof extensive learnino- and 
 profound penetration, thus writes to the Bacon Journal of Loifdon : 
 t,, /V^lfll''''8'FfJ t« the cipher part of Mr. Donnelly's book, it appears to me tliat 
 IL''''* M^^^'^'P^n ^^'^-^^^^' ^^^ ^^'^^^^ ^^«"er and luirrativis inclosJdinit 
 being as Mr. Donnelly has stated, is beyond q.e.tiou. All those who have expressed 
 themselves, who are competent to understand it, and who have been able to sivo 
 time to the close exammation of the arithmetical calculations, of the sequenc^e of 
 words l)>^means of these calculations, and of the doctrine of chances against or in 
 favor of that sequence, have come to the same conclusions: namely, that the d„hrr 
 
 "T- V'*Af ' V.^''"'*//'•^^'''- '^''''^"*^''"^^^^- • • • 'J^Iie imperfections in minor details to 
 which Mr Donnelly draws attention are, as he modestly says, 'due, not to the 
 maker of the cipher, but to the decipherer.' And we unite with Mr. DoAiudly in the 
 belief that wherever a sentence is not mathematically exact, or whencve'r a e-an 
 or flaw occurs m the work, it will, with the further time and labor which :Mr Don- 
 nelly is bestowing upon it, be corrected and the rule brought to absolute perfection.-' 
 
 Sir Joseph Neal McKenna, member of Parliament, and an 
 emmeut cryptologist, writes to the Dubhn Nation as follows : 
 
 ir.r. 1} ^"^^l ^^'^'^ ^^^' ''^'^'^^ ^"^'^"^^ "^^^ ^i^'*^' considerable practice in the construc- 
 tion of cryptograph notes and messages for the purposes of secrecy, brevity and 
 
 r'nUvT?-; • ; 7^'^ \ ""''''' '■' ^^."* ^^^^^'« '' -^ ^'^^'^i'^^' demonstrated S4a 
 cally-constructed cryptogram m the text of the play Ilenn, IV., which tells the 
 
 FolVn'Jifti ''Vi";.?^'"''''^^ ^? maintain that the printer, editor or publisher of the 
 Tf fh . -r "* ^^-'r T'^Y^^ PP""^ ^^ ^^'' infolding of the cryptogram in the text 
 wT,^i r ^'""^ published m that year. I do not go into minor points, none of 
 which however, m the slightest degree derogate from the certainty with which I 
 have already pronounced my own opinion or judgment." 
 
 .000^^'^^^^^^^" Greenwood, in the Kansas City Journal of May 21, 
 1888, says : -^ ' 
 
 ,>.;./ T'l^T^ going into all the details in the first part of the book; ... in 
 point of scholarship, close study, numerous and extended comparisons, minute re- 
 
 entile history, . . it must be confessed that Mr. Donnelly, by all laws of evi- 
 dence has shown that Shakspere could not have written the plays that are now 
 f.vi5o, •■ ■ i ■ ^^/'^^^t^^i^^^^^t'^e^'tainty, the chance that he clid'so would be as 
 first mr^o?t'h?/'w "'"''i*'''^ ''^i^ T"^'^'^'- ^^:^^"T of intelligent lawyers, on the 
 ti St pait of this great work, would bring m a verdict against Shakspere's author- 
 
 tho?; U.uAhTff't? '"'•^'l*' ''^^^'; gl^^ci^S through this part of the work, that 
 theie IS nothing in the cipher, unless he actually proves it mathematically. It 
 would take an expert mathematician several months to verify all these statements 
 or to disprove them It would be very much less work to calculate an eclipse of 
 the sun or moon. On the other hand, if the number-relations he presents and veri- 
 fies are simply happy coincidences without any significance, then it is t/>e most 
 elaborate cmdcomiected set 0^ coincidences that has e to light i,i chance 
 
 Zl;nu.(uJ 'V 'v'^'f r' r}^ ^'^'"^^^ ^ ^"^'^^ P«i^* i^ it- Of coVse it would 
 ?.h?^V^ 1 f (r English scholars to give an author justice who hails from the 
 wheat-faelds of ^imnesofa. 
 
114 BIOGBAPHICAL. 
 
 The Philadelpliia Evening Star says : 
 
 ' ' If Mr. Donnellj^ has made a single miscount his critics shoukl be able to 
 demonstrate it. He gives the page and the number on the page of every ci}3ber 
 word. It would, of course, be an easy matter for anybody to pick out words from 
 the pages of the plays that would make a consecutive story ; but here we have a 
 story which is consecutive, which is grammatical, which is written in the purest 
 English, with a rhetoric striking alike by its force and its simplicity, and which 
 retains the very flavor of the Elizabethan age, and all the words corresponding 
 with certain root numbers, which never vary, save according to certain modifiers! 
 This could not he the work of chance. It rests Avith those who may deny the possi- 
 bility of the cipher to explain away this startling fact— if they can. . . . Let any- 
 body take any of the cipher pages, as we have done, and a glance at its symmetri- 
 cal structure will sulfice at once to exclude the idea that Mr. Donnelly has deceived 
 himself. The figures are there. They are not there arbitrarily. It is inconceiva- 
 ble how they could be put there by any system of self-deception, and no other con- 
 clusion appears possible than the alternative suggested by the London editor — 
 that there is a cipher and Mr. Donnelly hasfoimd it.'''' . . . 
 
 Shakspere's Claims. 
 
 While differences of opinion exist as to the reahty of the cipher, 
 there is none as to the literary merit of the work, or its effect in 
 demolishing the claims of William Shakspere to he the author of 
 the great plays which hear his name. 
 
 Dr. R. M. Theohald, A. M., Hon. Secretary of the Bacon 
 Society, of London, says : 
 
 ' ' I cannot refrain from expressing my most unqualified admiration of his 
 [Mr. Donnelly's] masterly exposition of the Bacon-Shakspere case. His first 
 volume is, by far, the completest and strongest Baconian argument ever written 
 Its cogency astonished even me, convinced as I am from long familiarity with all 
 sides of the argument. How the Shakspereans will wriggle away from'thosc 200 
 pages of ' parallels' I cannot conceive. It is the most magnificent hit of circumstan- 
 tial evidence ever produced in the whole range of the vorld's literature. . . . But there 
 is the same cogency in most of the other chapters ; and the bright, attractive, 
 eloquent, often genuinely poetical, way in which he marshals his arguments and 
 enforces them, makes the whole book "so tascinating — so absolutely irresistible — 
 that I find it far more captivating than any novel I ever read."' 
 
 The Hon. Joseph Medill, the distinguished editor of the Chicago 
 Tribune, thus expressed himself the day the hook appeared : 
 
 << For those Avho have not seen Mr. Donnelly's work, the magnitude of his 
 performance cannot be described adequately Avithout danger of apparent exagger- 
 ation. Whether the Avorld shall accept his conclusions or hold the verdict in 
 abeyance, Ignatius Donnelly must hereafter be counted among the men whose 
 industry, persistence and sincerity have thrust into literature and history a force 
 compelling recognition, if not conviction ; and whose prodigious and patient 
 labor has amassed against the current belief about Shakspere too much testimony 
 for incredulity to scoff at, for jests to smile out of sight, or for learning to ignore." 
 
 The New York World said : 
 
 " It is the most startling announcement that has been hurled at mankind 
 since Galileo proclaimed his theory of the earth's motion." 
 
 Julian Hawthorne says : 
 
 ^' It involves the most interesting literary possibility of our generation." 
 
HON. JOHN BBIGHTS OPINION. 115 
 
 The San Francisco Argonaut said ; 
 
 '• The ignorance of Shakspere, the learning of Bacon ; the parallel passages 
 in Bacon's works and in tho plays ; the unity f)t' thought, the conimunitv of error ; 
 the employment of the identical metaphors, and of unusual and uexrlv coined 
 words ; th^ display of the same phases of religious belief, of politics and of liuuiau 
 sympathy ; the acute knowledge displayed in the plavs of comuiou law, even in 
 its most technical form, as well as of' science, lyid of moral and natural philos- 
 ophy, are all strikingly set forth, and demonstrate that either Bacon wrote all, or 
 at least a portion of the plays, or ■ that he and Shakspere were mental twins — 
 each a hemisphere of a single brain."' 
 
 The Bury Times, East Lancashire, England, said : 
 
 " This is one of the most remarkable books America has ever produced. . . 
 A monument of ability, industry and literary acumen . . . An epoch-making book." 
 
 Hox. John Bright's Opixiox. 
 The Great Cryptogram has made many converts, among 
 others the famous English statesman, John ]>right. Tlio Birmiug- 
 liam Daily Mail of May 13, 1888, said : 
 
 '' ilr. John Bright, M. P., is much better and practically out of danger. He 
 has not been troubling his head recently about ])olitical matters, but for the last 
 few- weeks he has been chietly occupied in thj studr of the Bacon-Shakspere 
 controversy. ^Ix. Bright is one of the few living men who have read all through 
 the ponderous volumes of Mr. Donnelly. He does not go all the way and assert 
 the accuracy of Air. Donnelly's discovery, but in his uncompromising and unhesitat- 
 ing manner declares his belief that, whoever may have Avritten the plavs. it was 
 not William Shakspere."' 
 
 The English newspapers also report Mr. Bright as saying, in' 
 his brusque fashion, ihat " any man who believes that William 
 Shakspere wrote Lear and Hamlet is a fool ! " 
 
 The St. Paul Pioxeer-Press Agaix. 
 Xo book ever created such intense excitement as The Great 
 Cryptogram ; every newspaper in England and America was ftdl of 
 ir, before and after it appeared; and the New York World devoted 
 tfro whole 2^nges to it. But the book was, so far as the sales were 
 concerned, a comparative failure. Joseph A. Wheelock began his 
 ])ersecution of it before it appeared. A sub editor of the Pioneer- 
 J'ress named Piles (appropriate name) prepared a small book, 
 called The Little Cryptogram, which was a burlesque of Governor 
 Donnelly's work; copies were sent to all the newspapers in the 
 United States, and even to England; agents weie employed by the 
 day, by the Pioneer-Press, to peddle copies everywhere, at tweutv- 
 livc cents each, in fidvance of the agents seut out by Governor 
 Donnelly's publishers, so that when thr)se agents called to sc'l tho 
 work they would hud the public mind tilled with the belief that iho 
 ciidier w as an absurd fraiul. These acts, with a concerted attack 
 fioni the plutocratic press, and a failure of the publishers t > procure 
 tlie fi.OOO agents they had promised (they had but about :r>0 i >r the 
 whole United States), and tlie fact that thebook wasnoto:i;;,ilein any 
 book-store (the publishers had threatened the retail boolvsellers witia 
 
116 BIOGBAPHICAL. 
 
 prosecution if they dared to sell a single copy of it, while for ninety- 
 nine hundredths of the territory of the United States there were no 
 canvassing agents to seek out those who might want it), could have 
 but one result: the sale was but a few thousand copies where the 
 pubhshers had promised Grovernor Donnelly a sale of 100,000 copies. 
 The New York Morning Journal said : 
 
 ' ' No book of modern times lias excited so mucli interest all over the civil- 
 ized world as this volume, and its sale will probably reach a million copies." 
 
 The free advertising which the book had received was worth a 
 million dollars, and if the book had been properly presented to the 
 j)ublic there ought to have been such a sale as the Journal 
 l^redicted. 
 
 Visit to England. 
 
 On March 17th, 1888, G-overnor Donnelly sailed from New York, 
 on the steamship Etruria, of the Cunard line, for Liverpool. The 
 object of his visit was to secure an English copyright of The 
 Great Cryptogram. He returned the same year on the Aurania, 
 of the same line, leaving Liverpool August llth, and reaching New 
 York August 19th, after a delightful sea voyage. He spent most of his 
 time in London, but visited and traveled through Scotland and Ire- 
 land. In the latter country he visited the birth-place of his father, 
 and was most hospitably entertained by many relatives. While in 
 Fintona, he delivered a lecture upon " The Irish in America, " and 
 dw^elt upon the necessity for temperance among the Irish people. 
 His address, particularly that part of it w^hich related to the ques- 
 tion of total abstinence, produced a great effect upon his audience, 
 and was extensively quoted in the newspapers of Ireland. The pro- 
 ceeds of the lecture went to the benetit of the Liberal campaign 
 fund. He was called upon, while in Fintona, by a delegation of 
 leading citizens, and asked if he would become a candidate for 
 Parliament on the Liberal ticket, and assured that if he would 
 they would nominate and elect him. He declined on the ground 
 that, while he was deeply interested in the success of the movement 
 for Home Rule, his interests and feelings all tied him to his native 
 country; that he was first, last and all the time an American. 
 
 English Newspaper Abuse. 
 
 G-overnor Donnelly and his book were the theme of constant 
 discussion and general denunciation by the English newspapers. 
 As some one said, '^ if the English people had to give up Shakspere 
 or the Indian Empire, they would let the Indian Empire go.'' In 
 fact, one distinguished English lady told Governor Donnelly that the 
 English people would give up Christianity before they would surren- 
 der the Bard of Avon. The fact that G-overnor Donnelly was an 
 i^anerican had a great deal to do with the ferocious opposition of tlie 
 .' English press, As one English gentleman said to him, " If you 
 
DEB A TES IN ENGLAND. 1 17 
 
 liad eveu been a Canadian, wo would not feel so badly about it! " 
 r>ut to think that the secret which had escaped the eyes of the E.)g- 
 lish critics, during three hundred years, should be found out by^ii 
 despised Yankee, from the backwoods of America, where but yester- 
 day the buffalo and the red man held undisputed sw\ay, was, as 
 Artemus Ward said, " too much ! too much ! " 
 
 Governor Donnelly kept his temper under all the abuse that 
 was heaped upon him, and replied in an ertective manner to many 
 of his assailants, through the columns of the daily press. The Bacon 
 Society of Loudon, an associati(m of ladies and gentlemen of high 
 culture and social standing, formed to study the works of Francis 
 Bacon — both his acknowledged ^vorks and those that are attributed 
 to him — ^ invited Governor Donnelly to lecture before it, and subse- 
 quently made a public challenge for the advocates of Shakspere to 
 pick out any man in the kingdom to meet Governor Donnelly in 
 joint debate on. the ajiestion, in London. But the men who were 
 ready to denounce the iconoclastic American at long range could 
 not be induced to meet him on the platform. 
 
 St. Albans. 
 
 Governor Donnelly spent a great deal of his time at St. Albans, 
 the former home of Francis Bacon. He "wandered, day by day, over 
 the fields and through the woods about Gorhamsbury, accompanied 
 by his son. Doctor Ignatius Donnelly, who was in London perfect- 
 ing his medical education; and spent hours in the quaint old church 
 of St. Michael, in the ancient city of St. Albans, where Bacon is 
 buried, and where his statue is erected, representing the great i^hi- 
 losopher and poet sitting in his chair, rapt in meditation. 
 
 Debates in England. 
 
 While Governor Donnelly was in England he made several 
 speeches in London, Birmingham, etc., on the Bacon-Shakspere 
 question, besides conducting debates at Cambridge University and 
 Oxford University, on the same topic, with bright young men, stu- 
 dents and graduates. The discussion at Cambridge was especially 
 spirited. It lasted from 8 o'clock to 12, and would probably have 
 continued all night but that the rules of the University required the 
 students to retire at midnight, Mr. Donnelly opened and closed the 
 debate, and some half-dozen others took part in it, equally divided 
 between the adherents of Bacon and Shakspere, Some of these 
 debaters were young men of twenty-five years of age, all of them 
 were among the brightest of the rising generation; they were from 
 all parts of the British Empire, even from Australia; and all of them 
 had been studying The Great Cryptogram in the University library, 
 and were perfectly informed on the subject of which it treated. The 
 rules of the society required that at the close of every debate all the 
 members present, a« they filed out through an ante-room, should 
 
118 BIOGBAPHICAL. 
 
 write their names iu a book kept for tliat purpose, aud record how 
 they V(jtcd on the question which had been under discussion. There 
 were five hundred present on the night of the debate on the authorship 
 of the plays, but the great majority of them became fo perplexed by 
 the arguments in favor of Bacon that they refused to vote at all, 
 and of the remainder who did vote one" hundred and twenty voted 
 that Shakspere wrote the plays, and one Inmdred and one that 
 Bacon wrote them ! 
 
 This was considered a great victory for the hew theory, right 
 in the heart of English conservatism, especially as one of the bigoted 
 professors of the university had stated, three months before, that he 
 " did not believe a single person, professor or student, could be 
 found in Cambridge who believed in the absurd Baconian theory." 
 
 In Edinburgh, Scotland, the interest in The Great Cryptogram 
 was so intense that the newspapers were filled with discussions on the 
 subject; and Mr. Donnelly was told that, iu the Advocates' Library, 
 the applications,by the lawyers, were so numerous for the book, that it 
 would be kept out of the library, in the hands ot readers, for six 
 months to come. 
 
 A Manchester paper has recently stated, as a generally recog- 
 nized fact, that Shakspere is already cast down from his 
 pedestal. 
 
 W. F. C. Wigston, of England, the learned author of A New 
 Study of Shakespeare and Bacon, Shakspere and the Bosicru- 
 cians,^' wrote to Mr. Donnelly, after his return to America, under 
 date of December 28th, 1888 : ' 
 
 " Toil have written a wonderful l)ook. Everybody who takes it up is very 
 soon converted, and 1 call it the most iconoclastic, idol-smashing piece of writing 
 ever penned. Shakspere has been attacked before, but never really shaken on 
 his pedestal with the public in England, nntil your work appeared. It has made a 
 f/reat, silent and quick revolution.. The boys in the college at Eyde [Isle of Wight 
 — Mr. Wigston's place of residence] divide and fight npon the subject; lectures 
 are given pro and contra. What more would you have?" 
 
 And at another time Mr. Wigston writes, to an American friend: 
 
 " Mr. Donnelly may console himself for any temporary checks or annoyances. 
 His name will bo 'as eternal as 'the god in art' whom he has vindicated from 
 oblivion. Kewton's great discovery Avas by no means accepted till many years 
 after his publication of it ; even Leibnitz opposed it. The greater the present oppo- 
 sition the greater will be his ultimate triumph. I have made many discoveries 
 Avhich go to confirm his cipher." 
 
 Francis Bacon's Secret Society. 
 
 Mrs. Henry Pott, a very learned and able lady, at whose house 
 G-overnor Donnelly visited, while in London, has now in press a re- 
 markable book, entitled Francis Bacon and His Secret Society 
 (F. J. Schulte & Co., Chicago), which goes to show that Bacon was 
 the real founder of the famous Rosicrucian Society, and that this was 
 the parent organization out of which Freemasonry arose. There are 
 
CjEsar'S' column. no 
 
 those wlio cliiiiii Dial the Ivosici-uciaii Society is yet alive, in Ger- 
 many, and possessed of tbc seci'et history of liacou's life and works. 
 Governor Donnelly is nowengaged npon a supplementary volume 
 to The Great Cryptogram, which he l)i^lieves will forever end the 
 Shaksperean contro\^ersy, and establish Francis Bacon's chiims to | 
 the authorship. It will be entitled, The Cipher in the Plays and \ 
 on the Tombstone. He says he will be able to prove, not only I 
 the reality of the cipher in the plays, but also that the curious 
 insci'iption which was ])laced over Shakspere's grave, at the time of 
 his death, contains a statement, in Francis Bacon's biliteral cipher, 
 that Francis liacon wrote the plays. The original inscription was in 
 this exti-aordinary form: 
 
 "Good Freud, for Jesus SAKE forbeare 
 To diGG T-E Dust Enclo-Ased HE.Re. 
 Blese be T-E Mau y sjiares T-ES Stoues, 
 And curst be He y moves my Bones." 
 
 " CiESAR'S COLUMX." 
 
 The year 1889 may be set down as a great year in the annals of 
 the struggle of the people of the whole world for their rights against 
 the encroachments of capital, f^a- in that year was written a book 
 which has become the Uncle Tom^s Cabin of the new revolution, 
 — Ccesafs Column. 
 
 Every work that deserves to live has its genesis. How did this 
 wonderful book come to be written f What were the circumstances 
 out of which it arose f 
 
 The session of the Legislature of Minnesota of 1889 was the most 
 rotten and corrupt ever held in the history of this rotten and corrupt 
 commonwealth. The very man, W. D. V/ashburn, who was elected 
 by it to the United States Senate, declared, to a New^ York news- 
 paper reporter, that such was the case, although he afterward tried 
 to disavow what he said; for, even with his limited intelligence, he 
 perceived that the man who had triumphed in such a degraded body 
 was, to say the least, under suspicion. Two great rival railroad 
 systems, the Canadian and the Chicagoan, contended for supremacy, 
 and their w^eapous were not argrtments, but greenbacks. There was 
 a perfect holocaust of corruption. Bill King was fluttering around 
 the battle like a foul bird of night. Men who had been bought by 
 one side for $5,000 held on to the money and sold out to the other 
 side for -$5,000 more; the men who made the last payment got the 
 votes. The thing was boundless and unfathomable. Scarcely were 
 the forms of decency preserved. One Senator, always impecunious, 
 became dead drunk in one of the orgies of the time, and, as his 
 friends were putting him to bed, several thousand dollars, in wads 
 of bank notes, rolled out of his clothes. The houses of prostitution 
 were the headquarters of the corruption. The newspapers were 
 filled with charges and counter-charges. After Washburn was 
 elected Senator, committees were appointed by the House and Sen- 
 
120 BTOGEAPHICAL. 
 
 ate to investigate these allegations. A large mass of testimony was 
 taken, by both committees; of the most damaging kind. When the 
 Senate committee reported, the Senate turned the pubhc out and 
 listened to the testimony in ''executive session/' and then sup- 
 pressed it. The House had no " executive session," and it deliber- 
 ately refused to permit the testimony to be read, and it never was 
 made public until two years afterward, upon the demand of Gov- 
 ernor Donnelly. But the corruption of that legislature was not con- 
 fined to the Senatorial election. It covered everything. One Sena- 
 tor charged, and offered to prove, that $25,000 had been paid to 
 another Senator for his vote; and that dignified body did not think 
 it worth while to investigate the charge. In the House, thirty 
 members were said to have banded themselves together, and one 
 man sold their votes, on all important questions, as Mr. Donnelly 
 said, " like a bunch of asparagus." An universal outcry went up 
 from the people of the State that it was the worst legislature that 
 had ever been known in the world. 
 
 Mr. Donnelly saw all this. He was not a member of the legis- 
 lature. He received fifteen votes of Alliance men for U. S. Senator, 
 but he recognized that in such a contest of money-bags he was out 
 of the question. But he knew everything that was going on. He 
 was appalled. He said to himself, if twenty-five or thirty years have 
 produced these dreadful conditions, what will one hundred years 
 yield us f Can civilization continue to exist under such conditions "i 
 What is to arrest the forward movement to destruction ? Where is 
 the remedy to be found ? Out of these reflections Ccesafs Column 
 was born. Mr. Donnelly believes he was inspired to write the book. 
 He says that while he was full of these gloomy reflections the words 
 " Caesar's Column " were spoken, as it were, within his mind. He 
 repeated them : " Caesar's Column ! What does that mean? What 
 Csesar ? What Column f' And then the thought came to him that 
 the phrase with its singular alliteration would make a good name for 
 a novel. Why not a novel to show the dangers that hung over man- 
 kind ? And so he proceeded step by step until he had built the 
 famous novel around the name thus singularly suggested to him. 
 
 He wrote the first chapter the night Washburn was elected 
 Senator. A few weeks afterward he resumed the work in his home 
 and finished it in about a month. 
 
 He then tried to find a publisher. Eemember that this work 
 has probably had a million readers in both hemispheres, in a little 
 over one year ; that it has been translated into two languages ; and 
 three editions of it have been pubhshed in England. And yet when 
 Governor Donnelly submitted it to four leading publishers, in New 
 York City, they each declined to print it. He then took it to a 
 prominent Chicago house. That too declined it, and the head of 
 the firm wrote Governor Donnelly a long letter, imploring him not 
 to publish it, or, if he did, to put the price so high that it would be 
 
rjE SAB'S COLVMK. I'il 
 
 heyoiid tho rencli of the cominon ix'oplc. At tliistinu- Mr. Doum-lly 
 bej^au to think that his hook would iH'vcrsce thu Hght. He I't^alizcd 
 that there was aheady in America a censorship of the press as com- 
 plete and autocratic as that of Russia, and that even a note of warn- 
 ing to the people, of the hell of destruction to which they were rush- 
 ing, with headlong speed, must be suppressed. Fortunately for the 
 world he at this time met a young man who was just starting into 
 the business of book pablisliing— a bright, capable, clear-headed 
 man, Mr. F. J. Schulte, of Chicago. He took the book, and it not 
 only proved, from the very first, a great success, but it brought suc- 
 cess to the publishing house which put it forth. It was the first of 
 a long line of very popular books on industrial questions. 
 
 Julian Hawthorne, himself a novelist of high rank, and the son 
 of the illustrious author oX The Marble Faun and Thr House of the 
 Sevep Gahles, said of Crrsar^s Column : 
 
 '• It i.s oxcccdiug-lr intercstiug as a uarrativo and is ■written bv a man of 
 thought, learniug and imagination. 1 consider it the best work of its class since 
 Buhver's Coming Rure. I Avas impressed with the power of the book — the vivid- 
 ness and strength Avith which the incidents of the tale are described and deveh^pcd. 
 The plot is absor])ing. and yet nothing in it seems forced. The conception of the 
 • Column ' is as original as its treatment is vigorous. There is no jjadding in the; 
 book; the events are portrayed tersely and clearly. The analysis is reasonable 
 and sag'acious, and the breadth of the "author's miiid, as well as his careful study 
 of social conditions, is made evident by liis treatment of the discussions put into 
 the mouths of his characters. Justice is done to each side." 
 
 Cardinal Gibbons said: 
 
 •• As an example of the highest literary form it deserves unstinted praise." 
 
 The Episcopal Bishop of New York, Right Rev. Henry C. Potter, 
 called it " a very extraordinary production. " 
 
 Miss Frances E. Willard pronounced it a " Grabriel's trump." 
 H. L. Loucks, president of the National Alliance, said : 
 
 '• I Avas unable to lay it down until I had finished reading it. It should be 
 read by every farmer in the land."' 
 
 Milton George, the founder of the Farmers' Alliance, said : 
 " Bellamy looks backAvard upon what is impossible as well as improbable. 
 Ccesar^s Column looks forAvard to what is not only possible, but proba))le." 
 
 George Cary Eggleston said, in the New York World: 
 '•The book points out tendencies which actually exist and are in need of 
 cure. It Avams us Avith vehemence and force of the necessity of guarding our lib- 
 erties against the encroachments of monopoly and plutocracy, and of disarming 
 corruption in government by every device that a vigilant ingenuity can supply." 
 
 The Arena spoke of it as — 
 
 "The most remarkable and thought-provoking novel that the disturbed in- 
 dustrial and social conditions of the present have produced. . . . The purpose of 
 this book is to arrest attention — to make men think wisely and act justly and Avith 
 dispatch. The Avriter holds it as a signal of danger before the on-commg train. 
 Will the warning be heeded ? "' 
 
122 mOGBAPHICAL. 
 
 The great AY asbingtoii journal, PabJic Opinion, said: 
 
 "The author writes with, tromeudous feeling and lireat iuiaii'iuati\-e jxjwer. 
 The picture gives in startling colors what would be the case if many of our busi- 
 ness methods and social tendencies were to more on unimpeded to their legitimate 
 results. The book is a plea, and a striking one. Its plot is bold, its language is 
 forceful, and the great uprising is given with terrible vividness." 
 
 These are a few of a tliousand similar utterances in England 
 and the United States. 
 
 Mr. Donnelly was so conscious of the opposition of the Plutoc- 
 racy that he did not, at first, dare to pubUsh Ccesar^s Column 
 with his own name on the title-page, but put it forth under the nom 
 de plume of " Edmund Boisgilbert, M. D.,"and the publishers 
 allowed it to be believed that it was the work of a Chicago million- 
 aire, and it was most amusing to see such villainous tools of mo- 
 nopoly as the Fioneer-Press cringing before the wealth of its sup- 
 posed author, and praising it to the skies ! 
 
 The book has made an immense impression on the public mind, 
 and is doing a great deal to warn thinking men and women of the 
 dangers that impend over the country. 
 
 "Doctor Huguet/' 
 
 Governor Donnelly's second novel, promises to become as great a suc- 
 cess OS his first. It is devoted to an entirely different subject, which it 
 treats in an altogether different manner. His first novel was writ- 
 ten to save men, of all races, from the loss of liberty and civihza- 
 tion; the second is a philanthropic appeal to the hearts of man- 
 kind in behalf of a poor and oppressed race, the negroes. 
 
 Mr. Donnelly is Nominated eor GtOvernoe. 
 
 On Mr. Donnelly's return from England he found that a Farm 
 and Labor Convention had been called to meet in St. Paul the next 
 day after he reached that city. He had taken no part in convening 
 the convention, and the meeting was comi^osed of a number of 
 workiugmen from the cities of St. Paid and Minneapohs, and but 
 three or four farmers who represented all the rest of the great State. 
 The gathering insisted on nominating Mr. Donnelly for Governor. 
 He objected strenuously. He told them that the movement was 
 premature; that there was no organization behind it, and no public 
 sentiment to sustain it; and that it would be better to postpone 
 action for a year or two, and not injure the good cause by making 
 a fizzle of it. But some of the leaders were honest enthusiasts and 
 some were cunning tricksters who desired to affect the action of the 
 coming Republican State convention by Mr. Dr^nnelly's candidacy, 
 and they assured him that he knew nothing of the feehng in the 
 State, and that a fund of $3,000 could be readily raised to pay the 
 expenses of speakers and for the distribution of printed matter and 
 that he must run. He was then nominated unanimously and 
 accepted, but with a reiteration of the views he had already im- 
 
Mil DONNELLY'S KELATIVES. Vi:\ 
 
 pressed oil tlie leaders. Tbe event proved he was right. He started 
 lo at oucLi on the campai<;u, and made a number of speeches and 
 spent between two and three hundred dollars of his own funds, and 
 then returned to St. Paul to find that the movement had utterlv 
 collapsed; that, instead of the $3,000 proniised, thev had raised but 
 $80 (one-fourth of which he had himself contributed) with which to 
 canvass the whole State, and the candidate for Lieutenant-Governoi- 
 insisted on getting off the ticket. The executive committee got 
 together and withdrew the State ticket and resolved that the whole 
 eflort of the new movement must be directed to electing members 
 of the Legislature to secure needed legislation. And so Governor Don- 
 nelly's campaign came to an end, very much to his disgust, for he is 
 the last man in the world to give up a contest, and he had wasted two 
 weeks of hard work and, for him, a considerable sum of money. I 
 refer to these facts because they were afterwards made the subject 
 of unjust comments, by his enemies. 
 
 Mr. Donnelly's* Relatives. 
 
 The reader will probably remember the article in the New York 
 Tribune of June 20, 1866, which I quoted heretofore, from the pen of 
 George Alfred Townsend, which, speaking of Mr. Donnelly, conclud- 
 ed with these words: " He belongs to a singularly gifted familv." 
 
 It seems to me that it might be proper, before concluding this 
 biography, to say a few words as to Mr. Donnelly's immediate fam- 
 ily—that is, his sisters. They all reside in their native city, Phil- 
 adelphia, and they fully deserve Gath's words of praise. 
 
 Some years since, when Professor Maguire was piincipal of the 
 Philadelphia Central High School, a gentleman from the West, who 
 was visiting the school, asked the Professor who was the most intel- 
 ligent young lady of his acquaintance in the Quaker Citv. Prof. 
 Maguire replied that the two most intellectual women of "^the city 
 were two sisters, of the name of Donnelly. Further inquiry diclosed 
 that they were the sisters of Ignatius Donnelly. 
 
 Miss Eleanor C. Donnelly. 
 
 Mr. Donnelly's sister, Miss Eleanor C. Donnelly, of Philadelphia, 
 is a very distinguished poetess. She has written some of the sweet- 
 est verses in our language. Her " Monk Gabriel's Vision " has been 
 rated by eminent critics far above a poem on the same subject written 
 by Longfellow. 
 
 The Philadelphia Press, speaking of the '' Vision of the Monk 
 Gabriel," said : 
 
 " Its warmth of imagination, artistic vigor and tenderness of color and ex- 
 pression make it glow lik-e an old painting beside the cold marble of Longfellow's 
 poem on the same subject." 
 
 The Minneapolis Tn7w/2e pronounced it '' a companion piece to 
 Whittier's ' Brother of Mercy' — Piero Luca." 
 
 The famous Dr. Mackenzie declared that Miss Donnelly's work 
 
124 BIOGnAPHICAL. 
 
 contaiued '^ some of the best poetry published in this or any other 
 country for many a long day/' 
 
 The New Orleans Morning Star said : 
 
 "The North lionizes Longfellow, the West pays homage to Joaquin Miller, 
 the South is proud of Father Eyan, but the East may name Eleanor C Donnelly as 
 one in all respects equal to these poets, and whose writings will live by the side of 
 theirs as long as the English language is spoken." 
 
 I regret that the limitations of this biography prevent me 
 from quoting ^^ The Monk GabrieFs Vision." I give, however, as a 
 specimen of her style, the following poem: 
 
 ^' Missing.'^ 
 
 In the cool, sweet hush of a wooded nook, 
 
 Where the May-buds sprinkle the green old ground, 
 And the wind, and the birds, and the limpid brook 
 
 Murmur their dreams with a drowsy sound, 
 "Who lies so still in the plushy moss, 
 
 "With his pale cheek pressed to a breezy pillow, 
 Concealed where the light and shadows cross. 
 
 Through the flickering fringe of the willow ? 
 Who lies, alas ! 
 So still, so chill, in the whispering grass ? 
 
 A soldier, clad in the zouave dress, 
 
 A bright-haired man, with his lips apart. 
 One hand thrown up o'er his frank, dead face. 
 
 And the other clutching his pulseless heart, 
 Lies there in the shadows cool and dim ; 
 
 His musket brushed by a trailing bough, 
 A careless grace in each quiet limb, 
 
 And a wound on his manly brow — 
 A wound, alas ! 
 Whose dark clots blood the pleasant grass. 
 
 The violets peer from their dusky beds. 
 
 With a tearful dew in their great blue eyes ; 
 The lilies quiver their shining heads, , 
 
 Their pale lips full of sad surprise. 
 And the lizard darts through the glistening fern, 
 
 And the squirrel rustles the branches hoary ; 
 Strange birds fly out, with a cry, to burn 
 
 Their wings in the sunset glory, 
 While the shadows pass 
 O'er the quiet face on the dewy grass. 
 
 God pity the bride who waits at home. 
 
 With her lily cheeks and her violet eyes, 
 Dreaming the sweet old dream of love, 
 
 While the lover is walking in paradise ! 
 God strengthen her heart as the days go by, 
 
 And the long, drear nights of her vigil follow ; 
 Nor bird, nor moon, nor whispering wind 
 
 May breathe the tale of the hollow ! 
 Alas ! Alas ! 
 The secret is safe with the woodland grass. 
 
 Miss Donnelly has published thirteen volumes of poems, and I 
 understand a collected edition of her most popular writings is about 
 
ME, DONNELLY AT HOME. 125 
 
 to be put forth by F. J. Schult>e & Co., of Chicago. All Mr. 
 Donnelly's sisters are *' book-makers," artists and musicians; they 
 have published a number of volumes, m.any of them translations 
 from the French, Italian and German. They are, all of them, very 
 intellectual and scholarly women. 
 
 Governor Donnelly had but one brothei- — John Gavin Donnelly. 
 He was at one time Collector of Internal Revenue in Philadelphia. 
 He migrated to Minnesota, and settled on a farm near Donnelly, 
 where he died, September 9th, 1889. He was a man of a very 
 modest; retiring disposition, but of excellent mind and great kind- 
 ness of heart, and beloved by all who knew him. 
 
 Mr. Donnelly's uncle, his father's youngest brother, John C. 
 Donnelly, of Fintona, is famous in the north of Ireland as a most 
 attractive and eloquent speaker; and crowds gather from many 
 miles around whenever it is known that he is about to make an ad- 
 dress. He is greatly respected where he lives, and has held several 
 important local offices. 
 
 Me. Donxelly at Home. 
 
 Like many others engaged in public work, we have been in 
 many homes, but never in one where the charm of home-life ap- 
 peared more exquisitely realized than in that literary farm -home at 
 Nininger, on the Mississippi, three miles above the city of Mastings, 
 Minnesota. The quiet humor of the man, whose famous sobriquet 
 of " The Sage of Nininger " will outhve the age ; the tenderness of 
 speech, the affection unspoken and yet ever expressed, made every 
 visit of ours one of great delight and of pleasant memory. One 
 who has witnessed the Titanic intellectual strength of Ignatius 
 Donnelly, in keeping an entire hostile State Senate at bay, for ten 
 days at a time, with a rhetorical vehemence and a mastery of ag- 
 gressive eloquence unprecedented, can hardly imagine the peaceful 
 quiet that marks his home as one of the happiest on earth. 
 
 A newspaper correspondent, Mr. James Sullivan, sent by one 
 of the Chicago papers, the Tribune, to interview Mr. Donnelly, at his 
 home, thus describes him : 
 
 " A man of wonderful vitality and energy, Mr. Donnelly belongs to that class, 
 by no means a large one, who never know when they are beaten. His exhaustless 
 energy and elasticity really amount to that ' vigor" so highly prized by the Hindoo 
 Mencius, and described by him as being ' supremely great, and in the highest de- 
 gree unbending.' He is a little below medium height, and deep-chested, while his 
 tine head is set, Douglas-like, above his l)road shoulders, upon the least possible 
 length of neck. His face is ruddy and smooth-shaven, and his expression is the 
 very essence of brightness and good feeling*, and when he speaks his clear, blue 
 eyes sparkle or grow humid Avith every shade of feeling. In manner Mr. Donnelly 
 unites the qiiiet'of the cultivated man of the East, the forcefnlness of the \7estern 
 man, and the chivalrous courtesy which distinguishes the Southern gentleman. 
 He is really pleasing to a charm socially, and in his own home, as the affable, en- 
 tertaining "host, is the embodiment of gracious a^reeableness," 
 
126 BIOGBAPHICAL. 
 
 Another correspondent writes : 
 
 "1 believe that in all the bitter political strifes to which Mr. Donnelly has. 
 been a party —and they have not been a few — there has not been a sustained as- 
 sertion agamst his morality, nor to the effect that he has not, when elected, reprc-- 
 sented his constituents honestly.'' 
 
 The celebrated Prof. Thomas Davidson, of Orange, N. J., who' 
 visited Mr. Donnelly in 1887, as the representative of the New York. 
 World, thus describes his home and himself: 
 
 " Mr. Donnelly had sent a carriage to meet us, and we were soon driving vig- 
 orously along the h'ish western bank of the Mississippi. In about half an hour we 
 reached Mr. Donnelly's residence, a roomy, old-fashioned, frame building, standing 
 in the midst of a large rural garden on a bluff' of the river, and affording a superb 
 vievv' of its course both above and below. The spot seemed altogether suitable for 
 'a quiet scholar desirous of uninterrupted leisure to devote to study. Everything 
 looked modest, simple and durable, betokening competency without wealth, and 
 refinement without luxury or show. At the garden gate 1 was met by Mr. Don- 
 nelly, who seemed made for his surroundings, and who greeted me in a most 
 cordial and unafi'ected manner. I had sharpened my eyes to discover in him the 
 deluded crank or the deluding fraud. I felt pretty sure that the 'lirst sight' 
 would reveal either the one or the other to me. and it was only when I utterly 
 failed to hnd in the man a trace of cither that I became aware, (to my shame), with 
 how much prejudice I had come laden. In Mr. Donnelly's person and demeanor I 
 could lind nothing that was not perfectly simple and genuine. His quietness and 
 ireniality at once disarmed me. 1 was forced to believe that he was an honest man, 
 and during my intercourse with him I did not alter this opinion for a moment. 1 
 could not find a trace of mystery about him, or of any desire to impose upon me. 
 . . His smile shows a man who delights in fun, while his whole expression is 
 keen, intelligent and kindly."' 
 
 Another correspondent, the celebrated Mrs. Antoinette V. Wake- 
 man, thus writes to the Chicago Times : 
 
 " A short way up from the Mississippi River, embowered in a natural grove of 
 oaks, stands Mr. Donnelly's broad, roomy house, which is encircled by piazzas and 
 surrounded by broad grounds that give it an air of ample hospitality. The brood- 
 ing stillness about the place is broken only by the song of birds and the occasional 
 puff" of engine and beat of great wheels on the placidly flowing water, as a steamer 
 plies up or down. The wasion-way leading to this retired spot, which is situated 
 fully a quarter of a mile from the main country road, is quite overgrown with the 
 thick clinffing knot-grass. As we approached our carriage wheels revolved noise- 
 lessly along this truly velvety way, and the place seemed to be quite away from all 
 the world and its bustle and noise': while the view from the approach, and the hovise 
 itself, of the distant towns of Hastings and Prescott, the great, green, billowy bluffs 
 the woodland, and the opposite tawny limestone cliff, pine-crowned_, over all ot 
 which huno- the diaphanous veil of soft blue haze which almost continually rests 
 above the distance of all Minnesota landscapes, was a picture of marvelous beauty. 
 His farm supplies the needs of life without personal effort on his part, while 
 the*i-e is still the ' somewhat to be desired,' which is ever a Avholesome stimulant to 
 effort; and the profound and charming retirement of his home gives ideal oppor- 
 tunity for literary work." 
 
 Mr. Donnelly's Religion. 
 
 During all his life time, since he came to man's estate, Mr. 
 Donnelly has never opened his mouth to make any statement as to 
 his rehgious views. As far back as 1855, when he was nominnted 
 for the Legislature, iti Philadelphia, he was denounced in public 
 
ME. DOimELLY'S MELIGION. 127 
 
 handbills, as an " iofideL " Time and again he has been assailed in 
 Minnesota, on the one hand as a heretic and renegade, and on the 
 other as a Catholic and Jesuit. Even Elihn Washburne, in 1868, 
 said he was " false to his religion," —implying that Mr. Donnelly 
 had been a Catholic and had left his faith : — a strange charge for a 
 Protestant, like Washburne, a behever in the right of private 
 judgment, to make, as a matter of opprobrium. It is to Mr. 
 Donnelly's honor that he has never made any appeal to race or 
 sectarian prejudices of any kind. He preferred to suffer political 
 unpopularity rather than say one word about his religious belief 
 which mignt affect the opinions of others, or be interpreted as 
 reflecting upon any creed. But we learn from members of his 
 family that Elihu Washburne's charge was without any foundation : 
 — Mr. Donnelly had never been a member of the Catholic church, 
 or of any other church. He never received even the rite of confirma- 
 tion, which is administered in early youth. He inherited his frame 
 of mind upon this question from his father. His creed Avas the creed 
 of Micah: ^' And what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do 
 iustly and love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? " But 
 "while Mr. Donnelly "is as independent in religion as in politics, 
 he has felt that it was wrong to shake any man's faith in the 
 restraining influences of the gospel; and in his lecture, in reply 
 to Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, entitled " The Mistakes of Inger- 
 soll in Literature and Religion," he denounces him strongly 
 for unsettling the beliefs of men in their old creeds, while giving 
 them nothing in exchange except barren agnosticism. He declared 
 that all relig-ions conserve morahty and are a restraint on our nat- 
 ural weakness and wickedness, and hence that any religion is better 
 than none. His books show that he has the profoundest respect for 
 Christianity and the most unshaken belief in the immortality of the 
 soul and the existence of an intelligent First Cause in the Universe. 
 In fact, the tone of all his writings is strongly religious ; he is not a 
 "materiahst; " he believes that man is a spirit, dwelling, for a 
 time, in a shell of flesh, and that God is overruling the aftairs of 
 earth for the good of mankind. He is, therefore, a Christian in the 
 broadest sense of the word, while not accepting the dogmas of any 
 particular denomination. Although he entertains his own views 
 upon many questions, he has never written or spoken a word in all 
 his life that could wound the religious feelings of any man or lessen 
 his respect for virtue. He believes that each individual has just 
 that kind and grade of religion which is fitted to his mental condi- 
 tion and stage of development. I remember to have heard him say, 
 in one of his Alliance speeches : 
 
 " When I die and present myself at the golden gate, I do not 
 expect St. Peter to ask me, ' What is your opinion upon this or that 
 dogma, or this or that translation of such a (4reek or Hebrew textf ' 
 But I expect him to thrust his head out of his window and roar 
 
l:io BIOGBAFHIC^L. 
 
 at me, iu a voice of thunder : ' You miserable little cuss, what did 
 you ever do, while on earth, to help your fellow man"? What did you 
 ever do to punish the robbers of the people and lift up the fallen ? ' 
 And I fear, my friends, that if I cannot satisfactorily answer that 
 question, I will never play on a golden harp, even if my shroud is 
 stuffed full of receipts for pew-rents and certificates of good charac- 
 ter from all the clergymen in Minnesota. " 
 
 Mr. Donxelly's Chaeacter. 
 
 At the close of the session of the Legislature of 1887, the St. 
 Paul Dispatch, then and now the ably-edited leader of the Republi- 
 can party of Minnesota, proceeded to announce Mr. Donnelly's ruin, 
 and to read him out of the party. It is the most singular and at 
 the same time complimentary indictment ever framed against a 
 public man, as an excuse for retiring him to private life. 
 
 Mr. Donnelly was elected to the House that year, from his own 
 county, as an Independent or AlUance man, indorsed bytheEepub- 
 licans; and when it came to voting for United States Senator, the 
 Independents having no candidate, he voted for the Eepublican 
 candidate. The Kepublicans claimed that he had turned Republi- 
 can again, but he insisted that he was still an Independent. The 
 Dispatch thus refers to this episode : 
 
 ' ' ^o man had ever entered anew upon a political career vyith brighter pros- 
 pects than had Mr. Donnelly at the opening of the present session. The arms of 
 the Republican party had been opened to receive him, with a joy that no returning 
 political prodigal had ever before experienced. In a speech of the rarest power and 
 eloquence, in the Republican legislative caucus, he placed himself squarely upon 
 the platform of that party and justified his errantry in the past. He was at once 
 the prophet and the leader of the farming element in the State." 
 
 But he fell from grace. The Dispatch continues its remarkable 
 eulogy, suggesting as a cause for his " fall " his faithfulness to the 
 people : 
 
 '' The bent of Mr. Donnelly's mind and sympathies undoubtedly leads him to 
 the championship of the cause of the common people. It is ingrained in him that 
 he should oppose every form of public policy which he might believe to lead toward 
 the curtailment of individual right. In the many digressions which he has made 
 from the path of party fealty, the people have involuntarily made allowance the 
 most liberal for this manifest disposition of his. They have marked his signal tal- 
 ents. Few of them there are who have not, at one time or other, fallen under the 
 spell of his magic eloquence. Intellectually there is no man that has appeared 
 among us, perhaps, who can be said to be his peer. A scholar the most profound, 
 a debater the most skillful, a publicist trained and educated ; still this singular man 
 has willfully stamped upon his own character the brand of political failure." 
 
 Why ? He was not dishonest. The Dispatch continues : * 
 " For upward of a quarter of a century Ignatius Donnelly has been prominent 
 in the public life of Minnesota. It may be truly said, how^ever, that during that 
 period the enmities which he has aroused have been more numerous and enduring, 
 and have had a more vital bearing upon his career, than any friendships which 
 may have sprung either from his personal good qualities or from that admiration 
 which his grand talents could not help but evoke. Enemies and friends alike 
 unite in conceding to him that the duties of every public station which Mr. Don- 
 
CONCLUDING liEMABKS. 129 
 
 nelly lias over held have been disehai-gcd faithfully and with ability. That this is 
 the public verdict the people of Minnesota have ijorne testimony 'in the many ex- 
 alted positions to which they have successively called him." 
 
 Who were these enemies he had made, whose opposition liad 
 such a vital bearing on his career ? They were the men who were 
 profiting by the plunder of the people. Why, let us ask, had he in- 
 curred their enmity ? Because he would neither betray nor deceive 
 the people. And therefore, despite all his honesty, industry and 
 ability, to which the Bispatch bears sucli ample testimony, he is 
 branded as a " political failure," and the leading Republican organ 
 of the State reads him out of the party. And in doing so it throws 
 a flood of light on the character of the man it proscribes, and the 
 character of the age and country in which he lives. 
 
 Yes, it is " ingrained " in him to defend the oppressed, and it is 
 '' ingrained " in him to advocate the same ideas in olfice that he did 
 before he got the office. And there is no human power that can 
 corrupt him, or intimidate him, or cajole him. He will fight as 
 bravely alone as with ten thousand at his back. I well remember 
 last winter, when the great battle was on over the usury question 
 and the repeal of the forfeiture clause, Avhen his allies, and some 
 even of his own men, deserted him, and when he was the subject of 
 savage attacks without number on the floor and in the newspapers — 
 I well remember the fierce determination with which he said : 
 
 "■ The Eepublicans may desert me, but I shall stand firm. The 
 Democrats may desert me, but I shall stand firm. The Alliance 
 may desert me, but I shall stand firm. You may hack the flesh ofl:* 
 these bones, but the very bones will continue to fight for justice." 
 
 We know of nothing equal to that since Martin Luther declared 
 that he would go to the Diet of Worms " though there were as many 
 devils there as there are tiles on the roofs of the houses." 
 
 Indeed, it might be said that Governor Donnelly is the strang- 
 est and most extraordinary combination of fierce determination 
 with amiability and magnanimity that was ever heard of. He will 
 fight the whole world in arms, but he will not strike his worst 
 enemy when he is down.^ Indeed, he is oftentimes too good- 
 natured for his own good; and part of his failure in public life has 
 been due to the fact that he would trust, and take to his heart, those 
 who had once proved themselves unworthy of his confidence, but 
 who came to him with appeals to his mercy. His treatment of Bill 
 King illustrates this feature of his character. 
 
 Concluding Remarks. 
 
 It will probably be expected that, as usual at the end of a 
 biography, there should be some summing up of the character of 
 the subject of the narrative, in particulars other than those I have 
 just spoken of; but I do not feel able to undertake such a task. If 
 I attempted it my readers would, I fear, conclude that my natural 
 
130 BIOGBAPHICAL. 
 
 feelings, as a friend, had colored my judgment. Moreover it seems 
 to me that any one who has read the foregoing biography, or who 
 will read the extracts which follow in the body of this work, will 
 have formed a fairly accurate judgment for himself. I would there- 
 fore only call attention to one or two points. 
 
 In the first place it is very apparent that Mr. Donnelly is a very 
 composite character, with a great many sides to his mind. 
 
 It is usually the rule that a ready man is not a profound man ; 
 an orator is seldom a writer; and high imagination and close reason- 
 ing and penetration of mind seldom go together. But it seems to 
 me all these qualities will be conceded, by all men, to the subject of 
 this sketch. 
 
 An amusing article appeared, not long since, in the St. Paul 
 Globe, the leading Democratic paper of Minnesota, which considers 
 Grovernor Donnelly's composite character from a hostile standpoint: 
 
 " Some people liave compared Ignatius Donnellj to Cicero. . . . This is en- 
 tirely unfair. When it comes to talking, Cicero is not to be named with Donnelly. 
 Cicero was wordy, prosy, ornate and elaborate. Donnelly scintillates with the 
 rarest of prismatic brilliancy ; he is as witty as Lucifer, who made the angels 
 laugh around the glassy sea ; he is as fluent as an Itasca County brook-stream on a 
 July day; he is as original and as full of joyous surprises, terrifying abysses and 
 overshadowing summits as are the Peruvian Andes. Ignatius Donnelly is a great 
 orator. 
 
 "Donnelly is not like Cicero in action either. Ceesar and Pompey and Mark 
 Antony, and other ward politicians of ancient Rome, snubbed Cicero, and made 
 him whimper. Finally, he got to be such a bore that they cut off his head, or some 
 other vital part of him. Just fancy anybody's snubbing Ignatius Donnelly ! Who 
 ever heard Ignatius Donnelly whimper? Who, in the whole wide world, would 
 dare say that he had ever been anything but interesting and effective ? He is as 
 earnest and persistent as Charles Stewart Parnell. He can exist without political 
 pabulum as long as Succi.went without food, and then come up smiling, sleek and 
 fat, as though he had been all the time fattening on the fees of the best office in 
 Kamsey County. He is as steadfast and brave, in defeat and disaster, as Marcus 
 Aurelius. He is as industrious and many-sided as William Ewart Gladstone. Ho 
 can thrust and parry with the grace of an Orlando. He is as subtle as Jay Gould ; 
 as masterful as Thomas B. Reed ; and as crafty as Macchiavelli. Donnelly is not 
 at all like Cicero in action. He is an amazing man." 
 
 His Keadt Wit. 
 
 I give a good many specimens of his quick wit in the following 
 extracts. I would call attention to but one or two more at this 
 time. 
 
 The Waterways Convention of the Northwestern States, which 
 met a few years ago in in St. Paul, was called, ostensibly, in the in- 
 terest of the producers, as against the exactions of the railroad cor- 
 porations; but these latter interests, as usual, packed the conven- 
 tion with railroad attorneys, who were determined that nothing 
 should be done that would conflict with the interest-sof their employers. 
 Mr. Donnelly was invited to attend by Governor Hubbard, as a promi- 
 nent representative of the producing class. He tried to get some 
 resolutions passed looking to reduced railroad charges^ because, as he 
 
" GOT 'EM AGIN, BY THUNDER.'' 131 
 
 argued, it would be useless to improve the great waterways, at 
 public expense, if the productions of the country were eaten up by 
 exorbitant railroad charges before they could reach those water- 
 ways. The railroad lawyers combined to table his resolutions and 
 put him down. One gentleman, of tliis class, a very able, and per- 
 sonally a very worthy man, now deceased, got up, and, referring 
 to Governor Donnelly's resolutions, and desiring to intimate that 
 they were foreign to the business of the convention, said : 
 
 " Mr. Chairman, I move you that we also indorse the new 
 revision of the Old Testament." 
 
 Governor Donnelly sprang to his feet, as quick as a flash, and 
 said : 
 
 '' And, Air. Chairman, I move that we especially indorse that 
 verse of the Old Testament which says: ^And the ox knoweth his 
 owner, and the ass his master's crib.' '' 
 
 The convention " took " at once, and the roar of laughter and 
 applause that followed lasted for several minutes, while the railroad 
 attorney sat down pale as a sheet, and looking as if he had been 
 hit on the head with a club. 
 
 Another attorney, who sat in the gallery, and whose sympathies 
 were not at all with Mr. Donnelly's views, and who, when excited, 
 is an especially profane man, turned to a friend sitting next to him, 
 
 and, swearing fiercely, said: " To think that that d d fool had 
 
 not sense enough to keep out of the claws of that d d wild- 
 cat!" 
 
 Another story is told of him that illustrates his rare quickness 
 of mind. 
 
 He was making a speech during the war, when party feeling 
 ran high, to an outdoor meeting at Stillwater, standing on a piazza, 
 between two posts. Some political opponent, in the background, 
 hurled a hard, solid head of cabbage at him, and it struck one of 
 the posts beside him with great force. He stooped and picked it 
 up. 
 
 '' Gentlemen," he said, " some Democrat has flung his head up 
 here. I only asked him for his ears, and, lo! he has given me his 
 whole head ! " 
 
 Then, turning the mangled side of the vegetable to the audi- 
 enjce, he continued : 
 
 " Look at the fine, intelligent cast of that countenance ! The man 
 that head belongs to believes, I have no doubt, that slavery is 
 ordained of God, and that the best way to prosecute the war is to 
 stop fighting. " 
 
 " Got 'em Agin, by Thunder.'' . ; . 
 
 During the Senatorial contest of 1S89, Governor Donnelly had 
 rooms in the Merchants' Hotel, St. Paul. On a cabinet, in his re- 
 ception room; was one of those curious Japanese dragons, made of 
 
132 BIOGRAPHICAL. 
 
 Xmpier mache, all eyes and horns, a horrible-looking object. Among 
 the Governor's callers, every day, was an amiable young fellow, 
 whose great weakness was drink. He made himself rather a bore to 
 the Governor and his friends, for be was seldom sober. 
 
 One day he happened to roll his eyes up until they encountered 
 the terrible-looking creature on the cabinet. 
 
 " Good God! " he cried, rising to his feet, " what's that? " 
 
 '' What's what? " asked the Governor, quietly. 
 
 *' Why, that thing there ! " pointing to it. 
 
 " There's nothing there," said the Governor. 
 
 " What! nothing tbere? " 
 
 " Not a'thing. Is there, gentlemen? " asked the Governor, ap- 
 pealing to those present. 
 
 They entered into the spirit of the joke, and protested that 
 there was not a thing to be seen on the cabinet. 
 
 The young man's face grew very solemn ; he grabbed his hat 
 and struck a bee-line for the door, muttering as he went, " Got 'em 
 agin, by thunder ! " 
 
 He never returned. He remained sober for six months. 
 
 A Difference in the Size of Vessels. 
 
 One day in the State Senate, 'a very important question was up 
 for discussion, and one of the Senators, a man of very mediocre 
 ability, proposed that all speeches be limited to five minutes each. 
 A discussion followed. 
 
 " Why, " said he, '^ Mr. President, I can say all I have to say, 
 on any question, in five minutes. " 
 
 " Mr. President," said Governor Donnelly, " it takes longer to 
 empty a five-gallon jug than a pint bottle. " 
 
 The motion was lost. 
 
 Hic Oeiginality. 
 
 On the other hand, in Governor Donnelly's literary works we find 
 evidences of the deepest and most original thought. Who, before him, 
 ever conceived that the destruction of Plato's Atlantis was identical 
 with the Flood of Noah? Who, before him, ever saw the relationship 
 between the alphabets of the old and new world? And in Ragna- 
 rok we have the most startling and original conceptions as to the 
 origin of the Drift, and a linking together of Legends and geological 
 and astronomical facts which has carried conviction to thousands of 
 minds. Who, before him, ever conceived the idea that an absolute 
 arithmetical cipher existed in the Shakespeare plays, aud saw the 
 real nature of Bacon's hints about a cipher narrative infolded in an 
 external narrative ? ' 
 
 His Coiteage. 
 
 In 1887, while Governor Donnelly was a member of the Mm- 
 nesota HousC; he proved, in the most striking way, his possession of 
 
HIS INDirSTRY. I33 
 
 extraordinary nerve. The State Capitol building had been vcn-y 
 poorly constructed; an immense weight of iron, thousands of tons 
 was piled on the roof, which was insufficiently held up by the walls' 
 One day a tremendous crowd gathered to witness the fight between 
 the temperance and anti-temperance elements over the high license 
 law — every seat and every foot of space was occupied. Governor 
 Donnelly was acting as speaker ^^ro tern. One of the officers of the 
 House came and whispered to him that the floor was settling the 
 walls cracking, and that in another moment the ponderous 'roof 
 might come crashing down. Already great cracks appeared rin-ht 
 over his head. A sudden movement of the dense mass of people 
 might bring down death and ruin upon them. Governor Donnelly 
 rose, and, with a smiling face, said that in all legislative buildings 
 * the dead-pomt of danger " was always inside the door, on the 
 floor ot the House, and that there were too many people present- 
 and he requested those in the galleries to move out. He did it so 
 jovially that the crowd quietly and reluctantlv withdrew. Many 
 laughed and kept their seats, for they could not believe there was 
 any danger. Then he urged those in the lobby to withdraw; and 
 when they had done so, he called the attention of the House to the 
 cracks m the wall and ceiling, and the frightened House instantly 
 adjourned. The St. Paul Globe said, the next day: 
 
 " The value of having a man with a cool head and steady nerve at the helm 
 was never better illustrated than yesterday, when Mr. Donnelly filled the speaker's 
 chair during the impending crisis of a falling building. It was Mr. DoSnelly's 
 reassuring manner, m requesting the crowd to withdraw, that averted a stampede 
 which would assuredly have been a thing of horrible fatality at that crisis. The 
 provabilities are that a very slight vibration of the floor would have hastened the 
 spreading ot the walls, and the hundreds of men and women assembled in the 
 House ot Kepresentatives would have been buried in the wreck. People who at 
 rh3 polite request ot Acting Speaker Donnelly, quietly withdrew, laughinj? o'ver 
 what they supposed was a little practical joke to get them out of the room, so as 
 to give the members ot the Legislature a better chance to spread themselves on the 
 higb license bill, little realized the imminent peril which environed them, or how 
 much thev owe to Mr. Donnelly for averting what otherwise might have been the 
 most dreadful catastrophe of modern times. Mr. Donnelly's way of thinkino- on 
 many public matters, is not our way of thinking, but the Globe is alwavs ready to 
 render credit where credit is due. And so it is we write it down, that for a cool 
 head and steady nerve Ignatius Donnelly takes the palm, and deserves praise for 
 his heroism m the face of danger. " r ^ ^ 
 
 The hall of the House could not be again occupied until great 
 pillars were erected to hold up the roof, and after the adjournment 
 of the Legislature the whole thing had to be reconstructed. 
 
 His Industry. 
 
 Governor Donnelly's industry is something phenomenal. It is 
 endless and absolutely tireless. He never rests during his waking 
 hours. He works regulariy from twelve to fourteen hours a day, and 
 he boasts that he is as fresh at midnight as he was in the morning 
 Nor does he force himself to this industry. It is natural to him' 
 
 ^*^ 
 
134 BIOGBAPHICAL. 
 
 He could not do otherwise. One of his brother senators called 
 him "a steam-engine." His greatest delight is in his library, and 
 he never leaves his home except reluctantly; and under the pres- 
 sure of his sense of public duty. 
 
 His Habits. 
 
 He has been all his life abstemious and temperate in his habits. 
 He has never used whisky or tobacco. Of late years he does not 
 drink tea or coffee, believing, with Thiers, that they are nerve 
 poisons and destructive of digestion. The result of his mode of life 
 Is that, while nearly sixty years of age, he looks like a man of forty- 
 five, and can perform, without effort, an amount of work that would 
 kill many a man of forty. 
 
 The Futuke. 
 
 As we intimated when we began this biography, we do not 
 think Governor Donnelly's career is at an end, or even near its close. 
 He is in the full flush of extraordinary vigor. Even as we write, a 
 new novel from his pen, Doctor Huguet, is, as we have shown, at- 
 tracting the attention of the world; and he has, he says, hterary 
 work enough blocked out to occupy him for months and years to 
 come; so that, even if the Plutocracy are able, as is very probable, 
 to keep him out of national pubhc life, as they have done for the last 
 twenty-three years, he will be neither idle nor useless. 
 
 In Conclusion. 
 
 We conclude these pages with many apologies. They were 
 written hurriedly, in the midst of the exactions of newspaper life 
 and many pressing duties, and we offer them simply as a rough and 
 imperfect throwing together of facts, and a mere sketch of the 
 life of a man in whom many people are to-day greatly interested. 
 
 We hope to recur to the subject hereafter, under more 
 favorable circumstances. 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 The Last Act in the Drama. 
 
 SINCE I prepared the foregoing pages of this biography, some- 
 thing has happened which has attracted renewed attention to 
 Governor Donnelly,, on both sides of the Atlantic; namely, his action 
 for damages against thQ Pioneer -Press newspaper for libel. 
 
 Although every page of the preceding record has shown him 
 constantly battling for riglit and justice, against wealth and power; 
 w^hile facts and official documents have proved, beyond controversy, 
 that his enemies were a gang of public plunderers and desperate 
 thieves, nevertheless, as if by the very irony of fate, this champion 
 of the people has been forced to defend himself, in the last few 
 months, against the charge of the corruptionists, that he has been, 
 or rather was, twenty-Uvo or tweiitif -three years ago, a corrupt and 
 dishonest man; and tliey have sought to estabUsh the truth of his 
 charge by the testimony of no less a person than that dreadful 
 character — Bill King — whom we saw indicted for perjury by the 
 grand jury of the District of Columbia, and flying to Canada for 
 shelter from the officers of his outraged country. 
 
 A Peculiar Kind of Witnesses. 
 
 I do not propose to defend Governor Donnelly, in much detail, 
 against these attacks. They are too ffimsy. They are already 
 answered by the verdict of a jury in his favor, for if that jury had 
 believed that any one of the counter-charges made against him was 
 sustained by the evidence, they would undoubtedly have given their 
 decision in favor of his persecutors. But the end is not yet. Other 
 suits are pending, and, I learn, still others are to be instituted. All 
 the lion in Governor Donnelly is aroused, and his assailants will get 
 enough of it before he consents to stop. 
 
 It is sufficient to say now that during the last twenty- three 
 years Governor Donnelly has been almost constantly in public life, 
 in Minnesota; he has served in seven sessions of the House and 
 Senate of the State; he has been at all times a public leader, with 
 a large influence and following. If he had been corrupt he could 
 readily have sold out a score of times to the corporations and the 
 
136 ADDENDA. 
 
 rings. But during all that period not a single charge of wrong- 
 doing is brought against him. His enemies concede that his career 
 has been spotless. He testified in the course of the libel suit that in 
 1887 he was offered $100,000 to betray the AUiance and stop his 
 fight against the railroad corporations. And, strange to say, the 
 very man, (a fellow by the name of Rhoads), who made this offer, 
 and pressed Governor Donnelly to accept it, and go with him and 
 see the leading railroad magnate of the State, and close up the 
 trade, took the stand and swore that Governor Donnelly's character 
 as an honest legislator was bad! And yet he admitted that Gov- 
 ernor Donnelly, in a pubhc meeting in Hastings, where he, Ehoads, 
 lived, had publicly charged, in 1890, that Rhoads had made him 
 that offer, and had challenged him, RhoadS; to meet him before the 
 public, at a subsequent meeting, and deny the charge if he dared; 
 and that he, Rhoads, had never accepted that challenge. 
 
 A Defeated Candidate Testifieth! 
 
 Another man — one R. C. Libby, of Hastings — also swore that 
 Governor Donnelly's character was "bad," especially among his 
 friends and neighbors, in Dakota County. Mr. Donnelly's attorney 
 — Mr. C. Welhngton — then asked him the following brief and 
 pointed questions : 
 
 Wellington. " Did yoii run against Governor Donnelly last fall for the State 
 Senate in Dakota County ? " 
 
 Lihhy. "Yes." 
 
 Wellington. " On what ticket ? " 
 
 Libby. " The Democratic ticket." 
 
 Wellington. " The county is usually Democratic by about 500 majority, I be- 
 lieve 1" 
 
 Libby. "Yes." 
 
 Wellington. " There was a Eepublican candidate also in the field ? " 
 
 Libby. "Yes." 
 
 Wellington. " And Grovemor Donnelly beat both of you, by large majorities ? " 
 
 Libby. " Yes." 
 
 Wellington. ' ' And you say his character is bad and the people have no con- 
 fidence in him ? " 
 
 Libby. "Yes." 
 
 Wellington. " That's all." 
 
 And the obliterated Libby retired, amid shouts and roars of 
 laughter, from judges, attorneys, jury and audience. 
 
 Another witness, named Rich, swore that he lived quite near 
 Governor Donnelly, and that his reputation for political honesty was 
 bad among his immediate neighbors. Then came the following 
 cross- examaination : 
 
 Wellington. ' ' You say Governor Donnelly's character is bad among his neigh- 
 bors in his own township ? " 
 Bich. "Yes." 
 
 Wellington. " "What township is that ? " 
 Hick. " Mninger Township." 
 
 Wellington. " He has lived there thirty- five years, hasn't he ? " 
 Rich. '" I believe so." 
 
HASTINGS AND DAKOTA RAILWAY CHAUGE. 137 
 
 Wellington. " Now, was uot tho voto of thnt towuship almost unanimously 
 in favor of Governor Donnelly when ho ran for State Senator last fall, while the 
 rest of his party ticket had but a third of tho vote '? " 
 
 Bich. " I believe it was." [Great laughter and applause.] 
 
 lu fact, the immense crowd in the court-room was so strongly 
 in favor of Governor Donnelly, even in that hostile city of Minneap- 
 olis, that they repeatedly broke forth in tremendous applause when- 
 ever his brilliant counsel, Mr. Wellington, said a word in his favor, 
 until the presiding judge threatened to clear the court-room if the 
 interruptions continued. 
 
 The Hastings and Dakota Railway Charge. 
 
 One WiUiam G. Le Due, a personal and political enemy of Gov- 
 ernor Donnelly, and now a Republican office-holder and tool of the 
 Phitocrats, swore that in 1867 Governor Donnelly made a demand on 
 him for $10,000, for services rendered in procuring a land-grant, as 
 member of Congress, for the Hastings and Dakota Railroad, of 
 which he, Le Due, was president; and that he, Le Due, presented 
 his demand to the board of directors of the company, and that they 
 refused to pay it; and thnt he. Governor Donnelly, then reduced his 
 demand to $5,000, and again Le Due presented it to the company, and 
 again they refused to pay it. But Le Due said that he did not con- 
 sider this attempt at bribery dishonorable, and that he and Mr. Don- 
 nelly remained warm friends for years afterwards. Goveinor Donnelly 
 produced the secretary of the company and another gentleman, one 
 of the board of directors and of the executive committee at that 
 time, both perfectly reputable men, and they swore positively that 
 no such demands were ever made by Le Due, Donnelly or any 
 one else. And Le Due could not and did not produce a single wit- 
 ness to sustain his statement, out of all the large board of directors 
 and stockholders of the company. 
 
 And it further appeared that the company was practically 
 bankrupt at the time; that it had but about $3,000 in its treasury 
 when Le Due swore Donnelly asked them for $10,000; that its stock 
 was worthless; that he, Le Due, stated, at a meeting of the direct- 
 ors (Governor Donnelly not being present, and never having been 
 present at any meeting of the board), that Governor D. had ren- 
 dered the company great services, outside of his duties as Congress- 
 man; that he asked no compensation therefor, but that he, Le Due, 
 moved that, as an expresssion of their gratitude (Governor Don- 
 nelly having subscribed for $2,500 of the stock and paid in a five per 
 cent, assessment on it), his money so paid, $125, be returned to him, 
 and that the balanct; of his assessments be treated as paid up in full. 
 This was done; and the secretary so notified Governor Donnelly; 
 but he never replied to the notice; he regarded the stock as worth- 
 less; he had subscribed for stock, as others had done, to help along 
 a local enterprise ; the stock was never issued or delivered to him ; the 
 road became bankrupt through Le Due's mismanagement, and the 
 
138 ADDENDA. 
 
 citizens of Hastings, who had invested some $70,000 in the enterprise, 
 lost every cent of their money, and the stock became utterly worth- 
 less — not worth the paper it was printed on. The largest stockholder 
 in the company, Stephen Gardner, president of the First National 
 Bank of Hastings; L. S. Follett, cashier of the same, and Michael 
 Comer, Treasurer of Dakota County (both of these two last named 
 gentlemen having also put their money into the road, as a local pub- 
 lic enterprise), united in a letter to the St. Paul Press, dated Feb- 
 ruary 23, 1874, in which they said : 
 
 " Le Due asked us to vote Mr. Donnelly $2,500 in stock, saying that it would 
 only in part compensate him for his trouble. We knew that Mr. Donnelly had 
 perfoi'med these services, and voted him the stock, not for any past Congressional 
 services, or with the hope of any in the future, but solely for services in aiding 
 Le Due, upon his (Le Due's) own representations as to the value of the services en- 
 dered. The resolution was passed at a public meeting of the Board of Directors, 
 and almost every 'person in Hastings, at the time, hiew of it, and it was looked upon by 
 all as a perfectly legitimate transaction. Mr. Donnelly was not present, knew 
 nothing of the inatter until afterwards, and did not take the stock." 
 
 They further say : 
 
 "We knew Governor Donnelly Avhen he first went to Congress, and had pretty 
 fair means of knowing his financial condition, and when he returned, after six years 
 in Congress, his means were not visibly increased, and he was not one of that' kind 
 that squandered money. . . . We believe he is unselfish and above bribery, 
 and we know that he did not prostitute his position in Congress to his own pecu- 
 niary advantage. " 
 
 The St. Paul Press published this letter. It never attempted to 
 deny or contradict its statements, and yet, with dreadful mendacity, 
 it continued its slanderous attacks on Grovernor Donnelly, on this 
 very charge^ year after year, and set it up in its answer to the libel 
 suit; and when Governor Donnelly's counsel attempted to show 
 that they had published the foregoing letter, and knew perfectly 
 well that the charge was false, they made the technical objection 
 that the St. Paul Press and the St. Paul Pioneer-Press ivere not 
 one and the same paper, although they admitted that the Press had 
 simply bought out the Pioneer; and that the same man edited and 
 the same man managed the old Press and the new Pioneer-Press! 
 
 The Memphis and El Paso Chaege. 
 
 This charge was fully as baseless as the last. Gen. John C. 
 Fremont, the great explorer, conqueror of California, and first can- 
 didate of the Eepublican party for the Presidency, was, in 1869, 
 president of a Texas railroad company called " The Memphis and 
 El Paso." At the close of Governor Donnelly's term as Congress- 
 man, when he was about to return to private life, General Fremont 
 offered to employ him, as an attorney for his company, to appear 
 before the committees of the next Congress and sustain an applica- 
 tion for legislation which would enable them to extend their road 
 from Texas to the Pacific Ocean, over the line now occupied by the 
 Southern Pacific Railway. The company had no money, and its 
 
COL. BL ANTON DUNCANS STATEMENT. 139 
 
 stock was practically worthless; and General Fremont ottered 
 Governor Donnelly a large amount of such stock, and a due-bill 
 of the company for $50,000, if he would come to the next Congress, 
 pay his own expenses and work for the road. If Governor Don- 
 nelly had accepted that otter there would have been nothing wrong 
 about it, for he was out of public life, and he had been educated 
 for the law, and was even then a practicing attorney. But, after 
 considering the otter, Mr. Donnelly declined it and never received a 
 penny from the company. 
 
 In 1875 the St. PaufPre^s — Joe Wheelock — made a charge that 
 Mr. DouMelly had been corruptly intiuenced by the Memphis and 
 El Paso Company, as a member of Congress, and thereupon Doctor 
 William Schmoele, treasurer of the company, wrote a letter to the 
 Phi]adeli:)hia Press, dated February 10, 1875^ in which he said: 
 
 " Having held a contract with that company, by which I was to nold and dis- 
 pose of all the assets of the company, and apply the' proceeds to the building, etc., 
 of the road, and being, at the same "time, one of the officers of the company and 
 familiar with its affairs, I am able to state authoritatively that Mr. Donnelly 
 never received one cent from the company, or from any person for it." 
 
 Dr. Schmoele then proceeds to state the ofter made to Gov- 
 ernor Donnelly to employ him, about a week, he says (it was 
 really four days), before the close of his term as Congressman; and 
 that Governor Donnelly declined the same ; and adds : 
 
 "J feel that this statement is due to M,r. Donnelly, whom I have always 
 known and regarded as one of our most patriotic, pure and thorough statesmen." 
 
 This letter the St. Paul Press printed, and tlien retracted the 
 charge that it had made; ihis retraction was in February, 1875, and 
 closed with these words : 
 
 " And we, therefore, cheerfully admit that, as the case now stands, the evidence 
 affords no sufficient ground for the conclusion that the stock or money agreed to he paid 
 him ivere designed as a corrupt consideration for his legislative services.^' 
 
 And yet, despite this retraction, Wheelock, year after year, when- 
 ever Governor Donnelly was a candidate for ofiice, or was striking 
 heavy blows against the thieves, in the legislature or elswhere, has 
 revamped and revived this charge, and even made it a part of his 
 justification in the libel suit! There are no words in the English 
 language that can do justice to such a malignant character. 
 
 CoL. Blanton Duncan's Statement. 
 
 It seems that one of the directors of the defunct Memphis and 
 El Paso company was the celebrated Col. Blanton Duncan, of Ken- 
 tucky, one of the ablest Democrats and foremost statesmen of the 
 South. He was at Los Angeles, California, at the time of the trial 
 of the libel suit, and seeing, by the newspaper reports, that one of 
 the charges made against Governor Donnelly, by his enemies, was in 
 connection with that company, of which he had been a director, he 
 
140 ADDENDA. 
 
 voluntarily wrote a letter to Governor Donnelly, in which he gives 
 a full history of the company, and says : 
 
 '* If you had informed me that you required anybody to hear testimony that 
 you had passed through the times with clean hands and a clear conscience, when 
 dishonest men could make fortunes under the syndicates which ruled at Washing- 
 ton in 1868-9, I could have said emphatically, as I do now, that you were one of 
 the clean-handed. You had opportunities, from your great influence and the warm' 
 friendship entertained for you by many prominent men, to have amassed a million 
 easily, by simply turning rascal. But'instead of that you have lived as poor as a 
 church-mouse for twenty years, expressing your fearless independence on all occa- 
 sions, and, as I understand, making a bare living from your literary efforts. If all 
 the slanderous charges brought against you have no greater foundation than those in con- 
 nection tvith the El Pdso, you are as ivhite as an arigeU^ 
 
 After giving a history of the legislation in connection with the 
 company, and its subsequent unfortunate career, he concludes : 
 
 ' ' I knew fully who were the corrupt men engaged, and I have no hesitation 
 in saying that you were not ' in it;' and that no breath of scandal was whispered 
 about you, when scores of public men were freely discussed." 
 
 Bill King's Chaeges. 
 
 It is hardly worth while to dignify Bill King's charges by reply- 
 ing to them. The fact that he made them is a sufGicient refutation. 
 He has been the life-long enemy of Governor Donnelly ; the life-long 
 tool of rings and corporations, with all his dreadful record in the 
 past — he has been, in short, the worst and most dangerous instru- 
 ment of Plutocracy in the whole world. Governor Donnelly epit- 
 6mized the man when he said : 
 
 '' And there sits the mephitic Bill King, with his tail over his 
 back, surrounded by the unapproachable atmosphere of his own un- 
 paralleled reputation!" 
 
 We have seen that he contradicted himself flatly on the witness 
 stand. He first swore that, in the Senatorial fight, in 1869, he and 
 his brother Dana were neutral, as between Governor Donnelly and 
 Governor Eamsey ; and then, when he saw that Governor Donnelly 
 held in his hand documentary evidence which would contradict him on 
 that point, he whirled around and swore that both he and his brother 
 Dana, who was a member of the Legislature, were earnestly support- 
 ing Governor Donnelly, and continued to support him to the end of 
 the contest. And yet he had just sworn that Governor Donnelly had 
 offered him $3,000, to give to Dana, to corruptly induce him to sup- 
 port Donnelly, the man he was already earnestly/ in favor of! 
 
 But his other charge was even more ridiculous. He swore that 
 C. P. Huntington, the famous president of the Central Pacific Eail- 
 road Company, wrote him, King, a letter, in January or February, 
 1869, — the first and only letter, he says, that Huntington had ever 
 written him, — inclosing a check, for $2,500, drawn to bearer, and 
 requested him to give it to Governor Donnelly, because " for obvious 
 reasons" he, Huntington, did not want to send it directly to Don- 
 nelly ! And he swore he handed Governor Donnelly that check and 
 destroyed that letter. There was, of course, nothing to have pre- 
 
DEGRADING THE LA W. 141 
 
 vented Mr. Huntington, if the story had been true, from sending 
 the check, in a letter, directly to Governor Donnelly himself 
 through the mails; and, as no one would have known anything 
 about it, in that case, but Donnelly and himself, it would have 
 been a thousand times safer than *^to have placed in the hands 
 of a man of King's reputation evidence that would —if the charge 
 was true — have been sufficient to convict both Huntington and 
 Donnelly of bribery, and have sent them to the penitentiary. As 
 Mr. Wellington said, on the trial : 
 
 "If King had ever come into possession of any such letter, written by the 
 millionaire Californian, he would have cut his right arm off before he would have 
 destroyed it. He would have had not only the president of the richest railroad cor- 
 poration in the world on his knees forever after, subject to all the exactions he 
 might see fit to make upon him ; but he would also have had his enemy, Donnelly 
 in his power forever. The whole story is a lie, and an absurd lie." ' 
 
 It is needless to add that Governor Donnelly swore that there was 
 not a syllable of truth in King's statement. The Pioneer-Press did 
 not call Mr. Huntington as a witness, although as a railroad man 
 he could have had no sympathy with Mr. Donnelly ; and since the 
 trial Huntington has declared, most emphatically, through the 
 public press, that King is a liar; that he never sent any such 
 check to King ; and that he never paid Mr. Donnelly, directly or 
 indirectly, a single dollar. 
 
 Degrading the Law. 
 And this is all there is of the charges that have been heralded over 
 the whole world. This is all there is of the filth that has been heaped 
 upon Governor Donnelly's head for twenty years past by Joseph 
 A. Wheelock. Brought to the analysis of a court and jury, it becomes 
 thin air. Governor Donnelly's defense has been complete and 
 overwhelming at every point. The Pioneer-Press spent $12,000 
 in this trial; a large part of this was paid to detectives to 
 search the face of the world for everything Governor Don- 
 nelly had done during thirty-five years past, in order to find 
 something — anything — that would sustain and save them. 
 And, not content with professional detectives, they have de- 
 graded the very profession of the law, by hiring the law-firm of 
 Flandrau & Squires, of St. Paul, to play sleuth-hounds and spies, 
 and range over the country from New York and Washington 
 to the western boundary of Minnesota. No other reputable firm in 
 America would have descended to such work. 
 
 A Class of Democrats Described. 
 
 And this reminds us of a description in Governor Donnelly's 
 journal [1880] of a class of men that have been, for twenty years 
 the curse of the Democratic party in Minnesota, and probably in 
 other States : 
 
 "There is a class of superserviceable Democrats who are always ready to sell 
 
142 ADDENDA. 
 
 their poor, wMsky-sodden brains to the defense of Republican iniquity. Like 
 prostitutes that come of respectable families, the very decency of their antecedents 
 gives an increased rate to the wages of their infamy. They are always hired by 
 Republican thieves when they are in trouble, because they belong to the opposition, 
 which, as a party, has had no share in the steal. They are a stench in the nostrils 
 of honest Democrats — for Democracy means, or ought to mean, the cause of the 
 common people against the aristocracy. But these fellows believe that if they get 
 drunk on Republican champagne it makes them gentlemen — knights — barons — 
 feudal lords; — while their instincts may be as base as those of sneak-thieves, — 
 mere blackguards, befuddlers of juries, perverters of justice and allies of criminals. 
 But they steal the livery of Democratic decency to serve the Republican devil in. 
 Pah ! The spirits of Jefferson and Jackson look down from the clouds and spit upon 
 the wretches."' 
 
 As a general statement of an abstract truth no exception will 
 be taken to the correctness of this description of a class. 
 
 Attacking Mr. Donnelly's Books. 
 
 One of the attorneys for the Pioneer-Press in the libel suit 
 spent the greater part of his time, during his final argument, in 
 denouncing Governor Donnelly^ s literary tvorks! He said, for in- 
 stance, that Ccesafs Column was stolen bodily from Bellamy's Look- 
 ing Backward! There is, in fact, no more resemblance between 
 these two books than there is between Thomson's Seasons and the 
 tragedy of Lear. Nothing but a powerful alcoholic stimulant could 
 excuse such ignorant misrepresentation ; but the malignity was all the 
 lawyer's own — it had about it the ingrained flavor of the tomahawk 
 and the scalping-knife. 
 
 A significant fact is, that this man is the hireling of the 
 railroad corporations. At the very time that he was thus denouncing 
 Governor Donnelly and his great works he was the paid attorney of 
 the Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway Company, the company whose 
 agents flood Dakota County every time Governor D. is a candidate 
 for office. 
 
 The Motive. 
 
 But why, I ask, these attacks? Why Elihu Washburne's un- 
 founded and unsupported charges'? Why Wheelock's venomous 
 persecutions of a lifetime? Why Bill King's coming out from the 
 shameful obscurity to which his evil life had consigned him, and 
 daring to enter once more into a court of justice, to attempt to 
 swear away any man's character f Why did the very railroad attor- 
 neys join in this man-hunt f 
 
 Why is Governor Donnelly so harried, tormented, pursued and 
 blackened with lies, spread through the agency of the Associated 
 Press all over the United States and all over, the world? Why, at 
 sixty years, of age, is he- compelled to go into c.ourt to defend his 
 good name — for^the sake of hi-s wife and children — against such a 
 gang of knaves and thieves ? Why was the inside raihng of the 
 court-room at Minneapohs filled, crammed (Mr. Wellington called 
 
HE IS INDOHSED. 143 
 
 attention to the fact in his speech) with a mob of tools and agents 
 of every form of robbery that oppresses the people f The Millers' 
 Ring, the Elevator Ring, the Watered Stock Ring, the Railroad Ring, 
 the Indian Ring, the Pine LandRing, all were there, inside that railing, 
 to help kill and bury this man. What had he done f They admitted, 
 by failing to attack it, that for twenty-three years his life had been 
 blameless and spotless. They could not show that he had ever in- 
 jured a human being. They could not trace home a "single wrong 
 or oppression to his door. No combination owned him. In the midst 
 of poverty he had always fought for humanity. 
 
 Ah ! that was his offense. 
 
 He would not cease; he would not come to terms; he would not 
 sell out; he would not he corrupt ; and, therefore, they charged 
 
 HIM WITH CORRUPTION. 
 
 Think of it ! A gang of rich rascals, rich by public plunder, 
 trying to prove that a poor man, living in a httle hamlet, not even 
 a village, supporting himself by tongue and pen, was a corrupt and 
 purchasable knave, when, if it had been true, they would have had 
 no quarrel with him, for they ivoulcl have bought him, over and over 
 again, long ago. 
 
 " Ah ! " th-ey said, " if he would only stick to literature and 
 book-making, we would crown him with bays and laurels, and we 
 would carry him on our shoulders. Why will a man with such 
 genius interfere in politics? " 
 
 Why? Because Ignatius Donnelly is something more than a 
 book-maker. He is a philanthroi)ist. He wishes to leave the 
 world better than he found it. Only some such reason can explain 
 his entrance into the filthy pool of politics. He beheves, as he shows 
 in Ccesar's Column, that the world is on the high road to ruin, and 
 he would save it, if that be possible. He knows there is no money in 
 such a contest for him, and no promotion; nothing but defamation 
 and sorrow. It is a thankless task. But, as he has often said, in 
 his public speeches, he believes that the only title a man can have 
 to happiness in the next world is devotion to the interests of his 
 fellow creatures in this. That is the key-note of his career. 
 
 He is Indorsed. 
 
 Any one can see the purpose of these ferocious attacks on Gov- 
 ernor Donnelly. Hon. John G. Otis, member of Congress elect from 
 Kansas, and a very able gentleman, wrote to Governor Donnelly, 
 immediately after the trial ; 
 
 "We' have read with great interest the reports from jour libel case. It is 
 simply Plutocracy versus the People. 
 
 " We admire your courage in never giving up to the infernal Money-Power. 
 
 " In that suit Ignatius Donnelly represents the cause of the common people 
 single-handed. But rest assured he has the sympathy of every true reformer." 
 
144 ADDENDA. 
 
 The Farmers' Voice, of Chicago, one of the leading Keform 
 papers of the United States, says : 
 
 ''From his first entrance into public life down to the present time Ignatius 
 Donnelly has been a loj'al tribune of the people. 
 
 " He has not only been scrupulously honest in keeping his hands clean from 
 the stain of vulgar money bribes, but he'has shown forth that loftier integrity that 
 will not temporize and palter with sincere convictions in order to gain high place. 
 
 " Ignatius Donnelly, gifted as he is with commanding genius, could have been 
 continuously in public life during the past twenty years. 
 
 "He had merely to compromise with truth, and Governorships, United States 
 Senatorships, and even the Presidency of the Nation, would have invited him." 
 
 " If Mr. Donnelly had consented to a truce with the plutocratic corporations 
 it would have been all-sufficient. 
 
 " He need not have worked for them either openly or secretly, for the mon- 
 opolists would have rewarded him with the highest honors in the Nation, as a 
 wage for keeping silent. 
 
 " They would have joyously compromised with him, on a basis that he should 
 not attack their atrocious felonies against the prosperity of the producers and the 
 stability of the republic. . . . 
 
 "Ignatius Donnelly is above and beyond the power of plutocratic corruption, 
 and the threats of the Triumphant Plutocracy cannot frighten his serene and fear- 
 less soul. - 
 
 " He is the unrelenting foe of aristocratic privilege, and the leagued money 
 kings of America hate, and would destroy him if they could. 
 
 "Men of the great plain people of America, the plutocrats are striving to crush 
 Ignatius Donnelly, and they do this because he is your friend, your defender, your 
 dauntless tribune. 
 
 " Every blow these assassins strike at him is a blow struck at you, because if 
 he were not your champion, they would not seek to do him harm." 
 
 A thousand similar utterances could be quoted from newspapers 
 and individuals, since the trial of that famous suit for libel. 
 An Appendix to "Cesar's Column." 
 
 Can any one doubt that the events detailed in this biography, 
 and especially in these closing chapters, are a fit and proper appendix 
 to CcEsafs Column? Can anyone fail to see that there is noth- 
 ing told in that book half so significant of the decadence of free 
 institutions as this record of the long and terrible battle of a human 
 life against the combined forces of the Money Power? Can any one 
 fail to see that the subtle, wide-spreading, cruel, degrading despot- 
 ism of Prince Cabano already has possession of this country. East and 
 West ? Can any one doubt that if the new political revolution is not 
 able to arrest these evils and save the republic, peacefully, at the 
 ballot-box, the dreadful figure of the column of corpses will soon 
 rise, amid flam© and ashes, and the destruction of a rotten civiliza- 
 tion? 
 
EXCEEPTS FEOM THE WIT, WISDOM, POETRY AND 
 ELOQUENCE OF IGNATIUS DONNELLY. 
 
DONNELLIANA. 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM THE WIT, WISDOM, POETRY AND 
 ELOQUENCE OF IGNATIUS DONNELLY. 
 
 T NTELLECT. An ounce of brains outweighs a pound of muscle. — 
 ■^ Speech to Farmers, 1873. 
 
 The Soul. Every fiber of the frame of man or woman partakes 
 of the characteristics of the soul. — C(esafs Column. 
 
 Truth. Truth is born an acorn, not an osik.—Bagnarok. 
 
 The Jews. '' Well, " he replied, " it was the old question of the 
 survival of the fittest. Christianity fell upon the Jews, originally a 
 race of agriculturists and shepherds, and forced them, for many cent- 
 uries, through the most terrible ordeal of persecution the history 
 of manlvind bears any record of. Only the strong of body, the cun- 
 ning of brain, the long-headed, the persistent, the men with capacity 
 to live where a dog would starve, survived the awful trial. Like 
 breeds like; and now the Christian w^orld is paying, in tears and 
 blood, for the sufferings inflicted by their bigoted and ignorant an- 
 cestors upon a noble race. When the time came for liberty and 
 fair play, the Jew was master in the contest with the Gentile, who 
 hated and feared him.'' — CcBsar^s Column. 
 
 How TO Improve the World. Out of arrested selfishness 
 comes happiness. — Speech to the State Alliance, December, 1890. 
 
 Evening. 
 The day drops piecemeal, darkly crumbling down. 
 Heaping the east with gray, worn, twilight ruins. — 1850. 
 The World. The world is a garden of beauty, filled with the 
 stench of injustice. —Journal, 1886. 
 
4 BONNELLIANA. 
 
 Loss OF Force. Every concession to our own weaknesses is a 
 robbery of our own forces. — 1855. 
 
 LiBE. A fight with bacteria. — Journal, 1889. 
 Death. Death is simply the opening of the windows. — Jour- 
 nal, 1886. 
 
 The Farmers. '^ There are 6,000,000 farmers in the United States 
 hard at work." — Exchange. 
 
 Yes; and half a million thieves living off them. — The Anti-Monop- 
 olist. 
 
 Magnanimous. When G-od lays his hand upon a man it is time 
 to take ours off. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 Love. What a powerful impulse is this love ! It is nature-wide. 
 The rushing together of the chemical elements; the attraction of suns 
 and planets— all are love. See how even the plant casts its pollen 
 abroad on the winds, that it may somewhere reach and rest upon 
 the bosom of a sister-flower; and there, amid perfume and sweetness 
 and the breath of zephyrs, the great mystery of life is re-enacted. The 
 plant is without intellect, but it is sensible to love. — Ccesafs Column. 
 
 The Virtues of Selfishness. It will be no consolation to the 
 tra\eler, when he feels the teeth of the lioness crunching his ribs, to 
 know that she is a devoted mother and an affectionate spouse. — 
 Journal, 1882. 
 
 Twilight. The sunset towers from gold heaps into gloom. — 
 1850. 
 
 When Truth's wings are grown she draws her feet out of the 
 pigeon -nets of technicality. — Journal, 1868. 
 
 The Tributes of Virtue. Abuse and denunciation are the 
 tributes which villainy pays to virtue. — Speech to the State Alliance, 
 Bee, 1890. 
 
 GrREAT Poets. And as the hunter knows the older and bolder 
 eagles, as they fly far above him in the heavens, by the ragged 
 clefts in their wings, where the feathers liave fallen out, so in the 
 daring and venturesome soarers above Parnassus, there is a rough- 
 ness and carelessness which reveals them, no matter at what alti- 
 tude they may fly. — Essay, 1851, 
 
EXTBACTS AND SELECT FONS. 5 
 
 The Mind. The aiiud, enlightened, is a tremendous engine. 
 Given industry enough, and the capacities of the human intellect 
 are as unlimited as the universe. It is not the mind falls short. It is 
 knowledge. God give us knowledge. — Journal, 1886. 
 
 Political Oratory. — ^The average political speaker knows no 
 other literature than the inflamed, disjointed, metaphorical, ex- 
 travagant and abusive stuff of party organs and campaign papers. — 
 Essay, 1853. 
 
 The Penalties of Independence. The man who in this 
 world undertakes to think his own thoughts, and express them, will 
 find the angles of ten thousand elbows grinding his ribs continually. 
 The fool who has no opinions, and the coward who conceals what 
 he has, are always en rapport with the streaming, shouting, happy- 
 go-lucky multitude; but woe unto the strong man who does his 
 own thinking, and will not be bullied into silence! — The Great 
 Cryptogram. 
 
 The Purpose of Things. The purpose of the thing must 
 always be greater than the thing itself; it incloses, permeates and 
 maintains it. The result is but a small part of the pre-existent in- 
 tention. All things must stand or fall by their purposes, and every 
 great work is the outgrowth of a great purpose. — The Great Crypto- 
 gram. 
 
 Opportunity. Then came the news that a Manchurian pro- 
 fessor, an iconoclast, had written a learned work in English, to 
 prove that George Washington's genius and moral greatness had 
 been much overrated by the partiality of his countrymen. He was 
 answered by a learned doctor of Japan, who argued that the great- 
 ness of all great men consisted simply in opportunity, and that, for 
 every illustrious name that shone in the pages of history, associated 
 with important events, a hundred abler men had lived and died un- 
 known. The battle was raging hotly, and all China and Japan were 
 dividing Into contending factions upon this great issue. — Ccesar's 
 Column. 
 
 God's Power Exercised Through Agents. Through what 
 infinite seas or atmospheres of life — myriad-formed and multiple- 
 natured life — do the spirit and purposes of God reach down to this 
 lower world! — Journal, 1889, 
 
6 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 Genius and Talent. The jeweled arrow of genius will often 
 miss the mark which the sturdy shaft of talent pierces to the cen- 
 ter.— i854. 
 
 Great Eaces. Great races are the weeded- out survivors of 
 great sufiferings. — Bagnarok. 
 
 The Power or Time. You can carry a score of acorns in your 
 vest pocket. But one acorn _pZ^t5 time will crush a hundred men. — 
 Journal, 1884. 
 
 The Povter of Man. . What an infiDite thing is man, as revealed 
 in the tremendous civilization he has built up ! These swarming, 
 laborious, all- capable ants seem great enough to attack heaven 
 itself, if they could but find a resting-place for their ladders. Who 
 can fix a limit to the intelligence or the achievements of our species ? 
 — CcBsar^s Column. 
 
 Reasonable. If a man has betrayed you once, do not trust him 
 again — at least not in this world. — Address to State Farmers^ Alli- 
 ance, 1886. 
 
 What the Woekingmen Need. A friend writes to ask us if 
 we indorse the extreme doctrines of the Socialists, as to the division 
 of property, etc. Not at all. What the workingmen of the world 
 need is a fair chance to acquire property, not an opportunity to de- 
 stroy it. — TJie Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 The Unbelief of Ignoeance. The fact that the story of 
 Atlantis was for thousands of years regarded as a fable proves noth- 
 ing. There is an unbelief which grows out of ignorance, as well as 
 a scepticism which is born of intelligence. The people nearest to 
 the past are not always those who are best informed concerning the 
 past. — Atlantis. 
 
 The Duty of the Ra ces. To the white race I would preach 
 mercy and charity. I ask them to give the humblest and lowest a 
 chance in the great, fierce battle of life. Do not trample on the 
 man that is down. To the black race I would preach patience and 
 wisdom. The negro's remedy is not in violence. Six millions cannot 
 go to war with sixty millions. He who steps outside of the law 
 Invokes all the overwhelming powers of government upon his own 
 head, and they crush him. The prejudices of race are not to be 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 7 
 
 dissipated hj groupin.i;- the i)C()plo into tli(^ sepanitions of race-poli- 
 tics. —i^oc/or Huguct. 
 
 Washburne Acknowledging Grant's Honors. Why, sir, we 
 had General Grant up in Minnesota, and of course the distinguished 
 gentleman from lUinois was with him, and when General Grant was 
 serenaded the gentleman from Ilhnois stuck his head out of the 
 window and thanked the crowd, and when they rode in an open 
 barouche together, and the crowd hurrahed, the gentleman from 
 Illinois laid his hand upon his heart and bowed profound acknowl- 
 edgments. Why, Mr. Speaker, my people up there were in great 
 doubt which was Grant and which was Washburne. They naturally 
 concluded that the quiet little gentleman must be the fourth-class 
 politician, and that the pretentious, fussy individual must be the 
 conqueror of Lee. Good old Jesse Grant, it is said, remarked on 
 that occasion, " It 'pears to me that Washburne thinks he owns 
 'Lysses ; but he don't own me, not by a long sight. ^^— Speech in 
 Congress, 1868. 
 
 Great Thoughts. Every great thought is part of the living 
 God. It can no more die than God can die. The world may perish, 
 but it will be repeated by spirits beyond the st^ivs.— Journal, 1886. 
 
 A Plat on Words. 
 
 What matters it, what does my lady lose. 
 
 If I, a muse, amuse, am used, or muse ? 
 
 Sing, sigh, soar, sorrow, smile, or smirk, or smatter, 
 
 So that I please at all, it is no matter. — 1854. 
 A ISeutral Paper. What will that be ? It will represent those 
 obscure forms of primal life where both sexes were embraced in the 
 same system, and the process of procreation was slow and difficult. 
 It will be like the stuff that fell the other day in Kentucky, neither 
 fish, flesh, nor good red-herring, but a kind of ill-smelling, unor- 
 ganized protoplasm — Democratic at one end, and Republican at the 
 other end, united by Government contracts. — The Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 THE FAILURE OF MODERN CIVILIZATION. 
 
 " It is the greatest of pities that so noble and beautiful a civiliza- 
 tion should have become so hollow and rotten at the core." 
 " Rotten at the core ! " I exclaimed. 
 
8 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 " Yes ; our civilization has grown to be a gorgeous shell, a mere 
 mockery, a sham, outwardly fair and lovely, but inwardly Ml of 
 dead men's bones and all uncleanness. To think that mankind is 
 so capable of good, and now so cultured and polished, and yet all 
 above is cruelty, craft and destruction, and all below is suffering, 
 wretchedness, sin and shame ! " 
 
 '^ What do you mean ?" I asked. 
 
 " That civilization is a gross and dreadful failure for seven- tenths 
 of the human family ; that seven-tenths of the backs of the world 
 are insufficiently clothed; seven -tenths of the stomachs of the world 
 are insufficiently fed ; seven-tenths of the minds of the world are 
 darkened and despairing, and filled with bitterness against the 
 Author of the universe. It is pitiful to think what society is, and 
 then to think what it might have been if our ancestors had not cast 
 away their magnificent opportunities — had not thrown them into 
 the pens of the swine of greed and gluttony.''— (7<^5ar's Column. 
 
 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 
 
 Life is a perpetual struggle even under the most favorable cir- 
 cumstances ; an unending fight of man against man, 
 
 'Tor some slight plank whose weight will bear but one ! " 
 And occasionally how monstrous and horrible are the giant selfish- 
 nesses which start up under our feet like ghouls and affrights ! 
 
 History is the record of the gradual amelioration of deep-rooted, 
 ancient injustice. What a hard, long, bloody, terrible fight it has 
 been ! But for the fact that our national organization rests upon a 
 basis of new colonizations we would not possess the large measure of 
 liberty we now enjoy ; we would be as are the old lands of the world, 
 still weighed down by the burdens of feudality and barbarism. But 
 being peopled by the overflowings of the poor laboring people of 
 Europe, who left the errors and prejudices of the Old World in mid- 
 ocean, we have started upon our career of national greatness on the 
 grand basis of the perfect political equality of all men. — Speech in 
 Congress J January 17, 1867. 
 
 The Blue Flowees a:n"d the Red. I said to them that I did 
 not expect black men to become white men, or white men to turn 
 into black men ; but there was room on God's footstool for them all. 
 The blue flowers in the meadow did not quarrel with the red flowers. 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 9 
 
 The oak tree grew jx'accrnlly jjcsidc tlio inai)l(.'. 'J'lic onm^c did 
 not ask God wh}' He made the laurel. — Doctor HiKjiict. 
 
 Daniel and the Lions. No wonder the editor of the Minne- 
 apolis Tribune wrote to his paper that the " resolutions were moder- 
 ately applauded!" "I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that 
 word:" ^^ moderately applauded." They cheered sotto-voce, v^ith. 
 their ears cocked to catch the responsive echoes from Faneuil Hall. 
 They did well not to let themselves out. As " Gath " says, they 
 were distressed with the problem " how to keep Daniel alive and 
 satisfy the lions at the same time." They were willing to com- 
 promise hy giving the lions the meat, and letting Daniel keep the 
 bones — his own bones! [Laughter.] It is impossible, my friends, 
 to sweeten such a mass of putridity with a pinch of salt in the shape 
 of a respectable candidate. — Speech to Grangers, 1873. 
 
 Material Civilization. Material civilization might be de- 
 fined to be the result of a series of inventions and discoveries, 
 whereby man improves his condition, and controls the forces of 
 nature for his own advantage. — Atlantis. 
 
 A Penetrating Mind. His mind was like a great forceps, 
 that reached out and seized the central fact or core of a thing, and 
 twisted and pulled until he dragged it out, shrieking, into the hght 
 of day ; never to retreat into the shadow again. — Journal, 1890. 
 
 The Legal Profession. The mental labor bestowed by the 
 lawyers on their business is out of all proportion to the objects at 
 stake. Ask the names of the great lawyers of the last century, and 
 there is no answer. Ask the names of the great lawyers of another 
 nation, and fame is silent. Their toil is in the little affairs of others; 
 their reputation is among their brethren. And yet some have given 
 more anxious toil and severe thought to this trifling business than 
 have been employed to conquer kingdoms and build up dynasties. 
 — Laiv Essays, 1852. 
 
 Dakota County after an Election. Dakota County this 
 year is a perfect Golgotha— "a place of skulls." Nearly every 
 man has his head in his hand, examining the cracks and sore 
 places, and wondering whether the other fellow's skull is as badly 
 damaged as his own. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
10 BONNELLIANA. 
 
 Washbtjene's Eritditiox. Mr. Speaker, I tremble for my 
 country. Is it true that eighty odd years of republican government 
 have reduced us so low that there is hut one honest man in this 
 House — but one Lot in all this Sodom ? Does no voice but his ring 
 out against chques and conspiracies and rings ? Will no voice but 
 his be heard in all the future assuring this House that they are 
 all a pack of knaves, that the country is going to the devil — con- 
 cluding with that favorite quotation, launched at us from the vast 
 stores of his erudition : 
 
 " Shake not thy gory locks at me, 
 Ttiou canst not say I did it," 
 
 given with a roar like a wounded gorilla, and ending with a rush on 
 the cloak-room, amid the shouts and laughter of the House? — Speech 
 in Congress, 1868. 
 
 BEEAK EANKS. 
 
 The perpetual dread of the South is a race war. When the 
 negroes all mass themselves together, in solid pohtical phalanx, it 
 looks, to the whites, like a black army ready to march to battle. 
 Every passion in the white man's breast rises at the challenge, ready 
 for the conflict; — race, home, wife, children, prosperity, self-govern- 
 ment, liberty, shriek in his ears their clamorous appeals for protec- 
 tion. He seizes his rifle, — he marches, — he murders. 
 What is the remedy? 
 
 Let the black men break ranks! Let them dissolve into the com- 
 munity. Let them divide politically on other lines than those of 
 color. Great economic questions are arising which have nothing to 
 do with the old struggle. A tidal wave — a great passionate cry for 
 justice, for prosperity, for liberation from the plunderers, for each 
 man's share of happiness and the fruits of civihzation — sweeps, 
 high-mounting, through the hearts and brains of the whites of the 
 South. They are gathering in a vast army, with principles for ban- 
 ners and ballots for weapons. The black man's interests are the 
 same as theirs. He needs prosperity, growth, opportunity, happi- 
 ness. He wants to see the robbers struck down. He desires all 
 that civihzation can give him — all that belongs to him. Will he 
 join with his white brethren to rescue the land from poverty and 
 ruin ? Or will he stand afar off, in solid, unreasoning, sullen, threat- 
 ening array; to perpetuate the race-prejudices which are destroying 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 11 
 
 him ? When he breaks his own ranks and moves, in sohd column, 
 with part, at least, of his white friends and neighbors, they will 
 perceive that his ballots are l>ullets, as potent as their own to kill 
 injustice. Their own interests will compel them to defend his rights. 
 The day of persecution and cruelty will end. In every intelhgent 
 white man the intelligent black man will find a defender; and the 
 reign of peace and love and brotherhood will begin in the South, 
 yea, in the whole land. And if the negro does not then rise to the 
 topmost heights of culture and education and material prosperity, it 
 will be his own fault.— Doctor Huguet. 
 
 The Fables of the Woeld's Youth. There is nothing in 
 antiquity that has not a meaning. The very lables of the world's 
 childhood should be sacred from our laugliter.— Ea/zworoA:. 
 
 Human Tigers a:nd Wolves. I pitied mankind, caught in 
 the grip of such wide-spreading tendencies. I said to myself: 
 '' Where is it all to end i What are we to expect of a race without 
 heart or honor ? What may we look for when the powers of the 
 highest civilization supplement the instincts of tigers and wolves? 
 Can the brain of man flourish when the heart is dead? '^—Ccesar's 
 Column. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln. I am aware, Mr. Speaker, of the great 
 claims which President Lincoln has upon the people of the United 
 States. I recognize that popularity which accompanies him, and 
 which, considering the ordeal through which he has passed, is little 
 less than miraculous. I recognize that unquestioning faith in his 
 honesty and ability which pervades all classes, and that sincere 
 affection with which almost the entire population regard him. We 
 must not underrate him even in our praises. He is a great man. 
 Great not after the old models of the world, but with a homely and 
 original greatness. He will stand out to future ages in the history 
 of these crowded and confused times with wonderful distinctness. 
 He has carried a vast and discordant population safely and peace- 
 fully through the greatest of political revolutions with such consum- 
 mate sagacity and skill that while he led he appeared to follow; 
 while he innovated beyond all precedent he has been denounced as 
 tardy ; while he struck the shackles from the hmbs of three million 
 slaves he has been hailed as a conservative ! If to adapt, persist- 
 
12 BONNELLIANA. 
 
 enll}' aucl continuously, just and righteous principles to all the 
 perplexed windings and changes of human events, and to secure in 
 the end the complete triumph of those principles, be statesmanship, 
 then Abraham Lincoln is the first of statesmen. — Speech in Congress, 
 May 2, 1864. 
 
 Money-making. The money-getting faculty is low down in the 
 accoutrement of the mind. Midas was always painted with the ears 
 of an ass. — Journal, 1889. 
 
 Genius. Genius is a powerful predisposition, so strong that it 
 overrules a man's whole life, from boyhood to the grave. The 
 greatness of a mind is in proportion to its receptivity, its capacity 
 to assimilate a vast mass of food; it is an intellectual stomach that 
 eliminates, not muscle, but thought. Its power holds a due relation 
 to its greed — it is an eternal and insatiable hunger. In itself it is 
 but an instrument. It can work only upon external material. — 
 The Great Cryptogram. 
 
 Sitting on the Safety-Valye. But I must cease. Several 
 speakers are to follow me. In the old days of steamboat racing on 
 the Southern Mississippi it was customary to set a negro on the 
 safety-valve. If the boiler got more pressure on it t!ian it could 
 stand there was an explosion and that colored gentleman was pro- 
 jected into space and became a white-robed angel. When I look 
 back at these gentlemen behind me, full to bursting with bottled-up 
 eloquence, I feel like the negro on the safety-valve — something has 
 got to give, and if I don't get out of the way I run a risk of being 
 thrown half way across this YidW..— Speech, St. Paul, 1887. 
 
 THE LABORERS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 
 
 What struck me most was their incalculable multitude and their 
 silence. It seemed to me that I was witnessing the resurrection of 
 the dead ; and that these vast, streaming, endless swarms were the 
 condemned marching noiselessly as shades to unavoidable and ever- 
 lasting misery. They seemed to me merely automata in the hands 
 of some ruthless and unrelenting destiny. They hved and moved, 
 but they were without heart or hope. The illusions of the imagina- 
 tion, which beckon all of us forward, even over the roughest paths 
 and through the darkest valleys and shadows of life, had departed 
 from the scope of their vision. They knew that to-morrow could 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 13 
 
 briug them nothing better than to-day — the same shameful, 
 pitiable, contemptible, sordid struggle for a mere existence. If they 
 produced children it was reluctantly or unmeaningly; for they 
 knew the wretches must tread in their footsteps, and enter, like 
 them, that narrow, gloomy, high-walled pathway, out of which 
 they could never climb; which began almost in infancy and ended 
 in a pauper's grave — nay, I am wrong, not even in a pauper's 
 grave; for they >might have claimed, perhaps, some sort of owner- 
 ship over the earth which enfolded them, which touched them and 
 mingled with their dust. But public safety and the demands of 
 science had long ago decreed that they should be whisked off, as 
 soon as dead, a score or two at a time, and swept on iron tram-cars 
 into furnaces heated to such intense white heat that they dissolved 
 crackling, even as they entered the chamber, and rose -in nameless 
 gases through the high chimney. That towering structure was the 
 sole memorial monument of millions of them. Their graveyard was 
 the air. Nature reclaimed her own with such velocity that she 
 seemed to grudge them the very dust she had lent them during their 
 wretched pilgrimage. The busy, toiling, rushing, roaring, groaning 
 universe, big, with young, appeared to cry out : " Away with them! 
 Away with them! They have had their hour! They have per- 
 formed their task. Here are a billion spirits waiting for the sub- 
 stance we loaned them. The spirits are boundless in number; 
 matter is scarce. Away with them! " — Gcesafs Column. 
 
 Too True. Poverty in all ages has been the most efficient tool 
 of despotism.— T/^e Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 The Old World. That boundless sea of human misery, which 
 roars and dashes and moans and threatens around the base of civil- 
 ization, flinging its salt tears even into the faces of those who sit 
 highest in assured prosperity. — Journal, 1888. 
 
 An Advice to the Races. The race, whatever its color, 
 which gives itself over unanimously and unconditionally to any one 
 political party, incurs the hatred of the organization it opposes and 
 the contempt of the organization it serves. The one has nothing to 
 hope from it ; the other has nothing to fear from it. The one party 
 feels that it can never gain it; the other that it can never lose it. 
 The former persecutes the race for their unreasoning hostihty; the 
 
14 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 other despises thOTi for their unreasoning fideUty. The first feels 
 that it cannot placate them by doing them justice; the other that 
 they will not revolt under any amount of injustice. They become a 
 target for the abuse of all men; a wall behind which scoundrels 
 hide to steal ; a faction without a friend or an advocate. — Doctor 
 
 Insufficiency. There can be no doubt that if one were to 
 look abroad, with a wide range of thought, he would cast down his 
 weapons and turn his back on the world's conflict. Insufficiency is 
 written over all the temples of human labor. Riches to the sordid; 
 praise to the vain; pleasure to the thoughtless; but for the search- 
 ing and penetrating soul of man there is no rest, no XQivigQ.— Essay, 
 1854. 
 
 Did You? Did you ever know a banker to be reduced to snow- 
 packs and a ragged overcoat ?—T/ie Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 A Vision of Destruction. And then I thought how thin a 
 crust of earth separated all this splendor from that burning heU of 
 misery beneath it. And if the molten mass of horror should break 
 its limitations and overflow the earth ! Aheady it seemed to me the 
 planet trembled; I could hear the volcanic explosions; I could see 
 the sordid flood of wrath and hunger pouring through these halls; 
 cataracts of misery bursting through every door and window, and 
 sweepiug away all this splendor into never-ending blackness and 
 ruin. — Ccesafs Column. 
 
 A Question. Who ride in buggies — the men who raise the 
 crops or the men who handle them? — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 Intemperance. A habit deadlier than death, for it makes eren 
 death disgrsiceful.— Journal, 1888. 
 
 THE TRANSFORMATION OF DOCTOR HUGUET. 
 
 How long I slept I know not. It must have been an hour or 
 
 two an hour or two of disturbed and uneasy slumber, troubled 
 
 with dreams, in which I saw again and again those reproachful, 
 threatening eyes. Then came a feeling as if I was smothering — 
 choking. I gasped and was awake. But the smothering sensation 
 did not leave me. It seemed to me as if the air was exhausted ; as 
 if I was shut up in a vault or — coffin ! And then I noticed a strong. 
 
EXTBAGTS AND SELECTIONS. 15 
 
 negro-like smell. My first thought was that a negro burglar had 
 entered my room and was leaning over me. I threw my hands up ; 
 they encountered nothing. I was in total darkness. As my arms 
 fell one of them came near my face, and the negro-like smell grew 
 stronger than before. Instinctively I placed my bare arm close to 
 my nosC; and I then perceived that the strong odor came from my 
 own person. What could it mean ? I felt with one hand my other 
 hand and arm. The arm was larger than my own — much larger. 
 The hand was coarse and huge — the palms calloused and rough — 
 little, fine filaments of skin projected fi'om the frayed callosities, as 
 in the hands of those worn with hard work. My God ! What does 
 it mean ? I quickly brought both hands to my face. The negroloid 
 smell was stronger than ever. I felt my face. Instead of my own 
 clean-cut features, my hands encountered a flat nose and a pair of 
 swollen lips. Was I dreaming some dreadful dream? I bit my 
 hand until the blood came. No ; I was wide awake. The bed was 
 not my own. It was lumpy and stufied, apparently, with straw. I 
 felt out on both sides of me. My left hand encountered a huge, 
 sleeping body. 
 
 Where am I? What in God's name does all this mean ? Am I 
 insane ? Has some dreadful disease — like the Indian elephantiasis — 
 overtaken me in my sleep, and swelled my limbs and features to 
 twice their natural size? But that would not account for the 
 changed bed and the sleeper by my side. I must find out where I 
 am. I put my feet out of the bed, and stood erect. In doing so 
 my head struck the ceiling with such force that I made an exclama- 
 tion of pain. There was a movement in the bed, and a voice cried 
 out; shrilly and fiercely; and in the unmistakable speech of a negro 
 woman : 
 
 "Hi; there! Sam Johnsing, you d d nigger! What you 
 
 gittin' up for now ? Does you think yer gwine steal Colonel Jen- 
 kins' shirts again, and pawn 'em ? " 
 
 There was a bounce out of bed on the instant, and the next 
 minute a match was struck and a tallow candle lighted. It re- 
 vealed to me an astonishing sight. I was standing in a negro cabin, 
 between the bed and the wall, my head touching the sloping roof. 
 On the other side of the bed, holding the lighted caudle in her 
 hand, and glaring at me savagely, was a huge, coal-black negro 
 
16 DONNELLIANA, 
 
 woman. In one corner was a cradle, in another a wash-tub, and 
 across the further end of the cabin were some hues, on which hung 
 an assortment of washing — stockings, shirts and underwear. All 
 this my astonished eyes took in at a glance. I looked down at 
 myself. A torn fragment of a shirt revealed to me the large body, 
 arms and legs of a negro — the huge, splay feet resting on the mud 
 floor of the cabin. 
 
 Tor a few moments I was as one paralyzed. My mind seemed 
 torn from its moorings. I could not put the facts together. I had 
 fa-'en asleep in my own luxurious room. I had awakened here in 
 •this wretched hovel. Who was this woman ? I had never seen her 
 before. Who was this man, standing, almost naked, against the 
 wall, with eyes revolving wildly, taking in his surroundings? It 
 could not be I — Doctor Anthony Huguet — the gentleman — the 
 physician — the cultured scholar ! Oh, no ! That thought was too 
 dreadful — too impossible. I smiled. 
 
 The woman noted the expression, and said : 
 
 " What you grinnin' at, you d d nigger — you chicken-thief. 
 
 You knows berry well dat you got up to steal de clothes, to buy 
 more whisky. But I'll crack yer d d skull first. " 
 
 With this she picked up an ironing-board and assumed a 
 threatening position, advancing toward me. 
 
 And still my brain worked, and still I couldn't understand what 
 it all meant. How did I come here ? Where was I ? What had 
 happened to me ? Who was this standing against the wall, with 
 stooped head, watching the advancing virago ? It was not I, and 
 yet I seemed to think witliin it ! How did I come to be within this 
 black figure ? And then came to me a dreadful thought : 
 
 " My God! has my soul been placed within the body of this black 
 man f, ^^— Doctor Huguet. 
 
 Maelowe and Shakespeare. And we have seen the critics 
 speculating whether Marlowe, if he had not been prematurely cut 
 off, in his twenty-ninth year, would not have been in time as great a 
 poet as Shakespeare! As if bountiful Nature, after waiting for five 
 thousand years to produce a Shakespeare, had been delivered of 
 twins in that year of grace 1564 ! And we are asked to believe that, 
 if it had not been for Marlowe's drunken brawl, the two intellectual 
 monsters would have existed side by side for thirty years or so, cor- 
 
EXTEACTS AND SELECTIONS. 17 
 
 riiscatinfr Tamburlanes, Lears, Doctor Faustiises and Hamlets to 
 the end of the chapter; to the infinite delight of the pyrotechni- 
 cally astounded multitude, who couldn't have told the productions 
 of one from the other. But it was a sad fact that one of these 
 brilliant suns was not able to rise until the other had set; and 
 unfortunate that both at last declined their glorious orbs into a sea 
 of strong drink, while " the god of the machine " was behind the 
 scenes delivering immortal sermons in behalf of temperance. — The 
 Great Cryptogram. 
 
 The Civilizatio:n- of the Wood-tick. The civilization of the 
 world to-day is the civilization of the wood-tick and not the honey- 
 bee. The wood-tick sucks, but it creates nothing. The thing that 
 carries it feeds it. It is the bloated plutocrat of the woods — simply 
 claws and belly. A higher civilization means death to the wood- 
 ticks and fair play for the honeybees. — Speech to State Alliance, Dec, 
 1890. 
 
 THE DEVOTION OF THE WEST TO THE UNION. 
 
 We who come, Mr. Speaker, from the far West, have not that 
 deep and ingrained veneration for State power which is to be found 
 among the inhabitants of some of the older States. We have found 
 that State lines, State names. State organizations, are, in most 
 cases, the veriest creatures of accident. To us there is no savor of 
 antiquity about them. Our people move into a region of country 
 and make the State. We feel ourselves to be offshoots of the nation. 
 We look to the nation for protection. The love of our hearts 
 gathers around the nation; and there is no prouder and no gladder 
 sight to our eyes than the flag of the nation fluttering in the sun- 
 shine over our frontier homes. We are willing to trust the nation. 
 We have never received aught at its hands but benefits. We need 
 erect no bulwark of State sovereignty behind which to shelter our- 
 selves from the gifts which it so generously and bountifully showers 
 upon us ; and when the order of nature is reversed and it calls to us 
 in its extremity for help and protection, the farmer will be found 
 leaving his plow in the furrow, and the woodman the tree, half 
 felled in the forest, to fly to its assistance. Part of a mightynation, 
 we feel that our fame and greatness reach to the uttermost ends of 
 the earth, over all the seas, and through all the continent. ■ Citizens 
 
18 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 of States, we are lost and buried from the gaze of mankind, the 
 tribatary Nubias of those governments which control the mouth of 
 our Nile; without commerce, without a navy, without a flag; the 
 merest insignificant accidents. Be assured, sir, those interior States 
 will forever insist upon ^' the Union," and will continue to insist 
 upon it, even if abandoned by all the rest of the nation. It is their 
 right to reach the sea in every direction over kindred territory; nay, 
 it is more than their right; it is their necessity. 
 
 There is, then, one solidified sentiment in the hearts of our 
 people, one sentiment which will not be denied, one sentiment which 
 rises above all political considerations — this nation must live. 
 What shall stand in the way of its life"^ The institution of 
 slavery? Put the nation and slavery in the balance, and ask 
 the people of the Northwest to choose between them. What 
 is slavery to them? Unfitted for their climate, repugnant to 
 their tastes, destructive to their interests, bloody with the 
 blood of their children, onerous with the weight of taxation to 
 themselves, and terrible with portents of ruin to the nation in the 
 future, what interest have they in the preservation of slavery? 
 Will they for slavery give up that kind and generous Government 
 which has so long blessed and protected them? Will they for 
 slavery see their fair, bright flag, with all its clustering stars and 
 all its lines of light, torn into shreds and trampled in the dust? 
 Will they for slavery drag down upon themselves the fabric of their 
 Grovernment and bury themselves beneath mountains of anarchy 
 and destruction? Never! It needs but to present the question to 
 call forth a unanimous answer. Let that man step forth who is 
 willing to bring calamity and ruin upon himself and family that a 
 gigantic crime may continue to exist, undisturbed, a thousand miles 
 away; who is willing to sacrifice the enjoyments of earth that hell 
 may escape annoyance.— ;Speec/^ in Congress, May 2, 1864. 
 
 The Ceuel Past. Let the dead past bury its dead. It was a 
 cruel, bloody and merciless past. Its ways were not our ways, nor 
 its thoughts our thoughts. Let us thank God that we live in this 
 great, broad, generous, tolerant age ; and let us frown down all 
 attempts to revive the evil passions and hatreds of the past. — The 
 Anti- Monopolist. 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 19 
 
 SHAKSPERE'S DAUGHTER. 
 
 Think of it ! The daughter of William Shakspere, the daughter 
 of the greatest intellect of the age (if he wrote the Plays), or of all 
 ages, the profound scholar, the master of Latin, Greek, Italian, 
 French, Spanish, Danish, the philosopher, the scientist, the politi- 
 cian, the statesman, the physician, the musician, signs her name with 
 a curley-queue like a Pottawatomie Indian. And this girl was 
 twenty-seven years old, and no idiot; she was subsequently married 
 to one of the leading citizens of the town, Thomas Quincy, vintner. 
 She was raised in the same town wherein was the same free-school 
 in which, we are assured, Shakspere received that magnificent edu- 
 cation which is manifested in the Plays. 
 
 Imagine William E. Gladstone, or Herbert Spencer, dwelling in 
 the same house with a daughter, in the full possession of all her 
 faculties, who signed her name with a pot-hook. Imagine the father 
 and*daughter meeting every day and looking at each other! And 
 yet neither of these really great men is to be mentioned in the same 
 breath with the immortal genius who produced the plays. 
 
 With an income, as we have shown, equal to $25,000 yearly of 
 our money; with the country swarming with graduates of Oxford 
 and Cambridge, begging for bread and ready to act as tutors; living 
 in a quiet, rural neighborhood, where there were few things to dis- 
 tract attention, William Shakspere permitted his daughter to attain 
 the ripe age of twenty- seven years, unable to read the immortal 
 quartos which had made her father famous and wealthy. We will 
 not— we cannot— believe it.— The Great Cryptogram. 
 
 Daybreak. 
 
 The sweep 
 Of the torn sunlight down some craggy slope. 
 Half morning and half midnight. — 1850. 
 American Politics. Dean Swift described a country where the 
 horses ruled the men ; we have here in America a country where 
 the asses rule the men. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 Night. 
 
 Many-folded night. 
 Like a black banner drooped along the sky. 
 Blazoning a quaint deviee of stars. — 1850. 
 
20 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 EiGHT-LiYiNG. Death is not a thing to be dreaded, if man 
 lives aright. 
 
 "For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight: 
 He can't be wrong whose life is in the right. 
 In Faith and Hope the world will disagree, 
 But all mankind's concern is Charity." 
 
 — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 A Compaeiso:n'. ^' A negro highwayman near Lexington bought 
 a revolver of a man for $3, and then used the weapon to rob him of 
 all his money, including the purchase price." 
 
 That's a good deal like getting a land-grant from the people to 
 build a railroad, and then charging them oppressive tariffs on the 
 transportation of their goods forever after. — The Anti- Monopolist, 
 
 AN APPEAL TO MAN'S BETTER NATURE. 
 
 Build a little broader. Dives. Establish spiritual relations. 
 Matter is not everything. You do not deal in certainties. Yo\i are 
 but a vitalized speck, filled with a fraction of God's delegated intelli- 
 gence, crawling over an egg-shell filled with fire, whirling madly 
 through infinite space, a target for the bombs of a universe. 
 
 Take your mind off your bricks and mortar, and put out your 
 tentacles toward the great spiritual world around you. Open com- 
 munications with God. You can not help God. For Him who 
 made the Milky Way you can do nothing. But here are His creatures. 
 Not a nerve, muscle or brain- convolution of the humblest of these 
 but duphcates your own ; you excel them simply in the co-ordination 
 of certain inherited faculties which have given you success. Widen 
 your heart. Put your intellect to work to so readjust the values of 
 labor and increase the productive capacity of nature, that plenty 
 and happiness, light and hope, shall dwell in every heart, and the 
 catacombs be closed for ever. 
 
 And from such a world God will fend off the comets with His 
 great right arm, and the angels will exult over it in heaven. — 
 BagnaroJc. 
 
 THE POWER OF POVERTY. 
 
 '' The strongest resolves of men melt in the fire of want like 
 figures of wax. It is simply a question of increasing pressure to 
 find the point where virtue inevitably breaks. Morality, in man or 
 
j^xthacts and selections. 21 
 
 woman, is a Diagiiificcnt liowcr wbicli blossoms only in the rich soil 
 of prosperity; impoverish the land, and the bloom withers. If 
 there are cases that seem to you otherwise, it is simply because the 
 pressure has not been great enough ; sufficient nourishment has not 
 yet been withdrawn from the soil. Dignity, decency, honor, fade 
 away when man or woman is reduced to shabby, shameful, degrad- 
 ing, cruel wretchedness. Before the clamors of the stomach the 
 soul is silent. " 
 
 " I cannot believe that," I replied; " look at the martyrs who 
 have perished in the flames for an opinion. " 
 
 " Yes, " he said, " it is easy to die in an ecstasy of enthusiasm 
 for a creed; with all the world looking on; to exchange life for eter- 
 nal glory ; but put the virgin, who would face without shrinking 
 the flames or the wild beasts of the arena, into some wretched gar- 
 ret, in some miserable alley, surrounded by the low, the ignorant, 
 the vile ; close every avenue and prospect of hope ; shut off every 
 ennobling thought or sight or deed ; and then subject the emaci- 
 ated frame to endless toil and hopeless hunger, and the very fibers 
 of the soul will rot under the debasing ordeal, and there is nothing 
 left but the bare animal, that must be fed at whatever sacrifice. " — 
 Gcesar^s Column. 
 
 The Chix. The chin, the organ of character. The pedestal on 
 which the brain rests. — Journal, 1891. 
 
 Bigotry. Bacon's mind was too great to be illiberal. Bigotry 
 is a burst of strong light, through the crevice of a narrow mind, 
 lighting only one face of its object and throwing all the rest into 
 hideous and grotesque shadows. Bacon's mind, like the sun in the 
 tropics, illuminated all sides of the object upon which it shone, with 
 a comprehensive and vivifying light. — The Great Cryptogram. 
 
 Death as Natural as Life. Death is as natural as life; there 
 is nothing horrible about it. It is superstition that has invested it 
 with terrors and hobgoblins. Let the mantle of Christian charity 
 cover the differences of race and social conditions, for under it all 
 men can dwell together in peace and happiness. — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 EGBERT EMMETT. 
 
 We have seen the world celebrate the centennial of the plough- 
 man poet, the sweet singer of Scotland, Robert Burns. We have 
 
22 t)ONNELLlANA. 
 
 seen the Grerman race gather together to renew the memories of that 
 master of the human soul, Schiller. The other day the Emperor of 
 G-ermany unveiled the statue of that old Gothic hero who over- 
 threw the Roman legions in the day of their glory. A few days ago 
 our whole land celebrated the birth of that great and good man who 
 led the forces of the American colonies through the War of Inde- 
 pendence. Ireland, alas ! has none of these triumphant memories. 
 In the midst of her gloom and desolation she selects as her idol one 
 who, like herself, went down in disaster — one whose life, like her 
 own, was a life of suffering and sacrifice. 
 The poet has said : 
 
 " Whether upon the scaffold high, 
 Or in the battle's van, 
 The noblest place for man to die 
 Is where he dies for man. " 
 
 It is easy to die for one's country in the rush and roar of battle, 
 with the soul ablaze with combat. How different is it to be led 
 forth by a rude executioner, the basest of his species, and consigned 
 to a brutal and shameful death. Thus did Emmett die. 
 
 Did he die in vain ? No. From generation to generation of Irish- 
 men the flame of patriotism leaps along the hue of the ages. From 
 the Irishman who fought Strongbow to the Irishman who now lan- 
 guishes in England's prison the long line is unbroken — the chain of 
 succession is complete — and far away into the future it will reach 
 through many generations. ♦. 
 
 Sooner or later that persistent, passionate patriotism will triumph. 
 Under the ameliorating influences of modern civilization England 
 will of her own accord do Ireland justice, or in some grand crisis ci 
 her fate the conquered but unsubjugated race will spring to their 
 feet and hurl down their oppressors. — Speech at St. Paul on 
 EmmetVs Birthday. 
 
 The Last Man. " The newspapers are wondering ' what will 
 become of the last man?' As he will have all the money in the 
 world, and nothing in particular to do, he will probably marry the 
 last woman. Heaven only knows what will become of him then. " 
 
 He will probably raise a family of last children, and the race 
 take a new start. This planet will not get clear of mankind as long 
 as there is a fragment of it left. They will breed and fight and steal 
 on a good-sized chunk of meteor. — The Anti-Monopolist. 
 
EXTliACTS AND SJiLECTlONS. 23 
 
 Drunkenness is Misgovernment. " In England they are 
 getting nearer to the root of that dreadful disease, drunkenness. 
 x\.t a recent temperance meeting in his diocese, the Bishop of Ely 
 said that he attributed drunkenness not to a desire for liquor, but to 
 the comfort of the public-house and the discomfort of their homes." 
 
 In the last analysis drunkenness is misgovernment. Give every 
 man a comfortable home, prosperity, hope and bright thoughts, and 
 drunkenness will disappear from the face of the earth. And if 
 the laws were wise and just the earth could afford all these blessings 
 to all her children. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 The Animal World. Have you entered into the mind of the 
 animal? Can you say that he has no glimpses of the Infinite? A 
 barrier of incommunicability is placed between your soul and his. 
 If it were removed he might perchance tell you more than you 
 could tell him. Why do horses tremble at the sight of white objects 
 in the dark? Do they beheve in ghosts ? And if so, — why? Tell 
 us all about it. — Journal, 1S86. 
 
 METALLIC MONEY AND CIVILIZATION. 
 
 And thus has it come to pass that, precisely as the physicians of 
 Europe, fifty years ago, practiced bleeding, because for thousands 
 of years their savage ancestors had used it to draw away the evil 
 spirits out of the man, so the business of our modern civilization is 
 dependent upon the superstition of a past civihzation, and the 
 bankers of the world are to-day perpetuating the adoration of *< the 
 tears wept by the sun " which was commenced ages since on the 
 island of Atlantis. 
 
 And it becomes a grave question — when we remember that the 
 rapidly increasing business of the world, consequent upon an in- 
 creasing population, and a civilization advancing with giant steps, 
 is measured by the standard of a currency limited by natural laws, 
 decreasing annually in production, and incapable of expanding pro- 
 portionately to the growth of the world — whether the Atlantean 
 superstition may not yet inflict more incalculable injuries on man- 
 kind than those which resulted from the practice of phlebotomy. — 
 Atlantis. 
 
 The Future of Mankind. I tremble, my brother, I tremble 
 with horror when I think of what is crawling toward us, with noise- 
 less steps; couchant, silent, treacherous, pardlike; scarce rustling 
 
24 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 the dry leaves as it moves, and yet, with bloodshot, glaring eyes and 
 tense-drawn limbs of steel, ready for the fatal spring. When comes 
 it? To-night? To-morrow? A week hence? Who can say? — 
 Ccesar^s Column. 
 
 The Duty of a Gee at Man. A man of an ignorant, a low, a 
 base mind may refuse to sympathize with his own caste because it is 
 oppressed and down-trodden, and put himself in posture of cringe 
 and conciliation to those whose whip descends upon his shoulders ; 
 but a really great and noble soul, a really broad and comprehensive 
 mind, never would dissociate himself from his brethren in the hour 
 of their afQiction. — The Great Cryptogram. 
 
 The Necessity eok Religion. But, say some, it will be ad- 
 mitted that there is a great deal of immorality in the age itself, a 
 loosening of the marriage tie, debauchery, corruption, peculation, 
 and crime and violence. Granted ; but are the public schools 
 responsible for this ? Is it not due to the fact that religion has been 
 for years past, yes, we may say, for a century past, losing its hold 
 upon the convictions of the adult population ? It is not necessary 
 to go into the causes of this result ; it is sufficient to know that 
 thousands are skeptical and hundrds of thousands indifierent. There 
 is scarcely a leading newspaper in our country that does not sneer 
 at religion. This result is to be deplored ; for, aside from the truth 
 or error of the dogmas taught, the moral training and discipline for 
 which we must look alone to churches and pastors is essential, in 
 our judgment, to the preservation of virtue and the safety of society; 
 and hence all the Christian churches are working together for the 
 good of mankind. It is scarcely possible to conceive of an endur- 
 ing republic based on intelligence without morality. The waljs^ofi 
 the penitentiaries of such a country would simply divide the stupid;; 
 kuaves inside from the intellectual knaves outside. — The Anti-- 
 Monopolist. , 
 
 MOENING. 
 
 The trees shake out the fragments of the night, 
 
 And the glad sun thrusts in his glowing hand 
 
 Till the rough bark is splashed with laughing gold. — 1850. 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 25 
 
 Paety Slavery. The curse of our land is party slavery. It is 
 worse for the negro than the old physical slavery. God have mercy 
 on the man who permits another to do his thinking. 
 
 " First slave to words, tlien vassal to a name, 
 Then dupe of partj-; child and man the same: 
 Bounded by nature, narrowed still by art, 
 A trifling head and a contracted heart, " 
 
 — Doctor Huguet. 
 THE HIGHER ARGUMENT. 
 
 But there is still another consideration. So far I have striven to 
 conduct this argument with a view only to its political relations, to 
 the effect of the questions involved upon the material welfare of the 
 people. 
 
 But there is something beyond all this. There are considera- 
 tions as far above all this as the heavens are above the earth. To 
 every man comes home this question: Shall I take my place in the 
 ranks of that continuous and unending procession of events which, 
 since the revival of civilization in Europe, has been steadily pressing 
 forward over the world and through the centuries f Or shall I be 
 of those frail and feeble ones who present their breasts as barriers 
 and bulwarks against the rising flood which the breath of God is 
 swelling and lifting over all the wrongs and iniquities of the world? 
 
 For who will dare to say that in the long fight of the centuries 
 error is not hourly losing blood and strength and life; that truth is 
 not each day arming itself with new and more formidable weapons, 
 shining each day with more glorious aud more effulgent radiance? 
 
 Let us take to ourselves the consolation afforded by this thought, 
 that truth is imperishable, and that no human power is sufficient to 
 destroy it. It is a subtle essence, the soul of the material world 
 The heavens and the earth may pass away, but truth shall not pass 
 away. We have seen it in all the past hberated by the blows 
 aimed at its destruction. We have seen it passing, upon golden 
 wings, out through all the meshes with which the perverted skill of 
 the human mind sought to entangle it. 
 
 Let us remember, then, that in so far as we contribute, however 
 humbly, to the cause of truth, we are identifying our temporary 
 existence with an eternal work. This is a posterity which shall 
 never die; this shall live and brighten and keep green our memories 
 
i^(j i)ONNELLiAi^A. 
 
 when the descendants of our hodies have disappeared froni athbng 
 the things of the world. 
 
 For myself, I can see the welfare of my country only in those 
 things which widen the opportunities and elevate the dignity of 
 mankind. I cannot perceive the advantage to any man of the 
 degradation of any other man; and I feel assured of the greatness 
 and perpetuity of my country only in so far as it identifies itself 
 with the uninterrupted progress and the universal liberty of man- 
 kind.— /S??eec/i in Congress, May 2, 1864. 
 
 Secular Education has Nothing to do with Religion. 
 Neither can it he claimed that there is anything irreligious in edu- 
 cation itself. There is no possible heresy in reading, writing, gram- 
 mar, geography or arithmetic. The rule of three neither proves 
 nor disproves any theological dogma; and the length of the Tom- 
 bigbee or the Hoangho river throws no light on trausubstantiation 
 or predestination. If our whole people were converted to-morrow 
 to Mohajnmedanism or Brahminism, the alphabet, the rules of arith- 
 metic, the forms of grammar and the facts of geography, astronomy, 
 etc., would remain the same. In short, secular education, con- 
 sidered in itself, has nothing whatever to do with morality or im- 
 morality, religion or irreligiou. And we cannot therefore perceive 
 wherein congregations of young people, to pursue their studies in a 
 public school, are necessarily any more " Godless " than similar 
 assemblages would be to learn the printer's art or the carpenter's 
 trade. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 THE GREAT CRIMINALS. 
 
 And when you come to look at it, my brother, how shall we 
 compare the condition of the well-to-do man, who has been merely 
 robbed of his watch and purse, even at the cost of a broken head, 
 which will heal in a few days, with the awful doom of the poor mul- 
 titude, who from the cradle to the grave work without joy and live 
 without hope f Who is there that would take back his watch and 
 purse at the cost of changing places with one of these wretches? 
 
 And who is there that, if the choice were presented to him, 
 would not prefer instant death, which is but a change of conditions, 
 a flight from world to world, or at worst annihilation, rather than 
 to be hurled into the hving tomb which I have depicted, there to 
 
EXTihiCfS ANi) SELECTIONS. !>7 
 
 gfovel and writhe, pressed down by the sordid mass around him, 
 until death comes to his rehef f 
 
 And so it seems to me that, in the final analysis of reason, the 
 great criminals of the world are not these wild beasts, who break 
 through all laws, whose selfishness takes the form of the bloody 
 knife, the fire-brand, or the bludgeon; but those who, equally 
 selfish, corrupt the fountains of government and create laws and 
 conditions by which millions sufter, and out of which these mur- 
 derers and robbers naturally and nnavoidably arise. — Ccesafs 
 Column. 
 
 The Persian Theory. The presence of such narrow-headed, 
 
 bitter-hearted, small-souled men as McC in this world goes far 
 
 to support the Persian theory that occasionally God turns over his 
 creative power to the devil. McC — — was slipped into the world in 
 one of these unfortunate moments. How else could he have got 
 here f — The Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 Egypt. And how mighty must have been the parent nation of 
 which this Egypt was a colony ! Egypt was the magnificent, the 
 golden bridge, ten thousand years long, glorious with temples and 
 pyramids, illuminated and illustrated by the most complete and 
 continuous records of human history, along which the civilization 
 of Atlantis, in a great procession of kings and priests, philosophers 
 and astronomers, artists and artisans, streamed forward to Greece, 
 to Rome, to Europe, to America. As far back in the ages as the 
 eye can penetrate, even where the perspective dwindles almost to a 
 point, we can still see the swarming multitudes, possessed of all the 
 arts of the highest civilization, pressing forward from out that other 
 and greater empire of which even this wonder-working Nile-land is 
 but a faint and imperfect copy. — Atlantis. 
 
 GOD AND THE EGG. 
 
 Science is merely knowledge of the materials of nature. It has 
 never yet solved the enigma of that principle which makes matter 
 move, grow, think and reproduce, which we call life. The philoso- 
 pher can tell you the constituents of an Qgg in their due propor- 
 tions; he might even put them together — so much lime, so much 
 albumen, so much sulphur, so much of the phosphates, etc.; he 
 might cover them with a shell, but he could not, until the end of 
 
28 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 time; start within his composition that vital principle which is to 
 convert these dead elements into flesh, blood, bones, feathers, 
 brains, motion, life and capacity for reproduction. JBLere is a 
 miracle which you can hold in your hand, and which yet transcends 
 all the wonders of man's power. 
 
 Is there not to this great globe of matter, the universe, a vital 
 principle, a germ-spot, as there is to the Qgg ? Is there something 
 in the Qgg which is able to construct that marvel of mechanism, 
 the eye, out of inert matter, by processes which the microscope is 
 too gross to follow, and is there no constructive power, no order- 
 enforcing genius in the great cosmos, of which the ^gg is but an 
 humble, infinitesimal speck? — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 THE SENTIMENT OF IRISH NATIONALITY. 
 
 The history of Europe gives us the record of more than one 
 nationality stamped out of existence by an armed power. Poland's 
 subjugation is as a thing of yesterday, and yet Poland sits to-day 
 silent and passive in her chains. Hungary's last great struggle 
 for independence occurred in our own generation, but to-day Hun- 
 gary seems contented in her unnatural alliance with Austria. It 
 is to the honor of the Irish people that, from the day when King 
 John and Strongbow and De Courci trod their shores to this hour, 
 they have never failed to resist, in spirit or in arms, the domination 
 of the conqueror. For several centuries the Irishman has been a 
 rebel. And there is no reason to doubt that he will continue to 
 be such until his country is free. This long-continued, per- 
 sistent, undying devotion to the idea of nationality is one of the 
 marvels of the world. That flag [pointing to the green flag of Ire- 
 land] floats to-day over no fortress, over no ship, over no govern- 
 ment. And yet it it is honored and treasured by millions, as if it were 
 the recognized emblem of a great, powerful and established nation- 
 ality. This meeting in honor of Robert Emmett, and the thousands 
 ^f kindred meetings held to-night all over the world, are simply an 
 -expression of that undying sentiment of nationality, that persistent 
 love of the motherland, that eternal purpose that Ireland must one 
 day be a free republic. — Speech at St. Paul, 1878. 
 
 Fame and Glory. For I kept repeating to myself: How httle 
 u ^'oAJg is glory ! It consists simjply of thoughts of you in the minds 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 20 
 
 of others, and in a short time those others will be dust, and their 
 very names have perished. And what is immortality ? Who were 
 the great men that lived before Agamemnon? Lost! lost! And 
 the day will come when the earth's generations will have forgotten 
 Alexander and Napoleon. Fame? Fame is nothing. We leave 
 nothing behind us on this earth that is permanent, except our influ- 
 ence for^ood or ill; that goes on, visible to God, but invisible to 
 men— a force in the affairs of humanity, spreading like a great, un- 
 dying ripple in the sea of mind. Big or httle, eminent or obscure, 
 we each contribute to that intangible net-work of earth-forces, for- 
 ever renewing themselves with every new brain that is born into the 
 world. Fame ! No ; let us do our duty. — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 Love. And what is Love? Love is the drawing together of 
 two beings, in that nature-enforced affinity and commingling, when, 
 out of the very impact and identity of two spirits, life, triumphant 
 life, springs into the universe. — CcBsafs Column. 
 
 Night. 
 Out in the hollow sky the darkness sits 
 Owl-like and lone. The royal night strides on, 
 Trailing his starred train over the dusky earth. — 1850. 
 Fine Minds. It is a curious fact that when nature makes a 
 fine mind she casts it in very much the same mold as all the other 
 fine minds that preceded it — it looks at things and reaches conclu- 
 sions in much the same way. It would seem, therefore, that intellect 
 is not an accidental development, but a growth upward to a pre- 
 scribed standard. — Journal, 1888. 
 
 Evolution. If our thread of life has expanded from Cain to 
 Christ, from the man who murders to him who submits to murder 
 for the love of man, who can doubt that the Cain-like in the race 
 will gradually pass away and the Christ-like dominate the planet ? 
 — Bagnarolc. 
 
 A TIMON IN WATTLES. 
 
 Yonder is a rooster that has been whipped out in the great battle 
 of life. Man dehghts not him — nor woman either. He reposes 
 beneath a tree, far from the madding crowd. His air is somber. 
 He seems to have been studying the great problem, " Is life worth 
 living? "and to have decided it in the negative. The conceit — 
 
30 DONNELLIANA, 
 
 which usually supports us all — has been pounded out of him. He 
 has no illusions. Life is a mockery — a hollow sham. He is a feath- 
 ered misanthrope — a Timon in wattles. 
 
 But lo! A hen approaches— wandering, meandering — appar- 
 ently without purpose ; her head down, seemingly intent on the 
 sequestered bug. Never did man fall so low that one woman did 
 not sympathize with him. 
 
 " woman, in our hours of ease, 
 Uncertain, coy, and hard to please ; 
 * "When pain and suffering wring the brow, 
 
 A ministering angel thou ! " 
 
 What a change comes over Timon ! 
 
 With one eye furtively fixed on the distant tyrant, he rises and 
 asserts himself. " He tvill peek as long as he has the spirit of a 
 man left! '' He crows. He says in eloquent, inflectional notes, '' I, 
 too, am a man! I defy Fate and the Devil ! " 
 
 And the coy schemer sympathizes with the poor exile ; and with 
 many little womanly airs and arts, — as if still intent on the 
 ubiquitous bug, — she leads him, strutting and parading^ like a 
 militia colonel on training day, into the high brush. Eve has 
 climbed the fence of Paradise, and Adam is once more happy. — 
 Journal, 1886. 
 
 THE RATS. 
 
 And the thought forever presses on me, Can I do nothing to avert 
 this catastrophe ? Is there no hope i For mankind is in itself so 
 noble, so beautiful, so full of all graces and capacities; with aspira- 
 tions fitted to sing among the angels ; with comprehension fitted to 
 embrace the universe! Consider the exquisite, lithe-hmbed figures 
 of the first man and woman, as they stood forth against the red 
 fight of their first sunset— fresh from the hand of the Mighty One — 
 His graceful, perfected, magnificent thoughts ! What love shines 
 out of their great eyes; what goodness, hke dawn-awakened 
 flowers, is blooming in their singing hearts ! And all to come to 
 this. To this ! A hell of injustice, ending in a holocaust of 
 slaughter. 
 
 God is not at fault. Nature isnot to blame. Civilization, signifying 
 increased human power, is not responsible. But human greed — 
 blind, insatiable human greed — shallow cunning; the basest, stuff- 
 
EXTBACTS AND SELECTIONS. 31 
 
 grabbing, nut-gathering, selfish instincts, these have done this work ! 
 The rats know too much to gnaw through the sides of the ship that 
 carries them ; but these so-called wise men of the world have eaten 
 away the walls of society in a thousand places, to the thinness of 
 tissue-paper, and the great ocean is about to pour in at every aper- 
 ture. And still they hoot and laugh their insolent laugh of safety and 
 triumph above the roar of the greedy and boundless waters, just 
 ready to overwhelm them forever. — Ccesar^s Column. 
 
 THE PIONEERS OF THE WEST. 
 If there is any one subject which the eye of philanthropy can 
 contemplate with more satisfaction than all others, it is the first 
 settlement of a fertile and beautiful country. We there see humanity 
 in its most attractive aspects. The emigrant goes forth with his 
 family, his train of horses and cattle, his household goods, into the 
 new land which lies open before his feet, the richest gift of the 
 Almighty. He passes along by fenced fields and pleasant homes, 
 where but yesterday the wilderness reigned supreme, and he looks 
 
 forward, 
 
 " With all his future in his face," 
 
 to that coming day when he, too, shall sit under his own roof- tree 
 and look abroad over his own land ; when he shall escape forever 
 from the hard and grinding hand of poverty and from 
 "The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, 
 
 The insolence of office, and the spurns 
 
 "Which patient merit of the unworthy takes." 
 
 When he strikes his plow into the earth it is the virgin earth, 
 pure and sweet from the hands of its great Maker. The air that 
 sweeps around him comes not freighted with the reeks of crowded 
 and pestilential cities, the dreadful haunts of poverty and vice, but 
 it blows from out the lips of heaven with health and beauty on 
 its wings. 
 
 The first settler is the corner-stone of all future development ; 
 the entire structure of society and government must rest upon the 
 foundation of his labors. His work shall last till doomsday. He 
 first unites the industry of man to the capabilities of the fertile 
 earth. The tide of which he is the forerunning, breaker shall never 
 recede — "ne'er feel returning ebb, but keep due on" — until the 
 wilderness is densely populated ; until every foot of land, however 
 
32 BONNELLIANA. 
 
 intractable, is subdued; until the factories cluster thickly in great 
 knots upon every falling stream; until cities, towns and villages dot 
 the whole land^ until science, art, education, morality and rehgion 
 bear the world forward to a development far beyond the farthest 
 ken of the imagination, into that unknown future of the human race 
 which we cannot prefigure even in our 'dreams. 
 
 How many beautiful traits gather around these homes snatched 
 from the wilderness ? How many fair women and noble men have 
 seen the first light of heaven through the chinks of the log-house ? 
 How many heroes worthy to be embalmed in perpetual history have 
 grown up in the sturdy independence of the forest and the prairie ? 
 By the side of such men the denizens of your cities are a dwarfed 
 race. It needs pure air, pure sunshine, pure food, and the great 
 stormy winds of heaven to produce the highest types of the human 
 family, and to give to them that inflexible grain which is the first 
 constituent of great character.— >Speec7^m Congress, May 7, 1868. 
 
 The Power of G-od. And how much must that ruling, order- 
 ing, controlling Power, parent of every form of motion, every 
 capacity of sensation, every manifestation of life, transcend all 
 that we know of the material world! Weigh all the stars, suns, 
 planets, nebulae and comets, and add up the grand total ; then esti- 
 mate all the forces of heat, gravity and magnetism in the universe, 
 and, if the figures of man's arithmetic can express it, reduce the 
 amount to tons or pounds, and what are they all to the mighty 
 Power that centers and controls them all? Matter itself would 
 seem to be but the outward crystalization of this great Force — its 
 slave, its expression. From the heart of the earth to the center of 
 the sun, and beyond, through all space, there is no spot where force 
 is not perpetually existing and exercised. — The Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 Life Like the Heavens. But life is like the heavens: we 
 never know what storms and thunderbolts may come out of it; we 
 never know how soon the many-tinted cloud- wreaths which adorn, 
 like picturesque scarfs, the drapery of the dying day, may turn into 
 black and horrible tempests and lay cities low. The Fates that pre- 
 side over the destinies of men seem to love the very grotesqueries of 
 fortune. Now they lift up the half- fed boy to a throne, and anon they 
 send forth the king a beggar and a wanderer on the face of the earth. 
 At one moment they squeeze the heart of splendid success until it 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 33 
 
 sheds streams of blood ; and anon they make the soul of the unutter- 
 ably miserable to sing aloud for joy. And there is no science of 
 meteorology that will tell us what is on the way to us out of the 
 overhanging skies of our lives. We can only bow reverently to the 
 unseen forces, and take all that comes with a stout heart. — Doctor 
 Huguet. 
 
 FRANCIS BACON. 
 
 He believed that God not only was, but was all-powerful, and 
 all-merciful, and that He had it in His everlasting purposes to lift 
 up man to a state of perfection and happiness on earth, and that He 
 had created him — even him, Francis Bacon — as an instrument to 
 that end, and to accomplish that end he toiled and labored almost 
 from the cradle to the grave. 
 
 He was — in the great senses of the words — a priest and a 
 prophet of God, filled with the divine impulses of good. If he erred 
 in his conceptions of truth, who shall stand between the Maker and 
 His great child, and take either to account? 
 
 We breathe an air rendered sweeter by his genius; we live in a 
 world made brighter by his philosophy; his contributions to the 
 mental as well as to the material happiness of mankind are simply 
 incalculable. Let us, then, thank God that He sent him to us on 
 this earth; let us draw tenderly the mantle of charity over his 
 weaknesses, if any such are disclosed by the unpitying hand of his- 
 tory; let us exult that one has been born among the children of men 
 who has removed, on every side for a thousand miles, the posts that 
 experience had set up as the limitations of human capacity. — Tlie 
 Great Cryptogram. 
 
 The Twentieth Cektuey. Each generation found the condi- 
 tion of things more desperate and hopeless; every year multiplied 
 the calamities of the world. The fools could not see that a great 
 cause must continue to operate until checked by some higher power. 
 And here there was no higher power that desired to check it. As 
 the domination and arrogance of the ruling class increased, the 
 capacity of the lower classes to resist, within the limits of law and 
 constitution, decreased. Every avenue, in fact, was blocked by 
 corruption. Juries, courts, legislatures, congresses, they were as if 
 they were not. The people were walled in by impassable barriers. 
 Nothing was left them but the primal, brute instincts of the animal 
 
34 BONNELLIANA. 
 
 man, and upon these they fell back, and the Brotherhood of 
 Destruction arose. But no words can tell the sufferings that have 
 been endured by the good men, here and there, who, during the 
 past century, tried to save mankind. — Ccesafs Column. 
 
 Plant Tkees. There is no more important question for our 
 people to consider than that of tree -planting. What a noble monu- 
 ment a grove of trees will be for you, good reader, long years after 
 you have passed away ! Not a little piece of white stone in a grave- 
 yard, soon to be trampled, perhaps, under the feet of clowns and 
 cattle; but a great, leafy, arboreal monument; a land-mark for 
 miles around, and a blessing to every living thing that dwells near 
 it. The birds will sing and woo and build and brood in a thousand 
 branches through a hundred generations, among the trees^o^^ planted. 
 Don't pass away until you have provided such a monument for your- 
 self. It is but a little thing to drop a seed or set a cutting in the 
 earth, and God's infinite goodness does the rest ; your work is but a 
 suggestion to the Almighty-; a hint to His great forces of sun and 
 wind and rain and fertile earth to do their best. — The Anti-Monopo- 
 list. 
 
 A Little Tsma. An increased pressure of the hundredth 
 part of an ounce of blood upon a microscopic portion of the brain 
 may pervert the best judgment and change the whole course of a 
 man's life. How easy is it, then, for external spiritual forces to con- 
 trol the destiny of men and mankind. — Journal, 1883. 
 
 The Age oe Peace. What a glorious sight it was here to-day, 
 when, on that platform, we saw the representatives of North and 
 South, under the waving banners of the greatest republic and the 
 greatest government on Grod's earth, shake hands across the bloody 
 chasna, and renew the memories of Bunker Hill and Yorktown. 
 Never has there been witnessed such a scene of grand enthusiasm 
 as that which then presented itself. 
 
 The was is over. The feelings which accompanied it must die 
 with it. This whole land must address itself to the great economic 
 questions; the people must address themselves to the problem, how 
 can we take the plunderer from our throat ? How can we lift up 
 the downtrodden and the dejected f How can we strike down these 
 continental evils which oppress us ! — Speech before Cincinnati Con- 
 vention, May 20tli, 1891. 
 
EXTMACTS AND SELECTIONS, 35 
 
 Sunset. 
 Red embers of the daylight ! Through thy flush 
 Gleam the white ashes of the smoldering day. 
 
 — The Mournefs Vision, 1850. 
 ^'BiLL King." There he sits, with his tail over his back, 
 wrapped in the unapproachable atmosphere of his own unparal- 
 leled reputation.— Joz^rwaZy 1880. 
 
 Daniel O'Connell. Daniel O'Connell is a type of what his 
 countrymen should be — of what they are at their best. With an 
 eloquence unequaled in this century for brilliancy, depth and 
 breadth ; with a magnetic fire, a mighty passion, that shook vast 
 audiences as the whirlwind shakes the forest, he combined a per- 
 fect balance and equipoise of mind which was never disturbed from 
 its true center even by his own enthusiasm. While he aroused a 
 most passionate people to tempests of excitement, he held them in 
 check with a master hand. Conscious of the disparity in numt^"-^ 
 of his race as compared with the nation which ruled them, he s" 
 that an appeal to force was vain, and he threw all his powerful t 
 ergies into the arena of legislation. He brought all the numbe.- 
 the moral influence, the enthusiasm of the Irish people to bear upc 
 the same object ; he battered down the solid walls of ancient bi^ 
 otry and prejudice, until at length England yielded to the fury an 
 persistence of his attacks, and honored herself by granting univer 
 sal religious toleration. — Speech, 1875. 
 
 Semitizing the World. The task which Hannibal attempted, 
 so disastrously, to subject the Latin and mixed Gothic races of 
 Europe to the domination of the Semitic blood, as represented in ■ 
 the merchant city of Carthage, has .been successfully accomplished : 
 in these latter days l)y the cousins of the Phoenicians, the Israelites. 
 The nomadic children of Abraham have fought and schemed their 
 way, through infinite depths of persecution, from their tents on the 
 plains of Palestine to a power higher than the thrones of Europe. 
 The worid is to-day Semitized. The children of Japhet lie prostrate 
 slaves at the feet of the children of Shem; and the sons of Plam 
 bow humbly before their august dommiow.—Cmsar^ s Colunui. 
 
 A Political Fossil. '' Violate the chastity of the good old 
 Democratic party!'' Why, we should as soon think of violatiu"- 
 
36 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 the Judge's chastity. He is a much more tempting morsel. The 
 Judge in his youth played with the megatherium and gamboled with 
 the ichthyosaurus; and in middle age he read the resolutions of 
 '98 from the poop of the ark, when Ham and Shem were fishing for 
 gudgeons with a spoon hook. He struck out for Meeker County as 
 soon as the flood subsided, and has been running for office in that 
 vicinity ever since. ^T/^e Ami-Monopolist. 
 
 SiTTiNa Dow:fir with the Dead. The old man's death set me 
 to thinking what a strange, temporary world this is. Death is 
 always busy around us, and his darts fly thicker than the sunbeams. 
 Try to recall the faces of those you have known, who have crossed 
 the> dark river, and what an innumerable caravan recollection sum- 
 mons up ! What a banquet we would have if we sat down with the 
 dead ! — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 THE REPUBLICAN BULL-FIGHT. 
 
 They have an entertainment in Spain called the bull-fight. They 
 )rm a large ring, the people sitting around on the outside, looking 
 Lown upon it. They lead a bull into the ring, torture and madden him 
 )y arts with which they are familiar, and, when he is in a proper 
 state of rage, a horseman enters the ring and begins touching him 
 up with a spear. The bull becomes excited, and charges after the 
 horseman, who retreats and circles around, and so the sport goes on, 
 to the great entertainment of the populace. But occasionally it 
 happens that the bull is too fast or too furious, and he lunges at 
 the horseman so that his life is in danger, and when that crisis is 
 reached there are a lot of light-limbed fellows sitting around on the 
 fence surrounding the inclosure, whose business it is to rush into 
 the ring and shake red rags m the face of the bull, thus diverting 
 him from the object of his pursuit. And when the audience have 
 been sufficiently entertained, the matador . gives the final stroke, 
 and ends the sport and the bull together. 
 
 Now, that is the kind of bull-fighting we have had in America 
 these many years. The American bull, tortured by poverty, weighed 
 down by injustice, and agonized by suffering, makes a fierce lunge 
 at his enemy; but just as he is about to transfix him, the light-limbed 
 politicians, who sit upon the fences of the inclosure, jump into the 
 jing and shalie '^ the bloody sliirV^ before his face. And when the 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 37 
 
 sport is over, tlie bull is dead. — Speech before the Cincinnati Conven- 
 tion, May 20, 1891. 
 
 A Political Truth. It is impossible to make a statesman out 
 of the tool of a corporation. Omnipotence itself couldn't do it. Tbe 
 virtues of a servant are not the virtues of a master. Mediocrity is 
 of no value in a hurricane. — Journal, 1890. 
 
 Smiles and Steals. There is nothing like calling a spade a 
 spade, and a scoundrel a scoundrel. Our cold-blooded, villainous 
 age has no earnestness in anything. It simply smiles and steals. — 
 f(- The Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 d A Ruined Country. America is not an old country. It is a 
 1 new country, with millions of acres of fertile land awaiting settle- 
 ; ment. But it is a shockingly misgoverned country. It is being 
 ruined by bankers, money-lenders, bondholders and buUionists, who^ 
 will finally involve themselves in the common destruction. On its ' 
 gravestone will be written these words: " Died of old-world theories 
 applied, in the interest of capital, against the rights of the people. " 
 — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 Changing One's Mind. Senator H found fault with sen- 
 ators who had changed their minds on the subject [referring to Don- 
 nelly] , and said that he himself was of an obstinate race and did 
 not believe in changing his mind. 
 
 Donnelly arose in his might and proceeded to annihilate " the 
 senator from . " This was the way he put it : 
 
 " The senator is probably striking at me. He is proud of coming 
 of a race noted for its obstinacy; but I do not know that that is 
 anything to be proud of, for I believe the most obstinate animal in 
 the created world is a jackass. The jackass is the only creature that 
 never changes his mind, and if he were given a seat on the floor of 
 this Senate he would probably boast of this quality." 
 
 Mr. Donnelly claimed to be open to conviction, and went on to 
 state his position as favoring the present law. — Neivspaper Beport 
 of a Debate in the Minnesota Senate, 1890. 
 
 Philadelphia. We found Philadelphia the same beautiful, 
 prosy, hospitable city, with its everlasting uniformity of new brick 
 houses and its narrow streets, which look as if a Western man could 
 readily jump across from curb to curb. The weather is damp and 
 
38 BONNELLIANA. 
 
 mucky, sloppy and raining. Every Philadelphiaii is born with ail 
 umbrella in his hand, and his great anxiety in after life is not to 
 lose it. — Tlie Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 Mrs. Hog. You may clothe the hog in broadcloth, but he is 
 a hog still. You may put a silk hat on his head and a gold chain 
 about his neck, but he is nothing but a hog, and the bristles pro- 
 trude through the jewelry. And Mrs. Hog! Clothe her in satin; 
 hang her ears with diamonds; cover her mammary glands with 
 Valenciennes lace, and yet she is nothing but a hog; and when she 
 speaks you can hear between the syllables the guttural grunts that 
 remind you of gorging and guzzling at the royal swill-tubs. — Speech 
 to the State Alliance j Dec, 1890. 
 
 A Gextleman Three Hundred Years Ago. In this coun- 
 y every well-dressed, well-behaved man is a gentleman. But in 
 England in the sixteenth century it meant a great deal more. It 
 ignifled a man of gentle blood. A great and impassable gulf lay 
 jetween " the quality," " the gentry," the hereditary upper class,, 
 and the common herd who toiled for a living. It required all the- 
 powers of Christianity to faintly enforce the idea that they wer© 
 made by the same God and were of one flesh. The distinction, in 
 the England of 1596, between the yeoman and the gentleman, was 
 almost as wide as the difiference to-day in America between the 
 white man and the black man; and the mulatto who would try to 
 pass himself off as a white man, and would support his claim by 
 lies and forgeries, will give us some conception of the nature of this 
 attempt made by William Shakspere in 1596. — The Great Crypto- 
 gram. 
 
 The Chemist of the System. We should treat the stomach 
 as our discriminating friend and chemist, — not use it as a slush- 
 cart. — Journal, 1891. 
 
 Judges. You put a small-minded man on the bench, and he 
 loses sight of justice and right, and proceeds to help enlarge the 
 already vast system of technicalities found in the books. He ram- 
 bles away into wire-drawn distinctions as practical as those of the 
 old monks when they debated how many devils could dance on the 
 point of a hqq^Iq.— Journal, 1886. 
 
 The Chinese Cure for Corpulency. There was a rich man 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. ill 
 
 ill San Francisco, who was very corpulent and troubled with a pen- 
 (hilous stomach. He consulted a Chinese doctor. The disciple of 
 Confucius shaved his head, put a plaster on it, stood him in a cor- 
 ner, and told him to stand there until the plaster drew his belly up. 
 1 don't know but he is standing there yet. The old political parties 
 in this country have had the people in a corner for twenty years 
 past, drawing? up their bellies with the plaster of fair promises. 
 The belly shrinks, but it does not rise. When the victim complains 
 the doctor changes the plaster. He takes off the Republican pilaster 
 and puts on a Democratic plaster. And still it draws, and still the 
 victim waits — for both plasters are made out of the same materials, 
 and bought in the same shop — the old shop of Monopoly. — 
 Speech to State Alliance, Dec, 1890. 
 
 The Pioneer-Press of St. Paul, Minnesota. It contains 
 two hundred lies to the square inch. If a man reads it for an hour, 
 he rises with a strong desire to steal something. In the name of 
 honesty it defends the thieves ; in the name of morality it attacks 
 religion; it combines pohtic bigotry with the opinions of Bob Ingersoll. 
 Its highest ideal of journalism is continuous and systematic misrepre- 
 sentation. It has never failed to defend a rascality which paid, or 
 to attack a righteous cause which did not pay. The devil might 
 paper the walls of hell with its editorial columns, and in his leisure 
 hours chuckle over the ghastly exhibitions of human weakness and 
 wickedness which they contain. — Speech, 1880. 
 
 The Judgment Day. I drew a picture of death — not the 
 judgment day of flarue, but the momentous act of taking rank 
 in the invisible world, clad in the atmosphere of our deeds on earth. 
 The segregating of the good from the bad; the repulsive crowd- 
 ing together of the evil with the evil ; and then the beginning 
 of new careers of work and influence upon the minds of those yet 
 dwelling in the flesh, for blessing or for ban. — Doctor Hugiiet. 
 
 On the Threshold. We are but beginning to understand 
 the past : one hundred years ago the world Ivuew nothing of Pom- 
 peii or Herculaneum ; nothing of the lingual tie that binds together 
 the Indo-European nations ; nothing of the significance of the vast 
 volume of inscriptions upon the tombs and temples of Egypt ; noth- 
 ing of the meaning of the arrow-headed inscriptions of Babylon; 
 
40 I>ONNELLtANA. 
 
 nothing of the marvelous civilization revealed in the remains of 
 Yucatan^ Mexico and Peru. We are on the threshold. Scientific 
 investigation is advancing with giant strides. Who shall say that 
 one hundred years from now the great museums of the world may 
 not "be adorned with gems, statues, arms and implements from 
 Atlantis, while the libraries of the world shall contain translations 
 of its inscriptions, throwing new light upon all the past history of 
 the human race, and all the great problems which now perplex the 
 thinkers of our day? — Atlantis. 
 
 God Liftie-g- Up the World. And what greater guarantee 
 of the future can we have than Evolution ? If God has led life from 
 the rudest beginnings, whose fossils are engraved (blurred and ob- 
 scured) on the many pages of the vast geological volume, up to 
 this intellectual, charitable, merciful, powerful world of to-day, who 
 can doubt that the same hand will guide our posterity to even higher 
 levels of development ? — Bagnarok. 
 
 The Imagination. The basis of Bacon's mind was the imag- 
 ination. This is the eye of the soul. By it the spirit sees into the 
 relations of things. This it is gives penetration, for it surveys 
 objects as the eagle does — from above. And this is Bacon's meta- 
 phor. He says: '' Some writings have more of the eagle in them 
 than others." 
 
 It was this descending sight, commanding the whole landscape, 
 that enabled him to make all knowledge his province, and out of 
 this vast scope of view grew his philosophy. It was but a higher 
 poetry. Montaigne says : " Philosophy is no other than a falsified 
 poesie. . . . Plato is but a poet unripened. All superhuman* 
 sciences make use of the poetic style. " — The Great Cryptogram, 
 
 A Strong Comparison. If you, the producing classes, attempt 
 to defend your interests against the vermin that prey upon you, the 
 vermin declare that you " want to tear down the pillars which sus- 
 tain civilization," etc., etc. You can scarcely kill a bedbug now-a- 
 days that he does not protest that you are striking a fatal blow at 
 society. — The Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 Our Flag. 
 Fling forth the flag that meets the stars with stars, ;.. ^ 
 
 Light seeking light, and glory raised toward God. — 1851, ; ' 
 
EXTliACTS AND SELECTIONS. 41 
 
 Bill W . And thei-e, in the background, stands Bill W ! 
 
 Faint, dim, uncertain, attenuated ; a thing of shreds, patches and 
 saw-dust. 
 
 "They brought one Pinch, a hungiy, Icau-faeccl villain, 
 A mere anatomy, a mountebank, 
 A living dead-man." 
 
 Stat nominis umbra, — a suit of clothes and a name. His noblest 
 intellectual capacity, to steal. His highest conception of patriot- 
 ism, to corrupt. — Speech, 1880. 
 
 The '' AuKA " of our Thoughts. And then my thoughts 
 drifted to the people about me, and I could not help but think that 
 each one dwelt in his or her own world of reflections, filled with its 
 own memories and thoughts — of men and women, and deeds and 
 things, each one totally differing from his neighbor. And it occurred 
 to me, if the aura of every man's thoughts was made visible, what a 
 sight it would be, — extending far beyond the narrow limits of the 
 railroad car, overlapping each other, and reaching, in some instances, 
 to the end of the earth. Each individual carries his* world of thoughts 
 around him like a great atmosphere. In one case it is pure and bright 
 and tenanted by angels; in another it is dark and gloomy, thick with 
 scowling crimes and threatening demons. The raiment of these 
 peoxjle touched as they sat together; they exchanged the 
 little civilities of speech; and yet heaven and hell were not farther 
 apart than the realms in which their souls dw^elt. — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 JOB. 
 
 Now, when we take this description, with all that has preceded 
 it, it seems to me beyond question that this was one of the crooked 
 serpents with which God adorned the heavens ; this was the mon- 
 ster, with blazing head, casting out jets of light, breathing vol- 
 umes of smoke, molten, shining, brilliant, irresistible, against 
 whom men hurl their weapons in vain ; for destruction goes be- 
 fore him : he casts down stones and pointed things upon the mire, 
 the clay ; the sea boils with his excessive heat ; he threatens heaven 
 itself; the angels tremble, and he beholds all high places. This is 
 he whose rain of fire killed Job's sheep and shepherds; whose chaotic 
 winds killed Job's children ; whose wrath fell upon and consumed 
 the rich men at their tables; who made the habitations of kings 
 
42 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 '' desolate places ;" who spared only in part '' tbe island of tlie in- 
 nocent, " where the remnant of humanity, descending by ropes, hid 
 themselves in deep, narrow-mouthed caves in the mountains. This 
 is he who dried up the rivers and absorbed or evaporated a great 
 part of the water of the ocean, to subsequently cast it down in great 
 floods of snow and rain, to cover the north with ice; while the 
 darkened world rolled on for a long night of blackness underneath 
 its dense canopy of clouds. 
 
 If this be not the true interpretation of Job, who, let me ask, can 
 explain all these allusions so as to harmonize with the established 
 order of nature ? And if this interpretation be the true one, then 
 have we indeed penetrated back through all the ages, through 
 mighty lapses of time, until, on the plain of some most ancient civil- 
 ized land, we listen, perchance at some temple-door, to this grand 
 justification of the ways of God to man ; this religious drama, this 
 poetical sermon, wrought out of the traditions of the people and 
 priests, touching the greatest calamity which ever tried the hearts 
 and tested the faith of man. 
 
 And if this interpretation be true, with how much reverential 
 care should we consider these ancient records embraced in the 
 Bible ! — Magnarok. 
 
 Minneapolis. A city of churches, dominated by Bill King and 
 Bill Washburne. God help us ! — Speech, 1880. 
 
 To A Picture. 
 There lie a thousand pleasures 
 
 Within those deep blue eyes, 
 And on those lips the treasures 
 
 Of a thousand kind replies. — 1855. 
 
 The Scalp of a Bald-Headed Man. An Eastern paper says 
 
 we took S S 's scalp last fall. We modestly demur. We 
 
 abstained from taking it, because, as a trophy, it would have been 
 of no value. The world could not have told from what part of his 
 person it had been removed. — Tlie Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 Ages that Make No Histoet. It is the pitiable spectacle 
 of the soul of man drowned in the glories of the flesh; of a nation 
 perishing of too much prosperity; of the dead, flat waste of ages that 
 make no history. Genius lights, with its crooked talons, upon the 
 
EXTBACTS ANT) SELECTIONS. 43 
 
 uioLintani peaks of world-shaking convulsions. It finds iio resting- 
 place upon the desolate plains of a money- worshiping, characteiiess, 
 materialistic age. — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 The Iowa Hotel. Cheap transportation doesn't mean robbing 
 or ruining the railroads, but that intelligent policy, born of broad 
 minds, which looks to a decrease of rates and an increase of trade; 
 not to a decrease of trade and an increase of rates, like that Iowa 
 landlord who kept hotel a year without a single customer, and then 
 insisted, revolver in hand, on collecting his whole expenses for the 
 year off the first poor devil who stayed over night with him. — The 
 Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 THE EFFECTS OF MISGOVERNMENT. 
 
 Misgovernment has gone on in this land, ' supplementing tlie 
 oppression which exists in the old world, through kings, emperors 
 and aristocracies, until great numbers of our people are already re- 
 duced to misery, discontent and turbulence. To break down the price 
 of labor at home, the enemies of mankind have filled the country with 
 importations of hordes of foreign laborers from the most oppressed 
 portions of Europe; and these men, taught all their lives to regard 
 government of any kind as tyranny, and all property as robbery, have 
 broken out in bloody insurrections, which have shocked and alarmed 
 the whole country. For the first time in free America, a consider- 
 able part of our population is, to-day, held in subjection only by the 
 rifle and cannon. The men who have, by their insatiable rapacity, 
 brought about this state of things, are now clamoring for a " strong 
 government;" that is to say, a despotism. The farmer should 
 never forget that in all despotisms the tiller of the soil is a serf, in 
 fact, if not in name. Our agricultural class has, therefore, the high- 
 est interest in preserving the liberties of the whole country. Om- 
 foreign-born farmers cannot desire to see this land go back to the 
 conditions of Europe; and he is indeed blind who does not perceive 
 that the whole drift of the current is in that direction. — Address of 
 State Farmers^ Alliance, 1886. 
 
 The Power of the Press. There is a mystery and a miracle 
 to this day about that art of printing. The editor might stand and 
 utter his opinions upon the street corners and no man would regard 
 him ; they would answer him with taunts and laughter j but let the 
 
44 BONNELLIANA. 
 
 same opinions be set up in cold type and printed on paper, and some 
 occult power of civilization seems to attach to them; the coward 
 cringes before them; the sneerer takes off his hat to them; and 
 even the wise man scratches his head and says : " There must be 
 something in that. '' — Speech to the Editors of Wisconsin^ 1889. 
 
 The Wkath or a Little Mae- with a Big Hat. Irving 
 Todd, in reply to some mild statement of ours^ dangles his legs 
 down out of his hat, kicks them about wildly in the air, like the 
 antennae of a June bug, and fiercely shrieks, " It's a lie ! " If Irving's 
 size held any proportion to his viciousness the seat of Goliah's pants 
 would not make him a night-cap. — The Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 Hypnotism. We have reached the limit of physical explora- 
 tions. The Colons and Cabots are no longer needed. Our future 
 voyages must be made by the soul of man, not his body. Out of 
 this " Hypnotism" will be developed, in the future, the power to 
 send the entranced and subjugated spirit on voyages of discovery 
 to the planets, — yes, to the uttermost limits of the universe; and all 
 that is shall be known to man. — Journal, 1890. 
 
 Gee AT Cities. They* are, indeed, what Tom Jefferson called 
 them, ''great sores." They are the mouths of graveyards. Last 
 year 29,211 deaths occurred in New York City, an average of eighty 
 each day. The numbei" of births reported during the same time 
 was 23,744, which is greatly at varian-ce with the generally accepted 
 theories regarding the relative proportions of births and deaths. 
 Morally and physically great cities degenerate the people. If it 
 were not for the fresh blood from the rural districts annually poured 
 into their insatiate maws they would destroy themselves. Let us 
 thank Ood for country homes and country breeding. They are 
 the safety of our race and the salvation of our Republic. — The Anti- 
 Monopolist. 
 
 A Distinctio]^. If a man attempts to serve the people he is a 
 demagogue ! If he serves their masters he is a " gentleman, a 
 scholar, and a patriot." — Speech to Grangers, 1873. 
 
 Fate. 
 
 Unequal fortune, misproportioned fate, 
 
 On acts and thoughts and circumstances wait. — iS-5^. 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 45 
 
 THE INDIGENOUS CIVILIZATION OF AMERICA. 
 
 It may be safely said the Spaniards encountered in Mexico and 
 Peru an indigenous civilization in many respects higher than their 
 own. 
 
 The conquerors of Peru found that country covering a narrow 
 tract of land along the sea coast, four thousand miles in length and 
 three hundred miles in width, and containing a population of thirty 
 millions, — nearly equal to the entire population of the United 
 States. 
 
 The civilization of the Peruvians was not of sudden growth. It 
 had extended 'through many centuries. The people were agricultur- 
 ists, and the pursuit had been carried to a degree of refinement un- 
 known at that time in Europe. To this day the curious traveler finds 
 upon the tops of the mountain ranges, in some cases thirteen thousand 
 feet above the level of the sea, and amid the haunts of the eagle, the 
 crumbling walls and vast monuments which bespeak the civilization 
 of the ancient people. 
 
 Nor was this civihzation rude and immature. Of its kind it was 
 perfect. Almost every foot of their vast territory was brought under 
 subjugation to the labor of man. So dense was the population and 
 so energetic the efi"orts of industry, that the soil of the valleys was 
 carried up on the backs of the peasants to the elevated sides of the 
 mountains, and crops raised as high as the limits of vegetation. 
 
 Of this unfortunate people nine-tenths have wasted away before 
 the white man. The valley of Santa, for instance, which once main- 
 tained seven hundred thousand inhabitants, does not now contain 
 twelve thousand. The city of Cuzco, which at the time of the con- 
 quest was larger than Chicago, does not now number twenty thou- 
 sand souls. 
 
 When we turn to the Mexicans we find still more striking evi- 
 dences of the indigenous development of the Indian mind. 
 
 That interesting people possessed at the time of their conquest 
 a perfectly organized form of government. The monarch was 
 elected from the royal family by the votes of the nobles. A regular 
 administration of justice prevailed. For each great city there 
 was a supreme court, with a single judge; and below these, in each 
 province, an inferior court of three members; and below these 
 again the local magistracy elected by the people. A right of appeal 
 
46 JDONNELLIANA. 
 
 lay from one court to another, but the decision of the supreme court 
 was final, and the judges were independent of the crown. The 
 laws were registered and exhibited to the people in their hieroglyph- 
 ical character. " The rites of marriage, " says Prescott, '' were cele- 
 brated with as much formality as in any Christian country, and the 
 institution was held in such revereuce that a tribunal was instituted 
 for the sole purpose of determining questions relating to it." Tax- 
 gatherers were distributed throughout the empire. The tributes 
 consisted of" cotton dresses; mantles of feather- work ; ornamented 
 armor; vases and plates of gold; gold dust, bands and bracelets; 
 crystal, gilt and varnished jars and goblets; bells, arms, and uten- 
 sils of copper; reams of paper; grain, fruit, copal, amber, cochineal, 
 cocoa, timber and lime." Hospitals were established in the prin- 
 cipal cities, for the cure of the sick and the permanent refuge of the 
 disabled soldiers, and surgeons placed over them, " who were so far 
 better than those in Europe," says an old chronicler, " that they 
 did not protract the cure in order to increase the pay." — Speech in 
 Congress, Feb. 7, 1865. 
 
 Pleasiis^g Eveet One. A Western paper says: " Wanted, at 
 this office, an editor who can please every one. " The editor of the 
 Anti-Monopolist will fill the bill exactly. Democrats take our paper 
 to see us rap the Kepublicaus, and Republicans take it to see us 
 give it to the Democrats, while the Independents are delighted 
 because we denounce them both, and we are happy because our sub- 
 scription list is growing. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 Intolerant Religious Controversy. That Serbonian bog, 
 whose dense waters " skylark never warbled o'er, "whose borders 
 have never been reached by mortal man, over whose quicksands no 
 compass or chronometer has ever established latitude or longitude, 
 whose Mara-like depths plummet has never sounded, whose rotting 
 bosom exhales only decay and death. — Journal^ 1880. 
 
 WAS IT A COMET? 
 
 What, now, are the elements of the problem to be solved? 
 
 First, we are to find something that instantaneously increased to 
 a vast extent the heat of our planet, vaporized the seas, and fur- 
 nished material for deluges of rain, and great storms of snow, and 
 
EXTBACTS AND SELECTIONS. . 47 
 
 accumulations of ice north and south of the equator and in high 
 mountains. l 
 
 Secondly, we are to find something that, coming from above, 
 smashed, pounded and crushed " as with a maul, " and rooted up 
 as with a plow, the gigantic rocks of the surface, and scattered 
 them for hundreds of miles from their original position. 
 
 Thirdly we are to find something which brought to the planet 
 vast, incalculable masses of clay and gravel, which did not contain 
 any of the earth's fossils; which, like the witches of Macbeth, 
 
 " Look not like th' inhabitants of earth, 
 And jet are on it ; " 
 
 which are marked after a fashion which can not be found anywhere 
 else on earth; produced in a laboratory which has not yet been dis- 
 covered on the planet. 
 
 Fourthly, we are to find something that would produce cyclonic 
 convulsion upon a scale for which the ordinary operations of nature 
 furnish us no parallel. 
 
 Fifthly, we are to find some external force so mighty that it 
 would crack the crust of the globe like an eggshell, lining its sur- 
 face with great rents and seams, through which the molten interior 
 boiled up to the light. 
 
 Would a comet meet all these prerequisites ? 
 
 I think it would.— Bagnarok. 
 
 A Personal Devil. It is not to be wondered at that a large 
 part of mankind believe in a personal devil, since there is so much 
 malignity and hatred of all goodness in a considerable part of the 
 population of the world. The doctrine of demoniacal possession, 
 despite the doctors, would seem to have some ground and founda- 
 tion of experience and reason to stand upon. We so often see evil 
 done which neither profits the doer nor any one else, that one is 
 constrained to look for its source iu extra-mundane influences, and 
 to see in the unreasonable and unprofitable wickedness of man the 
 impish instincts of some grinning demon behind the scenes.— Z^oc^or 
 Huguet. 
 
 The Greenbacks. " The Treasury has just burned $152,000 in 
 greenbacks under the action of the resumption act. '^—Exchange. 
 What offense had those $152,000 of greenbacks committed ? Did 
 
48 / DONNELLIANA. 
 
 the people ask for their destruction ? Did the people ever haye a 
 better or more satisfactory currency than those very greenbacks? 
 
 The people had the use of those $152,000 of currency free of cost. 
 Now they have, in lieu of them, $121,600 of national bank notes, 
 on which they will pay, in taxes, for interest on bonds, over $6,000 
 per annum, forever, m gold. And this is the result of one day^s 
 it'ork! — The Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 The Beginning of the Newspaper in England. Here we 
 have the very beginning of the system which has culminated in the 
 London Times and New York World. How strangely do Cymball's 
 two rooms, his few clerks, his manuscript letters, filled with the 
 gossip of barbers, tailors, porters and watermen, compare with the 
 gigantic system of Eeuter in Europe and the Associated Press Com- 
 pany in America, with telegraph lines under all the oceans, and to 
 all the towns and cities of the continents and islands, and with a 
 vast army of news-gatherers and correspondents over all the world. 
 And think of those few clerks making written copies of CymbalFs 
 weekly letters, to be sent out to a score or so of subscribers through- 
 out the kingdom, and compare them with one of Hoe's gigantic 
 lightning presses, which from a web of paper four miles long can 
 print 25,000 copies of an eight-page newspaper in an hour. When 
 we consider Cymball's two rooms and then look around upon the 
 world we live in, one feels like sending up a shout of praise to G-od 
 that He cast our lot in such a perfected and tremendous era. We 
 can not help a feeling of pity for all who lived in those little, mean, 
 dwarfed, helpless ages of the world's history. If Brown- Sequard's 
 discovery is a reality, and he can, to paraphrase Burns, " mak auld 
 men maist as good as new," we will stay here and enjoy this mag- 
 nificent world, where all things are conjoining for man's happiness, 
 until the over-crowded younger generation get up a rebellion against 
 the old folks and drive them into the sea. — Speech before the Editors 
 of Wisconsin, 1889. 
 
 True Statesmanship. ^' The Senate bill extending the time 
 for redemption of land sold for taxes in the counties of Dakota and 
 Sibley passed the House on the 12th. Another specimen of Donnel- 
 ly's statesmanship." — Hastings Gazette. 
 
 Yes ; the statesmanship which takes more account of one poor 
 
EXTBACTS AND SELECTIONS. 49 
 
 mau, struggling against adverse circumstances, than of a hundred 
 tax-sharks, in shiny hats, with their pockets full of greenbacks. — 
 Anti-31onopolist. 
 
 The Eagle. Flat-headed, grim, far-peering into space — with 
 cold, cruel, carnal, unsympathetic eyes. — Journal, 1889. 
 
 A VOICE comes roUing like an ocean wave 
 
 Up the cold shores of silence. — 1850. 
 
 The Product of the " Business Era." " Gentlemen," said 
 he, " I am ashamed of this creature ; I am ashamed of him as a 
 Northern man. The North is a land of heroes — the war proved 
 that. I w^ant you to understand that it produces very few such 
 scoundrels as this. They are the latest fruit of our ' commercial 
 age;' of the 'business era,' proudly so called, which now dominates 
 politics, rehgiou and everything else; in which, if a man steals 
 enough and keeps out of the penitentiary, he becomes an aristocrat. 
 God help the country where such Dead Sea apples grow on the tree 
 of knowledge. " — Doctor Huguet. * 
 
 The Stomach. A man's whole career in hfe may depend on 
 whether his stomach is acid or alkaline. And yet there are fools who 
 think they are the architects of their own fortunes. — Journal^ 1891. 
 
 MONARCHIAL OPPOSITION TO REPUBLICS. 
 
 Some such measure as this, Mr. Speaker, is necessary, not alone 
 to define the rights of American citizens abroad, native-born and 
 naturalized, but to arrest and resist the arrogant i^retensions of the 
 monarchial governments of Europe upon this question. There is no 
 doubt that it has always been the disposition of those nations 
 to treat repubhcan governments, and especially our own country, 
 with contempt. And in this connection I desire to quote from the 
 London Times of the date of the 20th of May, 1814:, an extract 
 which is significant as demonstrating the real ulterior purposes for 
 which the war of 1812-14 was waged against this country. This 
 was published within three days after the conclusion of peace be- 
 tween France and England : 
 
 " The British negotiators will not, we hope, discuss the impudent 
 nonsense called an American doctrine about impressment and native 
 allegiance, but will demand the safe and undivided possession of 
 the great lakes, the abandonment of the Newfoundland fisheries, 
 
50 JJONNELLIANA. 
 
 and the restoration of Louisiana and the usurped Territory of 
 Florida. " 
 
 The British Government sent out its armies and navy to enforce 
 the doctrines and purposes of which we have here the key-note, and 
 but for the disasters which overtook the British tleet on Lake Cham- 
 plain from the guns of Commodore McDonough ; but for the defeat 
 of the British forces at New Orleans shortly afterward by the heroic 
 Jackson; but for the power which this nation then developed, that 
 doctrine in all its atrocity would have been enforced by the British 
 nation. And, sir, to-day every right we possess and exercise as a 
 republican people is exercised in the face of the contempt of these 
 monarchial governments; is possessed and exercised only by virtue 
 of our power as the greatest nation on the earth. — Speech in Con- 
 gress, Jan. 30th, 1868. 
 
 A TEKRIBLE QUESTION. 
 
 I hope the question will never come in this shape : Is it better 
 that the rich should be made poor, or that the poor should starve? 
 And mankind will make answer : We are not, any of us, entitled to 
 wealth; but we are, all of us, entitled to life. Better that the pal- 
 aces of the great should be dismantled than that the living temples 
 of God should lose their tenants. 
 
 But only the vast, cruel, unreasonable stupidity of the upper 
 classes will ever permit the dreadful question to reach that shape. — 
 Journal, 1886. 
 
 THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION ON THE EARTH. 
 
 Let us reason together : 
 
 The ice, say the giacialists, caused the Drift. What caused the 
 ice ? Great rains and snows, they say, falling on the face t>f the 
 land. Granted. What is rain in the first instance? Vapor, clouds. 
 Whence are the clouds derived? From the waters of the earth, 
 principally from the oceans. How is the water transferred to the 
 clouds from the oceans ? By evaporation. What is necessary to 
 evaporation ? Heat. 
 
 Here, then, is the sequence : 
 
 If there is no heat, there is no evaporation; no evaporation, no 
 clouds; no clouds, no rain; no rain, no ice ; no ice, no Drift. 
 
 But, as the Glacial age meant, they tell us, ice on a stupendous 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 51 
 
 scale, then it must have been preceded by heat on a stupendous 
 scale. — Bagnarok. 
 
 A Comparison. On the same ground Judas Iscariot might have 
 passed resolutions denouncing his own little Credit Mobilier busi- 
 ness, his little increase of salary to the amount of thirty pieces of 
 silver, and thencefoi'th have claimed the right as a purified Christian 
 
 to elbow Peter and Paul aside and lead the now dispensation. 
 
 Speech to Grangers, 1873. 
 
 The Eaft of Life. Indeed, it has sometimes seemed to me 
 that we are all voyaging together over a rough sea, on a loosely 
 constructed raft, full of holes. You turn to speak with a friend, 
 and, lo! he is gone, in the twinkling of an eye — not a bubble left of 
 him. You turn to another, and, as you converse with him, he drops 
 out of sight, into the great deep, before your very eyes. You begin 
 to realize that this wonderful structure, called Life, is made, not to 
 carry its passengers, but to drown them; and that, but for the new 
 souls which constantly clamber painfully up its rickety sides, it 
 would soon be sailing tenantless over the dark waves. And you 
 commence to study the loose, shifting planks beneath your feet, 
 half submerged in the water, and to watch, with intense interest, 
 every tremor in the fabric. The wonder is, you think, that the pre- 
 carious structure does not altogether dissolve and sink in the billows 
 of time, leaving only lifeless fragments in the midst of a dead 
 universe. — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 Society Divided. There are but tw^o classes in the world: 
 those who create wealth, and those who appropriate it. — Journal, 
 1888. 
 
 One of Our Dangers. We boast, in this country, that phys- 
 ical labor is honorable, and yet the children of the land are taught 
 to avoid it as a curse. We have left the labor of the country to be 
 performed by foreigners, until the character of American youth, 
 especially in our Eastern cities, has degenerated into a shiftlessness, 
 idleness and incapacity for honest work that must in the long run 
 have the worst effects upon the national character.— J/«e Anti- 
 Monopolist. 
 
 God's Intention. God never set the abundant table of this 
 world with intent that the gluttons should gorge to sickness, while 
 
52 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 thousands starved in the ante-room. — Speech to State Alliance, 
 Bee, 1890. 
 
 Englishmen and Ameeicans. The Englishman celebrates 
 every important event with a feast, the American with a speech ; 
 which shows the superiority of our race, for, while our brethren 
 acros-s the sea appeal to the stomach, we appeal to the mind, and 
 hence it has come to pass that the English upper class are recog- 
 nized as the best-fed people in the world, while the whole American 
 population are the most intellectual on the face of the earth. We 
 are willing to concede this much to the Englishmen — and to our- 
 selves ! — Address to the Editors of Wisconsin, 1889. 
 The flap of the great eagle's wing, 
 Sun- wakened on the mountain. — 1850. 
 
 The Exaltations of Genius. Neither can we judge what 
 great things genius can do in the blessed moments of its highest ex- 
 altation by the beggarly dregs of daily life. Lord Byron said, in a 
 letter to Tom Moore : 
 
 '' A man's poetry has no more to do with the everyday individ- 
 ual than had inspiration with the Pythoness when removed from the 
 tripod." — The Great Cryptogram. 
 
 The Settlement of Europe and Amekica. In fact, kindred 
 races, with the same arts, and speaking the same tongue in an early 
 age of the world, separated in Atlantis and went east and west — 
 the one to repeat the civilization of the mother-country along the 
 shores of the Mediterranean Sea, which, like a great river, may be 
 said to flow out from the Black Sea, with the Nile as one of its trib- 
 utaries, and along the shores of the Eed Sea and the Persian Gulf; 
 while the other emigration advanced up the Amazon, and created 
 mighty nations upon its head-waters in the valleys of the Andes and 
 on the shores of the Pacific. — Atlantis. 
 
 Memory in the Next World. One old man, who had been 
 a faithful scholar at seventy years of age, had died during my 
 absence, but his widow and his children were all there. I had ob- 
 served the old man's eagerness for knowledge, tottering as he was 
 on the very brink of the grave, and I asked myself whether our men- 
 tal acquisitions in this world are carried away with us into the 
 next. Why not ? It must be the thinking-principle that is immor- 
 tal, and memory is surely part of the thought apparatus. In fact. 
 
EXTJiACTS AKP SMLECTtOKS. :>;; 
 
 without memory there cannot be self-consciousness. We either 
 retain our knowledge, or we live not. — Doctor Hugiiet. 
 
 A Wise Decisiox. While Mr. Donnelly, as Lieutenant Gover- 
 nor of Minnesota, was President of the State Senate, a dispute arose 
 between the fireman and the messenger boys as to whose duty it 
 was to bring the drinking-water for the use of the Senators. Both 
 sides appealed to the President to settle the dispute, and he did so 
 with Solomonic wisdom. He said: '^ It is the duty of the fireman to 
 bring all the water used by him in kindling his fires ; the rest the 
 messenger-boys will bring." 
 
 THE IRON BAND OF A METALLIC CURRENCY. 
 
 " Take a child a few years old ; let a blacksmith weld around his 
 waist an iron baud. At first it causes him little inconvenience. 
 He plays. As he grows older it becomes tighter; it causes him pain ; 
 he scarcely knows what ails him. He still grows. All his internal 
 organs are cramped and displaced. He grows still larger ; he has 
 the head, shoulders and limbs of a man and the waist of a child. 
 He is a monstrosity. He dies. This is a picture of the world of 
 to-day, bound in the silly superstition of some prehistoric nation. 
 But this is not all. Every decrease in the quantity, actual or rel- 
 ative, of gold and silver increases the purchasing-power of the 
 dollars made out of them; and the dollar becomes the equivalent 
 for a larger amount of the labor of man and his productions. This 
 makes the rich man richer and the poor man poorer. The iron 
 band is displacing the organs of life. As the dollar rises in value, 
 man sinks. Hence the decrease of wages; the increase in the 
 power of wealth ; the luxury of the few; the misery of the many.'' 
 
 '' How would you help it ? '' he asked. 
 
 " I would call the civilized nations together in council, and 
 devise an international paper money, to be issued by the difi'erent 
 nations, but to be receivable as legal tender for all debts in all 
 countries. It should hold a fixed ratio to population, never to be 
 exceeded ; and it should be secured on all the property of the civil- 
 ized world, and acceptable in payment of all taxes, national, state 
 and municipal, everywhere. I should declare gold and silver legal 
 tender only for debts of five dollars or less. An international 
 greenback that was good in New York, London, Berlin, Melbourne, 
 
64 BONNELLtANA. 
 
 Paris and Amsterdaiu, would be good anywhere. The world, re- 
 leased from its iron band, would leap forward to marvelous pros- 
 perity; there would be no financial panics, for there could be no 
 contraction ; there would be no more torpid middle ages, dead for 
 lack of currency, for the money of the nation would expand, pari 
 passu, side by side with the growth of its population."— Cesar's 
 Column. 
 
 A Voice. 
 
 Let not thy hfe — e'en as thy voice is not — 
 Be marred by one false note or pauseful spot. 
 
 A voice more sweet floats not, on wildering wing, 
 ! Where by the great white throne the angels sing ; 
 
 A voice more sweet, e'en among Eden's bowers. 
 Ne'er tranced the senses of the listening flowers, 
 
 Nor ever hung o'er the despairing ear 
 A tone so heaven-touched, so low, so clear. — 1855.. 
 
 A CONUNDKUM. What is the use of shutting out the goods 
 made by the pauper labor of Europe, if you admit free the pauper 
 labor that made the goods^ — Speech at Glencoe, 1884. 
 
 USURY. 
 
 Money in itself is valueless. It becomes valuable only by use — 
 by exchange for things needful for life or comfort. If money 
 could not be loaned, it would have to be put out by the owner 
 of it in business enterprises, which would employ labor ; and as the 
 enterprise would not then have to support a double burden, to- wit, 
 the man engaged in it and the usurer who sits securely upon his 
 back, but would have to maintain only the former usurer, that is, 
 the present employer, its success would be more certain; the .gen- 
 eral prosperity of the community would be increased thereby, and 
 there would be, therefore, more enterprises, more demand for labor, 
 and consequently higher wages. Usury kills off the enterprising 
 members of a community by bankrupting them, and leaves only the 
 very rich and the very poor, for every dollar the employers of labor 
 pay to the lenders of money has to come eventually out of the pock- 
 ets of the laborers. Usury is, therefore, the cause of the first aristoc- 
 racy, and out of this grow all the other aristocracies. Inquire where 
 the money came from that now oppresses mankind, in the shape of 
 
EX fn ACTS AND SKLKC'liONS. 5o 
 
 great corporations, combinations, etc., and in nine cases out of ten 
 you will trace it back to the fountain of interest on money loaned. 
 The coral island is built out of tlie bodies of dead coral insects; large 
 fortunes are usually the accumulations of wreckage, and every dollar 
 represents disaster. — Cfpsafs Column. 
 
 Pearls. Great thoughts are like pearls. One must dive deep 
 into the great sea of suffering to bring them iip.—Journal, 1886. 
 
 The Anglomaniacs. I would advise that the Anglomaniacs be 
 put in petticoats, if it were not for the injustice it would do the 
 women. — Journal, 1890. 
 
 The Unloved. Love ! thou art the medicine of the soul I 
 Life without love is half-death. Woe unto him whom nothing 
 
 loves! Better were it for him that he were in his grave. Doctor 
 
 Huguet. 
 
 The Peosperitt of the United States not Due to its 
 Tariff Laws. What has the tariff got to do with it? Imagine 
 a man who would say " Forty years ago I was worth but $10,000, and 
 my yearly income was but $600 ; now I am worth $100,000, and my 
 income is $6,000 ; then I wore a blue coat, now I wear a black coat, 
 ergOj my increased income is due to my black coat. " This is gener- 
 alizing with a vengeance. 
 
 It reminds me of the doctor who had an Englishman for a pa- 
 tient, sick with typhoid fever. The Englishman had an unnatural 
 craving for pickled oysters. " Well, " says the doctor to his friends, 
 " he is going to die anyhow, so you might as well gratify him by 
 giving him the oysters." The Englishman ate the oysters and re- 
 covered. The doctor forthwith made the following entry in his note 
 book: "Mem. Pickled oysters area sure cure for typhoid fever. " 
 The next day he had another patient afflicted with the same disease, 
 a Frenchman. " Give him pickled oysters, " said the confident doc- 
 tor. They did so, and the Frenchman died. Then the doctor went 
 home and made this further entry in his note book : " Mem. Pickled 
 oysters are a sure cure for typhoid fever in an Englishman, but are 
 certain death to a Frenchman. "—*S;peec/i at Glencoe, Minnesota, 
 1884. 
 
56 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 Editors. Editors have no business in this world if they do not 
 strive to make men better and wiser. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 ''A-E Illinois Pompeii. There is a Pompeii, a Herculaneum, 
 somewhere underneath Central and Northwestern Illinois or Ten- 
 nessee, of the most marvelous character ) not of Egypt, Assyria, or 
 the Roman Empire, things of yesterday, but belonging to an incon- 
 ceivable antiquity; to pre-glacial times; to a period ages before 
 the flood of Noah — a civiUzation which was drowned and deluged 
 out of sight under the immeasurable clay-flood of the comet.— 
 Ragnarolv. 
 
 Ae Aphorism. Every pohtical party has its helpless infancy, 
 its gallant and chivalrous youth, and its corrupt and selfish old 
 age. — Speech to Grangers, 1873. 
 
 A Great Man. A great man is like a pair of boots. He con- 
 centrates our attention twice : First, when he is new and we ad- 
 mire him ; and, secondly, when he is old and we lament the holes 
 which time has made in him. — Journal, 1879. 
 
 THE CAT. 
 
 I leaned down and petted a great cat, slumbering in a chair, and 
 I said to it : 
 
 " My poor brother, you are wrapped up in your environment of 
 limitations as I am in mine. You cannot fathom my thoughts, nor 
 I yours. But we are both pieces of the same fabric, cut from the 
 same roll of cloth ; we are both children of the same great Designer, 
 who cares for us and yet cares for us not. " 
 
 And the cat turned over on its back, as if to say : 
 
 " I would rather have my belly scratched than listen to your 
 philosophy." 
 
 And the cat illustrated the difference between physics and meta- 
 physics. — Journal, 1890. 
 
 A GOOD WORD FOR THE JEWS. 
 
 We are reminded of these generalizations by a dispute which 
 took place in Hastings the other day between two merchants, wherein 
 one denounced the other in the newspapers as '^ a Jew." 
 
 It never occurred to the worthy man who flung out that ferocious 
 eipithet that the Jews were a civilized race, worshiping the One 
 
EXTBACTS AND SELECTIONS. \ 57 
 
 Liviug God, when his ancestors were savages, bowing down to st':H*,ks 
 and stones. It never occurred to him that Christianity was simply 
 an amplified Judaism ; that Christ himself was a Jew, and that for 
 a long time it was a grave question in the early church whether any 
 one could be a Christian who was not a Jew. 
 
 This worthy merchant probably did not know that the Semitic 
 race, of which the Jews are a branch, originated the three great re- 
 ligions of the world : Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism ; 
 and that alone of all the races of antiquity they proclaimed, in the 
 midst of polytheism, the great truth : '' There is but one God." Our 
 white race of Western Europe never originated either a religion or a 
 civilization ; it borrowed the first from the Jews and copied the last 
 from the Romans. 
 
 The Jewish race has been for a thousand years a race of outcasts 
 and outlaws ; hunted, proscribed, persecuted, plundered ; fenced in 
 in the corners of towns like a x)estilence; ostracised from society 
 and despised of all men. Yet to-day England, majestic Protestant 
 England, is ruled by a Jew — the Prime Minister D'Israeli. In art, 
 in literature, in music, the Jewish race has been illustrated by ma- 
 jestic names, such as Mendelssohn, Niebuhr, Auerbach, etc. In 
 finance what name will compare with that of Rothschild? 
 
 Give the Jews a chance. This is their country as well as ours, 
 and they have a right to make all out of themselves that they are 
 capable of without having " Jew, Jew," shouted after them. 
 
 A great nation, like a magnificent piece of mosaic work, has room 
 in it for all the race elements of the world. There is room here for 
 Goth and Celt and Basque and African and Jew — yes, even for the 
 Indians, if they can survive civilization. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 Imitating the Creatok. We should work as the Divine 
 Creator works: in non-essentials diversity; in essentials identity. 
 In the vertebrata there is endless variety, but there is only one 
 scheme of back-bone. — Journal, 1890. 
 
 The East. Oysters, heat, moisture and dense population sen- 
 sualize the race. Their literature runs to murders, their art to legs, 
 their politics to place-hunting, and their statesmanship to sectional 
 plunder. If the nation is to be saved, it must be by the dwellers 
 on the great elevated, inter-continental plains.— /ot^rwa?, 18Q0. 
 
5B DOnNJ^LtiANA, 
 
 The Woeld's Great Men. The Creator's greatest gift to mari 
 is the world's moral heroes. Great cities sink into dust-heaps; the 
 mines of Golconda are exhausted ; the plains of the ancient empires 
 are desert places; but the work of the great men who strove to 
 benefit humanity remains a perpetual force in nature, bearing new 
 fruits century after century. Empires have passed away, dynasties 
 have perished, nations and languages have become extinct, since the 
 barefooted Socrates preached on the street corners of Athens, but his 
 work and his thoughts remain a potent force to-day, even, in our 
 modern civilization. — Speech on Daniel O^Connell, 1875. 
 
 An Argument for the Birds. The grasshopper infliction is 
 simply a disarrangement of the great balance of nature. They 
 come from a region where there are no trees, consequently no insec- 
 tivorous birds. In the great battle of life the withdrawal of a single 
 element of destruction gives an undue advantage which is manifested 
 at once. It is believed that a single plant, if its enemies and com- 
 petitors were withdrawn, would in a few years cover the whole 
 world. Look at it ! The progeny of a single female grasshopper, 
 increasing 'fifteenfold, would in eight years produce j^^;e hillion grass- 
 hoppers ! 
 
 That beats a frontier money-lender's rates of interest ! And 
 nothing else can. 
 
 If, then, a prairie chicken gobbles a grasshopper, he gobbles the 
 great -grandmother of five billion little red-legged possibilities. 
 And when said prairie chicken lives off grasshoppers for a month or 
 two, he nips in the bud more grasshoppers than the office-holders 
 have stolen dollars. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 " Darwinism PLUS God. " I explained to them, as well as I 
 could, the doctrine of Evolution : how, under a divine impulse, the 
 higher rose out of the lower; the great out of the less ; the complex 
 out of the simple; the noble out of the ignoble ; the pure out of the 
 impure ; the civilized man out of the savage ; the Christian out of 
 the brute. I showed them that Darwinism plus God was the true 
 philosophy of the new age. — Doctor Hitguet. 
 
 The Ballot-Box. What is a despotism? It is a country where 
 reforms can only be achieved by the bayonet. What is a republic f 
 It is a country where the people are absolute masters, with the right 
 
iJxrnAcrs' and sELKirrnms. 
 
 and power to efl'ect all needed re.\)rms peaceably at the ballot-bc 
 In a free country nothing counts but ballots. Parties, resolutioi 
 platforms, public opinion, are only steps to the ballot-box; and|if 
 they do not reach there they end in empty ii\\\— Speech to Granger^, 
 1873. I 
 
 BuENS. Burns' drunkenness was simply the protest of his spiril 
 against the cruelty of his environment. — Journal, 1890. 
 
 A Philosophical Reflection. How httle thinks the reticent 
 and unsocial oyster, while it is quietly adding layer after layer of 
 lime to its shell from the briny waters, that it is simply toiling to 
 furnish some poor man the means of plastering the walls of his 
 humble home. — Journal j 1879. 
 
 THE WONDERS OF EGYPT. 
 
 Look at the record of Egyptian greatness as preserved in her 
 works : The pyramids still, in their ruins, are the marvel of man- 
 kind. The river Nile was diverted from its course by monstrous 
 embankments to make a place for the city of Memphis. The arti- 
 ficial lake of Moeris was created as a reservoir for the waters of the 
 Nile; it was four hundred and fifty miles in circumference and three 
 hundred and fifty feet deep, with subterranean channels, flood- 
 gates, locks and dams, by which the wilderness was redeemed from 
 sterility. Look at the magnificent masonwork of this ancient peo- 
 ple! Mr. Kenrick, speaking of the casing of the Great Pyramid, 
 says: " The joints are scarcely perceptible, and not tvider than the 
 thiclxness of silver-paper, and the cement so tenacious that fragments 
 of the casing-stones still remain in their original position, notwith- 
 standing the lapse of so many centuries, and the violence by which 
 tliey were detached. " Look at the ruins of the Labyrinth, which 
 aroused the astonishment of Herodotus; it had three thousand 
 chambers, half of them above ground and half below — a combina- 
 tion of courts, chambers, colonnades, statues and pyramids. Look 
 at the Temple of Karnac, covering a square each side of which is 
 eighteen hundred feet. Says a recent writer: '' Travelers, one and 
 all, appear to have been unable to find words to express the feelings 
 with which these sublime remains inspired them. They have been 
 astounded and overcome by the magnificence and the prodigality of 
 workmanship to be admired. Courts, halls, gateways, pillars, 
 
()() hONNELLTAKA. 
 
 obelisks^ monolithic figures^ sculptures, rows of sphinxes, are massed 
 iu such profusion that the sight is too much for modern comprehen- 
 sion. '' Denon says : " It is hardly possible to believe; after having 
 seen it, in the reality of the existence of so many buildings collected 
 on a single point— in their dimensions, in the resolute perseverance 
 Tv^hich their construction required, and in the incalculable expense 
 of so much magnificence." And again: " It is necessary that the 
 reader should fancy v^hat is before him to be a dream, as he who 
 views the objects themselves occasionally yields to the doubt 
 whether he be perfectly awake. " There were lakes and mountains 
 within the periphery of the sanctuary. '' The cathedral of Notre 
 Dame at Paris could be set inside one of the halls of Karnac, and not 
 touch the walls ! . . . The whole valley and delta of the Nile, from 
 the Catacombs to the sea, was covered with temples, palaces, tombs, 
 pyramids and pillars. " Every stone was covered with inscriptions. 
 — Atlantis. 
 
 Why? If thcxpowers of government have been used to enrich 
 the few, why should they not be used to enrich the many? Have 
 the many less rights than the few ? If so, why? —Journal, 1890. 
 
 Reconstruction. Now, then, comes the question to each of us, 
 by what rule shall we reconstruct the prostrated and well-nigh deso- 
 lated States? Shall it be by the august rule of the Declaration of 
 Independence, or shall we bend our energies to perpetuate injustice, 
 cruelty and oppression, and make of this fair government a mon- 
 strosity, with golden words of promise upon its banners, a fair seem- 
 ing upon its surface, but a hideous and inhuman despotism within it; 
 the Christianity and civilization of the nineteenth century crystal- 
 ized into a nation, with Dahomey and Timbuctoo in its bowels? A 
 living lie, a rotten pretense, a mockery and a sham, with death in 
 its heart ! —/Speec/i in Congress, Jan. 18, 1867. 
 
 The Bovine Peocession. And I could not help but think how 
 kindly we should feel toward these good, serviceable ministers to 
 man ; for I remembered how many millions of our race had been 
 nurtured through childhood and maturity upon their generous 
 largess. I could see, in my imagination, the great bovine proces- 
 sion, lowing and moving, with their bleating calves trotting by their 
 sides, stretching away backward, farther and farther, through all 
 
EXTBACTS AND SELECTIONS. 01 
 
 the historic period ; through all the conquests and bloody, earth - 
 staining battles, and all the sin and suffering of the race ; and far 
 beyond, even into the dim, pre-historic age, when the Aryan ances- 
 tors of all the European nations dwelt together under the saiuje 
 tents, and the blond-haired maidens took their name of " daugh- 
 ters " (the very word we now use) from their function of milk- 
 maidens. And it seemed to me that we should love a creature so 
 intimately blended with the history of om- race, and which had done 
 so much, indirectly, to give us the foundation on which to build 
 civilization. — Ccesafs Column. 
 
 Washburne in Heaven. Why, Mr. Speaker, if all this be 
 true, I tremble for my country. What if God, in a moment of en- 
 thusiasm at one of the gentleman's speeches, were to pluck him to 
 his bosom and leave this wretched nation staggering on in darkness 
 to ruin ! I do not wonder that the gentleman's family manifest such 
 an intense desire to get into Congress. I fancy the gentleman — 
 for what would be our loss would be heaven's gain — I fancy the 
 gentleman haranguing the assembled hosts of heaven — the cheru- 
 bim and the seraphim — the angels and the archangels ! How he 
 would sail into them ! How he would rout them — horse, foot and 
 dragoons ! How he would attack their motives and fling insinua- 
 tions at their honesty ! And how he would declare for economy, 
 and urge that the wheels of the universe be stopped because they 
 consumed teo much axle-grease. — Speech in Congress, 1868. 
 
 What Might Have Been. But let us be merciful and philo- 
 sophical in our judgments. Man is the creatu«re of circumstances. 
 If the leaders of the North had dwelt in the South they would have 
 been secessionists; if the leaders of the South had dwelt in the North 
 they would have been abolitionists. Stonewall Jackson, if born iu 
 Vermont, might have been rotten-egged in Boston as an abolitionist, 
 and Lloyd Garrison, born in Georgia, have aided Toombs to " fire 
 the Southern heart." If Abraham Lincoln's parents had moved 
 southward into the Carolinas instead of northward into Illinois, who 
 can tell what part he might have played in the great struggle; and 
 if Ben Butler had been born .in Mississippi instead of Massachusetts, 
 he might to-day be sitting alongside Jeff. Davis, looking out over 
 the blue waters of the Gulf, and, like the Danbury man's goat. 
 
62 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 Scratching his heard and trying to recall how it all happened.— 
 Memorial Address, 1884. 
 
 Knowledge. Knowledge is the accumulation of interesting 
 iacts. That which does not interest humanity is not worth remem- 
 bering. You must widen the brows of men by forcing new ideas into 
 their brains. Thought is the food of the mind, and it grows with 
 what it feeds on. It longs for learuing as the eye longs for light — 
 it is the sustenance of the soul. — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 Bosh. Let us be conservative. Let us not ignore the sacred 
 claims and prescriptive rights of Bosh !— Journal, 1890. 
 
 Dn. Johnson and Ossian. We are reminded of that intel- 
 lectual old brute, Dr. Samuel Johnson, trampling poor Macpherson 
 under foot, like an enraged elephant, for daring to say that he had 
 collected from the mountaineers of wild Scotland the poems of 
 Ossian, and that they had been transmitted, from mouth to mouth, 
 through ages. But the great epic of the son of Fingal will survive, 
 part of the widening heritage of humanity, while Johnson is re- 
 membered only as a coarse- souled, ill-mannered incident in the 
 development of the great English i^eople.—Bagnarok. 
 
 The Lightning. 
 Thou hast swept out the darkness at a dash; 
 
 Amid thy blaze the startled heavens grow white ; 
 And the dark face of storm, lit with thy flash, ' 
 Lies with its horrid features wrought in light. — 1853. 
 The Bakren Fig Tree. Talk is necessary ; but talk that does 
 not fructify into deeds is like the barren fig tree, fit only to be cut 
 down and cast into the fire. — Speech to State Alliance, Dec, 1890. 
 
 The Tree of Knowledge. The editorial function is the high- 
 est known to civihzation. Its business is to acquire facts and dissemi- 
 nate information. Facts are the bricks, the stones, the masonry out 
 of which the temple of knowledge is constructed. The newspaper 
 is based on the great primal instinct of man — the desire to know. 
 The business commenced when Eve ate of the tree of knowledge. If 
 she could have subscribed, at that time, for a first- class newspaper, 
 she would have learned all about good and evil ; and the apple might 
 have rotted on the tree for all she would have cared for it. And 
 
EXTRAC1\^ ANU SKJ.ECTIONS. \ 03 
 
 think of the conaequences ! think of a Wisconsin or Minnesota l^^gis- 
 lature that knew no guile, wandering around Madison or St. ?aul 
 next winter, with the thermometer at forty degrees below zero, ^lad 
 in a bland smile and a fig-leaf.— Speech to Editorial Convention!' ^/ 
 Wisconsin J 1889. ,' 
 
 Francis Bacon's Aims. No man ever lived upon earth ilia 
 possessed nobler aims than Francis Bacon. He stands at the portal 
 of the opening civilization of modern times, a sublime figure ; his 
 heart full of love for man, his busy brain teeming with devices for 
 the benefit of man, with uplifted hands praying God to bless his 
 work, the most far-extending human work ever set afoot on the 
 planet. — The Great Cryptogram. 
 
 An Aphorism. There can be no birth without a groaning.— 
 Journal, 1890. 
 
 EEADY-MADE-CLOTHING STYLE OF MEN. 
 
 In the age of Queen Ehzabeth there were but five million people 
 who spoke the English language ; now there are, in all the world, 
 one hundred and twenty millions; but what one name, of this gen- 
 eration, have we to set up against the immortal galaxy that adorned 
 that wonderful era. Not one ! We erect great fortunes; but we 
 do not build great men. 
 
 ' ' Ye have the Pyrrhic dance as yet — 
 Where is the Pyn-hic phalanx gone? 
 Of two such lessons, why forget 
 The nobler and the manlier one 1 " 
 
 The individual lessens as the race greatens; independent thought 
 becomes an ofi'ense, and strength of character a crime. Society is a 
 great shop, where the millions are turned out after the same pat- 
 tern—like ready-made clothing. As Pope says, in the Bunciad: 
 " "With the same cement, ever sure to bind, 
 "We bring to one d.ead level every mind ; 
 Then take him to develop, if you can. 
 And hew the block off and get out the man.'' 
 
 It is the age of poijitless uniformity and immensely prosperous 
 dullness. And all this prosperity is but dust blown in the eyes of 
 Apollo.— Doctor Huguet. 
 
 Shakspere and Stratford. It would, indeed, be a miracle 
 if out of this vulgar, dirty, ilhterate family came the greatest genius, 
 
G4 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 the profouudest thinker, the broadest scholar that has adorned the 
 annals of the human race. It is possible. It is scarcely proba- 
 ble. . . . And it is to this social state, to this squalid village, that 
 the great thinker of the human race, after association, as we are 
 told, with courts and wits and scholars and princes, returned in 
 middle life. He left intellectual London, which was then the center 
 of mental activity, and the seat of whatever learning and refinement 
 were to be found in England, not to seek the peace of rural land- 
 scapes and breathe the sweet perfumes of gardens and hedge-rows, 
 but to sit down contentedly in the midst of pig- sties, and to inhale 
 the malarial odors from reeking streets and stinking ditches. — TJie 
 Great Cryptogram. 
 
 Our New Civilizatiok^. It is the new creed that whatever is 
 lawful is honorable. In the old time many things were lawful that 
 were most dishonorable. — Journal, 1890. 
 
 The Rights of a Wrong. A wrong has no rights except the 
 right to die — and die at once. Its existence is a reproach to the in- 
 telUgence of mankind. Away with it ! Plow it up and sow the 
 ground with salt. You cannot compound with the devil. — Speech to 
 State Alliance, Dec, 1890. 
 
 Mixed by His Early Training. One day last week, when 
 the income-tax bill was under consideration, Donnelly got up and 
 spoke in favor of it, saying that it was part of the great revolution 
 which was inaugurated last fall, and which rolled up 60,000 dollars 
 for Owen. Of course, he meant votes, and some of the Republicans, 
 who are ever ready to laugh at the Sage, enjoyed themselves at his 
 expense. But Donnelly caught on, and in that peculiar way of his 
 said : " I mean votes; my early training as a Republican caused me 
 to forget the votes and remember only the dollars." Tlien the 
 laugh was on the other side, and it was a good, long and loud one, 
 too. — From the Henderson {Minn.) Independent. 
 
 The Soil that Grows No Poisons. " You are right," I re- 
 plied ; " there is nothing that will insure permanent peace but uni- 
 versal justice : that is the only soil that grows no poisons. .Univer- 
 sal justice means equal opportunities for all men, and a repression 
 by law of those gigantic abnormal selfishnesses which ruin millions 
 for the benefit of thousands. ^'—CcBsar's Column. 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. (i;5 
 
 GRANT AND WASHBURNE DELINEATED. ! 
 
 What is the meaning of this attack, Mr. Speaker? — becaus 
 there must be some meaning to it. There was nothing in my lettJ 
 to Mr. Folsom to provoke such a terrible outpouring of bile. Whai^ 
 is the meaning of itf Why, it means this: As you know, Mr.' 
 Speaker, the gentleman has for a long time cracked his whip over 
 the shoulders of the members of this House. He has been the nat- 
 ural successor here of those old slave-lords who used to crack their 
 whips here. 
 
 But his vaulting ambition has at last overleaped itself. Not 
 satisfied to assail us here, to vituperate us here, he is going to mold 
 the next Congress ; and lie is going out into our districts to tell the 
 people of the United States whom they shall select and whom they 
 shall not select. Why, my friend from Iowa [Mr. Price], as he tells 
 me, meets in the newspapers of his district the assaults of the gen- 
 tleman here. 
 
 He is ranging the whole vast amphitheater. Why does he do 
 this? Why does he do it, Mr. Speaker? There is a very simple 
 explanation which has come out in my district, and which is one of 
 the great arguments why they should send to this House the brother 
 of the distinguished gentleman. It is that he owns General Grant; 
 that he carries Ulysses Grant in his breeches pocket. 
 
 Why, sir, the gentleman already feels upon his shoulders the 
 cares of empire. He is already forecasting cabinets, dispensing for- 
 eign missions, setting men up and putting men down. We can 
 apply to him the language that Cleopatra used of Mark Antony : 
 " In his livery 
 Walk'd crowns and crownets ; realms and islands were 
 As plates dropp'd from his pocket." 
 
 Why, Mr. Speaker, has he not lived in the same town with Gen- 
 eral Grant ? And should he not, therefore, perforce, be the War- 
 wick, the king-maker, the power behind the throne ? I never could 
 account, Mr. Speaker, for the singular fact that the gentleman did 
 live in the same town with General Grant except by reference to 
 that great doctrine of compensation which runs throughout the 
 created world. The town of Galena having for so many years en- 
 dured the gentleman, God Almighty felt that nothing less than 
 Ulysses S. Grant could balance the account. Josh Billings beauti- 
 
6 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 illy illustrates this doctrine of compensatiou when lie says that it 
 ^ a question whether the satisfaction of scratching will not pay a 
 nan for the pain of having the itch. I leave the gentleman's con- 
 stituents to apply the parable. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, I bow humbly before the genius of Ulysses S. Grant. 
 I recognize him as the greatest, broadest, wisest intellect of this 
 generation. I cannot believe that be will degenerate into a puppet 
 to be pulled by wires held in the hands of the gentleman from Illi- 
 nois ; that he will degenerate into a kind of hand-organ to be tooted 
 around on the back of the gentleman from Illinois, while his whole 
 family sit on the top of the machine grinning and catching pennies 
 hke a troop of monkeys.— /S^eec/^ in Congress, 1868. 
 
 The Soul and Body. As we feel, in perfect health, a total un- 
 consciousness of the body, its wants and its limitations, so we can 
 realize how pure, lofty, powerful, serene, the mind must be, divested 
 of the body. — Journal, 1886. 
 
 The Fool Needs a Strong Constitution. The fool needs 
 a strong constitution — for all the burdens of life are piled on him, 
 and he grins and is tickled. He feels that God intended him to 
 husk the corn for another, and hve on the husks. He is happy. 
 He is a conservative. He is opposed to all radicals. He don't be- 
 lieve in the Farmers' Alliance. To him the rich man is a visible 
 god in breeches. Nothing else ever was so completely happy as a 
 fool. Omnipotence, that made the universe, can do nothing with a 
 
 fool except kill him. And God so pities him that He lets him 
 
 live for the amusement of the angels ; and all heaven holds its sides 
 and roars with laughter over the antics of the fool. — Speech to State 
 Alliance, Dec, 1890. 
 
 Happiness. As happy as a dog in the house of a childless 
 woman. — Journal, 1890. 
 
 A Materialistic Age. It is hard to tell, I thought, how far 
 a man is fortunate or unfortunate in his generation. In many 
 respects this is the greatest age the world has ever known. Never 
 before did humanity possess such vast powers over nature; never 
 before did such huge populations dwell in such a golden atmos- 
 phere of peace and enlightenment. And yet all these things 
 may be accompanied by such a denial of spiritual life; by such 
 
EXTliACTS AND SELECTIONS, 
 
 shallow, dust-griibbiug materialism ; by such a dead-rot of servilii 
 and heartlessness and wealth-grabbing and Mammon- worship, i 
 society, that the fair form of Progress becomes rotten and worm 
 eaten; and that which we mistake for the pulsations of breathing 
 life may he but the convulsive struggles of the filthy, swarming 
 vermin beneath the infected skin. — Doctor Hiiguct. 
 
 The Pride of the North ix the Courage of the South. 
 And that demand is just and right; and why should it he refused? 
 Why should it be denied us by invoking the memories of the war? I 
 am an old Republican, a Northern man, from the extreme Northern 
 tier of States; but I say this, my friends: while we think the South 
 was wrong in invoking the goddess of civil war in this land, yet we 
 see clearly that it was no merely criminal outbreak that made this 
 rebellion. It was made by men who believed, from the standpoint 
 of their education, that they were right; and they brought to the 
 defense of their principles a courage, a heroism, a chivalry, such as 
 the world has hardly ever seen before. For all those noble qualities 
 the people of this North can be proud. It would be a disgrace to us 
 if one-half the territory of this country had been inhabited by a caitiff 
 race. Their courage and heroism is part of the heritage of Ameri- 
 can glory; and the heart of America— I say it as a Northerner and 
 as an old Republican — the heart of America is big enough and 
 generous enough to enshrine in the recesses of its tenderest mem- 
 ories, not only the names of Grant and Lincoln, but the names of 
 Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. And as we pass away from 
 that dark and terrible time, clearer and clearer will the American 
 people perceive that we must give up the recriminations of the past, 
 and become ia fact, as we are in name, one people, — Speech at the 
 Cincinnati Convention, May 20, JSOl. 
 
 The Men to Blame. Pomeroy^s Democrat remarks: 
 " Three men in Waterford, Pa., were indicted at Erie for tarring 
 and feathering a woman of doubtful character, and after trial weie 
 found guilty and sentenced from one to ten years each in the peni- 
 tentiary." 
 
 It would have been much better to have tarred and feathered 
 the men who visited the woman. But the world has not yet oat- 
 grown the sentiment of the middle ages, that woman is the r:ie:iiv 
 and tempti'ess of man, a sort of she-Satan. When Adam put the 
 blame of the apple upon Eve, he would probably have tarred and 
 
DONNELLIANA. 
 
 aathered her also, if he had had the materials handy. — The Anti- 
 
 LlFE. 
 
 ■■-''■ I stand like him who, in the days gone by, 
 
 From Darien's rocks looked o'er an unknown sea ; 
 Below the rising waves are mounting high, 
 
 And passion's gales sigh out in prophecy. 
 I feel within what may make good or ill, 
 
 (Man's heart the heaven whence clouds or sunshine come) ; 
 But shall the strong tides of the flooding will 
 
 My lone bark bear, or bury it in foam 1 
 ■ Dark ocean, — life, — the night is on thy breast; 
 
 And fortune urges where I may not rest. — 1849. 
 
 POPULAE MYTHS. 
 
 In primitive races mind repeats mind for thousands of years. If 
 a tale is told at a million hearth-fires, the probabilities are small, 
 indeed, that any innovation at one hearth-flre, however ingenious, 
 will work its way into and modify the narration at all the rest. 
 There is no printing-press to make the thoughts of one man the 
 thoughts of thousands. While the innovator is modifying the tale, 
 to his own satisfaction, to his immediate circle of hearers, the nar- 
 rative is being repeated in its unchanged form at all the rest. The 
 doctrine of chances is against innovation. The majority rules. 
 
 When, however, a marvelous tale is told to the new generation 
 — to the httle ones sitting around with open eyes and gaping 
 mouths — they naturally ask, " WJiere did all this occur?" The 
 narrator must satisfy this curiosity, and so he replies, " On yonder 
 mountain- top, " or " In yonder cave." 
 
 The story has come down without its geography, and a new 
 geography is given it. 
 
 Again, an ancient word or name may have a signification in the 
 language in which the story is told different from that which it pos- 
 sessed in the original dialect, and, in the effort to make the old fact 
 and the new language harmonize, the story-teller is forced, gradu- 
 ally, to modify the narrative; and, as this lingual difficulty occurs 
 at every fireside, at every telling, an ingenious explanation comes 
 at last to be generally accepted, and the aneient myth remains 
 dressed in a new suit of liuguistic clothes. — Bagnarolu 
 
EXTRACTS AKl) SF.LECTIOKS. G9 
 
 Keligion. With niauy, reli«;-ion is8iiiii)ly a bigscare.--./o«r/«(<^ 
 
 Sowing Greatness to Posterity. And was not Bacon, nii these 
 appeals to national heroism, ^^ sowing greatness to 2^osteritg," and 
 helping to create or maintain that warlike " breed " which has since 
 carried the banners of conqnest over a great part of the earth's sur- 
 face f One can imagine how the eyes of those swarming audiences 
 at the Fortune and the Curtain nuist have snapped with dehght, at 
 the pictures of English valor on the field of Agincourt, as depicted 
 in Henry V., or at the representation of that tremendous soldier 
 Talbot, in Henry VI., dying Kke a lion at bay, with his noble boy by 
 his side. How the prentices nuist ha\ e roared ! How the mob must 
 have raved ! How even the gentlemen must have drawn deep 
 breaths of x)atriotic inspiration from such scenes ! Imagine the Lon- 
 don of to-day going wild over the work of some great genius de- 
 picting, in the midst of splendid poetry, Wellington and Nelson ! 
 — The Great Cryptogram. 
 
 A Declaration of Principle. Every effort of the laboring 
 classes to increase the sum of their comforts and enjoyments should 
 meet with the approval of all good men. — The Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 Law. a thing they call law, which is five-tenths trick, four- 
 tenths precedent, and one-tenth justice. — Journal, 1886. 
 
 Collecting Debts in the Next World. What a pity there is 
 no way to take a transcript of a judgment and enter it up in the 
 next world ! The spiritual medium who will devise that will earn a 
 monument at the hands of W^all Street. Wouldn't it be jolly to see 
 a spiritual sherilf hunting around in heaven for the maker of one of 
 those old Minnesota five per cent, per month notes, and threatening 
 to sell the wings off his back if he didn't pay up ! — The Anti-Monopo- 
 list. 
 
 History. History is simply 7w5- story, and depends on who tells 
 it. — Journal, 1890. 
 
 Liberty. Wherever man is oppressed the laws are at fault. 
 Either they have omitted to strike down some subtle form of injust- 
 ice or they have maintained it. Civihzation and liberty will yet 
 turn the blizzard-swept plains of the Saskatchewan into gardens of 
 plenty and beauty. Oppression and injustice have for centuries cov- 
 
70 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 erecl the fairest regions of the old world with wretchedness and 
 misery, more appalling and destructive than the snow-thickened 
 tornadoes of the north. Educate the mind of man and unshackle 
 his hands, and there is little in nature which he cannot subdue. The 
 earth is made for man and his handmaid — liberty. — Memorial 
 Address J 1884. 
 
 God axd the Humai^ Mind. And I said to them that so vast, 
 so wonderful, so adorable was this Being that He alone was worthy 
 of study and contemplation by the thoughtful mind; and that nature, 
 man and all things that are within the universe are entitled to con- 
 sideration simply because they are part of the outflow of this divine 
 power. I said to them that God was invisible, even as our own 
 minds are invisible ; that He had no shape, even as our own minds 
 are without shape ; that He was recognized by His works, even as 
 our own minds are known to one another by their influence on mat- 
 ter. That he who helped to make free the mind of man released 
 a part of God from the trammels and thraldom of matter, and gave 
 tTiought spiritual wings upon which it could traverse the universe. — 
 Doctor Hiiguet. 
 
 What the Declaration of Independence Means. There 
 was a time when emperors rode in ox-carts with solid log wheels and 
 fed like wild beasts. If any one had told Charlemagne that in a few 
 centuries the yeomanry, the traders, the leeches, the lawyers, 
 would enjoy a hundred-fold more of the comforts and luxuries of 
 life than he did, the great king would have chopped his head off as 
 a false prophet or have chained him as a lunatic. The Declaration 
 of Independence means that, eventually, every toiler in the world 
 shall enjoy all the education, all the comforts and luxuries, now pos- 
 sessed by the middle classes. That is the direction in which God is 
 moving. It was for that He reserved this continent. And who 
 will be hurt by it '/ Is the king any worse off because the bourgeoisie 
 are intelhgent, happy and cultivated ? Is the security of society 
 decreased? Will the republic be less powerful and permanent when 
 every industrious man in it has a comfortable home, a plentiful 
 larder, and an educated mind ; when every peasant, as Henry IV. 
 said, "has a chicken in the pot"'? Can a republic endure if the 
 majority are wretched, ignorant and discontented? — Memorial 
 
ExmAcrs ANT) r?:lections;. 71 
 
 TiiK Dominant Caste. Aiul \ cried out aloud: •' O my white 
 brethren I Little do you appreciate what a gl(>ry it is to belong to 
 the doniiiiaiit caste; what a hell it is to fall into the subject caste! 
 Little do you appreciate your race-advantages, to be 'the beauty of 
 the world, the paragon of animals,' the perfection of your species. 
 Little do you think what a boundless debt of gratitude you owe to 
 the good God, for his mercies, to be expressed in boundless tender- 
 ness and generosity to your unfortunate brethren." — Doctor Huguet, 
 
 Ambition. 
 The mind that takes an eagle's aim 
 
 Will find an eagle's wings ; 
 And sun-like soul shall set its claim 
 
 Above earth's little things. — 1853. 
 
 CIVILIZATION AND BARBARISM. 
 
 Civilization is not communicable to all ; many savage tribes are 
 incapable of it. There are two great divisions of mankind, the civ- 
 ilized and the savage; and, as we shall show, every civihzed race in 
 the world has had something of civilization from the earhest ages; 
 and as '' all roads lead to Rome, " so all the converging lines of civ- 
 ilization lead to Atlantis. The abyss between the civilized man and 
 the savage is simply incalculable ; it represents not alone a differ- 
 ence in arts and methods of life, but m the mental constitution, the 
 instincts^ and the predisposition of the soul. The child of the civ- 
 ilized races, in his sports, manufactures water-wheels, wagons, and 
 houses of cobs; the savage boy amuses himself with bows and 
 arrows. The one belongs to a building and creating race; the other 
 to a wild, hunting stock. This abyss between savagery and civili- 
 zation has never been passed by any nation, through its own original 
 force, and without external influences, during the Historic Period : 
 those who were savages at the dawn of history are savages still. 
 Barbarian slaves may have been taught something of the arts of 
 their masters, and conquered races have shared some of the advan- 
 tages possessed by their conquerors ; but we will seek in vain for 
 any example of a savage people developing civilization of and 
 among themselves. I may be reminded of the Gauls, Goths and 
 Britons; but these were not savages; they possessed written lan- 
 guages, poetry, oratory and history; they were controlled by relig- 
 
72 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 ious ideas ; they believed in God and the immortahty of the soul, 
 and in a state of rewards and punishments after death. Wherever 
 the Romans came in contact with Gauls, or Britons, or German 
 tribes, they found them armed with weapons of iron. The Scots, 
 according to Tacitus, used chariots and iron swords in the battle of 
 the Grampians — " enormes gladii sine mucrone." The Celts of 
 Gaul are stated by Diodorus Siculus to have used iron-headed 
 spears and coats-of-mail, and the Gauls who encountered the Ro- 
 man arms, in B.C. 222, were armed with soft iron swords, as well as 
 at the time when Caesar conquered their country. Among the 
 Gauls men would lend money to be repaid in the next world, and 
 we need not add that no Christian people has yet reached that sub- 
 hme height of faith; they cultivated the ground, built houses and 
 walled towns, wove cloth, and employed wheeled vehicles; they 
 possessed nearly all the cereals and domestic animals we have, and 
 they wrought in iron, bronze and steel. The Gauls had even in- 
 vented a machine on wheels to cut their grain, thus anticipatmg 
 our reapers and mowers by two thousand years. The difference 
 between the civilization of the Romans under Julius Caesar and the 
 Gauls under Vercingetorix was a difference in degree and not in 
 kind. The Roman civilization was simply a development and per- 
 fection of the civilization possessed by all the European populations; 
 it was drawn from the common fountain of Atlantis. — Atlantis. 
 The Sea-boy. 
 As the sad sea-boy, o'er the evening main, 
 Sends the long sorrow of some home- taught strain; 
 Now on the wild-gushed sea-wind softly sighing; 
 Now with the waves' fall lingeringly dying ; 
 While rocks the mast above the swaying sea, 
 And white the wave the scattered foam is flinging, 
 And from the upfurled shrouds, all mournfully, 
 That sad, sweet voice is singing. — 1856. 
 Falstaff's Half-pennyworth of Bread. There is a misap- 
 prehension about the convention. It was started ostensibly as a 
 conference of producers. I see here a galaxy of notable business 
 men and lawyers. I stand almost alone here as the representative 
 of the great producing class. When Falstaff fell asleep behind the 
 arras, Prince Hal searched his pockets, and found nothing in them 
 
EXTRACTS AXJ) SE]J<:CTI0NS. l:\ 
 
 but 11 tavcru bill, for a large (luantity of li([uor and a very small 
 amount of bread. " O monstrous! " said Prince Hal; " but one-half- 
 pennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack." Gentlemen, 
 in this convention I represent the bread. [Great laughter and ap- 
 plause.]— yS^^^eec/i in Northtvestern Waterivays Contention, 1885. 
 
 God's Cake of His World. If I am right, despite these incalcu- 
 lable tons of matter piled on the earth, despite heat and cyclones 
 and darkness and ice and floods, not even a tender tropical plant fit 
 to adorn or sustain man's life was blotted out ; not an animal valu- 
 able for domestication was exterminated ; and not even the great 
 inventions to which man had attained during the Tertiary Age were 
 lost. Nothing died but that which stood in the pathway of man's 
 development, — -the monstrous animals, the Neanderthal races, the 
 half-human creatures intermediate between man and the brute. The 
 great centers of human activity to-day in Europe and America are 
 upon the Drift-deposits; the richest soils are compounded of the 
 so-called glacial clays. Doubtless, too, the human brain was forced 
 (luring the Drift Age to higher reaches of development under the 
 terrible ordeals of the hour. — Bagnarok. 
 
 The Only Politics Worth Studying. The only politics^ , !• 
 worth studying is the amelioration of the condition of the great^ 
 masses of mankind. — Memorial Address, 1884, \ 
 
 The Details of Human Destiny Part of the Mechanism 
 of the Universe. Is it j)ossible that the great and perfect mechan- 
 ism of the universe, which has endured for so many billions of years, 
 does not extend to the details of men's lives? Is not God building- 
 up His splendid civilization, on this planet, with our life-works, even 
 as He fattens the productive soil with the death of plants and ani- 
 mals ? Who can ask the purpose of his own being, unless he can 
 comprehend the whole scheme of Divinity, broad enough to inclose 
 the fathomless depths of the stars, and enduring enough to reach 
 throughout eternity? Can the plant-root, as it reaches down into 
 the earth and eliminates organic matter for its sustenance, ask 
 what living thing died, centuries ago, to furnish it with that store- 
 house of food ? Can the artist tell at what point, in the long line of 
 his peasant ancestors, there was imported into their blood that 
 touch of genius which has flowered out, in himself, in beauty and 
 
74 DonNJ^LLtANA. 
 
 glory, for the pleasure of man and the up-building of society? 
 — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 Interest oi^ Money. " But what would you do, my good Ga- 
 briel, " said Maximilian, smiling, " if the reformation of the world 
 were placed in your hands ? Every man has an Utopia in his head. 
 Give me some idea of yours." 
 
 *' First, " I said, '' I should do away with all interest on 
 money. Interest on money is the root and ground of the world's 
 troubles. It puts one man in a position of safety, while another is 
 in a condition of insecurity, and thereby it at once creates a radical 
 distinction in human society. " — CcBsafs Column. 
 
 NO NECESSITY FOR APPARITIONS. 
 
 The mind within the skull is as vast as all nature outside of it ; 
 for the universe can float in the conception of a great mind, like a 
 boat in the ocean. 
 
 Why should God paint pictures of ghosts on the external pano- 
 rama of nature, when He has the mind of man as an universal 
 theater, on whose stage He can present His infinite phantas- 
 magoria ? 
 
 Do you suppose that He who made this brain, with its gorges and 
 valleys of gray matter, and its network of interlacing threads, can- 
 not mold it to any shape and direct it to any purpose He sees fit ? 
 
 And, if this is true of one man, why not of one million ? And 
 
 he is indeed shallow who does not feel in the operations of the 
 
 mind the fingers of the Deity. God's especial temple is, not on the 
 
 mountain tops or in the groves, but in the soul of man. — Journal, 
 
 1886. 
 
 Thee. 
 
 All sense, all fear, all grief, all earth, all sin, 
 
 Forgot shall be ; 
 Knit unto each, — to each kith, kind and kin, — 
 Life, like these rhyming verses, shall begin 
 
 And end in — thee. — Ccesar^s Column. 
 
 THE UNIVERSAL MIND. 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson grasped the whole answer to this question 
 when he said: '^The true poet and the true philosopher are one." 
 The complete mind (and we are reminded of Ulysses' application of 
 
EXTBACTS AND SELECTIONS. 75 
 
 the word to Achilles, " thou great and complete man") enfolds iu its 
 orb all the realm of thought ; it perceives not alone the nature of 
 things, hut the subtle light of beauty which irradiates them ; it is 
 able not only to trace the roots of facts into the dead, dull, material 
 earth, but to follow the plant as it rises in the air and find in the 
 flower thoughts too deep for tears. The purpose of things, the 
 wherefore of things and the glory of things are all one to the God 
 who made them, and to the great broad brain to which He has given 
 power enough to comprehend them. But such minds are rare. 
 Science tells us that the capacity of memory underhes those por- 
 tions of the brain that perceive, but only a small share of each, and 
 that if you excise a part of the brain, but not all of any particular 
 department, the surrounding territory, which theretofore lay dor- 
 mant, will now develop the faculty which was formerly exercised by 
 the part removed. So it would seem that in all brains there is the 
 capacity for universal intelligence, but there is lacking some power 
 which forces it into action. The intellect lies like a mass of coals, 
 heated, alive, but dormant; it needs the blow-pipe of genius to oxy- 
 genate and bring it to white heat ; and it rarely happens, in the 
 history of mankind, that the whole brain is equally active, and the 
 whole broad temple of the soul lighted up in every part. The world 
 is full of men whose minds glow in spots. The hereditary blood- 
 force, or power of nutrition, or purpose of God, or whatever it may 
 be, is directed to a section of the intelligence, and it blazes forth in 
 music, or poetry, or painting, or philosophy, or action, or oratory. 
 And the world, as it cannot always behold the full orb of the sun, 
 is delighted to look upon these stars, points of intense brilliancy, 
 glorious with a fraction of the universal fire.— T/^e Great Cryptogram. 
 The Graves of the Dead Soldiers. In this sweet spring- 
 time, this revival of nature, this resurrection of the year, this 
 emblem of God's perennial goodness and the immortality of his 
 works; even now, when into the cold and silent corpse of winter he 
 breathes life and warmth and motion, dissolving the snow-wreaths 
 into blossoms, and the white shroud into a garment of glorious ver- 
 dure, even now let us meet and cast the choicest children of the 
 spring upon the graves of those to whom we owe so much.— 
 Memorial Address, 1884. 
 
76 BONNELLIANA, 
 
 GOVERNMENT LOANS TO THE PEOPLE. 
 
 " But, as you had abolished interest on money, there could be no 
 mortgages, and the poor men would starve to death before they 
 could raise a crop. " 
 
 " Then,'' I replied, '^ I should invoke the power of the nation, as 
 was done in that great civil war of 1861, and issue paper money, 
 receivable for all taxes and secured by the guarantee of the faith 
 and power of five hundred miUion people; and make advances to 
 carry these ruined peasants beyond the first years of distress — that 
 money to be a loan to them, without interest, and to be repaid as a 
 tax on their land. Government is only a machine to insure justice 
 and help the people, and we have not yet developed half its powers. 
 And we are under no more necessity to limit ourselves to the 
 governmental precedents of our ancestors than we are to confine 
 ourselves to the narrow boundaries of their knowledge, or their 
 inventive skill, or their theological beliefs. The trouble is that so 
 many seem to regard government as a divine something which has 
 fallen down upon us out of heaven, and, therefore, not to be 
 improved upon or even criticised; while the truth is, it is simply a 
 human device to secure human happiness, and, in itself, has no more 
 sacredness than a wheelbarrow or a cooking-pot. The end of 
 everything earthly is the good of man; and there is nothing sacred 
 on earth but man, because he alone shares the Divine conscience. " — 
 Ccesafs Column. 
 
 Peovidence. Surely, then, we can afibrd to leave God's planets 
 in God's hands. Not a particle of dust is whirled in the funnel of 
 the cyclone but God identifies it, and has marked its path. — 
 Bagnarok. 
 
 Party Slavery. Party slavery is one of the most threatening 
 of the dangers which now surround free institutions. What we 
 want is an outcrop of individual judgment. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 The World Looked at erom Below. The world is a 
 wretched-looking object viewed from below, but grand and gaudy 
 as stage scenery to him who can contemplate it from above. The 
 highest test of a true gentleman is gentleness to servants and 
 courtesy to the unfortunate. The man who can address a beggar 
 with the same tones of voice which he will use toward a prince is 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 77 
 
 one of nature's noblemen — yea, a species of demi-god, and fit to be 
 worshiped by common humanity. — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 The Famous Brand. But he says I am " an oflBce-betj^gar ! " 
 '^ An office-beggar! " And that from a gentleman bearing the name 
 [Washburn] which he does! Et tu, Brute! " An office-beggar! " 
 Why, Mr. Speaker, when T entered the State of Minnesota it was 
 Democratic. Wlien I entered the county in which I reside it was 
 two to one Democratic. 1 asked no office ; I expected none. But, 
 Mr. Speaker, the charge comes from such a quarter I cannot fail to 
 notice it. Why, sir, the gentleman's family are chronic '^ office-beg- 
 gars." They are nothing if not in office. Out of office they are 
 miserable, wretched, God-forsaken — as uncomfortable as that 
 famous stump- tailed bull in fly time. [Laughter.] This whole 
 trouble arises from the persistent determination of one of the gen- 
 tleman's family to sit in this body. Why, Mr. Speaker, every young 
 male of the gentleman's family is born into this world with '^ M. C." 
 franked across his broadest part. [Great laughter and applause.] — 
 Speech in Congress j 1868. 
 
 Resolutio:n'. I should be a very weak creature if I could be 
 turned back from asserting what I believe to be true, through fear 
 of the laughter of a whole generation of fools. — Journal, 1891. 
 
 Modern Civilization. To-morrow we will go out together, 
 and I shall show you the fruits of our modern civilization. 1 shall 
 take you, not upon the upper deck of society, where the flags are 
 flying, the breeze blowing, and the music playing, but down into 
 the dark and stufiy depths of the hold of the great vessel, where the 
 sweating gnomes, in the glare of the furnace heat, furnish the 
 power which drives the mighty ship resplendent through the seas of 
 time. We will visit the Under -World. — Ccesar^s Column. 
 
 ATLANTIS THE LAND OF NOAH. 
 
 Let us briefly consider this record. 
 
 It shows, taken in connection with the opening chapters of 
 Genesis : 
 
 1. That the land destroyed by water was the country in which 
 the civilization of the human race originated. Adam was at first 
 naked (Gen., chap, iii., 7) ; then he clothed himself in leaves; then 
 in the skins of animals (chap, iii., 21); he was the first that tilled 
 
78 BONNELLIANA. 
 
 the earth, having emerged from a more primitive condition in which 
 he lived upon the fruits of the forest (chap, ii., 16); his son Abel 
 was the first of those that kept .flocks of sheep (chap, iv., 2) ; his son 
 Cain was the builder of the first city (chap, iv., 17) ; his descendant, 
 Tubal-cain, was the first metallurgist (chap, iv., 22) ; Jabal was the 
 first that erected tents and kept cattle (chap, iv., 20) ; Jubal was 
 the first that made musical iDStruments. We have here the succes- 
 sive steps by which a savage race advances to civilization. We will 
 see hereafter that the Atlanteans passed through precisely similar 
 stages of development. 
 
 2. The Bible agrees with Plato in the statement that these An- 
 tediluvians had reached great populousness and wickedness, and 
 that it was on account of their wickedness God resolved to destroy 
 them. 
 
 3. In both cases the inhabitants of the doomed land were de- 
 stroyed in a great catastrophe by the agency of water : they were 
 drowned. 
 
 4. The Bible tells us that in an earlier age, before their destruc- 
 tion, mankind had dwelt in a happy, peaceful, sinless condition in a 
 Garden of Eden. Plato tells us the same thing of the earlier ages 
 of the Atlanteans. 
 
 5. In both the Bible history and Plato's story the destruction 
 of the people was largely caused by the intermarriage of the superior 
 or divine race, "the sons of God," with an inferior stock, "the 
 children of men," whereby they were degraded and rendered 
 wicked. . . . 
 
 It is now conceded by scholars that the genealogical table given 
 in the Bible (Gen., chap, x.) is not intended to include the true negro 
 races, or the Chinese, the Japanese, the Finns or Lapps, the Aus- 
 tralians, or the American red men. It refers altogether to the Medi- 
 terranean races, the Aryans, the Cushites, the Phoenicians, the 
 Hebrews and the Egyptians. " The sons of Ham " were not true 
 negroes, but the dark-brown races. (See WinchelPs Preadamites, 
 shap. vii.) 
 
 If these races (the Chinese, Australians, Americans, etc.) are not 
 descended from Noah, they could not have been included in the 
 Deluge. If neither China, Japan, America, Africa, Northern Europe 
 nor Australia were depopulated by the Deluge, the Deluge could not 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 79 
 
 have been universal. But as it is alleged that it did destroy a 
 country, and drowned all the people thereof except Noah and his 
 family, the country so destroyed could not have been Europe, Asia, 
 Africa, America, or Australia, for there has been no universal de- 
 struction of the people of those regions ; or, if there had been, how 
 can we account for the existence to-day of people, on all of those 
 continents, whose descent Genesis does not trace back to Noah, and, 
 in fact, about whom the writer of Genesis seems to have known 
 nothing ? 
 
 We are thus driven to one of two alternative conclusions: either 
 the Deluge record of the Bible is altogether fabulous, or it relates to 
 some land other than Europe, Asia, Africa or Australia, some land 
 that «t'as destroyed by water. It is not fabulous; and the land it 
 refers to is not Europe, Asia, Africa or Austraha — but Atlantis. 
 No other land is known to history or tradition that was overthrown 
 in a great catastrophe by the agency of water ; that was civilized, 
 populous, powerful, and given over to wickedness.— Atlantis. 
 
 Hope. And joy sat in my heart; and Hope stood, with a fair face 
 and bright torch, the eternal angel of human life, pointing forward 
 to sweet and flowery paths of peace and love ; and my poor bruised 
 and battered soul, scarred with wounds and trampled under the feet 
 of Fate, glowed and expanded and shone like a great star — a world 
 of happiness.— Doctor Huguet. 
 
 Love. A piece of cheese browned for the rat-trap. An egregious 
 trick of nature, to make fools breed more fools.— Essai/, 1851. 
 
 The Caee of the Mind. As the train moved on I indulged in 
 many sad and some amusing reflections. Life is a wonderful pano- 
 rama, and far surpasses in interest, to the appreciative spirit, any- 
 thing that can be shown on the mimic stage. As we grow 
 older, the brain, when not poisoned by the use of intrusive and 
 destructive stimulants and narcotics, acquires all the sensitive- 
 ness of a photographic plate, and receives impressions of char- 
 acter of marvelous distinctness and variety of color. Youth 
 is the period of ferment, heat and passion, and the intellectual 
 apparatus does not reach its perfect work until middle life. The 
 receptivity and fecundity of the brain are then at their best. There 
 is no higher material study than the perfection of the conditions of 
 tl^.e mind. It is such a subtle jiotency that it is a grave crime to 
 
Sd BONNELLIANA. 
 
 injuriously affect it by putting into the mouth anything that will 
 lessen its harmonious and exquisite action. The mind responds, like 
 a delicately constructed instrument, to every influence acting upon 
 the body; and the body must be neither underfed nor clogged with 
 indulgence, if we would have the god-like harp respond to the finest 
 touches of the angels of the soul. — Doctor Hiigiiet. 
 
 The Survival of the Fightest. We should supplement Dar- 
 win's " Survival of the Fittest " with the survival of thefightest. It 
 is pluck that tells. The man that is eaten is the moral and mental 
 superior of the tiger that eats him — but the tiger survives. The 
 great races are the conquering races. Who ever depicted the 
 virtues and the glories of the subjugated ! The first thought that 
 should be impressed on a child is to stand up for his rights. No 
 nation would dare to trespass on a race so trained. — Journal, 1886. 
 
 Saint Judas. Oh, Judas, Judas! Why did you hang yourself"? 
 Why did you not boldly charge the betrayal on Peter "l You would 
 have divided public opinion, and been to-day St. Judas to half the 
 Christian world. Nothing is so bad as a confession. — Tlie Anti- 
 Monopolist. 
 
 A TERRIBLE THOUaHT. 
 
 What conclusion is forced upon us "l 
 
 That, written in the rocky pages of the great volume of the planet, 
 are the records of repeated visitations from the comets which then 
 rushed through the heavens. 
 
 No trace is left of their destructive powers, save the huge, unstrat- 
 ified, unfossiliferous deposits of clay and stones and bowlders, locked 
 away between great layers of the sedimentary rocks. 
 
 Can it be that there wanders through immeasurable space, upon 
 an orbit of such size that millions of years are required to couiplete 
 it, some monstrous luminary, so vast that when it returns to us it 
 fills a large part of the orbit which the earth describes around the 
 sun, and showers down upon us deluges of debris, while it fills the 
 world with flame ? And are these recurring strata of stones and 
 clay and bowlders, written upon these widely- separated pages of 
 the^ geologic volume, the record of its oft and regularly recurring 
 YV tations ? — Bagnaroh 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 81 
 
 THE IKISH AND SLAVERY. 
 
 No men should love liberty more than the Irish, since none have 
 suffered more from oppression. For centuries their religion was 
 proscribed, their literature trampled under foot, their language 
 almost exterminated, their soil confiscated, and millions of their 
 best and bravest driven into exile. Let these things be remembered, 
 not in bitterness and wrath^ for many of them were the natural out- 
 come of a rude, barbarous age; but let them be to Irishmen everywhere 
 an incentive to love liberty and sympathize with the oppressed. 
 For the sake of O'Counell, let the Irishman treat with kindness 
 everywhere the poor black men of America. Theirs is indeed a 
 hard lot to bear. When the Irishman shakes the dust of Ireland 
 from his feet, he steps at once into a land of equal opportunity. For 
 him and his children every path of preferment, every avenue of 
 social distinction, stands open. But the black man carries in the 
 color of his skin a perpetual appeal to prejudice. Let not the 
 countrymen of O'Connell add a single pang to his sufferings, or a 
 single obstruction to his progress. Over the grave of the great Lib- 
 erator let all bigotries be buried. As no race in the world believes 
 more profoundly than the Irish that Christ died for all men, black 
 and white, let no race excel them in generosity, liberality and tol- 
 eration. 
 
 It was in Ireland that slavery was first abolished. Far back in 
 the past, in the twelfth century, when England's serfs yet wore their 
 iron collars, when the peasant of Gaul was esteemed of less value 
 and had fewer rights than a red deer, the synod of Armagh pro- 
 claimed the freedom of every slave in Ireland, and since then 
 slavery has never polluted the soil of the green island with its pres- 
 ence. — Speech on O^Connell, 1875. 
 
 Morning. 
 Lonely the towering light goes up the hills, 
 Up 'mid the silent mountains ; while afar 
 The sheeted glow the opening orient fills, 
 O'erflooding star by star. — 1851. 
 
 Bacon's Double Character. These descriptions fit Bacon's 
 case precisely. His ambition drags him into the midst of the activ- 
 ities of the court; his natural predisposition carries him away to St. 
 Albans or Twickenham Park, to indulge in his secret " contempla- 
 
82 BONNELLIANA. 
 
 tions/' and to compose the "works of his recreation" and "the 
 works of the alphabet. " He was, as it w^ere, two men bound in 
 one. He aspired to rule England and to give a new philosophy to 
 mankind. He would rival Cecil and Aristotle at the same time.— 
 The Great Cryptogram, 
 
 Nature. "Nature," he continued, "is as merciless as she is 
 prolific. Let us consider the humblest little creature that lives — 
 we will say the field-mouse. Think what an exquisite compendium 
 it is of bones, muscles, nerves, veins, arteries — all sheathed in such 
 a dehcate, flexible and glossy covering of skin. Observe the innum- 
 erable and beautiful adjustments in the little animal; the bright, 
 pumping, bounding blood ; the brilliant eyes, with their marvelous 
 powers." — CcBsafs Column. 
 
 THE CIVIL WAR. 
 Only God can weigh the hearts of men; He alone can add up the 
 great account of praise and blame, and cast the true balance. And 
 doubtless the lessons of history as recorded in His books would shock 
 and stun mankind if revealed to them ; even as it may be true that 
 oftentimes, as Eliza Sproat Turner says, 
 
 " Satan laughs to greet the trooping souls' 
 Of those who had denied him on the earth, 
 And thought themselves secure of seats in heaven. " 
 
 The great civil war was a contest between rival modes of educa- 
 tion, rival traditions, rival systems of law and labor, rival beliefs, 
 intensified by climatic differences. It was a battle between the 
 forty-second degree of north latitude and the thirty-second; between 
 the lands of snow and the lands of sun. The roots of the conflict 
 reached back to the time when the savage first made a slave of his 
 prisoner, giving him his hfe in exchange for his service. Liberty 
 and slavery were the twins of one mother, antiquity; and they grew 
 side by side until a continent was not great enough to hold them, 
 and one or the other had to perish. And who grieves for slavery 
 to-day ■? No living soul in all the world. The nation has shaken it 
 off; it has girded up its loins ; it goes forward to new conquests and 
 new glories. —Memorial Address, 1884. 
 
 Let Each Man Do His Duty. It is the duty of every one to 
 do his utmost in the sphere of action assigned to him. The bricks 
 in the foundation -wall are necessary to the glorious statue which 
 
EXTltACTS AND SELECTIONS. 83 
 
 they uphold. They are not the statue, but the statue caunot stand 
 without them. If Wilham Burness, the poor gardener of Ayr, had 
 not done his whole duty, in the midst of grinding poverty and 
 wretchedness, we should have lost the sweetest lyrics in the lan- 
 guage, written by his immortal son. It is the black mud that feeds 
 the lily. It is from the refuse that the sweetest odors, freighting 
 the zephyrs, are distilled.— Doctor Huguet. 
 
 A Distinction. Success makes more men great than greatness 
 makes successful. — 1857. 
 
 Proofs of God, The tropical bird needs feathers no more than 
 the elephant and the Chinese dog need hair. Why is it not a naked, 
 ghastly, bat-like thing? Whose sense of beauty required it to be 
 covered with this gorgeous but hot plumage ? There must be a 
 cultured intelhgence that contemplates these things even in the 
 manless wMerness.— Journal, 1883. 
 
 Song of the Summer Wind. 
 OflF to the mountains at thought with the sun. 
 Whisper them kindly and kiss them — and on ! 
 On, where the silence is haughty and high, 
 With a smile to the sea and a glance to the sky. 
 Wheel thee, and turn thee, and twine thee in play ; 
 From the earth with thy wings flap the silence away; 
 Plague the dull shade in the leaf- sheltered bowers, 
 And splash the red sunshine adown on the flowers. 
 Summer-gale,— Summer-gale, — soft as the sigh 
 That heaves when the foot of the lover is nigh ; 
 Summer-gale, — Summer-gale, — wild as the tone 
 That the sea-eagle shrieks to the silence alone. 
 Summer-gale, — Summer-gale,— hght be thy way. 
 Over earth, as a leaf on a streamlet astray, 
 That trembles in ripple, in shadow is gone, 
 Now lit by the streamlet, now lit by the sun. 
 Summer-gale, — Summer-gale,— witching and wild, 
 With the clasp of a true-love, the laugh of a child; 
 Silkenly sweeping,— ah! Beauty unfurled 
 Thee to play like a smile on the iace of the world. 
 
 — The Mourners Vision, 1850. 
 
84 VONNELLIAKA, 
 
 The True Oedee of Peogeess. Progress must commence with 
 education; thence it proceeds to the ballot-box; thence to the 
 statute-book ; and thence it flowers forth in abundance, content- 
 ment, fair-play and virtue. The political reformer who seeks to im- 
 prove the legislation of a people strikes at the roots of vice, while 
 the parson simply prunes the limbs of that vine whose sap flows 
 from the fat, rich soil of misgovernment.— T/^ Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 Undeefeeding. For the vices of man are like his diseases. 
 While it is true that there are a few physical diseases which can be 
 traced to high-living, the great multitude of them spring from de- 
 bihty consequent upon under-feeding. So with moral diseases. 
 Dirt and want generate sins as naturally as they breed vermin.— r/*e 
 Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 The Civilizability of the Negeo. There are three things 
 which testify to the inherent civilizabihty of the negro race : First, 
 their desire for learning; second, their strong rehgious instincts; 
 and third, their desire to be respectable and to imitate the best ex- 
 amples given them by the whites. It does not seem to me that the 
 red men manifest any of these traits ; hence I argue that the negro 
 wdll rise upon the breast of civilization, while the Indian is very apt 
 to disappear before \t.— Doctor Huguet. 
 
 MOENING. 
 
 There on the mountain's crest the morning stands, 
 Her rosy palms turned peace-wise to the west; 
 The timid morn, mirth-lipped and beautiful. 
 Mark how the night, like an uncoiliug snake, 
 Steals slow and silent off.— T/^e Mournefs Vision, 1850. 
 The Phoenicians. The extent of country covered by the com- 
 merce of the Phoenicians represents, to some degree, the area of the 
 old Atlantean Empire. Their colonies and trading-posts extended 
 east and west from the shores of the Black Sea, through the Medi- 
 terranean to the west coast of Africa and of Spain, and around to 
 Ireland and England; while from north to south they ran ged from 
 the Baltic to the Persian Gulf. They touched every point where civil- 
 ization in later ages made its appearance. Strabo estimated that they 
 had three hundred cities along the west coast of Africa. When Col- 
 umbus sailed to discover a new world, or re- discover an old one, he 
 
J^JXTl^ACTS AM) SELECTtOXS. 80 
 
 took his departure froni a Phoenician seaport, founded by that great 
 race two tliousand five hundred years previously. This Atlantean 
 sailor, with his Phcruician features, sailing from an Atlantean port, 
 simply re-opened the path of commerce and colonization which had 
 been closed when Plato's island sank in the sea. And it is a curi- 
 ous fact that Columbus had the antediluvian world in his mind's 
 eye even then, for when he reached the mouth of the Orinoco he 
 thought it was the river Gihon that flowed out of Paradise, and he 
 wrote home to Spain, '^ There are here great indications suggesting 
 the proximity of the earthly Paradise, for not only does it correspond 
 in mathematical position with the opinions of the holy and learned 
 theologians, but all other signs concur to make it probable." — 
 Atlantis. 
 
 MiLLiONAiKES. The most utterly useless, destructive and 
 damnable crop a country can grow is — millionaires. If a commu- 
 nity were to send to India and import a lot of man-eating tigers, 
 and turn them loose on the streets, to prey on men, women and 
 children, they would not inflict a tithe of the misery that is caused 
 by a like number of millionaires. And there would be this further 
 disadvantage : the inhabitants of the city could turn out and kill the 
 tigers, but the human destroyers are protected by the benevolent 
 laws of the very people they are immolating on the altars of wretch- 
 edness and vice. — Ccesafs Column. 
 
 The Lark. 
 There rings the waked lark's song. 
 Wavering in echoes, as a quivering sword 
 Shakes off the long bright flashes. — 1850. 
 
 ELIHU WASHBUENE ARRAIGNED. 
 One word in conclusion. The gentleman has assailed me, and it 
 is but right that I should put his own character in the balance. 
 What great measure, in his sixteen years of legislation, has the 
 gentleman ever originated? What liberal measure has ever met 
 with his support ? What original sentiment has he ever uttered? 
 What thought of his has ever risen above the dead level of the 
 dreariest platitudes ? If he lay dead to-morrow in this chamber, 
 what heart in this body would experience one sincere pang of sor- 
 row? 
 
86 DONNELLlANA. 
 
 Who is there in this House he has not assailed ? 
 He told the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Woodbridge], the 
 other day, that every corrupt and profligate measure that was pressed 
 In this body met his support; and when the gentleman from Ver- 
 mont rose upon him he cringed out of it like a whipped spaniel! 
 Did he not say to my friend from Philadelphia [Mr. O'Neill] the 
 other day, that he would not say — for that is the gentleman's way 
 of making an insinuation — that he would not say that the gentle- 
 man was one of a ring to swindle this country ? Has he not attacked 
 my friend from Iowa [Mr. Price] and aspersed his motives in his 
 legislation in this body "? He has sought to build himself up upon our 
 dishonor, to glorify himself in our disgrace, to pollute and befoul 
 and traduce the very body of which he is a member. Why, sir^ his 
 harangues are the staple of the newspapers of the Opposition. We 
 meet his charges on the stump. By his wholesale reckless assaults 
 upon the honor and integrity of members he has lowered the stand- 
 ard of this body. He has furnished argument for the wit of Dan 
 Kice. He has furnished substance for the slanderers of the pot- 
 house. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, I need enter into no defense of the Fortieth Con- 
 gress. In point of intellect, of devotion to the public welfare, of 
 integrity, of personal character, it will compare favorably with any 
 Congress that ever sat since the foundation of our Government. It 
 Is illustrated by names that would do honor to any nation in any age 
 of the world. — Speech in Congress. 
 
 Heecules. In fact civihzation itself is, in one sense, simply the 
 power of human intelligence to overcome the antagonistic forces of 
 nature. Hence the myth of Hercules overcoming dragons and hons, 
 and navigating oceans, is simply the dim remembrance of the aggre- 
 gate triumphs of an ancient race, typified as a man, just as we call the 
 United States <' Uncle Sam -, " and afterwards deified as a God, just 
 as the Eomans worshiped the dead Caesars.— The Anti-Monopolist. 
 Temper. It is well to keep your wrath behind your thought, — 
 not in front of it; let it infuse itself into what you to say, — not fill 
 your mouth to spluttering. — Journal, 1886. 
 
 The Ig:n^orant Always Slaves. Then I told them that 
 without education they could not be a free people ; for freedom and 
 ignorance were an incongruous pair, who bred two twin monsters, 
 
EKTBACTS AND HELECTtON^. 87 
 
 anarchy aud despotism, and one of these was sure to devoiif the other. 
 An ignorant people were only fit to be slaves, and sooner or later 
 they were sure to become slaves — slaves to superstition, slaves to the 
 crafty, slaves to the powerful. They were the prey of every man 
 who knew more than they did. They must either learn to think or 
 remain beasts of burdeu through all generations. And they could 
 not think wisely without knowledge; and they could not acquire 
 knowledge unless through the alphabet; by this means the treasures 
 of the learning of all time were open for their use. Those queer, 
 crooked little marks lay at the base of civilization. They were the 
 keys of gold that would unlock the store -houses of the world's 
 accumulated wealth. — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 True Greatness. And remember, we have gotten into a way 
 of thinking as if numbers and wealth were everything. It is better 
 for a nation to contain thirty million people, prosperous, happy and 
 patriotic, than one hundred millions, ignorant, wretched and longing 
 for ail oi^portunity to overthrow all government. — CcBsar^s Column. 
 
 The " Amplitude " of St. Paul and Minneapolis. The 
 new^spapers say I was "sat down upon," as the phrase goes, in 
 this convention. That is true. I tried to get in a good word for 
 the producing classes, and the representatives of St. Paul and 
 Minneapolis (united in nothing else) combined to " sit down " upon 
 me. In an intellectual contest I should not fear any of them; but 
 when it cames to the " sitting down " process I grant you they have 
 an amplitude that covers everything. [Great laughter and applause.] 
 — Speech in the Northzvestern Waterways Convention, 1885. 
 
 OUR SOLDIERS. 
 
 The great poet tells us that there are : 
 
 "Tongues iu the trees, books in the running brooks, 
 Sermons in stones, and good in every thing," 
 
 and the graves of our dead soldiers preach to us many lessons. 
 
 The first is gratitude. 
 
 We look abroad to-day in this noble and beautiful land: no 
 hostile flag blots our sunshine ; no boom of an enemy's cannon dis- 
 turbs the placid scene ; no marching troops are hurrying forward to 
 battle and to death. From the Atlantic's waters to the Pacific coast, 
 from the lakes to the gulf, we are one united, contented and happy 
 
88 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 people; our flag honored, feared, respected aud beloved iu all lands; 
 the pride of our own jDeople, the harbinger of hope for the world. 
 
 All this we owe to the men, hving and dead, who, in the hour of 
 terror and agony, were ready to give their Uves that we to-day 
 might enjoy the countless blessings of nationality, liberty and peace. 
 Their bodies were the sea-wall which then encircled us, when the 
 flood of insurrection rose lip-high, turbid and. dark, ragged with 
 wrecks, and lashed, torn and frenzied by the tempests of gigantic 
 passions. — Memorial Address, 1884. 
 
 "Othello." Turn to OtJwllo. What is the text here? The 
 evils of jealousy and the power for wrong of one altogether iniquitous; 
 the overthrow of a noble nature by falsehood ; the destruction of a 
 pure and gentle woman to satisfy the motiveless hate of a villain. 
 And there is a lesser moral. The play is a grand plea for temperance, 
 with jewels of thought set in arabesques of speech. — The Great 
 Cryptogram. 
 
 Advice to the Irish ik America. But while we rejoice that 
 God has cast our lives in these pleasant places, let us remember that 
 injustice and despotism lie in waiting in the texture of human 
 government, as disease lies lurking in the physical system, ever 
 ready to break forth and turn this fair and charming prospect, this 
 garden of God, into a pest-house of oppression, such as that from 
 which you fled. Watch, then, afar off, the first coming of danger, 
 although the cloud be no bigger than a man's hand. Infuse into 
 tlie minds of your children the traditions of the republic, and the 
 teachings of O'Connell. Do this, and centuries from now, when the 
 muse of history comes to write the mighty record of America, she 
 will record that the blood of Grattan and Flood, of Curran and 
 O'Connell, of Charles Carroll and Andrew Jackson, everywhere, on 
 tlie battle-field, in the council chamber, in public and in private life, 
 proved itself true to the great cause of human justice, and honored 
 itself by advancing the welfare and the greatness of mankind. — 
 Speech on O^Connell, 1875. 
 
 Sinbad's Old Mait of the MouiirTAiN. In his speech at Glen- 
 coe, Minnesota, on August 19th, 1884, Mr. Donnelly thus good- 
 naturedly referred to his competitor, Major Strai*: 
 
 " One 1.5 reminded of the old man whom Sinbad the sailor, in the 
 
l^XTHACTS AND SElECTtOl^S. SO 
 
 Arabian tale, met ou the desert island on wbicli he was ship- 
 wrecked. He asked Sinbad to carry him across a brook; the oblig- 
 iug Arabian took him on his shoulders ; he wound his legs around 
 Sinbad's neck and utterly refused, ever after, to leave his perch, 
 forcing the poor fellow, by whippings and kickings, to carry him 
 whither he would, and feed him on the best fruits of his industry. 
 The story goes that Sinbad got clear of him at last by brewing some 
 wine of wild grapes, making him drunk, and then mashing his head 
 with a rock. 
 
 " Little did the Republicans of the Third Congressional District 
 think, in 1872, when they first shouldered the Major to carry him 
 across one nomination, that his legs would be dangling around their 
 necks in 1884. The boys and girls who were children at school then 
 are fathers and mothers now, but the Major is still on deck ; and if 
 he can have his way, he will ride the necks of their great grand- 
 children — grizzled and gaunt, it may be, but as hungry as ever — 
 kicking his heels in their reluctant ribs, and whooped on by a troop 
 of office-holders, the grandsons, probably, of the present incum- 
 bents. 
 
 " The afflicted people can not even have recourse to Sinbad's ex- 
 pedient, for the Major is too well seasoned for anything of that kind. " 
 
 State Rights. The nearer we can bring the government to the 
 people the better for liberty. In our fierce devotion to the idea of 
 nationality, assailed by domestic insurrection, we were ready t^ for- 
 get the rights of the States ; but we begin to perceive that the ene- 
 mies of mankind may take possession of the central government, 
 and that the States may become the last intrenchments of human 
 rights. — Speech in Senate of Minnesota, 1891. 
 
 A Creature Seventy Inches Long. Consider, Job, the little- 
 ness of man, the greatness of the universe; and what right have you 
 to ask Him who made all this the reasons for His actions ? And 
 this is a sufficient answer: A creature seventy inches long prying 
 into the purposes of an Awful Something, whose power ranges so 
 far that blazing suns are seen only as mist-specks ! — Ragnarok. 
 
 Man. Man : a something dependent upon everything. Holding 
 position, intelligence, life, happiness upon the uncertain tenure of a 
 tliousand contingencies. An idiot, dragged through the streets by a 
 swarming rabble of passions, necessities and circumstances^ haling 
 
00 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 him hither and thither, while, with hair on eud and Lis coat torn, ii6 
 makes a stump-speech about '' free-will." — Essay, 1853. 
 
 THE SERMON IN "MACBETH.'' 
 
 All this is revealed in Macbeth. We see the sped of ambition tak- 
 ing root ; we see it " disclose itself; '' we see self-love and the sense 
 of right warring with each other. We see his fiendish wife driving 
 him forward to crime, against the promptings of his better nature. 
 It depicts with unexampled dramatic power a cruel and treacher- 
 ous murder. Then it shows us how crime begets the necessity for 
 crime. 
 
 ■' To be thus is nothing, 
 But to be safely thus. " 
 
 It shows one horror treading fast upon another's heels; the 
 usurper troubled with the horrible dreams " that shake him nightly; " 
 the mind of the ambitious woman giving way under the strain her 
 terrible will had put upon it, until we see her at last seeking 
 peace in suicide; while Macbeth falls overthrown and slaughtered. 
 
 Have all the pulpits of all the preachers given out a more terrible 
 exposition and arraignment of evil ambition ? Think of the uncount- 
 able millions who, in the past three hundred years, have witnessed 
 this play ! Think of the illimitable numbers who will behold it dur- 
 ing the next thousand years ! 
 
 What an awful picture of the workings of a guilty conscience is 
 that exhibited when Macbeth sees, at the festal board, the blood- 
 boltered Banquo rising up and regarding him with glaring and soul- 
 less eyes. 
 
 Call the roll of all your pulpit orators ! Where is there one that 
 has ever x^reached such a sermon as that ? Where is there one that 
 ever had such an audience — such an unending succession of million- 
 large audiences — as this man who " in a despised weed sought the 
 good of all men "? 
 
 And remember that it was not the virtuous alone, the church- 
 goers, the elect, who came to hear this marvelous sermon, but the 
 high, the low, the educated, the ignorant, the young, the old, the 
 good, the vicious, the titled lord, the poor prentice, the high-born 
 dame, the wretched waste and wreck of womankind. — The Great 
 Cryptogram. 
 
l^XTliACTS AND SELECTUmS. 1)1 
 
 The West and South. In this great contest the brains and 
 muscles of the South and West must unite, for self-defense, against 
 the profound cunning and the insolent aggression of the Northeast- 
 ern part of the Union. — Speech, 1874. 
 
 A Good Woman. When she prays the angels gather around her 
 lips like humming-birds around honeysuckles. — Journal, 1880. 
 
 The Power of Corporations. Look at it now. These corpo- 
 rations, with unlimited credit abroad and complete control of all 
 business at home, are able to bribe the newspapers, corrupt the leg- 
 islature and even control the courts. They can crush out their ene- 
 mies and build up their friends. The highest powers of the human 
 mind become their servitors; genius, talent, eloquence, cunning, are 
 their tools. The bewildered people will eventually be driven to re- 
 sist them by force, even as the starved artisans and peasants of 
 France rose up against the devilish arts of that aristocracy which 
 iiad combined all Europe against their liberties. The ignorant 
 Frenchman found that the guillotine was the only match for the ^. - 
 perb cunning of his enemies. Every man must deplore such a re- 
 sult; yet it seems to be advancing with the certainty of doom. — 
 The Anti-Monopolist, 1874. 
 
 LOGICAL DEDUCTIONS AS TO THE DRIFT. 
 
 But there is still another reason which ought to satisfy us, once for 
 all, that the drift-deposits were not due to the pressure of a great 
 continental ice-sheet. It is this : 
 
 If the presence of the Drift proves that the country in which it 
 is found was once covered with a body of ice thick and heavy enough, 
 b}' its pressure and weight, to grind up the surface-rocks into clay, 
 sand, gravel and bowlders, then the tropical regions of the world 
 must have been covered with such a great ice-sheet upon the very 
 equator; for Agassiz found in Brazil a vast sheet of " ferruginous 
 clay with- pebbles," which covers the whole country, " a sheet of 
 drift," says Agassiz, " consisting of the same homogeneous, unstrat- 
 ifled paste, and containing loose materials of all sorts and sizes,'' 
 deep red in color, and distributed, as in the north, in uneven hills, 
 while sometimes it is reduced to a thin deposit. It is recent in time, 
 although overlying rocks ancient geologically. Agassiz had no doubt 
 whatever that it was of glacial origin. 
 
&!2 DonnELLLinA . 
 
 Professor Hartt, who accompanied Professor Agassiz in his Soulli 
 American travels, and published a valuable work called The Geol- 
 ogy of Brazil, describes drift-deposits as covering the province 
 of Para, Brazil, upon the equator itself. . . . 
 
 If there are no drift-deposits except where the great ice-sheet 
 ground them out of the rocks, then a shroud of death once wrapped 
 the entire globe, and all life ceased. 
 
 But we know that all life — vegetable, animal and human — is de- 
 rived from pre-glacial sources; therefore, animal, vegetable and hu- 
 man hfe did not perish in the Drift age; therefore an ice-sheet did 
 not wrap the world in its death-pall ; therefore the drift -deposits of 
 the tropics were not due to an ice-sheet; therefore the drift-deposits 
 of the rest of the world were not due to ice-sheets ; therefore we 
 must look elsewhere for their origin. 
 
 There is no escaping these conclusions. Agassiz himself says, de- 
 scribing the Glacial age : 
 
 " All the springs were dried up ; the rivers ceased to flow. To 
 the movements of a numerous and animated creation succeeded the 
 silence of death/'' 
 
 If the verdure was covered with ice a mile in thickness, all ani- 
 mals that lived on vegetation of any kind must have perished ; con- 
 sequently, all carnivores which lived on these must have ceased to 
 exist ; and man himself, without animal or vegetable food, must 
 have disappeared forever. — Bagnarok. 
 
 A GOOD WOED FOR WOMAN. 
 
 "As father Adam first was fooled, 
 (A case that's still too common), 
 Here lies a man a woman ruled ; 
 The devil ruled the woman." 
 
 The same old story. Always the blame thrown on the woman. 
 There have been a thousand women ruined by men where one man 
 has been ruined by a woman. Woman is man's angel. Whatever is 
 good in human nature is best in woman. There is no woman, not 
 insane, who is incapable of goodness. Whatever is beastly in wom- 
 an is man's work. That great master of human nature, Shakespeare, 
 when he painted the worst woman. Lady Macbeth, did not fail to 
 show her eventually crazed by the stings of conscience, and dying 
 of remorse. Her partner in guilt, Macbeth, fought it out to the last, 
 bold and defiant. — The Anti-Monopolist. 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 93 
 
 What the People Need. I would simply mislead the people 
 by confirming them in their prejudices; and, while they praised me 
 now, they would curse me hereafter. The people need prophets, not 
 pauders — bold-hearted men, ready to fight the siu'ging torrents of 
 popular error, rather than mealy-mouthed, empty-hearted dem- 
 agogues, who will float, like rotten drift-wood, along the ill-smelling, 
 turbid current of the world's popular delusions.— Doc/or Huguet. 
 
 Servility to Wealth. And then the inexpressible servility 
 of those below them ! The fools would not recognize Socrates if 
 they fell over him in the street ; but they can perceive Croesus a 
 mile ofi"; they can smell him a block away; and they will dislocate 
 their vertebrae abasing themselves before him. It reminds one of 
 the time of Louis XIV. in France, when millions of people were in 
 the extremest misery, — even unto starvation, — while great grandees 
 thought it the acme of earthly bliss and honor to help put the 
 king to bed, or take ofi" his dirty socks. And if a common man, by 
 any chance, caught a glimpse of royalty changing its shirt, he felt 
 as if he had looked into heaven and beheld Divinity creating 
 worlds. Oh, it is enough to make a man loathe his species.— O^e^ar's 
 Column. 
 
 Conscience and the Angels. There are threads that con- 
 nect the conscience of the humblest with the great White Throne of 
 Heaven, and when any man murders his sense of right all the 
 legions of angels are disturbed in their serenity.— Doctor Huguet. 
 
 THE ANTEDILUVIANS. 
 
 Science has but commenced its work of reconstructing the past 
 and rehabilitating the ancient peoples, and surely there is no study 
 which appeals more strongly to the imagination than that of this 
 drowned nation, the true Antediluvians. They were the founders 
 of nearly all our arts and sciences ; they were the parents of our 
 fundamental beliefs; they were the first civilizers, the first navi- 
 gators, the first merchants, the first colonizers of the earth ; their 
 civihzation was old when Egypt was young, and they had passed 
 away thousands of years before Babylon, Rome and London were 
 dreamed of. This lost people were our ancestors ; their blood flows 
 in our veins; the words we use every day were heard, in their prim- 
 
94 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 itive form, in their cities, courts and temples. Every line of race 
 and thought, of blood and belief, leads back to them. 
 
 Nor is it impossible that the nations of the earth may yet employ 
 their idle navies in bringing to the light of day some of the relics of 
 this buried people. Portions of the island lie but a few hundred 
 fathoms beneath the sea; and if expeditions have been sent out 
 from time to time, in the past, to resurrect from the depths of the 
 ocean Eunken treasure-ships, with a few thousand doubloons hiddeu 
 in their cabins, why should not an attempt be made to reach the 
 buried wonders of Atlantis? A single engraved tablet dredged up 
 from Plato's island would be worth more to science, would more 
 strike the imagination of mankind than all the gold of Peru, all 
 the monuments of Egypt, and all the terra-cotta fragments gathered 
 from the great libraries of Chaldea. — Atlantis. 
 
 The Power of Truth. One man, Mahommed said, with God 
 on his side, is a majority; and one man, with truth on his side, must 
 become a majority. — Bagnarok. 
 
 Ignora:nce. Ignorance in the individual is dreadful, suicidal. 
 But when it overspreads a nation in a black, fierce tempest of folly, 
 bigotry and passion, it is worse than the doom of destruction fore- 
 told in the Apocalypse. — Journal^ 1890. 
 
 PERSEVERAlfCE. 
 
 G-0 slowly on with patient brow : 
 
 The gradual is God's law ; 
 And struggling rose the names that now 
 
 Hold rivalry in awe. — 1853. 
 The Value of Foreig:n^ Immigration. If our age, Mr. Chair- 
 man, possesses any peculiar and distinctive significance, auy distin- 
 guishing trait which marks it as a new era in the development of 
 the human race, it is to be found in its breaking-down of old prej- 
 udices and illiberahties ; In its opening to all men, of all races and 
 colors, equal opportunities for advancement ; in its scattering over 
 new and virgin lands the pent-up and oppressed populations of the 
 elder nations ; and, in a word, in its softening the asperities and 
 broadening the generosities of mankind. Permit me to remark, 
 Mr. Chairman, that that party which shall aspire to continuously 
 rule the destinies of our nation must take this lesson deeply to 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 95 
 
 heart, or it will find itself unworthy its high mission. The focal 
 i3oint of the age, " the half-brother of the world," as an English 
 poet has called our country, those who would lead us must rise to 
 the sublime height of justice to the entire human family; not only 
 to that portion, whatever may be their color, born on our own soil, 
 but to those vast populations of the Old World, joint heritors with 
 ourselves of the billion acres of land still unclaimed and uninhab- 
 ited.— 5^?cec/^ in Congress, Feb. 27, 1864. 
 
 How News Travels. There is a sort of freemasonry among 
 the negroes, whereby the servants of one house communicate the 
 occurrences which happen in it to the servants of all the other 
 houses; and thus the news will spread, with almost telegraphic 
 rapidity, throughout a whole neighborhood. It is said that the In- 
 dians have the same system. We are told, for instance, that the mas- 
 sacre of General Custer and his troops was known to the red men, five 
 hundred miles from the scene of the disaster, long before the whites 
 had heard of it by the electric wires. I suppose that our own race, 
 before the days of newspapers, used the same means of disseminat- 
 ing information, and any startling news passed from mouth to 
 mouth with wonderful rapidity. — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 " Not Proven." The shallower the mind, the more positive it 
 Is usually upon every subject. The deepest thinkers adopt the 
 Scotch verdict, ^' Not proven," as to many of the great problems 
 of life. — The Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 A Smile. That bland, mechanical, New England smile, which 
 does not in the slightest degree interfere with the shrewdness, cun- 
 ning and observation working away beneath it. A piece of hered- 
 itary facial carving, derived from generations of worldly-minded 
 ancestors, who found that a smiling expression was a great help in 
 business, and cost them nothing — an important consideration to 
 an economical race. — Journal, 1886. 
 
 The Age of Trusts. " The undertakers met in St. Paul, 
 Sept. 9th, 1890, and formed a trust. Every large town in Minnesota 
 and the two Dakotas was represented." 
 
 What are we coming to ? When the morning of the Kesurrection 
 dawns and the poor fools are turning over and asking, half-awake, 
 '^ Where's Gabriel?" some newspaper reporter will tell them that 
 
9G BONNELLIANA. 
 
 a Trust has bought bis trumpet, aud tbat there won't be a single 
 " toot" without spot cash. — Journal, 1890. 
 
 THE MISSION OF ISRAEL. 
 
 The vital conviction which, during thousands of years, at all times 
 pressed home upon the Israelites, was that they were a " chosen 
 people, " selected out of the multitudes of the earth, to perpetuate 
 the great truth that there was but one God— an illimitable, omni- 
 potent, paternal spirit, who rewarded the good and punished the 
 wicked— in contradistinction from the multifarious, subordinate, 
 animal and bestial demi-gods of the other nations of the earth. 
 This subhme monotheism could only have been the outgrowth of a 
 high civilization, for man's first religion is necessarily a worship of 
 '' stocks and stones," and history teaches us that the gods decrease 
 in number as man increases in intelligence. It was probably in 
 Atlantis that monotheism was first preached. The proverbs of 
 "Ptah-hotep," the oldest book of the Egyptians, show that this 
 most ancient colony from Atlantis received the pure faith from the 
 mother-land at the very dawn of history ; this book preached the 
 doctrine of one God, " the rewarder of the good and the punisher 
 of the wicked." " In the early days the Egyptians worshiped one 
 ODly God, the maker of all things^ without beginning and without 
 end. To the last the priests preserved this doctrine, and taught it 
 privately to a. select few." The Jews took up this great truth 
 where the Egyptians dropped it, and over the heads and over the 
 ruins of Egypt, Chaldea, Phoenicia, Greece, Rome and India this 
 handful of poor shepherds— ignorant, debased and despised— have 
 carried down to our own times a conception which could only have 
 oi-iginated in the highest possible state of human society. 
 
 And even skepticism must pause before the miracle of the con- 
 tinued existence of this strange people, wading through the ages, 
 bearing on their shoulders the burden of their great trust, and 
 pressing forward, under the force of a perpetual and irresistible im- 
 pulse. The speech that may be heard to-day in the synagogues of 
 Chicago and Melbourne resounded two thousand years ago in the 
 streets of Rome ; and, at a still earlier period, it could be heard in 
 the palaces of Babylon and the shops of Thebes.— in Tyre, in Sidon, 
 in Gades, in Palmyra, in Nineveh. How many nations have perished, 
 how many languages have ceased to exist, how many splendid civil- 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 97 
 
 izatious have crumbled into ruin, how many temples and towers and 
 towns have gone down to dust since the sublime frenzy of mono- 
 theism first seized this extraordinary people! All their kindred 
 nomadic tribes are gone; their land of promise is in the hands of 
 strangers; but Judaism, with its offspi-ing, Christianity, is taking 
 possession of the habitable world; and the continuous life of one 
 people — one poor, obscure and wretched people — spans the tre- 
 mendous gulf between '' Ptah-hotep " and this nineteenth century. 
 
 If the Spirit of which the universe is but an expression — of 
 whose frame the stars are the infinite molecules — can be supposed 
 ever to interfere with the laws of matter and reach down into the 
 doings of men, would it not be to save from the wreck and waste 
 of time the most sublime fruit of the civilization of the drowned 
 Atlantis— a belief in the one, only, just God, the father of all life, 
 the imposer of all moral obhgationsf — .4^/«^^/5. 
 
 The Hell of the Pkoscribed. This is my punishment. This 
 is my Uving death. I sit in the midst of my sorrows as in a tomb. 
 I cannot die. I cannot fly into the unknown world out of which 
 have come such visions. I know nothing, I can surmise nothing 
 of the mucli that must be there. This is what terrifies me — the 
 unknown, the immeasurable ! I have no fear of hell. This is hell. 
 The proud mind that dwells in a proscribed body lives in hell. 
 Coals and flames are nothing to the anguish of a tortured spirit. It 
 is the soul that feels the burning, not the dead matter of the body. 
 — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 Bob Ingersoll akd Feancis Bacon. I should as soon at- 
 tempt to sound the depths of the Atlantic Ocean with a champagne- 
 cork, as to measure the intellect of the philosopher of Verulam by 
 the mind of this rhapsodist.— ^eec//, 1891. 
 
 Desire. There is no logician so subtle as Desire. It has a 
 thousand arguments. It can recall ten thousand facts. It casts its 
 glittering and deceptive fight over unprepossessing reality. It warms 
 us with a fire before which the cold figure of Judgment is seen to 
 dissolve and melt away in silence, like the wax image of the king 
 under the spell of the witches. — 1853. 
 
 The Eastern Newspaper Critics. Shallow creatures, who 
 measure a man's intellect by his distance from tide- water.— Journal, 
 1890. 
 
98 BONNFLLIANA. 
 
 Bacon ajs^d the Present Age. And why should he acknowl- 
 edge them? He left his fame and good name to his " own countrymen 
 after some time be past ; " he believed the cipher, which he had so 
 laboriously inserted in the Plays, would be found out. He would 
 obtain all the glory for his name in that distant future when he would 
 not hear the reproaches of caste ; when as a pure spirit he might 
 look down from space, and see the winged goodness he had created, 
 passing, on pinions of persistent purpose, through all the world, 
 through all the ages, from generation to generation. In that age, 
 when his body was dust ; when cousins and kin were ashes ; when 
 Shakspere had moldered into nothingness beneath the protection of 
 his own barbaric curse ; when not a trace could be found of the bones 
 of Ehzabeth or James, or even the stones of the Curtain or the Black- 
 friars: then, in a new world, a brighter world, a greater world, a 
 better world — to which his own age would be but a faint and per- 
 turbed remembrance — he would be married anew to his immortal 
 works. He would live again, triumphant, over Burleigh and Cecil, 
 over Coke and Buckingham, over parasites and courtiers, over trick- 
 sters and panders — the magnificent victory of genius overpower, 
 of mind over time;— and, so living, he would live forever.— T/?e 
 Great Cryptogram. 
 
 Injustice the Mother of Revolutions. Injustice is the 
 mother of revolutions. In no case has rebeUion raised its head in 
 the midst of equal laws; for what more can a man ask than equality'^ 
 But I challenge the historian to point to a single community where 
 unjust laws have not sooner or later given birth to revolutions; to 
 the efforts of one class to perpetuate and of the other to resist in- 
 justice.— /Speec/^ in Congress, February 1, 1866. 
 
 The Automatic Nature of the Mind. "What is the mind 
 of man? Who is it that thinks because he intends to think? Who 
 is it can anticipate his own thoughts? Where do they come from ? 
 The mind is like a great, shoreless pool, and thoughts arise to its 
 surface as mermaids project their shining shoulders above the quiet 
 sea. But from what unsoundable depths do they arise ? How far 
 down toward the central everlasting purposes do those waters 
 reach? Do they not rest upon the Will of the universe? And 
 are not these apparently self-acting intehects of ours part of the 
 great automatic mechanism we call Nature? Is there not a rhythm 
 
EXTRACTS ANn SELECTIONS. 99 
 
 in the music of the spheres? Are uot all things weighed, measured 
 and counted? Can there be an accident in a world that contains 
 a God ? And if this be so, are not my sulTerings fore-doomed and 
 necessary? Are they not part of the universal scheme? And, if 
 this be so, are not ray very miseries dignities? ''—Doctor Huguet. 
 
 Ix ALL Things Gentleness. I do not think it is necessary, 
 for the triumph of truth, that it should lacerate the feelings even of 
 the humblest. It should come, like Quetzalcoatl, with shining, 
 smiling face, its hands full of fruits and flowers, bringing only bless- 
 ings and kindliness to the mwliitw^Q.—Bagnarol'. 
 
 The Mountains Tuened into Bread. The time may come 
 when the slow processes of agriculture will be largely discarded, 
 and the food of man be created out of the chemical elements of 
 which it is composed, transfused by electricity and magnetism. We 
 have already done something in that direction in the way of syn- 
 thetic chemistry. Our mountain ranges may, in after ages, be 
 leveled down and turned into bread for the support of the most 
 enlightened, cultured, and, in its highest sense, religious people that 
 ever dwelt on the globe. All this is possible if civilization is pre- 
 served from the destructive power of the ignorant and brutal Plu- 
 tocracy, who now threaten the safety of mankind. They are like 
 the slave-owners of 1860 : they blindly and imperiously insist on 
 their own destruction ; they strike at the very hands that would 
 save them. — Ccesafs Column. 
 
 Mental Philosophy. There are men without any capacity 
 for original thought, who, like a phonograph, simply repeat what is 
 talked into them. — Letter to the Dramatic Mirror. 
 
 AMERICA'S SUPERIORITY. 
 
 Irishmen, you are right to love the beautiful land of your birth; 
 that western island, nearest to America, and green with the showers 
 borne by tlie gulf-stream from the shores of America. You do right 
 to reverence your native land, to cherish its memory, to pity its sor- 
 rows, to preserve its distinctive literature, to be prdud of the virtue 
 and the genius to which it has given birth. But what is Ireland - 
 yes, I may say, what is all Europe —compared with this g,e:it 
 theater of human activity of which we aie inheritors; ihis conti- 
 nental nation; this free republic? Rejoice and be exceeding- oiad 
 
100 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 that God has cast your lot in this goodly land. All that O'Connell 
 labored; struggled and fought for we have here, completed and per- 
 fected. No king sits on his throne to dictate to us; no aristocracy 
 grinds us into the earth ; no established church wrings tribute from 
 unwilling consciences; no dominant caste flaunts insults in your 
 faces. The earth beneath our feet holds in its bosom incalculable 
 fertility; the air that blows upon us is free as our own thoughts; 
 the government that rules us is ourselves. Here every temple 
 points its spire to Glod undisturbed by man; here each religion 
 strives with its fellows to establish the greatest claims upon the 
 respect and confidence of mankind ; while over all universal educa- 
 tion, broad and generous as God's blessed sunlight, brightens and 
 warms the nation with its beams. — Speech on Daniel O^Connell, 1875. 
 
 Life. 
 Why this great flight, this shadowy flight of time ? 
 
 Passing and hurried flit the phantoms by. 
 Have they no aim, no end, no mark sublime, 
 
 In all this labor, but to be and die ? 
 Is this their sum and total, and for this 
 
 Do they discard, dishonor or deprave 
 All that is given them, and all that is, 
 
 Perverting life and darkening the grave ? — 1851. 
 Death and the Hereafter. But that doom was, to one of 
 my training, worse than death and the grave. For in death all are 
 equal ; and the grave turns us at last into flowers, — bright flowers, 
 — things of beauty, that fill the air with perfume. In the dust of 
 the grave there are no stirrings of ambition ; no unsatisfied long- 
 ings ; no jealousies ; no pride ; no wounded sensibilities ; no great 
 passionate bursts of the hearts that are trampled under the feet of 
 men ; nothing but peace and sleep. Ay, profound and dreamless 
 sleep — sleep that takes no note of night or day, or time or season ; 
 of the wind's wild scream or the song-bird's melody ; of the grow- 
 ing grass or the falling leaves ; of sunshine or rain ; — sleep that 
 merges the individual into the universal nature, as a drop of water 
 is lost in the Interminable ocean. And if from this dissolving clod 
 the extricated spirit is carried by the great Purpose into other 
 realms of being, will not God be there too ? Will not that region 
 be part of God's world? wherever it may be ? Can not the soul 
 
J^JXT1^AC'J\S AND SELECTIONS. 101 
 
 trust itself with safety to Him who made it? Will the Creator. 
 Saturu-like, devour His children ? It cannot be. — Doctor Huyuct. 
 
 A New Idea. Whyshould twenty thousand people in a county 
 be taxed to pay the expense of allowing a few fools to squabble over 
 petty law-suits ? If A has a claim against B, why should C, D, E, 
 F and all the rest of the alphabet have to pay A the expense of 
 collecting that claim f What have they to do with it ? If A found 
 that he had to pay the piper himself he would hesitate about rush- 
 ing into law ; he would compromise with B, or he would agree to 
 arbitrate his dispute ; and thus the taxpayers of the county would 
 save thousands of dollars annually. — r//e Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 Our Old Soldiers. But gratitude does not end with the dead. 
 They may not hear or see us. The delighlod spirit, with a universe 
 in which to wander, may take small heed of the things of this little 
 earth. But we have many of the living soldiers of the w^ar still 
 among us ; their courage, their toils, their trials, were little less 
 than those of the fallen. They have reached middle life, some of 
 them old age ; and some to age have added poverty ; and though none 
 of them, I trust, 
 
 " Beg bitter bread through realms their valor won," 
 
 Still there are many who will be glad to feel that the communities in 
 which they dwell remember gratefully the part they took in the pre- 
 servation of the great republic, and are ready to bold out to them, 
 not the cold hand of charity, but the warm grasp of friendship. 
 Wbile, then, you adorn the graves of the dead, try to brighten the 
 homes of the living. Kindness, gentleness, brotherly love are fairer 
 flowers than any that bloom on the fields of earth ] they are divine 
 blossoms showered by the hand of God upon the heart of man. — 
 Memorial Address, 1884. 
 
 That's Certain^. If we find the devil on one side of a con- 
 troversy we know that God must be on the other. — Journal, 1889. 
 
 A PRE-GLACIAL COIN. 
 
 This is indeed an extraordinary revelation. Here we have a 
 copper medal, very much like a coin, inscribed with alphabetical or 
 hieroglypbical signs, which, when placed under the microscope, in 
 the hands of a skeptical investigator, satisfies him that it is not re- 
 
102 BONNELLtANA. 
 
 cent, aDcl that it imssed through a rolling-mill and was cut hy ci 
 macJiine. 
 
 If it is not recent, if the tooth of time is plainly seen on it, it is 
 not a modern fraud; if it is not a modern fraud, then it is really the 
 coin of some pre-Columbian people. The Indians possessed no cur- 
 rency or alphabet, so that it dates back of the red men. Nothing 
 similar has been found in the hundreds of American mounds that 
 have been opened, so that it dates back of the Mound-builders. 
 
 It comes from a depth of not less than eighth/ feet in glacial clay; 
 therefore it is profoundly ancient. 
 
 It is engraved after a method utterly unknotvn to any civilised 
 nation on earth, tvithin the range of recorded history. It is en- 
 
 GEAVED WITH ACID ! 
 
 It belongs, therefore, to a civilization unlike any we know of. If 
 it had been derived from any other human civilization, the makers, 
 at the same time they borrowed the round, metallic form of the 
 coin, would have borrowed also the mold or the stamp. But they 
 did not; and yet they possessed a rolling-mill and a machine to cut 
 out the coin. 
 
 What do we infer? That there is a relationship between our 
 civilization and this, but it is a relationship in which this represents 
 the parent; and the round metallic coins of historical antiquity 
 were derived from it, but without the art of engraving by the use of 
 acid. 
 
 It does not stand alone, but at great depths in the same clay im- 
 elements of copper and of iron are found. 
 
 What does all this indicate ? 
 
 That far below the present level of the State of Illinois, in the 
 depths of the glacial clays, about one hundred or one hundred and 
 twenty feet below the present surface of the land, there are found 
 the evidences of a high civilization. For a coin with an inscription 
 upon it implies a high civilization : —it implies an alphabet, a litera- 
 ture, a government, commercial relations, organized society, regu- 
 lated agriculture, . which could alone sustain all these; and some 
 implement like a plow, without which extensive agriculture is not 
 possible ; and this in turn implies domesticated animals to draw the 
 plow. The presence of the coin, and of implements of copper and 
 iron, proves that mankind had passed far beyond the Stone Age« 
 
EXTHACTS AND SELECTIONS. 103 
 
 And these views arc cculiriiied by the pavemeuts aud c\4l/jrns of 
 brick found seventy feet below the surface in the lower Mississippi 
 YdiW^y.—Bagnaroli:. 
 
 Man. That bag of fluids and divine and demoniacal influences 
 called — m^m.— Journal, 1889. 
 
 The Glory of Wealth. " And thus, under the stimulus of 
 shallow vanity," I continued, "a rivalry of barouches and bon- 
 nets—an emulation of waste and extravagance — all the powers of 
 the minds of men are turned — not to lift up the world, but to de- 
 grade it. A crowd of little creatures — men and women— are dis- 
 played upon a high platform, in the face of mankind, parading and 
 strutting about, with their noses in the air, as tickled as a monkey 
 with a string of beads, and covered with a glory which is not their 
 own, but wliich they have been able to purchase; crying aloud: 
 'Behold what I have got!^ not, 'Behold what I am !^^^—CcBsafs 
 Column. 
 
 The Conscience. And something, away within me, sneered at 
 me and reviled me — yea, spat at me. And in my heart of hearts 
 I stood at the altar of my soul, with downcast head and shamed 
 face, sore and sorry, humiliated and wretched. It seemed to me 
 that I was an outcast from myself— that my conscience spurned me 
 out of its doors into the wilderness.— Doctor Huguet. 
 
 Naturalness. Nothing can be great that is not natural. Great- 
 ness is but nature elevated. Man cannot invent anything that will 
 accord better with nature than herself. There is no grimace can 
 exceed in beauty the ordinary and reposeful face of woman. And if 
 one were to assemble all the sounds of nature and mingle them at 
 will, from the bellow of the bison to the lamentation of the nightin- 
 gale, he could form no scale for the expression of emotion superior 
 to the transitions of the human voice.— Essa^j, 1852. 
 
 Man. a creature that thinks — imported into a material world 
 incapable of thought. An exotic — a foreigner.— /owma?, 1889. 
 
 What the Farmer Is and Should Be. As Ralph Waldo 
 Emerson beautifully puts it in one of his essays: " The glory of the 
 farmer is that, in the division of labor, it is his part to create. All 
 the trades rest at last on his primitive authority. He stands close 
 to nature ; he obtains from earth the bread; and the food which 
 
104 jDONNELLIANA. 
 
 was not, he causes to be. The first farmer was the first gentleman, 
 and all historic nobility rests on the possession and use of land." 
 
 That's the way it should be ; but in this country the owner of 
 the land is simply a bondman whose duty it is to support usurers 
 and officeholders. He goes clothed in rags, and half- fed on the 
 coarsest fare, while those who live off him " wear purple and fine 
 linen and fare sumptuously every day.'' The ownership of the 
 land in other countries makes a man a gentleman ; here it simply 
 enables him to sweat and pay taxes. — The Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 THE VISION. 
 
 As I gazed intently upon this spot, to my extreme astonishment 
 I perceived that the light was slowly taking upon itself the outlines 
 of a human head and face; vaguely at first, but gradually growing 
 more and more plain, until at last the lines of the countenance 
 glowed with great distinctness. It was a face painted in light — I 
 might almost say in fire. A marvelous face ! A face never to be for- 
 gotten. A face I had never seen before. I had often thought how 
 much of diverse character and meaning could be implanted on the 
 few square inches of the human countenance; but here was a face 
 that transcended my highest dream of all such possibilities. 
 
 It was a massive head. The forehead was broad — very broad — 
 high and serene. Beneath it glowed wonderful orbs that looked as 
 if they had sounded all depths of thought and feeling — even to the 
 dreadful verge of despair. There was in them infinite power, sor- 
 row, kindliness and compassion ; and yet it was a strong face; the 
 mouth mobile, but the chin square. The face was very fair ; the 
 hair bright golden, falling in masses to the shoulders, and from it 
 radiated luminous beams, pulsating and ever moving. It seemed to 
 be the source of the light that illuminated the whole room. 
 
 I had never beheld, anywhere, any picture of this countenance, 
 and yet something within me whispered : 
 
 '^ This is The Christ!" — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 Truth Fits into Truth. We sometimes call, in law, an in- 
 strument between two parties an indenture. Why? Because it 
 was once the custom to write a deed or contract in duplicate, on a 
 long sheet of paper or parchment, and then cut them apart upon an 
 irregular or indented line. If, thereafter, any dispute arose as to 
 whether one was the equivalent of the other, the edges, where they 
 
P:XTh\iCTS AX J) Sh'LK('TlOXS. 105 
 
 Wert', divided, wore put logtjthcr to see if tlie}' precisely miitclied. If 
 they did not, it followed that some fraud had somewhere beeu prac- 
 ticed. Truth, in like manner, is serrated, and its indentations fit into 
 all other truth. If two alleged truths do not thus dovetail into each 
 other, along the line where they approximate, then one of them is 
 not the truth, but an error or a fraud. — The Great Cryptogram. 
 
 The Word's Rulers. There was about Prince Cabauo that 
 air of confidence and command which usually accompauies great 
 wealth or success of any kind. Extraordinary power produces 
 always the same type of counteuance. You see it in the high-nosed 
 mummied kings of ancient Egypt. There is about them an aristo- 
 cratic hauteur which even the shrinking of the dry skin for four 
 thousand years has not been able to quite subdue. We feel like 
 taking off our hats even to the parched hides. You see it in the 
 cross-legged monuments of the old crusaders, in the venerable 
 churches of Europe ; a splendid breed of ferocious barbarians they 
 were, who struck ten blows for conquest and plunder where they 
 struck one for Christ. And you can see the same type of counte- 
 nance in the present rulers of the world — the great bankers, the 
 railroad presidents, the gigantic speculators, the uncrowned mon- 
 archs of commerce, whose golden chariots drive recklessly over the 
 prostrate bodies of the people. — Ccesafs Column. 
 
 The Mountains. 
 Where the soft vales lie luUed like dimpled smiles ; 
 
 Where rocks stand thick, like high, thought-darkened brows. 
 Where wandering rivers linger 'round lone isles, 
 
 Kissing the wet leaves of their trailing boughs. 
 
 But most thy dark woods love I to behold, 
 
 Piled thick on steeps, and massy with close leaves, 
 Where 'mid the topmost branches, brownly old, 
 
 The troublous wind continually grieves. — 1851. 
 History. Man crawled timidly backward into the history of the 
 past over his little limit of six thousand years; and at the farther 
 end of his tether he found the perfect civilization of early Egypt. 
 He rises to his feet and looks still backward, and the vista of his- 
 tory spreads and spreads to antediluvian times. Here at last he 
 has reached the beginning of things : here man first domesticated 
 
106 DONI^ELLIAJ^A. 
 
 the animals; here he first worked in copper and iron; here he pos- 
 sessed for the first time an alphabet, a government, comiiierce, 
 and coinage. And, lo ! from the bottom of well-holes in Illinois, 
 one hundred and fourteen feet deep, the buckets of the artesian- 
 well augur bring up copper rings and iron hatchets and engraved 
 coins — engraved by a means unknown to historical mankind — and 
 we stand face to face with a civilization so old that man will not 
 willingly dare to put it into figures. 
 
 Here we are in the presence of that great, but possibly brutal 
 and sensual development of man's powers, " the sword-ages, the 
 ax-ages, the murder-ages of the Goths," of which G-od cleared the 
 earth when he buried the mastodon under the Drift forever. — Bag- 
 naroJc. 
 
 Sunset. 
 
 The gold- shod evening through the darkening west 
 
 Slips like a fugitive. — 1851. 
 Ireland and the South. Love and loyalty are flowers that 
 spring unbidden at the touch of the gentle hand of justice; they 
 can never be coerced out of the hearts of men by cruelty and op- 
 pression. — Speech at banquet to the Earl of Aberdeen, St. Paul, 1887. 
 
 The Sea. 
 And sink at last, when my song is past, 
 Like silence on the sea ; 
 Beautiful, solemn sea. 
 Thou art the world to me, 
 The whole wide world to me. 
 Never a strand or shore, 
 
 Never the wave of trees. 
 But ever the same stern roar, 
 
 The same continuous breeze. 
 Ever the same wide waste, 
 
 "With its sullen fall and rise. 
 The shadowy billows faced 
 With the everlasting skies. — 1851. 
 
 CONSIDER THE WRETCHED. 
 Speak to Dives of lifting up the plane of aU the under-fed, under- 
 paid, benighted millions of the earth — his fellow-men — to higher 
 
HXTBACTS AND SELECTIONS. 107 
 
 levels of comfort, aud joy, and inteliigeDce —not tearing doAvn any, 
 but building up all — and Dives can not understand you. 
 
 Ah, Dives ! consider, if there is no other life than this, the fate 
 of these uncounted millions of your race ! What does existence give 
 to them ? What do they get out of all this abundant and beautiful 
 world ? 
 
 To look down the vista of such a life as theirs is like gazing into 
 one of the corridors of the Catacombs: an alley filled with reeking 
 bones of dead men; while from the cross-arches, waiting for the 
 poor man's coming on, ghastly shapes loolc out : — sickness and want 
 and sin and grim despair and red-eyed suicide. 
 
 Put yourself in his place. Dives, locked up in such a cavern as 
 that, and the key thrown away ! —Ragnarok. 
 
 The Universe is Thought. A something within me seemed 
 to cry out : " Fool! fool ! thinkest thou that thy capacity for thought 
 is but an orphan accident in the midst of a barren universe ? No, 
 no ; tlie universe is thought. Thy mind is but a fragment chipped off 
 and dropped to earth from the illimitable soul of things, bearing 
 upon it the stamp of its divinity in its sense of right, its imperial 
 conscience. Death is but the opening of the door. The room is 
 empty, but the tenant has wandered elsewhere. — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 Ked Paint. The finishing touches of the portrait of Reform 
 are too often given with red paint. — Journal^ 1889. 
 
 A CHARACTER. 
 
 A countenance that looks as if it had been cut out of lignum- 
 vitce, by some humorous demon, with a broad- axe ; an evil face, 
 where God hath set the bar-sinister of his unquahfied disapproval. 
 
 A mixture of fool and knave in most exact and judicious propor- 
 tions. He would be a fool absolute if his cunning did not restrain 
 him ; he would be a scoundrel unmitigated if the cup of his folly 
 did not overflow the saucer of his judgment. 
 
 A monstrosity ; an absurdity ; an awful mixture of wickedness 
 and weakness. It is as if a Bengal tiger had begotten a foal on the 
 body of an unadulterated ass; and the product was an abnormal and 
 incongruous combination of claws, hoofs, stripes and ears ; the ap- 
 palling roar trailing out into a ridiculous bray; the belly fitted 
 neither for blood nor thistles. 
 
When he goes to hell — as he will — for he naturally belongs 
 there — the devils will alternately shrink back and leave a vacuum 
 around him, and then gather to roar with laughter over his antics 
 and absurdities. — Speech, 1884. 
 
 DINNER BELLS. 
 
 (AFTER POE — A LONG DISTANCE.) 
 
 Hear the glorious dinner bells ; 
 Sympathetic dinner bells ; 
 Tinkling, tingling, silver bells ; 
 What a world of satisfaction 
 Their melody foretells ! 
 
 With the pudding from the pot, 
 (The dark, ambrosial pot). 
 And the turkey smoking hot, 
 Filled with filling till it swells ; 
 And it smells ! 
 Oh, it smells ! 
 As if an angel dwells 
 
 In the circumambient air ; 
 And, from iridescent wings. 
 O'er the group assembled flings 
 Paradisial odors rare ; 
 Rich and rare ; 
 Filling, thrilling all the air ! 
 While it smells ! — Oh, it smells ! — 
 Smells ! — smells ! — smells ! — 
 Smells ! — smells ! — smells ! 
 As if the saints forgiven. 
 Through the open gates of heaven, 
 Flung the beaming, gleaming, streaming 
 Breath of Eden rare, 
 Rich and rare ; 
 Through the circumambient air. 
 Everywhere ! — Christmas, 1870. 
 
 The Comet. Do not count too much. Dives, on your lands and 
 houses and parchments; your guns and cannon and laws; your in- 
 surance companies and your governments. There may be even now 
 
EXTRACTS AND SEL-ECTIONS. 109 
 
 one comiug from beyond Arcturus, or Aldebaran, or Coma Berenices, 
 with glowing countenance and horrid hair, and milHons of tons of 
 debris, to overwhelm you and your possessions, and your corpora- 
 tions^ and all the ant-like devices of man in one common ruin.— 
 Ragnarok. 
 
 A Knave. A dishonest knave who would turn around on 
 one-tenth of his own dmmeter.— Journal, 1889. 
 
 The Poor of the Old World. And how pitiful, Mr. Speaker, 
 is the condition of those populations 1 They lie at the base of a col- 
 umn of injustices heaped high above them. How desolate is the cry 
 which their wretchedness, their misery, their very siufulness, sends 
 up to heaven ? How pale, how bloodless are their poor faces as they 
 gather in the fetid alleys of the great cities of the Old World, or sit 
 down patiently to their insufficient food in miserable cabins i The 
 whole past of the human family seems to rest crushingly upon 
 them. Conquests a thousand years old y^t press upon their should- 
 ers. The distinctions of race and caste and rehgion, and all the 
 miUion forms of injustice growing out of these, yet hold them under 
 their feet. They look to the laws, and they are against them; they 
 look to the land, and it is occupied ; they can only hope by the most 
 cruel and unceasing toil to snatch a hving more scant, more preca- 
 rious than that which the gaunt wolf gathers in the depths of the 
 forest. — Speech in Congress, May 7, 1868. 
 
 The Mind God-like. But what a sense of exaltation came 
 over me ! Out of the very wells and caverns of humihation I had 
 climbed to the light. I had risen upon the wings of my own soul. 
 I had found that there is that in the mind of man that can survive 
 '' the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds. '' Only the cowardly 
 fall. The brave man dares all the bolts of fate. Death simply 
 releases him from unfortunate conditions. The mind is god-like — 
 it is God. I would make this black hide as glorious as the crippled 
 figure of the slave ^sop, or the satyr-hke features of the persecuted 
 Socrates.— Doctor Huguet. 
 
 C^SAK LoMELLiNi. I tumcd to the president. Such a man I 
 had never seen before. He was, I should think, not less than six 
 feet six inches high, and broad in proportion. His great arms hung 
 down until the monstrous hands almost touched the knees. His 
 
110 JDONNELLIANA. 
 
 skin was quite dark, almost negroid, and a thick, close mat of curly 
 black hair covered his huge head like a thatch. His face was mus- 
 cular, ligamentous; with great bars, ridges and whelks of flesh, 
 especially about the jaws and on the forehead. But the eyes fasci- 
 nated me. They were the eyes of a wild beast, deep-set, sullen and 
 glaring ; they seemed to shine like those of the cat-tribe, with a 
 luminosity of their own. This, then — I said to myself— must be 
 Cgesar, the commander of the dreaded Brotherhood.— Ccssar's 
 Column. 
 
 National Phogeess. The progress of a people is like the 
 progress of a ship at sea. The air is agitated for a thousand miles 
 around the vessel; there is a great bluster in the rigging: a great 
 rattling of cordage; and out of the whole tumult the sails have 
 caught a few caps full of wind, and the ship is advanced a mile or two 
 upon its course. Grod has to blow hard down the centuries and over 
 the universe to move a nation forward a foot's space.— i(S55. 
 
 THE ABSURDITY OF THE ICE THEORY. 
 
 Again, where did the clay, which is deposited in such gigantic 
 masses, hundreds of feet thick, over the continent, come from ? We 
 have seen that, according to Mr. Dawkins, " no such clay has been 
 proved to have been formed, either in the Arctic regions, ivhence the 
 ice-sheet has retreated, or in the districts forsaken by the glaciers. " 
 
 If the Arctic ice-sheet does not create such a clay now, why did 
 it create it centuries ago on the plains of England or Illinois ? 
 
 The other day I traveled from Minnesota to Cape May, on the 
 shore of the Atlantic, a distance of about fifteen hundred miles. At 
 scarcely any point was I out of sight of the red clay and gravel of 
 the Drift; it loomed up amid the beach-sands of New Jersey; it 
 was laid bare by railroad-cuts in the plains of New York and 
 Pennsylvania; it covered the highest tops of the Alleghanies at 
 Altoona; the farmers of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin were 
 raising crops upon it ; it was everywhere. If one had laid down a 
 handful of the Wisconsin drift alongside of a handful of the New 
 Jersey deposit, he could scarcely have perceived any difference 
 between them. 
 
 Here, then, is a geological formation, almost identical in character, 
 fifteen hundred miles long from east to west, and reaching through 
 
EXTRACTS AND i^ELECTlONU, \\\ 
 
 the whole leugth of North aud South America, from the Arctic 
 Circle to Patagonia. 
 
 Did ice grind this out of the granite ? 
 
 Where did it get the granite ? The granite reaches the surface 
 only in limited areas ; as a rule it is buried many miles in depth un- 
 der the sedimentary rocks. 
 
 How did the ice pick out its materials so as to grina nothing hut 
 granite f 
 
 This deposit overlies limestone and sandstone. The ice sheet 
 rested upon them. Why were they not ground up with the granite ? 
 Did the ice intelligently pick out a particular kind of rock, and that 
 the hardest of them all ? 
 
 But here is another marvel — this clay is red. The red is due to 
 the grinding up of mica and hornblende. Granite is composed of 
 quartz, feldspar and mica. In syenitic granite the materials are 
 quartz, feldspar and hornblende. Mica and hornblende contain 
 considerable oxide of iron, while feldspar has none. When mica 
 aud hornblende are ground up, the result is blue or red clays, as the 
 oxidation of the iron turns the clay red ; while the clay made of 
 feldspar is light yellow or white. 
 
 Now, then, not only did the ice sheet select for grinding the gran- 
 ite rock, and refuse to touch the others, but it put the granite itself 
 through some mysterious process by which it separated the feldspar 
 from the mica and hornblende, and manufactured a white or yellow 
 clay out of the one, which it deposited in great sheets by itself, as 
 west of the Mississippi ; while it ground up the mica and hornblende 
 and made blue or red clays, which it laid down elsewhere, as the 
 red clays are spread over that great stretch of fifteen hundred miles 
 to which I have referred. — RagnaroJc. 
 
 The Wateks of Humiliation. Talk about drinking the 
 waters of humiliation. I have drained them to the very dregs ; I 
 have swallowed them by the quart, the gallon, the bucket-full, the 
 barrel-full; I have been plunged into an ocean of them; I have been 
 soaked in them, for years at a time, until every fiber of my being 
 has shrieked out its protest against injustice and degradation.^ 
 Journal, 1888. 
 
 A Marriage for Money. Can high walls, rich lawns, wide 
 fields and splendid trappings compensate the spirit, which, return-. 
 
112 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 iug from its wauderings, finds no rest, no comfort, no repose ; but 
 circles ever in restless flutterings around the empty image of a 
 home ? — Essay, 1S53. 
 
 Meaner than the Monkeys. It is an axiom that ^' no man 
 can he safely left in the unrestrained power of any other man. " It 
 was on this principle that we abohshed slavery. To say that a 
 dozen men in Minneapolis, by the ticking of a telegraph, shall fix 
 every year and every day the value of the productions of a hundred 
 thousand farmers, and the resulting prosperity of all the merchants, 
 professional men, mechanics and working people dependent on them, 
 is to say that a gigantic wrong must be inflicted on the people. 
 There never yet existed the power to oppress that oppression did 
 not follow. Mankind is meaner than the monkeys and cruder than 
 the wild beasts. We have only to look back a few hundred years to see 
 the horrible outrages which unrestrained man inflicted on his fel- 
 lows. In fact, w^e need only cross the ocean and visit the wretched 
 cabins of Ireland, or the mines of Siberia, to learn that tigers and 
 sharks are kinder to their kin than that " paragon of animals, " that 
 " quintessence of dust, " the human creature. — Speech at Glencoe, 
 1884. 
 
 Education and the Newspaper. Neither did it follow that 
 because a man was educated he was intelligent. There was a vast 
 population of the middle class, who had received good educations, 
 but who did not have any opinion upon any subject, except as they 
 derived it from their daily newspapers. The rich men owned the 
 newspapers and the newspapers owned their readers; so that, prac- 
 tically, the rich men cast all those hundreds of thousands of votes. 
 If these men had not been able to read and write they would have 
 talked with one another upon public afiairs, and have formed some 
 correct ideas; their education simply facilitated their mental subju- 
 gation ; they were chained to the chariots of the Oligarchy ; and 
 they would never know the truth until they woke up some bright 
 morning and found it was the Day of Judgment. — Ccesar^s Column. 
 
 A Dozen Lives. 1 regret that I cannot live a dozen lives at 
 once, with ten times the industry, for each one, that I am now 
 capable of. — Journal, 1886. 
 
 The Fires of Atlantis Still Burning. These facts would 
 seem to show that the great fires which destroyed Atlantis are still 
 
EXTliA CIS A XI) SELECTIONS. 1 1 3 
 
 smoldering in the depths of the ocean ; that the vast oscillations 
 which carried Plato's continent beneath the sea may again bring it, 
 with all its buried treasures, to the light ; and that even the wild 
 imagination of Jules Verne, when he described Captain Nemo, in 
 his diving- arm or, looking down upon the temples and towers of the 
 lost island, lit by the fires of the submarine volcanoes, had some 
 groundwork of possibility to build upon. — Atlantis. 
 
 A Stra:nge Compound. He is not even an honest fanatic ; for 
 all his viperishness and vituperativeness are at the service of the 
 man who owns, for the time being, the collar upon his neck. He is 
 that strangest of all compounds, a fanatic plugged with a post-ofi&ce ; 
 and hence he combines the docility of the water- spaniel with the 
 ferocity of the rat-terrier. — The Ant i- Monopolist. 
 
 The Illumination of Intellect. 
 
 As when the Chinese shade's raised figures stand, 
 
 Wrought almost perfect by the artist's hand. 
 
 And yet uneven, callous, cold and dull, 
 
 Till the lit taper fills them, clear and full ; 
 
 So woman's face, molded by skill divine. 
 
 Graced with angelic beauty in each line. 
 
 But meaningless and soulless meets the sight 
 
 Till intellect comes freshening it with light ; 
 
 And then, ah ! then, e?ich feature teems with grace, 
 
 Mind, softened mind, looks saint-like from the face ; 
 
 In each sweet, dimpled smile the light lies caught. 
 
 And in the deep eyes dwell whole worlds of thought. — 1855. 
 
 The White Manhood. " Smite me with sudden death, Lord 
 God! " I cried aloud ; ^^ cover me with leprosy ; rot me with con- 
 sumption ; infect me with all the racking pains that flesh inherits ; 
 plunge me in poverty to the very lips; overwhelm me with shame 
 and dishonor ; but give me back my body, my race, my white skin — 
 that loftiest symbol of dignity and greatness throughout all the 
 habitable world. Let me stand, if you will, God! at some street 
 corner, lame and blind, and sick and sore, with outstretched hand, 
 living upon the pitiful and contemptuous bounty of my kind; but 
 give me back my white manhood ! Spare me this awful, this in- 
 oomprehensible, this unprecedented affliction. And, Christ ! liavp 
 
114 , DONNELLIANA. 
 
 your pitying eyes no glance of mercy for me ? You died on thfe 
 cross, but you died a white man ? This is a living cross, a life-long 
 crucifixion, compared with which the nails and the spear were 
 merciful. — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 INDIVIDUAL OWNERSHIP OF LAND. 
 
 Now, what is the root of all this ? It is the pioneer driving his 
 plow for the first time into the surface of the wilderness. The whole 
 structure rests upon the occupancy and ownership of the land by 
 the individual. Hence follow independence^ self-respect, and all the 
 incentives to labor; hence industry, intelligence, schools, society, 
 development — not the hot-house development of the towns, but 
 sturdy, healthy development, which has its roots in the earth, 
 which expands in the family circle, and which brings strength and 
 power to the best traits of human nature. 
 
 We cannot overrate the importance of the subdivision of the land 
 among the people. Being the original parent of all wealth, its bless- 
 ing should be wide-spread and should reach as many as possible; 
 otherwise it will concentrate in a few hands, and then will follow 
 plethora for the few and pauperism for the many, until at last we 
 realize the pitiful and lamentable condition of Europe, where the 
 blood and tears and sweat of the afflicted cry from the earth like 
 the blood of Abel. 
 
 Now, Mr. Speaker, we owe to ever5»man who desires to possess 
 it a reasonable portion of the unoccupied land of the nation. The 
 right inheres in him and it inheres in the great mass of his fellow- 
 men, because he and they are alike to be benefited — he directly, 
 they indirectly. That right the homestead law recognizes and pro- 
 tects. — Speech in Congress, May 7, 1868. 
 
 AN ESSAY ON A DOG. 
 
 What curious sympathy is this that binds Jack's intelligence 
 to mine? 
 
 I start out to take a walk. I may have lounged around, and in 
 and out of the garden for hours, and wise old Jack never stirs; but 
 now he sees the purpose in my walk or bearing, and he is up and 
 away, gamboling with delight. 
 
 He has been at liberty at any time to stroll off into the woods by 
 himself; but the woods are nothing without companionship — nay, 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 115 
 
 they are nothing without human companionship, for even a fellow- 
 dog, who speaks his own language, does not appear to afford him 
 the society which his master does. And yet what a vast interval of 
 development separates Jack and me ! He comes of a wild, remote, 
 barbarian stock that would originally have eaten me ; and I of a 
 wild, remote, barbarian stock that would, with equal delight, have 
 eaten Jack. And yet Jack is happy only in my approval. He will 
 not stray far away from me; and if a nimble rabbit or impertinent 
 squirrel tempts him aside he soon returns ; and if he takes the 
 wrong path, how quickly he seeks me out, and is happy only in my 
 presence. He is enjoying the walk and my society; that is most 
 evident. 
 
 Observe the expression of Jack's eyes under different circum- 
 stances. Now he rolls and tumbles with another dog in play. See 
 how his eyes sparkle. See how tenderly they grasp each other's 
 limbs with their sharp teeth, conscious that they must not hurt one 
 another in their mimic strife. Observe how the bigger dog tumbles 
 Jack on his back and then rolls him backward and forward, as I 
 have myself rolled and tumbled a romping youngster. Who says 
 there is not in all this joviality, " fun, " kindness, fellowship and the 
 sense of humor ; all Christian virtues, as we understand them ? 
 
 I have seen Jack apologize with his eyes, as plainly as if he said 
 in words: " I am exceedingly sorry for my misdemeanor; I humble 
 myself before you as I would before my God. " 
 
 And, in fact, as some one has well observed, we stand to dogs in 
 the relation of gods. We hold in our hands, for them, the issues of 
 life and death; we are, to them, the dispensers of perpetual 
 bounty ; our houses, our implements, our arms, must strike them 
 with an awe similar to that with which the Indian regards the man- 
 ifestations of the Thunder-God. 
 
 The ancients were not without some show of probability when 
 they supposed that the souls of the dead revisited the earth in the 
 bodies of animals. If there is a spiritual life outside of this material 
 life, as we are taughl? to believe, who shall say what forms and 
 modes of being it assumes ? May not that conscious entity, the 
 soul, pass during countless ages, from planet to planet, through all 
 those multitudinous systems which uni-ojl themselves, night after 
 night, in magnificent pageantry before our gazef 
 
116 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 Jack here, with his apologetic eyes, and his strong love of human 
 companionship, may have been a philosopher on one of the planets 
 of Aldebaran. Or he may have been an editor on one of those 
 remote dots of light which go to make up that creamy, curdy 
 streak which wo call " the Milky Way," Or, perchance, coming 
 nearer home, he was a money-lender under Rameses, and exacted 
 his shent per shent and ground the greasy faces of the garhc-eating 
 Egyptian poor. Or he may have been a Roman soldier and carried 
 his eagle before Caesar. If so, I do not wonder he is ashamed of his 
 present degenerate state, tail and all, and apologizes for it out of 
 his brown eyes. 
 
 But whatever Jack is, wherever he came from, or wherever he is 
 going. Jack loves me ; that is self-evident. He experiences spasms 
 of exquisite pain whenever I scold him; he goes into paroxysms of 
 dehght if I deign to notice him. There are lines of sympathy which 
 link the contents of his poor httle imperfect brain-pan with my 
 educated intelhgence. He can neither read nor write nor vote ; and 
 yet he has, to a large degree, the same emotions and affections that 
 I have; he loves and he hates; he enjoys and he suffers; he hung- 
 ers and he thirsts; he has his friends and his enemies; he is fond of 
 his home and even of his companion of tbe kennel; he is capable 
 of rage, terror, gratitude, shame, modesty, reverence, merriment, 
 humor and sorrow. He is even superstitious, and has a savage's 
 horror of anything white shining out at him from the dark. And as 
 superstition is simply a barbarous religion, he may even have some 
 rudimentary dog-creed of his own, holding the same relation to a 
 properly organized theology that his few rude tones of voice, where- 
 with he expresses his emotions, hold to a cultivated language. 
 Who knows what thoughts are in that hair-covered little cranium ; 
 or what conceptions of his Creator are granted to him, vouchsafed 
 out of the illimitable charity of God, but incommunicable to man ? 
 
 How httle we know of that Mighty Power of which both Jack 
 and I are simply expressions! This, at least, we can learn, that 
 these humble creatures were built up out of the same dust, by the 
 same great Architect; and that our first duty is to be kind to them. 
 In some broad, pleasant, planet-embracing sense, we are their 
 brethren; and we should make their poor, brief hves pleasant and 
 comfortable. As we are gods in their eyes because of our power, we 
 
KXTMaCTS AM) SPJLl^JcrioNK 117 
 
 fchould bo gods to them iu our mercy aud beneficeucc.— IV^c Anti- 
 Monopolist. 
 
 The Spirit of Komance. 
 orient charm, that o'er dull commonplace 
 Throws all our life can know of light or grace, 
 Bring thou from out the mossed cells of age 
 Remembrance fair of learning's storied page ; 
 Give antique thought new life in beauty's brain, 
 And bid young hearts make old love young again.— 1854. 
 The Use of Tobacco. We are sometimes inclined to think that 
 the injurious consequences resulting from the use of tobacco are as 
 great as those from alcohol. To be sure, tobacco does not drfve men 
 to murder and suicide and thus shock society, but it gradually un- 
 dermines the system, and prepares it for the use of whisky, by 
 creating a demand for the use of a more powerful stimulant.— T/^e 
 Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 Summer. 
 
 Shade is gemmed aud worked in light, 
 
 Rills of crystal Hash to sight, 
 
 And the song-bird's dappled breast 
 
 Quivers o'er its sun- touched nest.— 1854, 
 Kings. The world has got no further use for that breed of 
 beasts they call kings. When I think of the billions of human 
 beings they have sent to death on the gallows, the block, the battle- 
 field, and at the stake, I feel like wringing the neck of every last one 
 of them. — Journal J 1890. 
 
 The Intellect on the Outside of the Head. My intellect, 
 my modes of thought, my acquired knowledge, my disposition, my 
 feelings, my affections, everything, belonged to Doctor Huguet. It 
 seemed to me that all these should shine through the apparel of the 
 flesh, like a light through a porcelain shade. But no ; the world saw 
 no further than the skin; men judged their fellows by their appear- 
 ance. The convolutions of the brain are covered by the osseous 
 plate of the impervious skull. And then I thought, why did not God 
 place the character and mold of the mind on the outside of the 
 head, so that men could recognize the intellects of their fellows, when 
 they passed them in the street, as they now recognize the shape of 
 their noses or chiusf How many lovely forms inclose a mental 
 
118 noNn:BLLiAnA. 
 
 vacuum! How mauy grand souls look out through distorted, 
 Socratic features ! But the human spirit dwells^ unhappily/ for itself, 
 behind a mask — an impenetrable mask. — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 THE COMET STRIKING THE EARTH. 
 
 Let us try to conceive the effects of the fall of the material of 
 the comet upon the earth. 
 
 We have seen terrible rain-storms, hail-storms, snow-storms; 
 but fancy a storm of stones and gravel and clay-dust! Not a mere 
 shower either, but falling in black masses, darkening the heavens, 
 vast enough to cover the world, in many places, hundreds of feet in 
 thickness; leveling valleys, tearing away and grinding down hills, 
 changing the whole aspect of the habitable globe. Without and 
 above it roars the earthquaking voice of the terrible explosions; 
 through the drifts of debris glimpses are caught of the glaring and 
 burning monster ; while through all and over all is an unearthly 
 heat, under which rivers, ponds, lakes, springs, disappear as if by 
 magic. 
 
 Now, reader, try to grasp the meaning of all this description. 
 Do not merely read the words. To read aright, upon any subject, 
 you must read below the words, above the words, and take In all 
 the relations that surround the words. So read this record. 
 
 Look out at the scene around you. Here are trees fifty feet 
 high. Imagine an instantaneous descent of granite-sand and 
 gravel sufficient to smash and crush these trees to the ground, to 
 bury their trunks, and to cover the earth one hundred to five 
 hundred feet higher than the elevation to which their tops, now 
 reach ! And this is not alone here in your garden, or over your 
 farm, or over your township, or over your county, or over your 
 State; but over the whole continent in which you dwell — in short, 
 over the greater part of the habitable world ! 
 
 Are there any words that can draw, even faintly, such a picture, 
 its terror, its immensity, its horrors, its destructiveness, its surpas- 
 sal of all earthly experience and imagination'? And this human 
 ant-hill, the world, how insignificant would it be in the grasp of 
 such a, catastrophe ! Its laws, its temples, its hbraries, its religions, 
 its armies, its mighty nations, would be but as the veriest stubble — 
 dried grass, leaves, rubbish — crushed, smashed, buried, under this 
 heaven-rain of horrors. 
 
J^JXTIUCTS AND SELECTiOisf^. m 
 
 But, lo ! through the darkness, the wretches not beaten down 
 and whelmed in the debris, but scurrying to mountain-caves for 
 refuge, have a new terror: the cry passes from lip to lip, "The 
 world is on fire ! " 
 
 The head of the comet sheds down fire. Its gases have fallen in 
 great volumes on the earth; they ignite; amid the whirling and rush- 
 ing of the dehris, caught in cyclones, rises the glare of a Titanic 
 conflagration. The winds beat the rocks against the rocks; they 
 pick up sand heaps, peat beds and bowlders, and whirl them madly 
 in the air. The heat increases. The rivers, the lakes, the ocean it- 
 self, evaporate. 
 
 And poor humanity ! Burned, bruised, wild, crazed, stumbhng, 
 blown about like feathers in the hurricanes, smitten by mighty rocks, 
 they perish by the million ; a few only reach the shelter of the cav- 
 erns, and thence, glaring backward, look out over the ruins of a 
 destroyed world. 
 
 And not humanity alone has fled to these hiding-places; the ter- 
 rified denizens of the forest, the domesticated animals of the fields, 
 with the instinct which in great tempests has driven them into the 
 houses of men, follow the refugees into the caverns. We shall see 
 all this depicted in the legends. 
 
 The first effect of the great heat is vaporization of the waters 
 of the earth; but this is arrested long before it has completed its 
 work. 
 
 Still the heat is intense — how long it lasts, who shall tell? An 
 Arabian legend indicates years. 
 
 The stones having ceased to fall, the few who have escaped— 
 and they are few indeed, for many are shut up forever by the clay- 
 dust and gravel in their hiding-places, and on many others the con- 
 vulsions of the earth have shaken down the rocky roofs of the caves 
 — the few survivors come out, or dig their way out, to look upon a 
 changed and blasted world. No cloud is in the sky, no rivers or lakes 
 are on the earth ; only the deep springs of the caverns are left ; the 
 sun, a ball of fire, glares in the bronze heavens.— jRa^waroA'. 
 
 Cities. No great intellectual work was ever accomplished in a 
 city. Time is consumed in frivohties. A thousand petty tempta- 
 tions beckon away every moment of leisure. — Journal, 1886. 
 
120 • IJONNELLIANA. 
 
 One of the Nation's Running Sores. We clip from the 
 Pioneer-Press the following standing advertisement : 
 
 " Divorces legally obtained for incompatibility^ etc. ; residence 
 unnecessary; fee after decree. Address P. 0. Box 1037, Chicago, 
 111." 
 
 That "etc." covers everything. "Residence unnecessary." 
 That is to say, a citizen of St. Paul or Crow Wing who has tired of 
 his wife, or fancies a younger or more buxom lass, can, without leav- 
 ing home, for an " etc." obtain a divorce, without notice to his wife, 
 and turn the partner of his bosom out of doors, perhaps onto the 
 town, to make a living by adding to the maelstrom of vice which 
 threatcDS to swallow society. Surely any belief as to the next 
 world which preserves virtue and morality in this world, fe better 
 than this worship of the god Priapus which is now taking possession 
 of the world, and turning society into a prolonged Roman saturnalia. 
 Aud any friend of his country and his kind would cry God- speed 
 to all the churches of the land, that are working together for 
 good, and seek to unite them in a livelier sense of Christian brother- 
 hood, as Moody and Sankey and other members of the " Broad 
 Church" are doing to-day, instead of reviving the passions, hatreds 
 and bigotries of a by-gone age. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 To the Sky-laek, Singing in the Dawn. 
 
 Go, — voice of earth ! 
 Go to the listening and ethereal forms 
 That, in the dim light, bend above the world, 
 Waiting sweet message from the waking earth, 
 And tell delightful stories of the flowers ; 
 The dew-besprinkled grass; the shadowy woods; 
 The long, sweet paths, hedge-bordered ; and the homes 
 Brimming with hope and love. 
 And, 'mid the faint wreaths of the fading mist, 
 Through the last tracings of the dying night, 
 Let them bear heavenward the golden tale, — 
 That earth, anew, takes up the tasks of God, 
 And bears them on in joy. — 1S53. 
 Fair Plat eor the South. If the nation is to live it must 
 
 not be with one section fastened like a wolf on the vitals of the rest. 
 
 Nothing endures in this world but justice. — Speech to Grangers j 1873. 
 
J^XTHA CTS AND SKLECTl ONS. I2i 
 
 A Sub-Kingdom by Himself. The Pioneer-Press thus divides 
 up the Senate : — 
 
 Republicans o^ 
 
 Democrats To 
 
 Donnelly .".".'.".".'.".'.".*.*."." 1 
 
 Republican majoritj' -,3 
 
 Good. We are not ranked in any department 'of the animals in 
 the pohtical menagerie but are a variety, species, order and sub- 
 kmgdom, by ourself. As Shakespeare says, 
 
 " Take him for all in all, 
 We ne'er shall look upon his like again. " 
 
 — The Anti-Monopolist, 1874. 
 The Sea-Bird. 
 
 Like the sea-bird's pinions gray, 
 
 Beating up, in skyward flight, 
 
 'Mid the sunset's golden light. 
 
 — The Mourner's Vision, 1850, 
 The Brotherhood of Justice. - Universal education is 
 right - It IS necessary, " I said, - but it is not all-sufficient. Educa- 
 tion will not stop corruption or misgovernment. No man is fit to be 
 free unless he possesses a reasonable share of education; but every 
 man who possesses that reasonable share of education is not fit to 
 be free. A man may be able to read and write and yet be a fool or 
 a knave. What is needed is a society which shall bring to Labor 
 the aid of the same keenness, penetration, foresight, and even cun- 
 mug, by which wealth has won its triumphs. Intellect should have 
 Its rewards, but it should not have everything. But this defense of 
 Labor can only spring from tlie inspiration of God, for the natural 
 mstinct of man, in these latter days, seems to be to prey on his fel- 
 low. We are sharks that devour the wounded of our own kind - 
 Ccesar's Cohimn. 
 
 The People's Party. Our politics to-day is in a chaotic state : 
 but It IS the chaos that precedes creation ; out of it the voice of God 
 will yet be heard crying, " Let there be light; " and we shall see, 
 clearly arrayed against each other, two well-defined parties, facing 
 each other hke warring lions. The one party representing wealth 
 as agamst manhood, the old ideas against the new, the old world 
 
i2'j DONNELLXAN'A. 
 
 against the new; representing sordid greed, grasping injustice, 
 accumulation and concentration, illiberality and indifference to the 
 rights of the humble. On the other hand, we shall have a party 
 laying its foundation deep and wide on the popular heart, filled with 
 the divine spirit of Him who preached from the Mount charity, jus- 
 tice and brotherhood ; solicitous to preserve liberty because liberty 
 makes possible all things of good to man j solicitous to hold together 
 the nation, because even a continent is too small for the working out 
 of God's benevolonce to man ; solicitous, by example and sympathy, 
 to lift up alt the oppressed of the earth, and strike down cruelty and 
 wrong wherever they may show their hideous heads. — Speech at 
 Glencoe, 1884. ' 
 
 Bacon's Magnanimity. And, still speaking of himself, he 
 continues with this noble thought : 
 
 '■ It may be you will do posterity good, if out of the carcass of dead and rotten 
 greatness, as out of Samson's lion, there may be honey gathered for the use of fut- 
 ure times." 
 
 What a noble, what a splendid image is this ! How the meta- 
 phor is interwoven, Shakespeare- v/ise, not as a distinct comparison, 
 but into the entire body of the thought. He is appealing for mercy, 
 for time to finish his great works ; he is himself already " dead and 
 rotten greatness," but withal majestic greatness; he is Samson's 
 lion, but in the carcass the bees have made their hive and hoarded 
 honey for posterity. And what a soul ! That in the hour of ruin 
 and humihation, sacrificed, as I believe, to save a dishonest king 
 and a degraded favorite, could still love humanity and look for- 
 ward to its w^\fsiYG.—The Great Cryptogram. 
 
 The Forest Spring. 
 
 A darkling hollow, by the rocks o'ershaded, 
 
 Into whose pooly cup the waters purl ; 
 Where, when the long-lived summer day hath faded, 
 
 Drink the small forest bird and woodland squirrel. — 1851. 
 
 <' The Distinguished Educators." These "distinguished 
 educators" are generally afraid to say " beans," unless some other 
 " distinguished educator" puts their hps in shape, and starts them 
 on the h.—TJie Anti- Monopolist. 
 
Extracts and selections. 123 
 
 an old library. 
 
 JBut aii old library is, indeed, a sad object to contemplate. It 
 represents so much of abandoned errors and disappointed ambitions, 
 that to examine its shelves is very much like walking through an 
 old church-yard. And what can be sadder than to look upon the 
 graves of the dead and consider that houses, lands, furniture, goods, 
 gold, silver, horses, cattle, books, grief, merriment, love, hate, are 
 all taken away from the departed, and they are all brought down to 
 a little, ghastly, erect stone, and a memory that grows fainter and 
 fainter every day, and at last disappears utterly in the awful abyss 
 of universal oblivion. 
 
 Thus an old library is a sort of intellectual graveyard ; we find 
 in it hundreds of forgotten books by forgotten men, who sought thus 
 to drag a fragment of remembrance out of the black waters of Lethe, 
 and fondly hoped that their works would live and occupy the minds 
 of mankind for many generations. How marvelously the living 
 creature shrinks from annihilation ! And yet Time will obliterate 
 the memory even of Homer. That universal maw spares nothing 
 that is or was. 
 
 " Time hath, my lord, a vallet at his back, 
 Wherein he puts alms for oblivion ; 
 A gi-eat-sized monster of ingratitude : 
 Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devoured 
 As fast as they are made, forgot as soon 
 As done." 
 
 — Doctor Huguet. 
 " EVERY BAD LAW BUILDS TAVERNS." 
 
 " In the Public Health Congress convened by the King of Belgium, 
 one delegate caught a glimpse of an important truth when he ob- 
 served that, if the general condition of the people were improved, 
 they Avould drink less." — Harper's Weekly. 
 
 That's it. The root and ground of all moral reform is just laws. 
 An oppressed people are always a poor people, and a poor people 
 are very apt to be a degraded people. Sin is a kind of moral sweat, 
 whose fountains are dirt and wretchedness. 
 
 To the drunkard intoxication is often a substitute for a thick 
 coat, a warm fire, a full stomach and a bright home. Give him all 
 these, and rum has lost its charms. But without these he seeks ob- 
 livion in the lethean waters of strong drink. 
 
124 l)ONNJ^LLiAMA. 
 
 If you would reform a people give them prosperity ; and this 
 comes only by taking from their throats the vampires that suck 
 away the fruits of their industry. 
 
 Every bad law builds taverns. — Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 The Non-Education of Votees. What a lovely time there 
 would be in one of those great Northern cities if the wealthier classes 
 turned out on election day and murdered a few workingmen for try- 
 ing to vote ! How much of that town would be up in the air in the 
 form of smoke before nightfall? How many of those intelligent 
 bankers and brokers, and lawyers, and railroad presidents, would 
 be ready to adorn a graveyard before supper- time ? But let us go 
 a step further. Let us suppose that the ruling class not only tried 
 to keep the workingmen from voting by murdering them, but went 
 so far as to shut up the school-houses and deny them education, and 
 employ the whole power of the civilized state to make them brutes 
 and savages'? What a hell-upon-earth would they prepare for 
 themselves ! What a cheerful place that would be for a cultured 
 gentleman of quiet and refined tastes to reside in, where the vast 
 majority of the people around him, male and female, were uncivil- 
 ized monsters, as enlightened as gorillas, and as bloodthirsty as 
 thugs. — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 The Immohtality of the Soul. Who can doubt that there is 
 another life ? Who, that knows the immortality of matter, its abso- 
 lute indestructibility, can believe that mind, intelligence, soul, — 
 which must be, at the lowest estimate — if they are not something 
 higher — a form of matter, — are to perish into nothingness ? If it be 
 true, as we know it is, that the substance of the poor flesh that robes 
 your spirits — nay, of the very garments you wear — shall exist, un- 
 diminished by the friction of eternity, aeons after our planet is blot- 
 ted out of space and our sun forgotten, can you believe that this in- 
 telligence, whereby I command your souls into thought, and com- 
 municate with the unsounded depths of your natures, can be clipped 
 off into annihilation ? Nay, out of the very bounty and largess of 
 God I speak unto you ; and that in me which speaks, and that in 
 you which listens, are alike part and parcel of the eternal Maker of 
 all things, without whom is nothing made. — Ccesafs Column. 
 
 The Green Altars of God. Let us take no steps backward. 
 Our forefathers gave us a republic ; let us preserve and perfect it. 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 125 
 
 Let us, upon the graves of our dead soldiers, as upon the green 
 altars of God, register our vows that the shadow upon the dial of 
 time shall not be turned back. Let our children learn, by the cere- 
 monies of to-day, the priceless value of their heritage ; let them be 
 taught how the repubhc honors those who die for it. So shall they 
 stand ready, in their day and generation, to spring to the defense of 
 the national life whenever threatened by internal or external foes; 
 and so, from age to age, the flower-covered graves of patriots shall 
 be the stepping-stones along which humanity shall advance, with 
 giant strides, to the perfection of its development and the fulfill- 
 ment of its destiu J. —Memorial Address, 1884. 
 The Moonlight. 
 Oh! mourner o'er a blind yet beauteous world, 
 Gray shadow of the daylight.— 1850. 
 The Negroes ii^ the Civil War. '' The negroes are the most 
 patient and forbearing and gentle people in the world. Imagine a 
 body of white slaves, during our late civil war, in charge of the 
 plantations, with the woaaen and children at their mercy, while 
 their masters were at the front fighting to decide whether their 
 slavery should end or continue forever ! If they had been English- 
 men, or Irishmen, or Germans — or even Scotchmen, Major — the 
 heavens would have been lurid with midnight flames, and the 
 Southern soldiers would have had to rush home, to find the calcined 
 bones of their best beloved shining white in the ashes of their hab- 
 itations. Nor was this from lack of native courage on the part of 
 the blacks; for, when armed by the Northern generals and placed 
 in the field of battle, they fought like demons. No; it was natural 
 goodness, and it should make every Southern father and husband 
 feel more kindly to these poor black creatures, who had .everything 
 at their mercy and refused to shed a drop of white blood, or bring 
 shame and despair to the face of a single white woman. The history 
 of the human family does not aff"ord another illustration of like for- 
 bearance under like circumstances. "— i)oc^or Hugiiet. 
 
 The Course of Human Progress. The savage man is a 
 pitiable creature; as Menaboshu says, in the Chippeway legends, he 
 is pursued by a '' perpetual hunger;" he is exposed unprotected to 
 the blasts of winter and the heats of summer. A great terror sits 
 upon his soul; for every manifestation of nature — the storm, the 
 
126 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 wind; the thunder, the hghtning, the cold, the heat— all are threat- 
 ening and dangerous demons. The seasons bring him neither seed- 
 time nor harvest; pinched with hunger, appeasing in part the ever- 
 lasting craving of his stomach with seeds, berries and creeping 
 things, he sees the animals of the forest dash by him, and he has 
 no means to arrest their flight. He is powerless and miserable in 
 the midst of plenty. Every step toward civilization is a step of con- 
 quest over nature. The invention of the bow and arrow was, in its 
 time, a far greater stride forward for the human race than the 
 steam-engine or the telegraph. The savage could now reach his 
 game; his insatiable hunger could be satisfied; the very eagle, 
 " towering in its pride of place, '' was not beyond the reach of this 
 new and wonderful weapon. The discovery of fire and the art of 
 cooking was another immense step forward. The savage, having 
 nothing but wooden vessels in which to cook, covered the wood 
 with clay; the clay hardened in the fire. The savage gradually 
 learned that he could dispense with the wood, and thus pottery was 
 invented. Then some one (if we are to^believe the Chippeway le- 
 gends on the shores of Lake Superior) found fragments of the pure 
 copper of that region, beat them into shape, and the art of metal- 
 lurgy was begun; iron was first worked in the same way by shaping 
 meteoric iron into spear-heads. — Atlantis. 
 
 Mankind. Mankind is a phantasmagoria of ghosts clad in 
 matter. — Journal^ 1885. 
 
 Geant and Washbuene Compaeed. Shall the two names 
 go down in history together! Grant and Washburne! What a 
 combination! Why, Mr. Speaker, the intellect of Grant is like 
 some of those ancient warehouses, in the great cities of the older 
 continent, where floor rises above floor, and cellar descends below 
 cellar, all packed full to overflowing with the richest merchandise. 
 The intellect of the gentleman from Illinois is like some of those 
 establishments we see on Pennsylvania Avenue, where the entire 
 stock in trade of the merchant is spread out in the front window, 
 and over it is a label, ''Anything in this window for one dollar." 
 [Laughter.] Why, sir, he is the " Cheap John" of legislation. [Great 
 \a,nghteY.] — Speechin Congress. 
 
 The Teue Docteine. In the welfare of the many will be 
 found the prosperity of each. It is easy to grow rich where all are 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 127 
 
 prosperous; it is not difficult to fall iuto poverty in the midst of the 
 poor. Justice and liberty are the parents of boundless and endless 
 prosperity; injustice and oppression mean wasteful luxuries for the 
 few and wretchedness for the many. — Memorial Address, 1814. 
 
 THE ANCIENT KELIGIONS. 
 
 There are many things which indicate that a far- distant, pre- 
 historic race existed in the background of Egyptian and Baby- 
 lonian development, and that from this people, highly civilized 
 and educated, we have derived the arrangement of the heavens 
 into constellations, and our divisions of time into days, weeks, 
 years and centuries. This people stood much nearer the Drift 
 Age than we do. They understood it better. Their legends 
 and religious beliefs were full of it. The gods carved on Hin- 
 doo temples, or painted on the walls of Assyrian, Peruvian or 
 American structures, the flying dragons, the winged gods, the 
 winged animals, Gucumatz, Rama, Siva, Vishnu, Tezcatlipoca, were 
 painted in the very colors of the clays which came from the disin- 
 tegration of the granite, "red, white and blue," the very colors 
 which distinguished the comet ; and they are all reminiscences of 
 that great monster. The idols of the pagan world are, in fact, con- 
 gealed history, and will some day be intelligently studied as such. 
 
 Doubtless this ancient astronomical, zodiac-building and con- 
 stellation-constructing race taught the people the true doctrine of 
 comets; taught that the winding serpent, the flying dragon, the 
 destructive winged dog, or wolf, or lion, whose sphinx-like images 
 now frown upon us from ancient walls and doorways, were really 
 comets; taught how one of them had actually struck the earth, and 
 taught that in the lapse of ages another of these multitudinous 
 wanderers of space would again encounter our globe, and end all 
 things in one universal conflagration. 
 
 And down through the race this belief has come, and down 
 through the race it will go, to the consummation of time.— Bag- 
 narok. 
 
 A Difference. Many a man mistakes an overloaded stomach 
 for an overburdened mind. — Journal, 1883. 
 
 True. To the drunk all things are drunk.— /o^*n^a^, 1884. 
 
128- DONNELLIANA. 
 
 FENCING-IN AMERICA. 
 
 But we are told that this Protective System will increase the 
 number of consumers in the United States, and that this " home 
 market " will be nearer to us than to the Russians or Hungarians. 
 What advantage is this, if we do not obtain a higher price than 
 the world's price? And what market can be better than the 
 market of the whole world? Is a part greater than the whole? 
 Why fence ourselves in and isolate ourselves from the rest of 
 mankind, in an effort to create a market in New England big- 
 ger and better than that of the habitable globe? This is on the 
 principle of the fellow who said that there was more room in his 
 barn than there was out of doors. Where are the great masses of 
 consumers? In Europe, in those dense hives from which we 
 swarmed. There, there are nearly 300,000,000 people. Of these 
 thero are 150,000,000 who consume cereals to the amount of one 
 billion bushels annually. Nature in those densely crowded countries 
 has hxcd a limit to the growth of food; all the land is occupied. 
 The entire Russian export of wheat amounted in 1857 to but 
 49,000,000 bushels, about twice that of the single State of Min- 
 nesota. 
 
 Here in this great West are the grain fields of the world. Why 
 build a wall between producers and consumers ? Why interpose a 
 barrier between the wheat-bins and corn-cribs of America and the 
 stomachs of Europe ? Why turn our backs upon the 150,000,000 of 
 Europe for the sake of a quarter of a million protected manufac- 
 turers in America? In Illinois thousands of bushels of corn have 
 been burned this winter as fuel for lack of purchasers ; in London 
 hundreds of human beings have perished this winter from " starva- 
 tion fever." — Speech to Grangers, 1873. 
 
 THE WORLD AFTER THE GREAT CATASTROPHE. 
 
 For the legends show us that when, at last, the stones and clay 
 had ceased to fall, and the fire had exhausted itself, and the rem- 
 nant of mankind were able to dig their way out, they returned to 
 an awful wreck of nature. 
 
 Instead of the fair face of the world, as they had known it, 
 bright with sunUght, green with the magnificent foliage of the forest, 
 or the gentle verdure of the plain, they go forth upon a wasted, an 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 129 
 
 unknown land, covered with oceans of mud and stones ; the very- 
 face of the country changed — lakes, rivers, hills, all swept away 
 and lost. They wander, breathing a foul and sickening atmosphere, 
 under the shadow of an awful darkness ; a darkness which knows no 
 morning, no stars, no moon; a darkness palpable and visible, lighted 
 only by electrical discharges from the abyss of clouds, with such roars 
 of thunder as we, in this day of harmonious nature, can form no con- 
 ception of. It is, indeed, "chaos and ancient night." All the 
 forces of nature are there, but disorderly, destructive, battling 
 each other, and multiphed a thousand-fold in power; the winds are 
 cyclones, magnetism is gigantic, electricity is appalling. 
 
 The world is more desolate than the caves from which they have 
 escaped. The forests are gone; the fruit-trees are swept away; 
 the beasts of the chase have perished; the domestic animals, gentle 
 ministers to man, have disappeared; the cultivated fields are 
 buried deep in drifts of mud and gravel; the people stagger in the 
 darkness against each other; they fall into the chasms of the earth; 
 within them are the two great oppressors of hiunanity, hunger and 
 terror ; hunger that knows not where to turn ; fear that shrinks 
 before the whirling blasts, the rolling thunder, the shocks of blind- 
 ing lightning; that knows not what moment the heavens may 
 again open and rain fire and stones and dust upon them. 
 
 God has withdrawn his face; his children are deserted; all the 
 kindly adjustments of generous nature are gone. God has left man 
 in the midst of a material world without law ; he is a wreck, a 
 fragment, a lost particle, in the center of an inimitable and endless 
 warfare of giants. 
 
 Some lie down to die, hopeless, cursing their helpless gods; 
 some die by their owm hands ; some gather around the fires of vol- 
 canoes for warmth and light — stars that attract them from afar off; 
 some feast on such decaying remnants of the great animals as they 
 may find projecting above the debris, running to them, as we shall 
 see, with outcries, and fighting over the fragments. — Ragnarok. 
 
 Rather Fight than Pay Taxes. There was a considerable 
 number of real Irishmen, the unadulterated, simon-pure article, went 
 out into ^Vestern Pennsylvania. They were poor people, but, like all 
 the race, courageous and warlike. The peaceful Germans and 
 Qnakers agreed tliat if they would fight the Indians and keep them 
 
130 BONNELLIANA. 
 
 off the settlements they should be exempted from taxation, and 
 there never was an Irishman yet who would not rather fight than 
 pay taxes. — ^ami Patrick's Day Speech, Grand Forks, JD. T., 1884. 
 
 The Forest Wateefall. 
 Where the rocks are heaped o'er the tangled glen, 
 
 Where the stream is rained, all mangled and rent, 
 Where the hemlocks peer o'er a sunless den.— 1850. 
 
 Prayer. A good prayer is a charitable purpose j — or, better, 
 a charitable SiCt.^^Journal, 1884. 
 
 Keligiok and Law. Human law is but a pen-and-ink sketch 
 of virtue. Law is virtue in the actions of men ; religion is virtue in 
 the innermost recesses of the soul. No sin is reprehensible by law 
 until it takes the form of actioii ; but rehgion stands at the womb 
 of thought and apprehends crime in its very conception. It modifies 
 the ovum when hfe first touches it. The one is restraint ; the other 
 goodness. — Essay, 1885. 
 
 Kings as Doctors. What king of Assyria, or Greece, or Rome, 
 or even of these modern nations, has ever devoted himself to the 
 study of medicine and the writing of medical books for the benefit 
 of mankind ? Their mission has been to kill, not to heal the people. 
 Yet here, at the very dawn of Mediterranean history, we find the 
 son of the first king of Egypt recorded " as a physician, and as 
 having left anatomical books." — Atlantis, 
 
 Southern Kindliness to the Negro. My friends carae often 
 to see me. Their visits provoked no comment, for there is a great 
 deal of gentle charity in the South from the white people, especially 
 the ladies, to the sick and poor among the negroes. Indeed, strange 
 a£ it may appear, in view of the political rivalries and hostihties, the 
 strongest bonds of love extend from one race to the other. I have 
 known a struggling white gentleman, with but a small income, set 
 aside one-fourth of it every month for the support of his " mammy, " 
 an ancient and helpless nurse, whose black breasts had fed him in 
 his infancy ; and I have known the dark foster-mother to love her 
 white charge more tenderly than her own offspring. It is a great 
 pity that, among such noble and generous natures, political differ- 
 ences should ever arise to array them against each other, when they 
 should all dwell together in peaceful Christian Iqve and charity, l^ut 
 
EXTBACTS AND SELECTIONS. 131 
 
 time will sweep away these evils, and leave only good behind ; for 
 
 God rules, and His path is toward the betterment of mankind. 
 
 Doctor Huguet. 
 
 Bacon. If Bacon built the causeway over which modern science 
 has advanced, it was because, mounting on the pinions of his mag- 
 nificent imagination, he saw that poor, strugghng mankind needed 
 such a pathway ; his heart embraced humanity even as his brain 
 embraced the universe. The river, which is a boundary to the rabbit, 
 is but a landmark to the eagle. Let not the gnawers of the world, 
 the rodentia, despise the winged creatures of the upper air. — 
 Bagnarok. 
 
 The Oppression of the South. It is said that we propose to 
 oppress the people of the South. It would be well if such oppression 
 could cover the whole surface of the known world ! Ours is an op- 
 pression which makes free; ours a despotism which builds the school- 
 house and the printing-office ; ours a tryanny which sets the plow 
 moving in the furrow and covers the lakes and rivers with the white 
 wings of commerce. God give the world abundance of such oppres- 
 sion. — Speech in Congress, Dec. 2, 1864. 
 
 Christ, the Great Iconoclast. He who drove the money- 
 changers out of the temple, and denounced the aristocrats of his 
 country as whited sepulchers, and preached a communism of goods, 
 would not view to-day with patience or equanimity the dreadful 
 sufferings of mankind. We have inherited Christianity without 
 Christ ; we have the painted shell of a religion, and that which rat- 
 tles around within it is not the burning soul of the Great Iconoclast, 
 but a cold and shriveled and meaningless tradition. Oh! for the 
 quick-pulsing, warm-beatiug, mighty human heart of the man of 
 Galilee ! Oh ! for his uplifted hand, armed with a whip of scorpions, 
 to depopulate the temples of the world, and lash his recreant 
 preachers into devotion to the cause of his poor, afflicted children, 
 — Ccesar^s Column. 
 
 THE TRAMP. 
 
 '' Among these signs and tokens there is not one, perhaps, ii],>r(> 
 significant than the appearance in the States of a personage hitherto 
 almost entirely unknown in the transatlantic economv,a cicatuie 
 undreamed of by Humboldt, uncontemplated by De'Tocqueville, 
 whose presence on Federal soil was certainly never reckoned ui;ou 
 
132 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 by the Fathers of the Republic, Washington, Jefferson and Adams. 
 The objectionable and portentous being to whom we allude is that 
 old and inveterate scourge of Europe, the 'tramp.'" — London 
 Standard. 
 
 And why the "tramp''? He is the result of misgovernment, 
 the sad protest of wretchedness against unjust laws. Is there not 
 abundance in God's world for all His children, if the substance of 
 thousands is not squandered on the few ? And what higher duty 
 has law or government than to protect the humble many in the enjoy- 
 ment of life and property ? 
 
 We had no " tramps " until the United States entered on a per- 
 nicious system of legislation. Now they cover the land. And 
 where is it to end ? — The Anti-Monopolist, 1S75. 
 
 The Dead Bear no Arms. But the graves teach us another 
 lesson — Charity. They tell us that the war is ended. These dead 
 have no weapons by their side. They repose, unarmed, in the embrace 
 of their great Creator. You cannot find the scars in their ashes. 
 " From their unpolluted dust shall violets spring. " Infinite Nature, 
 with her million supple, busy fingers, is carrying away all that is 
 mortal of them, and transforming it into grass and leaves and flow- 
 ers ; and over 
 
 ' ' The low, green tent, 
 Whose curtain never outward swings, " 
 
 in the midst of plenty and of peace, " with an aspect as if she pitied 
 men, " mighty Nature preaches the great gospel of Charity. — Memo- 
 rial Address, 1884. 
 
 Religion. What we need in religion is a remedy for abuses, 
 not an ansBsthetic. — Journal, 1885. 
 
 Political Toleration. There are a thousand reasons why 
 we rejoice to-night. We rejoice that we live in the greatest age of 
 the world's history ; in the greatest nation that has ever dwelt on 
 God's footstool; under the most benign institutions that have ever 
 blessed mankind. We rejoice that we have so great and wise and 
 self-controlled a population that the political government of fifty 
 millions of people and thousands of millions of wealth can pass from 
 one great party to another without the shedding of one drop of blood; 
 with less disturbance, in fact, than oftentimes accompanies a parlia- 
 mentary struggle in a single shire in England. We rejoice in the 
 character of our people ; in the moderation and good-nature with 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. u\<,~i 
 
 which, after tweDty-four years of power, the (U^'eated have taken de • 
 feat. To my mind one of the finest ilhistrations of American civili. 
 zation was given the other day in Phihidelphia, when the great Rc- 
 ])uhhcan ckib-house, the Union League, ilhiminated in honor of the 
 Democratic celebration. This is as it should be. Our contests are 
 not battles of armies, thirsting for each other's destruction ; but the 
 disputations of brothers, as to which possess the best policy for the 
 hiiiipiness of both. — Sxocech, 1885. 
 
 A Farewell to Sullivax County, Pennsylvania. 
 
 No more the bending pole, for me no more 
 
 The speckled trout lies flapping on the shore. 
 
 No more, alas, I creep at early dawn. 
 
 Where browse the stalking buck and restless fawn, 
 
 In desert clearings — desert long ago — 
 
 Where now, all rank, the wild oats only grow. 
 
 No more, alone, from the gray mountain peak, 
 
 I watch the shadowy morn rise wan and weak, 
 
 And see the pale day gathering round the height 
 
 While all below still lingers wrapped in night. — 1851. 
 
 THE FEVER OF CREATION. 
 
 There come bursts of creative force in history, when great 
 thoughts are born, and then again Brahma, as the Hindoos say, goes 
 to sleep for ages. 
 
 But, when the fever of creation comes, the poet, the inventor or 
 the philosopher can no more arrest the development of his own 
 thoughts than the female bird, by her will-power, can stop the 
 growth of the ova within her, or arrest the fever in the blood which 
 forces her to incubation. 
 
 The man who wrote the Shakespeare plays recognized this in- 
 voluntary operation of even his own transcendent intellect, when he 
 said: 
 
 " Our poesy is a gum which oozes 
 From whence 'tis nourished." 
 
 It came as the Arabian tree distilled its " medicinal gum;'' it 
 was the mere expression of an internal force, as much beyond his 
 control as the production of the gum was beyond the control of the 
 X'^QQ.—Itagnarok. 
 
134 DON^ELLIANA. 
 
 Advice to the Editors. My friends, whenever yoil put perl 
 to paper, feel the full significance of your act. Never write a sylla- 
 ble that tends to make virtue ridiculous or rehgion contemptible. 
 Dogmas may perish, but the essential soill of goodness in the heart 
 of creeds will live on, amid all the mutations of mankind, unless 
 stamped out by the feet of vice or folly. Ncvei^ write a word that 
 tends to make mankind sordid or degraded. In a little while we 
 shall all be heaps of dust; but the race will live on, shining, magni- 
 ficent, inextinctable — the never-ending, the consolidated, the im- 
 mortal man. As the coral insect makes continents, so we are build- 
 ing up the race out of our lives. Call the people to the higher levels 
 of their natures ; summon them forward to all goodness ; put before 
 them the highest standards of life and action. Defend them in all 
 their rights, and resist oppression from whatever quarter it may 
 come. And so, when a greater age writes thehistory of the present, it 
 will point to a noble, an exalted, a heroic people ] and it will say, 
 '^ This was the work of the men who possessed the avenues of pub- 
 lic thought, in the State of Wisconsin, a generation ago. They did 
 their duty to their age and to posterity. May their memory remain 
 green through all the ages, in the hearts of the race they hQWQ- 
 m^Q^.^'— Address to the Editors of Wisconsin, 1889. 
 
 The Local Associations of Genius. Genius, though its 
 branches reach to the heavens and cover the continents, yet has its 
 roots in the earth ; and its leaves, its fruits and flowers, its texture 
 and its fibers, bespeak the soil in which it was nurtured. Hence in 
 the writings of every great master we find mqre or less association 
 with the scenes in which his youth and manhood were passed — re- 
 flections, as it were, on the camera of the imagination, of those land- 
 scapes with which destiny had surrounded him. — The Great Crypto- 
 gram. 
 
 The Pure Soul. The purified individual soul we may not 
 underestimate. These are the swept and garnished habitations 
 where the angels dwell and look with unpolluted eyes upon the 
 world. — Ccesar^s Column. 
 
 The Invisible World. Was there anything in nature more than 
 we could see ? My brain was whirling ; for, on the instant, like a re- 
 volving panorama, it seemed to me that all space flashed, circling 
 ground me, densely packed with unknown creatures, with indescriba- 
 
EXTMACTS AND SELECTIONS. 135 
 
 bio tbi-ins that Howod iuto each other, and the universe was full effaces 
 and eyes, all centered upon me; faces misty and shadowy, through 
 which other eyes looked; faces behind faces, mingling with each 
 other, as if the illimitable void had not room enough for the intelli- 
 gences with which God had packed and crowded \t.— Doctor Huguet. 
 Dives' Heaven. And Dives has an unexpressed belief that 
 heaven is only a larger Wall Street, where the millionaires occupy 
 the front benches, while those who never had a bank account on 
 earth sing in the chorus. — Bagnarok. 
 
 Minds and Burdens. Minds are hke backs : what is a fitting 
 burden for one will break another. — 1S55. 
 
 Night. 
 
 The slow-limbed night, with a halt, laggard pacing. 
 Has thrust his dark and bronzed shield before ; 
 
 And, like a Spartan warrior, stands facing, 
 'Mid the rayed sunset, all the brunt of war; 
 
 And where a dart strikes hard there quivering clings a star. 
 
 —1851. 
 Great Thoughts. All great thoughts are inspirations of God. 
 They are part of the mechanism by which He advances the race; 
 they are new varieties created out of old genera. — Bagnarok. 
 
 The Eaces of Europe and America. When science is able 
 to disabuse itself of the Mortonian theory that the aborigines of 
 America are all red men and all belong to one race, we may hope 
 that the confluence upon the continent of widely diflerent races from 
 different countries may come to be recognized and intelligently 
 studied. There can be no doubt that red, white, black and yellow 
 men have united to form the original population of America. And 
 ther^ can be as little doubt that the entire population of Europe and 
 the south shore of the Mediterranean is a mongrel race — a combina- 
 tion, in varying proportions, of a dark-brown or red race with a white 
 race; the characteristics of the different nations depending upon the 
 proportions in which the dark and hght races are mingled, for pecuUar 
 mental and moral characteristics go with these complexions. The 
 red-haired people are a distinct variety of the white stock. There 
 were once whole tribes and nations with this color of hair; their 
 blood is now intermingled with all the races of men from Palestine 
 
136 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 to Iceland. Everything in Europe speaks of vast periods of time 
 and long-continued and constant interfusion of blood, until there is 
 not a fair-skinned man on the Continent that has not the blood of 
 the dark-haired race in his veins, nor scarcely a dark-skinned man 
 that is not lighter in hue from intermixture with the white stock. — 
 Atlantis. 
 
 The FailuE"E of the Churches. To make a few virtuous 
 while the many are vicious is to place goodness at a disadvantage. 
 To teach the people patience and innocence in the midst of craft 
 and cruelty is to furnish the red- mouthed wolves with wooly, bleat- 
 ing lambs. Hence the grip of the churches on humanity has been 
 steadily lessening during the past two hundred years. Men perma- 
 nently love only those things that are beneficial to them. The 
 churches must come to the rescue of the people, or retire from the 
 field. — Ccesar^s Column. 
 
 The Farmers xist> the Eailroads. Why is this? The rail- 
 road men are sharp, and quick, and bold. The farmers are dull, 
 and slow, and timid. The railroads are thoroughly organized and 
 act together." The farmers have not heretofore been organized, and 
 have divided on a dozen immaterial questions. The railroads buy 
 up the politicians, and the politicians humbug the farmers. The 
 railroads act for themselves ; the farmers dare do nothing without 
 consulting some lawyer, editor or cross-roads wire-puller. The 
 railroads own the newspapers, and the newspapers lash the farmers 
 back into the party lines. In short, the corporations are superb 
 rogues, and the farmers helpless and honest fools. If any man takes 
 the farmer's part, editors, politicians and corporations raise a howl, 
 a regular hue and cry against him, and too often the very farmers 
 drop their hoes and scythes and join with a yell in the pursuij;. If 
 any man takes the corporation's part there is no hue and cry; they 
 measure him by his capacity for service, and pay him accordingly. 
 — Speech to Grangers, 1873. 
 
 As A rule, simple races repeat; they do not invent. — BagnaroJc. ' 
 
 The Old and the New Creeds. Our fathers, when they 
 founded this nation, planted it upon a new conception — that con- 
 ception was the equality and happiness of mankind ; not of the fav- 
 ored few, but the universal many. In the old world all the forces of 
 
l^XThA CTS A XJ) SKLFA 'TtONS. 1 :;7 
 
 the govoriimeiit tiic bent to help those who ai'e on top; hero they 
 are heut to help those who are at the bottom. The old creed was : 
 " Take care of the rich, and the rich will take care of the poor." 
 The new creed is : " Take care of the poor, and the rich will take 
 care of themselves. " The old creed meant : Proscription, privilege, 
 concentration of wealth, injustice, degradation, aristocracy, mon- 
 archy. The new creed means: Equality, opportunity, universal hap- 
 piness, general wealth, an undying republic, and unexampled 
 growth. — Speech, 1885. 
 
 The Woods. 
 Oh ! dim are the woods where the quiet is held, 
 Like a Titan of old, that had fought against God ; 
 Oh ! dim are the woods, where the tree-tops of eld 
 Are barring the hght from the leaf-buried sod. 
 Where Ainder the boughs the shadows are deep, 
 Herded and huddled like flocks of sheep, 
 That nestle them down in their silent sleep. 
 And slumber and slumber for aye : 
 While out on the hills, with a searching eye, 
 The rose-lipped sunbeam is wandering by, 
 Like a shepherd that looks in the dells to spy 
 The shades that have stolen astray. 
 
 —The Mourner^ s Vision, 1850. 
 
 The Responsibility. Whenever religion consents to injustice 
 it consents to all the vices which spring from injustice, and becomes 
 thereby the very ally of the Devil. — Journal, 1885. 
 
 Christianity. And while we may regret the errors of religion, 
 in the past or in the present, let us not forget its virtues. Human 
 in its mechanism, it has been human in its infirmities. In the doc- 
 trine of the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God, which 
 are the essential principles of Christianity, lies the redemption of 
 mankind. — Ccesar's Column. 
 
 Where Did the Gravel Come From ? But, says another : 
 " The idea of a comet encountering the earth, and covering it with 
 debris, is so stupendous, so out of the usual course of nature, I refuse 
 to accept it." Ah, my friend, you forget that those Drift deposits, 
 hundreds of feet in thickness, are there. They are out of the usual 
 
138 DONNELLIANA > 
 
 course of nature. It is adaiitted that they came suddenly from some 
 source* If you reject my theory, you do not get clear of the phe- 
 nomena. The facts are a good deal more stupendous than the 
 theory. Go out and look at the first Drift deposit ; dig into it a 
 hundred feet or more ; follow it for a few hundred miles or more ; 
 then come back, and scratch your head, and tell me where it all came 
 from ! Calculate how many cart-loads there are of it, then multiply 
 this by the area of your own continent, and multiply that again by 
 the area of two or three more continents, and then again tell me 
 where it came from ! — Ragnarok. 
 
 The Koadside Spring. The day was hot. I grew thirsty. I 
 remembered that by the roadside, a short distance ahead, there was 
 a woodland spring trickling out of the rocks, and falling into a pool 
 of crystal clearness and beauty. Many a time, when a boy, hunting 
 through these forests, had I plunged my face, rosy^with youth and 
 health, into the fountain, and drunk my full of the delightful liquid. 
 Later in life I had rested by the refreshing pool, and philosophized 
 upon the goodness of God, whose hand had fashioned these threads 
 of living waters, creeping among the close-packed rocks, and 
 through earth aud gravel, and bursting forth at last, pellucid and 
 beautiful, for the good of His creatures. And I could not help but 
 compare it to a pure hniman soul, passing through all the pressing 
 insistance of multitudinous sins, aud coming forth at last without 
 a stain or discoloration upon its bright surface — a thing of the 
 earth, yet earthless. — Doctor Huguet 
 
 THE WESTERN FARMER'S HOME MARKET. 
 
 When I sell my wheat to the millers, for seventy-five cents per 
 bushel, I cannot tell — and they cannot tell — whether the flour that 
 is manufactured from it goes eventually into the stomachs of Amer- 
 icans, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Hindoos or Hottentots. 
 In fact, it don't make a cent's worth of difference to me where it 
 goes. I would have some faith in your talk about a home-market if 
 the mills and elevators put up signs like this : 
 
 Price of No. 1 wheat, to be eaten by Yankees, one dollar per 
 bushel. 
 
 Price of No. 1 wheat, to be eaten by the blasted Enghshmeii; 
 seventy-five cents per buphel. 
 
Ji:XTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 131' 
 
 " But (ioii't you see, " says brother Jonathan, " you are sure that 
 if the workmen who make your goods Uve in America they will buy 
 your wheat, while the Englishmen mfty buy their wheat elsewhere.'' 
 
 " What difiference, " you reply, " does that make to me if the 
 price is the world's price and is fixed by the supply of wheat in the 
 whole world? I can get no more than the world's price anyhow ; 
 and that I will get anyhow. " — Speech at Glencoe, 1SS4. 
 
 MiSEEY AND Injustice. If the web of the cloth is knotted in 
 one place it is because the threads have, in an unmeaning tangle, 
 been withdrawn from another part. Human misery is the correla^ 
 five and equivalent of injustice somewhere else in society. — Ccesar^s 
 Column. 
 
 THE GREAT RAINS OF THE DRIFT AGE. 
 
 " But," says one, " how long did all this take ? " 
 
 Who shall say ? It may have been days, weeks, months, years, 
 centuries. The Toltec legends say that their ancestors wandered 
 for more than a hundred years in the darkness. 
 
 The torrent-torn face of the earth ; the vast rearrangement of 
 the drift materials by rivers, compared with which our own rivers are 
 rills ; the vast continental regions which were evidently flooded, all 
 testify to an extraordinary amount of moisture, first raised up from 
 the seas and then cast down on the lands. Given heat enough to 
 raise this mass, given the cold caused by its evaporation, given the 
 time necessary for the great battle between this heat and this con- 
 densation, given the time to restore this body of water to the ocean, 
 not once but many times — for, along the southern border of the 
 floods, where Muspelheim and Niflheim met, the heat must have 
 sucked up the water as fast almost as it fell, to fall again, and again 
 to be lifted up, until the heat-area was driven back and water fell, 
 at last, everywhere on the earth's face, and the extraordinary evap- 
 oration ceased — this was a gigantic, long-continued battle. — 
 Magnarok. 
 
 The Bar Sinister. Through the trees I watched the slowly 
 receding figure, with the thoughtful pose of the head, thinking, 
 thinking of my dreadful story; and a great pity went out from my 
 heart toward that fair sufferer; fair and beautiful and yet pro- 
 scribed ; alone, facing a hostile world. And yet, so strong is the 
 
140 bONNELLlAKA. 
 
 power of prejudice, I felt, even while I pitied her, that I could not 
 have married her — no, not if Mary did not exist. Beauty of mind, 
 beauty of soul, exquisite beauty of body, such as fires the hearts of 
 men and sets their brains throbbing passionately, all this she had ; 
 everything to make the life of man sunshine and his home paradise, 
 and yet across the golden image of all this perfection ran diagonally 
 that thin, dark bar sinister; and prejudice stood up and pointed at it, 
 and hissed its scorn, and all the furies of society, with blazing eyes, 
 denounced it. Oh, strange, sad world, where a thought of the 
 mind has such power to undo all the works and merits of nature ! — 
 Doctor Huguet. 
 
 The Univeksal Eeroes. The universality of an error proves 
 nothing, except that the error is universal. The voice of the people 
 is only the voice of God in the last analysis. We can safely appeal 
 from Caiaphas and Pilate to Time. — Ragnarok. 
 
 The Pov^ee of the Kaileoads. If it is right to buy up all 
 the mines of coal in a State, and drive all the retail coal merchants 
 out of business, why would it not be equally right to buy up all the 
 farms, raise all the wheat, ship it and sell it? And If railroad 
 companies can borrow money in Europe with which to purchase all 
 the coal lands, why may they not in a few years more borrow money 
 enough to buy up all the wheat lands ? They compelled the owners 
 of coal mines to sell out to them by discriminating against them in 
 transportation. Why can they not do the same thing with the 
 wheat-raisers ? It is true that for a time they may cheapen coal to 
 the consumer by concentrating in their own hands the profits which 
 formerly supported hundreds of families and thousands of human 
 beings. But when they have established a monopoly of the mines, 
 the transportation and the retail trade, is it not in the nature of 
 things that they will put up the price ? And what remedy have the 
 people? They are powerless in their hands. — The Ant i- Monopolist. 
 
 The Beotheehood of Justice. " What the world needs is a 
 new organization — a great world-wide Brotherhood of Justice. It 
 should be composed of all men who desire to lift up the oppressed 
 and save civilization and society. It should work through govern- 
 mental instrumentalities. Its altars should be the schools and the 
 ballot-boxes. It should combine the good, who are not yet, I hope, 
 in a minority, against the wicked. It should take one wrong after 
 
EXTBACTS AND SELECTiaNS, 141 
 
 another,, concentrate the battle of the world upon them, and wipe 
 them out of existence. It should be sworn to a perpetual crusade 
 against every evil. It is not enough to heal the wounds caused by 
 the talons of the wild beasts of injustice; it should pursue them to 
 their bone-huddled dens and slay them. It should labor not alone 
 to reheve starvation, but to make starvation impossible; — to kill it 
 in its causes.— Cessans Column. 
 
 The Antiquity of Civilization. I hold it to be incontesta- 
 ble that, in some region of the earth, primitive mankind must have 
 existed during vast spaces of time, and under most favorable cir- 
 cumstances, to create, invent and discover those arts and things 
 which constitute civilization. When we have it before our eyes that 
 for six thousand years mankind in Europe, Asia and Africa, even 
 when led by great nations, and illuminated by marvelous minds, did 
 not advance one inch beyond the arts of Egypt, we may conceive what 
 lapses, what ceojis of time it must have required to bring savage 
 man to that condition of refinement and civilization possessed by 
 Egypt when it first comes within the purview of hi&tovy.— Atlantis. 
 
 Weakness Provokes Oppression. There never was an ass yet 
 but there stood one ready to load ^[lmx.—■ Journal, 1883. 
 
 A HIGH TARIFF EXPLAINED. 
 
 Let me suppose the case : 
 
 When you have sold a load of wheat that ought to be worth $1 
 per bushel for 75 cents per bushel, you take your money to buy 
 necessary articles, such as clothes, tools, nails, glass, lumber, salt, 
 coal, or anything else you may need. You go to an Englishman, or 
 a Frenchman, or a German, and he offers you the articles you want 
 at reasonable prices, and you are about to deal with him, when the 
 government, your own government which your own vote sustains, 
 and for which, perhaps, you formerly shed your blood, steps up and 
 says : 
 
 " Hold on, my friend, you cannot buy these good of this French- 
 man, Englishman or German. As a free American you can only 
 buy of another free American-^ these men are fenced out. " 
 
 " Well," you say, " that sounds patriotic. I think more of an 
 American than I do of these foreigners; I love the old flag," etc., 
 etc. 
 
142 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 And so you go to the American and you say : 
 
 " My friend, I prefer to deal with you. I have come to give you 
 my custom. Let us look over your goods. " 
 
 You pick out the same kind of articles the foreigner had offered 
 you, and you lay down the same price he asked you. 
 
 Your American brother says : 
 
 " That won't do, my friend; I want more. That article you offer 
 me $5 for I want $7.50 for; that other you offer me $18 for I ask $25 
 for; that other you offer me $20 for I want $40 for." 
 
 " Whew !" you say, " what is the meaning of that?" 
 
 " Why," repUes Brother Jonathan, " you see I am protected and 
 encouraged." 
 
 " How protected and encouraged?" 
 
 " I am protected against selling my goods to you at low prices, by 
 preventing you from buying at low prices from yonder Englishman, 
 Frenchman or German ; and I am encouraged at your expense by 
 compelling you to pay me $7.50 for that $5 article, $25 for that $18 
 article, and $40 for that $20 article. And a very substantial kind of 
 encouragement you will admit that it is. On the trade you pro- 
 pose, to the amount of $33, you will pay me $29.50 for the privilege 
 of hving under the freest and best government in the world." 
 
 " But see here," you say, '' the millers stole one-quarter of my 
 crop, and now you propose to steal one-half of what is left ! I am 
 a patriot, but that is paying too high a price for patriotism. If this 
 thing keeps on I will land in the poor-house." 
 
 " Very hkely, my friend, " replies Brother Jonathan. " I have 
 no immediate interest in your future condition. American industry 
 must be ^ encouraged ' and ' protected ' against the pauper labor of 
 Europe." 
 
 '' Blood and thunder ! " you reply, '^ am not I an American ? Do 
 1 not labor in raising my crops? And who protects me against the 
 pauper labor of Europe ? I have to sell my wheat at the world's 
 price, less the Minneapolis stealage; that price is fixed in Liverpool, 
 and there my wheat meets with the competition of the wheat raised 
 by the poorest peasants in Europe, viz.: the wheat of Eussia, Poland 
 and Hungary ; yes, even with the wheat raised by the half-clad, 
 dark-skinned natives of India. Wlio protects me? How am I to 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 143 
 
 get back that $29.50 you propose to now take from me?"— ^S^eec/? at 
 Glencoe, 1S84. 
 
 A Sonnet. 
 
 To Miss , %vhose favorite study is Astronomy. 
 
 Ah! soft-haired maiden, with the beaming eye 
 
 That plays in wild, that thinks in sober graces; 
 Why must thou make the human heart thy sky, 
 
 And read men's star-thoughts in their very faces? 
 Why, with that truly telescopic smile, 
 
 So soft and sad, so witching and so winning, 
 Dost thou enlarge the nebulae of guile. 
 
 And set tbe planet-wishes all a-sinning ? 
 Thou Herschel of sweet womanhood ! when over 
 
 The milky way of mankind, fond and fervent, 
 Thou rang'st thy glass, say, wilt thou please discover 
 
 And take a survey of thy " humble servant " ? 
 And, be assured, if worth in him thou'lt find. 
 That heretofore the whole world has been blind. 
 
 — January, 1850. 
 
 THE VISION OF THE HANDS. 
 
 Around the face there seemed to be a dark, moving mass, 
 in great, and, apparently, endless circles. The pulsating light 
 from the hair beat over it, but it was some time before I could 
 discern what it was. To my extreme astonishment I at last 
 perceived that it was made up of miUions of dark hands, all 
 clasped in the attitude of prayer, and all directed toward the 
 Christ. Something within me told me that they were the sup- 
 plicating hands of negroes. They were all sizes and shades of 
 darkness, from ebon black to those no browner than the hands 
 of the peasants of southern Europe. There were the plump hands of 
 children, the tapering hands of women, the coarse, rude hands of 
 workmen, seamed and calloused with toil ; the gnarled and knotted 
 hands of decrepid old men and feeble women. All were bent ap- 
 pealingly toward the central figure, and they moved with a continual 
 movement, as if they sought to reach and touch Him. The walls of 
 the room afforded no limit to the sight — it was an unive^^se of hanfU\ 
 shading" off into iiifinitv. 
 
144: DONNELLIANA. 
 
 The great, slowly-moving eyes regarded me again with a look of 
 melancholy reproach, and then swept that vast circle of piteous ap- 
 peal. Two bright tears flowed slowly down the fair face ; the lips 
 parted, and in a voice sweeter than the sound of rippling waters, 
 the vision spake : " These, too, aee my children. For them, 
 ALSO, I DIED o^ the CROSS !"— Docfor Hiiguet. 
 
 Grass. Grass, the green hair of the earth. — Journal, 1884. 
 
 THE BURNING OF MOTHER BINDELL'S. 
 
 The besieged have the advantage : they are sheltered and in the 
 darkness; while their assailants are almost unprotected, and 
 exposed, in the white glare of the full moon, to be picked off by the 
 skilled marksmen, who do not waste a shot. Several of the attack- 
 ing party are killed and many wounded. They are having the 
 worst of it. But still the fight goes on. A half hour passes — a 
 half hour of terrible battle. 
 
 Dr. Magruder and Berrisford are with those who are keeping 
 watch over the back part of the building. They are sheltering 
 themselves behind the old barn and firing as opportunity presents 
 itself. 
 
 And now a singular thing happens. 
 
 The Doctor notices a smell of burning hay. Men's senses are 
 acute at such a time. The wall of the old barn is full of cracks 
 and crevices. He peers through one of them. There is a light 
 within the barn. 
 
 " Berrisford," he said softly, " come here. What do you see? " 
 
 " Hush! " whispered Berrisford, " it is white! " And a super- 
 stitious thrill ran through him. 
 
 "It is a woman," said the Doctor; "I see her more clearly 
 now, through the smoke." 
 
 '^ What is she doing? " whispered Berrisford. 
 
 " She has kindled a fire in the barn, and now she is tying a rope 
 around a great mass of hay. " 
 
 " By heavens," said Berrisford, as the flames flashed up ; " she 
 has stuck a pitchfork through it, she lights it, she lifts it up, she 
 rushes toward the door. It is Ahigail! " 
 
 The Doctor sprang forward to save her at the risk, of his own life. 
 He was too late, Out through the open doorway, right toward the 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 14") 
 
 lioiise, across the hell of flying bullets, into the very jaws of death, 
 she ran swiftly, bearing the great blazing, roaring mass, high abo^ e 
 her head, like a banner. 
 
 '' She means to fire the house, " said Berrisford. 
 
 Yes, stntiglit to the back door she ran, and flung down her biu^n- 
 iug burden against it. And then she started to walk back, as calmly, 
 as unconcernedly, as if she had been upon a quiet country road near 
 her own home. But she had proceeded but a few paces when the 
 fire of the defenders of the house, who well understood what she 
 had done, Avas concentrated upon her, and she staggered and fell 
 backward — dead, with a smile of triumph upon her face. 
 
 And the door flew open, and a gray-haired woman, with blazing 
 eyes and harpy hands, rushed out, and tried to scatter and stamp 
 the burning hay. A dozen rifles cracked, and she fell headlong 
 among the roaring flames, which leaped and danced and roared 
 above her —exulting over her as a thing fit only to be utterly an- 
 nihilated. Door, wall, window, cornice, everything is now aflame, 
 and the fire demon grasps and gnaws and devoui-s, until the whole 
 house is lashed in its red and mighty arms; and every board — 
 reeking with years of sin and shame — is sucked into the vortex 
 of the horrible destruction. 
 
 And now, dimly through the smoke, begrimed and bloody figures 
 dart suddenly out, as if to escape. But they cross not the dreadful 
 circle around^the conflagration. Here and there, illy-defined heaps, 
 casting black shadows in the glare, lie upon the ground, moveless. 
 Lives they once were, loved by mothers ; now they are dust-heaps. 
 And, like an evil spirit, that exhausts itself and can do no further 
 harm to man, the conflagration pauses; but it casts down, ere it stops, 
 walls and timbers, and rafters and roof into the red furnace of the 
 cellar, where the coals glow portentously — like a veritable hell — 
 where stood so long that house of hell. — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 Unequal Distribution. One hundred millions of dollars in 
 one house represents " short commons " in ten thousand houses.^ 
 Journal, 1884. 
 
 The Retort Courteous. Where is Perrine, who said we 
 lacked the mathematical faculty, and could not tell what two vind 
 two made? Perhaps so. But we know that two like himself and 
 two like Bill Todd would make four of the biggest fools in Christen- 
 
146 BONNELLIANA. 
 
 dom. How many fools they would make in the due course of nature 
 we shall not appall the world by attempting to calculate. — The 
 Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 The Superstition of Metallic Money. Here, to-day, in 
 America, men are starving and cutting their throats, and a whole 
 country is ruined, trying to force the business of the people to ac- 
 commodate itself to the supply of a yellow metal, because Agamem- 
 non and Artaxerxes recognized it as money ; and in the midst of 
 their tribulations a war breaks out five thousand miles distant, and 
 presto, your carefully coined gold is shipped out by the million, and 
 the cutting of throats proceeds. The whole thing is fallacy and folly . 
 What is wealth? That which supplies the wants of man, food, 
 raiment, tools, weapons, herds, lauds, fuel, etc. These wants are 
 perpetual and universal. Gold and silver are valuable only because, 
 by Imv, they are interchangeable for these things ; repeal the law 
 and the Pioneer-Press admits that they would degenerate into pots 
 and pans, into '^ vessels of honor and dishonor." And yet society 
 has got itself into such shape that the men who produce those 
 things which supply the universal wants of man are, as a rule, poor; 
 while the fellows who hold the pot-metal are masters of the world. 
 — The Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 The Spirit World. There are creatures in space who look 
 upon our intelligences, even at their highest, with very much the- 
 same pity with which we contemplate the minds of cows. — Journal, 
 1891. 
 
 The Worst Selfishness. " Selfishness is the one great cause of 
 pohtical decay. It is an element of destruction wherever it intrudes 
 itself." — Corning Independent. 
 
 And that selfishness which ignores the rights of the great mass 
 of the people, the laboring classes, is the blindest and most destruct- 
 ive selfishness in the world. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 Hui^AN Automata. In a primitive people the mind of one 
 generation precisely repeats the minds of all former generations; the 
 construction of the intellectual nature varies no more, from age to 
 agf, than the form of the body or the color of the skin ; the gener- 
 adons feel the same emotions, and think the same thoughts, and use 
 the same expressions. And this is to be expected, for the brain is 
 
KXTIiACTS AND SELECTIONS. 147 
 
 as much a part of the inheritable, material organization as the color 
 of the eyes or the shape of the nose. 
 
 The minds of men move automatically ; no man thinks because 
 he intends to think ; ho thinks, as he hungers and thirsts, under a 
 great primal necessity ; his thoughts come out from the inner depths 
 of his being as the tiower is developed by forces rising through the 
 roots of the ^Ismt.—Bagnarok. 
 
 THE CAUSE OF HARD TIMES. 
 
 Now, good reader, we will suppose that you are taken suddenly 
 and seriously sick, and you send for a quack to prescribe for you. 
 The first question he asks you is: "Were you quite well last 
 weekf " " Very well," you reply. " You felt buoyant, happy and 
 hearty?" he asks. "Exceedingly so," you reply. "Just as I 
 thought," says Mr. Quack; "your good health last week was the 
 cause of your sickness. There never was a case of sickness yet that 
 was not preceded by a condition of good health. It is the health 
 that makes men sick. " And he prescribes a medicine that will keep 
 you sick. 
 
 So the quack of the Journal declares that hard times have in- 
 variably followed periods of abundant, or, as he calls it, " inflated " 
 currency. He fails tD tell you that those periods of inflated currency 
 were periods of great growth^ development and prosperity, and that 
 disaster followed when it was attempted to reduce all this growth, 
 development and prosperity to the meager measure of the quantity 
 of gold and silver in circulation. The Irishman said " it was not the 
 fall that hurt him, it was stopping so quick. " It was not the paper 
 money that produced collapse ; it was the attempt to make one dol- 
 lar of gold redeem three dollars of paper. " Specie payment " has 
 l)een the parent of the world's great crises.— Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 Ax Aphorism. All now recognized truths once rested, sohtary 
 and alone, in some one brain. — Bagnarok. 
 
 The Power of the Dollar. The purchasing power of the 
 dollar has been so increased that it is an equivalent for more wheat. 
 Hence the cheapness of wheat in the face of a foreign war and short 
 crops in Europe I The price of wheat shrinks, but the mortgage on 
 the farm does not. Property of all kinds is worth less; money is 
 worth more. We are burning the candle at both endS; and the 
 
148 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 flames are drawing uncomfortably close to the voter's fingers. Has 
 the voter sense enough to blow out the candle 'i — The Anti-Monopolist. 
 The Causes of Ixeidelity in the Age of Elizabeth. The 
 " malignity of sects " drove many men to infidelity. They saw in 
 religion only monstrous and cruel forces, which lighted horrible fires 
 in the midst of great cities, and filled the air with the stench of burn- 
 ing flesh and the shrieks of the dying victims. They held rehgiou 
 accountable for these excesses of fanaticism in a semi -barbarous age, 
 and they doubted the existence of a God who could permit such hor- 
 rors. They were ready to exclaim with Macduff, when told that 
 '' the hell-kite/' Macbeth, had killed all his family, " all his pretty 
 ones, '' at one fell swoop : 
 
 " Did heaven look on. 
 And would not take their part ? 
 
 They came to conceive of G-od as a cruel monster who relished 
 the sufferings of his creatures. Shakespeare puts this thought into 
 the mouth of Lear : 
 
 *' As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods ; 
 They kill us for their sport. " 
 
 — The Great Gryptogrcun. 
 
 Minnesota's Coat of Aems. Dakota County records 492 
 births and 182 deaths during the year 1876. Compare that with 
 New York, where the deaths were six thousand more than the 
 births ! We argued long ago that the coat of arms of Minne- 
 sota ought to be a double-barreled cradle with twins in it. But 
 perhaps that alarmed Indian who, in our State seal, is rushing 
 wildly toward the setting sun, is simply getting out of the way 
 of the on-coming rush of the white man's papooses. — The Anti- 
 Monopolist. 
 
 Choking the Volcano. There are but two forms of govern- 
 ment in the world: injustice, armed and powerful, and taking 
 to itself the shape of king or aristocracy ; and, on the other hand, 
 absolute human justice, resting upon the broad and enduring basis 
 of equal rights to all. Give this, and give intelligence and educa- 
 tion to understand it, and you have a structure which will stand 
 while the world stands. Anything else than this is mere repres- 
 sion, the jpiling of rocks into the mouth of the volcano, which 
 
£XTIiACTS JA'i) SELECTIONS. 14g 
 
 Ta"lsT ""' "'"' "'^'" *" '""^ ^^-SpeeckinConorcss, 
 
 Tkue Statesmanship, a true statesman is oue who adaots 
 righteousness to circumstances, as the Swiss peasant builds hs 
 
 equalities of the mountam. He could not erect a symmetrical 
 Greek temple upon the face of the precipice, but he s™ an 
 humble home, where love and peace may find shelter n the mid'" 
 of Alpme tempest .-Hoctor Huguet. 
 
 Music. 
 Showering music on the full-eared night, 
 Until the soul sits listening. _ 1850 
 
 cKdtarf""' °':'^ "'^"' '''''^ """''l -" '^<^ '-'i und r' heTron 
 clad tax-law ; and you would have to join the Anti-Drive- Well Asso 
 cation, or pay $10 royalty on the hole.-r*e AnU.MoL7<^Ilt 
 
 Evening. 
 Sweetest hour of changing heaven, 
 % So^i' «f briglit and beauteous even; 
 
 When the happy day-god goes 
 To a conscience-calm repose ; 
 And the stars hke guards are blent 
 Round the dim night's dusky tent ; 
 And the moon, a mourner fair, 
 Guards the heedless sleeper there. 
 
 —The Mourner's Vision, 1850, 
 What One Man Can Do. One man can do much. Look at • 
 the history of the anti-slavery movement. In 1783 six obscm^ 
 Quakers met m London and organized the first society which in aU 
 the history of mankind, had been created to protest aSst the 
 
 Z Lo thM f ^ '°^"'"'' '''''''' ship-owners for throw- 
 ^ng into the sea and drowning one hundred and thirty-two 
 
150 nON^ELLlANA. 
 
 Africans, Ijy the master of a slave-ship, to defraud the underwriters. 
 No penalty was inflicted; because they were slaves! And yet^ in 
 twenty-four years, the movement, inaugurated by the six Quakers, 
 had grown so strong — in the consciences and souls of men — that a 
 bill passed Parhament to abolish the slave trade ; in twenty-three 
 years more every Christian nation in Europe and America had pro- 
 hibited the commerce in human beings, and in thirty-five' years 
 more slavery itself had ceased to exist in nearly every country on 
 earth. — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 Caves. Caves were the first shelters of uncivihzed men. It 
 was not necessary to fly to the caves through the rain of falhng 
 debris; many were doubtless already in them when the great world- 
 storm broke, and others naturally sought their usual dwelling- 
 places. 
 
 Man is born of the earth; he is made of the clay; like Adam, 
 created — 
 
 " Of good red clay, 
 Haply from Mount Aornus, beyond sweep 
 Of the black eagle's wing." 
 
 The cave-temples of India — the oldest temples, probably, on 
 earth — are a reminiscence of this cave-life. 
 
 We shall see hereafter that Lot and his daughters " dwelt in a 
 cave; " and we shall find Job hidden away in the '' narrow-mouthed, 
 bottomless " pit or cave. — RagnaroJc. 
 
 The Future of Laboe. Our masters have educated us to 
 understand that we have no interest in civilization or society. We 
 are its victims, not its members. They depend on repression, on 
 force alone ; on cruelty, starvation, to hold us down until we work 
 our lives away. Our lives are all tve have; it may be all we will 
 ever have. They are as dear to us as existence is to the millionaire. 
 — Ccesar^s Column. 
 
 The Objects oe the Book '^ Atlantis. " If these propo- 
 sitions can be proved, they will solve many problems which now 
 perplex mankind; they will confirm in many respects the statements 
 in the opening chapters of Genesis ; they will widen the area of 
 human history; they will explain the remarkable resemblances 
 which exist between the ancient civilizations found upon the 
 opposite shores of the Atlantic Ocean, in the old and new worlds; 
 
KXTl^ACtS AM) SELKCriON^. 151 
 
 iuid they will aid us to rehabilitate the fathers of our civilization, 
 our blood; and our fundamental ideas — the men wlio lived, loved 
 and labored ages before the Aryans descended upon India, or the 
 Phoenician had settled in Syria, or the Goth had reached the shores 
 of the Baltic. — A tlantis. 
 
 LINES 
 
 To my dear friend John T. Grehie, of Pldladelphia, Cadet at West Point, Jamiary 
 
 15th, 1851. 
 (J^iieutenant Greblc was killed at the battle of Big Bethel, Ya., June 10, 1861. 
 He was "the first officer of the regular army who perished iu the war for the sup- 
 pression of the rebellion." The Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, said: " Hia 
 distinguished character, his gallant conduct on the field where he fell, and his 
 devoted sacrifice to the cause of his country, will make his name and memory 
 illustrious."] 
 
 Look forward to the future, for thy heritage is there, 
 Where our country's starry banner floats alone upon the air ; 
 Or, through the smoke of battle, its smoke-enveloped form. 
 Gleams like a white sail plunging 'raid the tossing of the storm. 
 
 Look forward to the future, for our nation's dawn is nigh, 
 
 And her struggling hght is glancing whei-e the golden deserts lie. 
 
 The sun that peeped above the sea on Plymouth's wintry shore 
 
 Now flashes where the billows of the wide Pacific roar; 
 
 And up along the icy north his slanted beams lie white 
 
 O'er pallid lake, and windy plain, and frozen forest height ; 
 
 And down amid the dim green woods of shadowy Brazil 
 
 His golden light shall dazzle where all is dark and still. 
 
 Look forward to the future, when worth shall find its own. 
 
 And when the mightiest mind shall wield the monarch-might alone, 
 
 When nobler deeds and greater thoughts shall light our nation's 
 
 home 
 Than ever blessed the Spartan's hills or shook the halls of Rome. 
 Then thou shalt shine, my iarly friend; thy dimly rising star 
 Shall kiss the sunken waves of peace or light the waste of war ; 
 And we shall stand aside and watch its steady, changeless ray, 
 Until its light fades faintly out in fame's eternal day. 
 
 The Contests of Races. ''Remember this is a race conflict, 
 and the contentions of races with one another are always more bitter 
 than the battles of rival religions ; for every physical attribute which 
 
152 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 separates the combataDts accentuates the ferocity of the struggle. 
 In a battle of the birds and beasts only the bats, hideous, 
 misshapen creatures, can be indifferent. One must go, right or wrong, 
 with his class." — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 THE DRIFT NOT DUE TO ICE ACTION. 
 
 Here, then, in conclusion, are the evidences that the deposits of 
 the Drift are not due to continental ice-sheets: 
 
 1. The present ice-sheets of the remote north create no such 
 deposits and make no such markings. 
 
 2. A vast continental elevation of land-surfaces at the north 
 Was necessary for the ice to slide down, and this did not exist. 
 
 3. The ice-sheet, if it made the Drift markings, must have 
 scored the rocks going up-hill, while it did not score them going 
 down-hill. 
 
 4. If the cold formed the ice and the ice formed the Drift, why 
 is there no Drift in the coldest regions of the earth, where there 
 must have been ice ? 
 
 5. Continental ice-belts, reaching to 40° of latitude, would have 
 exterminated all tropical vegetation. It was not exterminated, 
 therefore such ice-sheets could not have existed. 
 
 6. The Drift is found in the equatorial regions of the world. If 
 it was produced by an ice-sheet in those regions, all pre-glacial 
 forms of life must have perished; but they did not perish; therefore 
 the ice-sheet could not have covered these regions, and could not 
 have produced the drift-deposits there found. 
 
 In brief, the Drift is not found where ice must have been, and is 
 found where ice could not have been; the conclusion, therefore, is 
 irresistil^le that the Drift is not due to ice. — Bagnarok. 
 
 A Brother of the Mud-puddle. We might add a man is what 
 he thinlis. Physiologically he is but a bag of microbe-infested 
 iluids, held in shape by a skeleton ; and Ijut for the light in his brain 
 a brother of the mud-puddle. It is the thought faculty that is di- 
 vine. In this he is made in the image of God. When he thinks, 
 the same processes are at work that made the stars. What higher 
 function is there than to feed and trim this burning flame of the 
 soul, and help men to arrive at just conclusions? — Address to the 
 Editors of Wisconsin, 1889. 
 
J^JXTHACny AND SELECTIONS. \:^:\ 
 
 Fate. But what arewei? The creatures of late; the victims 
 of circumstances. We luok upon the Medusa-head of destiny, witli 
 its serpent curls, and our wills, if not our souls, are turned into 
 stone. God alone, who knows all, can judge the heart of man. — 
 Ccesafs Column. 
 
 Death. Death — going down the pitiful steps of depression to 
 darkness and dust. — Journal, 18S3. 
 
 The Comet Striking the Earth. But suppose two heavenly 
 bodies, each with its own center of attraction, each holding its own 
 scattered materials in place by its own force, to meet each other; 
 then there is no more probability of the stones and dust of the 
 comet flying to the earth, than there is of the stones and dust of the 
 earth flying to the comet. And the attractive power of the comet, 
 great? enough to hold its gigantic mass in place through the long 
 reaches of the fields of space, and even close up to the burning eye 
 of the awful sun itself, holds its dust and pebbles and bowlders 
 together until the very moment of impact with the earth. In short, 
 thej^, the dust and stones, do not continue to follow the comet, be- 
 cause the earth has got in their way and arrested them. It was this 
 terrific force of the comet's attraction, represented in a fearful rate 
 of motion, that tore and pounded and scratched and furrowed our 
 poor earth's face, as shown in the crushed and striated rocks under 
 the Drift. They would have gone clean through the earth to follow 
 the comet, if it had been possible. — Bagnarok. 
 
 Observation and Experiment. Life, to the wise man, is, a 
 series of observations and experiments to find what will best con- 
 serve the inherited vitality. The small flame, in the hand of in- 
 telligence, carefully shielded, will outlive the tempest which blows 
 out the uncovered, flaring torches of the roysterers. — Journal, 1891. 
 
 Half Prose and Half Poetry. All through the essay it 
 seems to be more than prose : from beginning to end it is a mass of 
 imagery; it is poetry without rhythm. Like a great bird which, as 
 it starts to fly, runs for a space along the ground, beating the air 
 with its wings and the earth with its feet; so in this essay we seem 
 to see the pinions of the poet constantly striving to lift him above 
 the barren limitations of prose into the blue ether of untrammeled 
 expression. — The Great Crifptogram. 
 
HOW CAPITAL CONTROLS THE LABOR VOTE; 
 
 " Do you mean to tell me that this cunning, crafty, long-headed 
 white race, that has dominated every darker people it has come in 
 contact with, is unable to control a horde of ignorant black men 
 without butchering them? How do they control their own people? 
 Look at the vast populations of laboring men in the cities of the 
 North. They have the ballot; they are united by a sense of real or 
 fancied wrongs; they enthusiastically resolve every year to take the 
 government into their own hands; they are the vast majority. Did 
 you ever hear of the bankers and brokers and lawyers shooting 
 them down at the polls? Not a bit of it. And yet the professional 
 classes and the corporations, comparatively insignificant in number, 
 always rule the cities and the States. How do they doit? They 
 divide up the laborers. They buy up their leaders. They set them 
 to battling on other issues. They adopt what the philosophers call 
 ^the expulsivie power of a new affection.' They bewilder and befud- 
 dle them, and govern them. They establish newspapers among 
 them •to direct them; and they take possession of them, very much 
 as the negroes of Africa capture monkeys. They leave beer for 
 them to drink, and when the quadrumanous little fools are pretty 
 well overcome by intoxication, a negro steps forward and takes 
 the leader by the hand. The imitative creatures follow this exam- 
 ple, and all clasp hands in the same way, and the colored gentle- 
 man leads them all off, in a long hue, happy and contented, to 
 captivity. If the South desires to control its labor vote, it should 
 take example from the astute North, where politics are reduced to a 
 science. But firing bullets into their lungs and stomachs and 
 hearts! Pah! that is brutal and barbarous, and marks an unde- 
 veloped state of society. In fact, force is always the remedy of men 
 who cannot reason. You kill a man because nature has not given 
 you brains enough to convince him. " — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 The Value of Civilization. What is civilization worth 
 which means happiness for a few thousand men and inexpressible 
 misery for hundreds of millions? — Ccesar^s Column. 
 
 '' Another of Mr. W 's manifest derelictions of public duty 
 
 was in his failure to include Mr. Donnelly's celebrated project for the 
 improvement of the navigation of the Zumbro and Cannon rivers, 
 in his scheme of national water routes." — St. Paul Press. 
 
EXTRACT^i AND SELECTIONS. loj 
 
 Easily explained, Joseph. 1st. These, rivers are in Minnesota. 
 'Jd. There is no steal in them. Improving- Minnesota rivers is not 
 
 W 's forte. His best hold is steamship lines to China, with a 
 
 twenty years' subsidy of $1,000,000 per year. Those are the things 
 to help Llinnesota. Every farmer who wants to ship tea to China 
 is benefited thereby ; every farmer who proposes to " diversify his 
 industry'' by raising bamboo poles has an interest in that subsidy. 
 — Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 The Effect of Civilizatiox on Legends. Legend has one 
 great foe to its perpetuation — civilization. Civilization brings with 
 it a contempt for everything which it can not understand; skepti- 
 cism becomes the synonym for intelligence ; men no longer repeat ; 
 they doubt; they dissect; they sneer; they reject; they invent. 
 If the mytli survives this treatment, the poets take it up and make 
 it their stock in trade : they decorate it in a masquerade of frip- 
 pery and finery, feathers and furbelows, like a clown dressed for a 
 fancy ball; and the poor barbarian legend survives at last, if it 
 survives at all, like the Conflagration in Ovid or King Arthur in 
 Tennyson — a hippopotamus smothered in flowers, jewels and laces. 
 Hence we find the legends of the primitive American Indians ad- 
 hering quite closely to the events of the past, while the myths that 
 survive at all among the civilized nations of Europe are found in 
 garbled forms, and only among the peasantry of remote districts. 
 — Bagnarok. 
 
 The New Issues. The old issues concerned black men ; the 
 new issues concern white men. Slavery robbed of the fruits of 
 their industry a people living a thousand miles away ; the corpora- 
 tions, the manufacturers, the monopolists, are stealing the fruits of 
 our otvn industry. In the great war we fought for our brethren ; 
 now we must fight for ourselves. Then we battled with the cart- 
 ridge-box; now we must fight with the ballot-box. — Speech to 
 Grangers, 1873. 
 
 The American Flag. There are stars upon it : they are stars 
 for the hopes of the world. There are stripes upon it : they are 
 stripes for the oppressors of mankind. — Speech at the Labor Kir- 
 mess, Minneapolis, May, 1887. 
 
 The Producers. " Our labor creates everything; we possess 
 nothing. Yes, we have the scanty supply of food necessary to ena- 
 
1 56 T) ON NE Lit A KA . ' 
 
 ble us to create more. We have ceased to be men — we are iuu- 
 chines. Did God die for a machine? Certainly not." — Ccesafs 
 Column. 
 
 THE MISEKIES OF OUR FRONTIER POPULATION. 
 
 On the other hand, it is not given to the mind of man to con- 
 ceive, or the tongue of man to utter, the silent, pitiful, awful strug- 
 gles that are being endured among our frontier population, to ena- 
 ble these creatures to adorn their wretched bodies in the glittering 
 spoils of Golconda, and revel and riot in wasteful splendor. It is a 
 silent struggle, for these pioneers belong to strong races; they rep- 
 resent the American, the Irish, the German, the Scandinavian, the 
 English, the Scotch, the French races ; and, like the Spartan boy, 
 they will not cry out, but prefer to die and give no sign, even 
 though the serpent is gnawing at their hearts. 
 
 But every now and then we read in the newspapers some little 
 incident which throw^s a whole flood of light on the scene, like that, 
 for instance, of the poor Nelson family, who, last winter, perished 
 in the Red River valley; father and two daughters, caught in a 
 blizzard, carrying hay to burn, freezing to death between the hay- 
 stack and their wretched, smoke-blackened home. Those stajk, 
 stiff and half-clad bodies should have been carried into Minneapolis 
 and laid down, side by side, on the platform of the mills, that the 
 public eye might be relieved of the monotony of diamonds, and 
 French bronzes and Louis XIV. clocks, and fast horses, and faster 
 women. 
 
 For one, my friends, I would rather live on a forty-acre farm, on 
 a diet of water and potatoes, than possess all the luxuries that life 
 can give, obtained at the cost of so much misery and suffering to 
 my fellow-men. ^^ It is not and it cannot come to good." — Speech at 
 Glencoe, 1884. 
 
 ■ That's the Questio:n". A poor editor, being asked if he ever 
 thought what he would do if he had Vanderbilt's income, replied : 
 '' No; but I have often wondered w^hat Vanderbilt would do if he 
 had my income." — Journal, 1883. 
 
 The Stomach. The stomach is your true civilizer. Abundance 
 of food means density of population ; and this, in turn, means migra- 
 tions, colonizations, inventions, industry, laws, all social regulations 
 
EXTUACTS AND SELECTIONS. 157 
 
 Napoleou said an army marched ou its belly; — meaDing that if it 
 was not fed it could not fight. And so we may say that civilization 
 moves ou its stomach. — Journal, 1883. 
 
 An Aphorism. It is the old story of brains owning muscles all 
 the world over. The men who refuse to do their own thinking will 
 always be the serfs of the men who think for them. — Speech to 
 Grangers^ 1873. 
 
 PARTICIPATING IN THE PURPOSES OF GOD. 
 
 " Granted, Major," I replied ; " granted that the white race is 
 the masterful race of the globe ; and in the presence of their 
 tremendous achievements no man — black, brown, red or yellow — 
 can doubt it. They are the biggest-brained, the boldest-hearted, 
 the most capable subdivision of mankind that has ever dwelt on the 
 planet. I grant you all that. But are we to do justice only to our 
 superiors, or our equals f If so, it yields us no honor, for our supe- 
 riors and our equals are able to enforce justice from us. Generosity 
 can only be exercised toward those less fortunate than ourselves. 
 Power has no attribute grander than the god-like instinct to reach 
 down and lift up the fallen. If we can plainly perceive in the prog- 
 ress of humanity the movement of a great Benevolence, every 
 year adding to the comfort and happiness of mankind, why should 
 we not, to the extent of our little i)owers, aid Him in His tremen- 
 dous work ? How divine a thought it is that we are participating 
 in J:he purposes and work of the Almighty One ! That, as he has 
 dragged man up from reptilian barbarism to this splendid, this 
 august era of peace and love, we are able to help the flagging foot- 
 steps of the laggards and stragglers who have dropped behind in 
 God's great march. In such a work we become the very children of 
 God — fired with his zeal, illuminated by his smile. How base and 
 brutal it would be if we were willing to be fed with all the countless 
 fruits of God's beneficence, and, in the midst of our full content, 
 commend only poison to the lips of those whose sole ofi'ense is that 
 Heaven has not given them our blessings I " — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 CIVIL SERVICE REFORM. 
 
 It is a sad state of things when the servants of the people become 
 their masters ; when those selected to perform subordinate duties, 
 for which they are well paid, band together to control the com- 
 
158 BONNELLIANA. 
 
 munity, and perpetuate their own lease of office. It produces in the 
 country a class of active, intelligent, cunning, selfish and reckless 
 men, who, while others sleep, are plotting and scheming ; who stand 
 ready, at all times, for their own base ends, to fan popular passions 
 to white heat and array the people into two hostile camps, ready 
 to drop their ballots and seize their rifles, and plunge all things into 
 the gulf of civil war. 
 
 Every man knows that eight years ago we were brought to the 
 very brink of chaos by the struggles of the office-seekers ; and but 
 for the patriotism and forbearance of that great statesman, Samuel 
 J. Tilden, the streets of every city in the land would have run red 
 with fraternal blood, and the republic have gone down in disgrace 
 forever. 
 
 And four years ago we saw one who was the worst type of the 
 American office-seeker and professional politician, — Guiteau, — 
 maddened by disappointment, and sharing in the passions of his 
 faction, send down to darkness and dust, by the bullet of the assassin 
 one of the broadest and brightest intellects the new world has ever 
 produced. — Speech at Glencoe, 1884. 
 
 Mason and Dixon's Line Blotted Out. This is now one 
 nation. Armies of men perished to make it one nation. The abo- 
 lition of slavery blotted out Mason and Dixon's line. There is no 
 longer a South. The rebellion exists only in history; a history that 
 testifies that the American people, North and South, have no peers 
 on earth for courage, manhood, persistence and endurance. — 
 Speech, 1885. 
 
 MoDEKN Justice. Justice in the old time was painted blind- 
 fold; she did not see the contending parties, but simply felt when 
 the scale was rightly adjusted. Our modern justice is like the 
 monkey, with his eyes wide open, who divided the cheese found by 
 the two dogs, and who kept biting a piece alternately off each frag- 
 ment, to make them balance, until there was nothing left for the 
 astonished dogs. — Speech at Glencoe, 1884. 
 
 THE PLAY- WRITER IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 The reader can readily conceive that the man must, indeed, be 
 exceedingly ambitious of fame who would insist on asserting his 
 title to the authorship of plays acted in such theaters before such 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 159 
 
 audiences. Imagine that aristocratic young gentleman, Francis 
 Bacon, born in the palace, Tork Place; "put to all the learn- 
 ing that his time could make him master of;" an attache of 
 the English legation at the French court; the son of a Lord Chan- 
 cellor; the nephew of a Lord Treasurer; the offspring of the virtu- 
 ous and pious Lady Anne Bacon ; with his head full of great plans 
 for the reformation of philosophy, law and government, and with 
 his eyes fixed on the chair his father had occupied for twenty years — 
 imagine him, I say, insisting that his name should appear on the 
 play-bills as the poet who wrote Mucedoriis, Tamhurlane, The 
 Jew of Malta, Titus Andronicus, Fair Em, Sir John OldcasiJe, or 
 The Merry Devil of Edmonton ! Imagine the drunken, howling mob 
 of Calibans hunting through Gray's Inn to find the son of the Lord 
 Chancellor, in the midst of his noble friends, to flog him, or toss 
 him in a blanket, because, forsooth, his last play had not pleased 
 their royal fancies ! — The Great Cryptogram. 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF DESTRUCTION. 
 
 " Oh, my dear friend," I replied, " do not say so. Destruction! 
 What is it? The wiping out of the slow accumulations made by 
 man's intelligence during thousands of years. A world cataclysm. 
 A day of judgment. A day of fire and ashes. A world burned 
 and swept bare of life. All the flowers of art; the beautiful, gos- 
 samer-like works of glorious literature; the sweet and lovely crea- 
 tions of the souls of men long since perished, and now the in- 
 estimable heritage of humanity; all, all crushed, torn, leveled in 
 the dust. And all that is savage, brutal, cruel, demoniac in man's 
 nature let loose to ravage the face of the world. Oh! horrible — 
 most horrible! The mere thought works in me like a convulsion; 
 wliat must the inexpressible reality be? To these poor, suffering, 
 hopeless, degraded toilers; these children of oppression and the 
 dust; these chained slaves, anything that will break open the gates 
 of their prison-house would be welcome, even though it were an 
 earthquake that destroyed the planet. But you and J, my dear 
 friend, are educated to higher thoughts. We know the value of the 
 precious boon of civilization. We know how bare and barren, and 
 wretched and torpid, and utterly debased is soulless barbarism. " — 
 Ccesafs Colunm. 
 
IGO BONNELLIANA. 
 
 The Yeomanry. This nation needs more of such men. We 
 must cherish the institutions which have produced them. Their 
 price is richer than rubies. They are the salt of a nation. Some 
 one said to Croesus^ when he showed him his treasures : " But if one 
 should come along with more iron he would take all this gold. " 
 The prosperity of a people rests upon its manhood; the gold can 
 only repose upon the Iron. Without this a nation is but a con- 
 glomerate of sordidness and sensuality — a mixture of clay and brass 
 which must fall to pieces the moment a strong hand is laid upon it. 
 — Speech in Congress , May 7, 1868. 
 
 THE SONG OF THE ELF-QUEEN. 
 
 Hither come from loam and foam; 
 
 From the mountain eagle's nest; 
 
 From the dark wave's curling crest; 
 
 From the softly sleeping valley. 
 
 Where the wandering breezes rally; 
 
 From the white clouds hurrying past, 
 
 Foam-like, on the streaming blast ; 
 
 From the distant deep'ning sky, 
 
 Mournful as a mother's eye, 
 
 When her dearest droops to die ; 
 
 From the surf- wave's shivering shock 
 
 On the lonely ocean-rock, 
 
 With the shelving billow falhng, 
 
 And the sea-birds wailful calling. 
 
 Gather, gather, spirits, gather, 
 
 To this rocky hillock's heather; 
 
 By the sadly sounding sea. 
 
 Moaning everlastingly. 
 
 Gather, spirits, unto me.— The Mourner's Vision, 1850. 
 
 Life on a Southern Plantation. It was a yery bright and 
 pleasant life— kindly and social and generous. No man was trying 
 to outwit or plunder his fellow. The discussions of politics— apart 
 from the natural local prejudices— were all conducted on a high 
 plane: --the good of their section. There was, to be sure, a sort of 
 half-expressed feeling that the South had been caught in an 
 eddy of dead-water, full of the drift-wood of old opinions, far 
 
EKTHACTS AND SELECTIONS. 101 
 
 remote from that great, surging, swollen, i-apidly- advancing stream 
 of the world. And yet they felt, too, that the stream was covered 
 with the debris of selfishness, and its shores lined with cruel wreck- 
 ers; and that its waters poured over the drowned caves of abysmal 
 and multitudinous want; and that, in comparison with it all," their 
 lives were honorable and sweet and iMWc— Doctor Iliiguet. 
 
 Jefferson's Doctrine. We need statesmen who, above every- 
 thing else, will love liberty because they love tlie human fVimily; 
 who will resist wrong because it means wretchedness to mankind! 
 We need a people high enough above prejudice to cordially and 
 unitedly support such men. And we need a powerful political or- 
 ganization, filled with the spirit of that magnificent utterance of 
 Thomas Jeflerson: " I have sworn undying hostility, on the altar 
 of my God, to every form of oppression of the bodies or the souls 
 of men."— 6^eec/< at Glencoe, 1884. 
 
 THE Ei^ISTENCE OF GOD. 
 
 " Science has increased their knowledge one hundred per cent, 
 and their vanity one thousand per cent. The more they know of 
 the material world the less they can perceive the spiritual world 
 around and within it. The acquisition of a few facts about nature 
 has closed their eyes to the existence of a God. " 
 
 " Ah, " said I, " that is a dreadful thought ! It seems to me that 
 the man who possesses his eyesight must behold a thousand evi- 
 dences of a Creator denied to a blind man; and in the same way 
 the man who knows most of the material world should see the 
 most conclusive evidences of design and a Designer. The humblest 
 blade of grass preaches an incontrovertible sermon. What force is 
 it that brings it up, green and beautiful, out of the black, dead 
 earth? Who made it succulent and filled it full of the substances 
 that will make flesh and blood and bone for millions of gentle, graz- 
 ing animals? What a gap would it have been in nature if there 
 had been no such growth, or if, being such, it had been poisonous 
 or inedible? Whose persistent purpose is it — whose everlasting 
 will— that year after year, and age after age, stirs the tender roots 
 to hfe and growth, for the sustenance of uncounted generations of 
 creatures? Every blade of grass, therefore, points with its tiny 
 finger upward to heaven, and proclaims an eternal, a benevolent 
 
162 DONNELLIANA, 
 
 God. It is to me a dreadful thing that men can penetrate farther 
 and farther into nature with their senses, and leave their reasoning- 
 faculties behind them. Instead of mind recognizing mind, dust 
 simply perceives dust. This is the suicide of the soul." — Ccesar^s 
 Column. 
 
 The Parallelism of Legends. And then grave and able 
 men — philosophers, scientists — were seen with note-books and 
 pencils going out into Hindoo villages, into German cottages, into 
 Highland huts, into Indian tepees, in short, into all lands, taking 
 down, with the utmost care, accuracy and respect, the fairy- stories, 
 myths and legends of the people — as repeated by old peasant- 
 women, " the knitters in the sun, " or by " gray-haired warriors, 
 famoused for fights. ' And when they came to put these narratives 
 in due form, and, as it were, in parallel columns, it became apparent 
 that they threw great floods of light upon the history of the world, 
 and especially upon the question of the unity of the race. They 
 proved that all the nations were repeating the same stories, in some 
 cases in almost identical words, just as their ancestors had heard 
 them, in some most ancient land, in ^' the dark background and 
 abysm of time," when the progenitors of the German, Gaul, Gael, 
 Greek, Koman, Hindoo, Persian, Egyptian, Arabian, and the red 
 people of America, dwelt together under the same roof-tree and 
 used the same language. — Bagnarok. 
 
 Justice to the Eed Man. Let it not be said that the nation 
 shall advance in its career of greatness regardless of the destruction 
 of the red mani There is room enough in God's world for 9^11 the 
 races he has created to inhabit it. Thirty million white people can 
 certainly find space, somewhere on this broad continent, for a third 
 of a million of those who originally possessed the whole of it. While 
 we are inviting to our shores the opjjressed races of mankind let us, 
 at least, deal justly by those whose rights here antedate our own by 
 countless centuries. — Speech in Congress, Feb. 7, 1865. 
 
 THE POVERTY OF HUMAN INVENTION. 
 
 In the next place, we must remember how impossible it is for 
 the mind to invent an entirely n^w thing. 
 
 What dramatist or novelist has ever yet made a plot which didnot 
 consist of events that bad already transpired sorcipwl^ere on earth f 
 
EXTUACTS AND SELECTIONS. 163 
 
 He might intensify events, concentrate and combine them, or am- 
 plify them ; but that is all. Men in all ages have suffered from jeal- 
 ousy, like Othello ; have committed murders, like Macbeth ; have 
 yielded to the svray of morbid minds, like Hamlet; have stolen, hed 
 and debauched, like Falstafl"; there are Oliver Twists, Bill Sykeses, 
 Nancies, Micawbers, Pickwicks and Pecksniffs in every great city. 
 
 There is nothing in the mind of man that has not pre-existed in 
 nature. Can we imagine a person, who never saw or heard of an 
 elephant, drawing a picture of such a two-tailed creature? It was 
 thought at one time that man made the flying-dragon out of his 
 own imagination ; but we now know that the image of the ptero- 
 dactyl had simply descended from generation to generation. Sin- 
 bad's great bird, the roc, Avas considered a flight of the Oriental 
 fancy, until science revealed the bones of the dinornis. All the 
 winged beasts breathing fire are simply a recollection of the comet. 
 In fact, even with the pattern of nature before it, the human 
 mind has not greatly exaggerated them; it has never drawn a bird 
 larger than the dinornis or a beast larger than the mammoth.— 
 Ragnaroh. 
 
 Winter Dawn. 
 The pale-faced dawn, like a shepherd's child, 
 Goes out o'er the moorlands bleak and wild; 
 Lonely and cold, and half asleep, 
 And pausing ever to stand and weep. 
 The Millers Carving Up the Farmer. These fellows delib- 
 erately sit down on us and carve us up, and divide our territory among 
 themselves, saying to one another: ^' You take the hindquarter, and 
 you take these ribs; Til take the sirloin steak, and you can have 
 this piece of the rump. " And the people are stripped until the State 
 looks Uke a Greely Expedition. There is nothing left but the bones, 
 and the pleasing consciousness that we are a great, intelligent and 
 self-governing people ! — Speech at Glencoe, 1884. 
 
 The War Instinct. It was pleasant to sit, in the cool of the 
 evening, on the piazza, and hsten to the war stories of these old 
 heroes. To the philosophic mind they illustrated what a curious 
 fighting animal man is, and how singularly, under high excitements 
 he considers life and limb as of less consequence than insistancc 
 upon his own opinions, It seems to me strange that a man should 
 
1(>4 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 be willing to go out of the world to improve the world, when, after 
 he goes out of it, the world can be of no more interest to him. The 
 presence of vast war passions, in great bodies of men, inciting them 
 to dash themselves to death, is one of the marvels of the world. I 
 suppose those passions are the survivors of emotions and habits 
 possessed by our remote and savage ancestors, at a time when every 
 particle of food a man swallowed had to be fought for, and one man 
 hved only by another man's death. The human being, as all wars 
 testify, is, when you take off the crust of social refinement, simply 
 a ferocious wild beast.— Z)oc^or Huguet. 
 
 Civilization. Civilization is the steadily increasing power of 
 spirit over matter. In the future men will control all the forces 
 of the planet. — Journal, 1885. 
 
 SHYLOCK AND USURY. 
 
 The purpose of the play was to stigmatize the selfishness mani- 
 fested in the taking of excessive interest; which is, indeed, to the 
 poor debtor, many a time the cutting out of the very heart itself. 
 And hence the mighty genius has, in the name of Shylock, created 
 a synonym for usurer, and has made in the Jewish money-lender 
 the most terrible picture of greed, inhumanity and wickedness in 
 all literature. 
 
 Bacon saw the necessity for borrowing a-nd lending, and hence 
 of moderate compensation for the use of money. But he pointed 
 out, in his essay Of Usury, the great evils which resulted from the 
 practice. He contended that, if the owners of money could not lend 
 it out, they would have to employ it themselves in business ; and 
 hence, instead of the " lazy trade of usury," there would be enter- 
 prises of all kinds, and employment for labor, and increased reve- 
 nues to the kingdom. And his profound wisdom was shown in this 
 utterance : 
 
 " It [usury] bringeth the treasures of a realm or state into a 
 few hands; for the usurer being at certainties, and all others at un- 
 certainties, at the end of the game most of the money will be in his 
 box; and ever a state flourisheth most when wealth is more equally 
 spread."— r/ie Great Cryptogram. 
 
 The Comets. Man, by an inherited instinct, regards the comet 
 as a great terror and a great foe; and the heart of humanity sits 
 uneasily when one blitzes in the sky. Even to the scholar apd tfie 
 
EXWACTS AND SELECTIONS. 10" 
 
 Kcieiil 
 
 list they arc a puzzle aud a fear; they are erratic, unusual, an- 
 archieal, monstrous — something let loose, like a tiger of the heav- 
 ens, athwart an orderly, peaceful and harmonious world. They 
 may be impalpable and harmless attenuations of gas, or they may 
 be loaded with death and ruin; but in any event man cannot cou'- 
 template them without terror. —Bagnarok. 
 
 The Death of Webster. Our great men may have left us. 
 One by one, weary with the race of life, they have sought the silent 
 chambers of the dead. Now, not one bold, uncompromising front 
 is left to breast back the flood of popular excitement that may sweep 
 over this open land. 
 
 '' E'eu .AlarshfiekV.s giant oak. whose stormy brow- 
 Oft turned the ocean-tempest from the west, 
 Lies on the shore he guarded long — and now 
 Our startled eagle knows not where to rest."' 
 Yet how urgent is the necessity for great men. We are near the 
 most dangerous era of our country's history. Two hundred years 
 of unshaken and unweakened existence would render the union of 
 these States holy; would hedge it in with sancity, and solicit all the 
 reverential feelings of man in its behalf. But now, old enough to 
 expand, but yet too young to fill its destined mold, its energies are 
 running wild and purposeless. It hath become already 
 "A shape that hath no certainty of shape, 
 A shape that shape has none." 
 
 —Alumni Address, 1850. 
 
 The Negroes not Apes. ''No, no, gentlemen," I replied, 
 " do not be unfair to them: a race that could produce a Toussaint 
 rOuverture is not simian. You cannot rank a coal-black negro, 
 like Toussaint, who compelled the surrender of a French army, 
 under Brandicourt; took twenty-eight Spanish batteries in four 
 days; and, with half their force, compelled the surrender of the 
 British army, you cannot, I think, rank him with the monkeys. He 
 brought Napoleon's brother-in-law, Leclerc, to his knees, and was 
 only overcome at last by treachery. The darkest page in the his- 
 tory of the great Corsican is his treatment of that magnificent ne- 
 gro. He kidnaped him by fraud and left him to die of starvation 
 and be eaten by the rats in a French prison. If he had treated a 
 white man in that manner, the whole world would have risen up to 
 
166 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 denounce liim; but Toussaint's dusky skin justified everything.''— 
 Doctor Huguet. 
 
 THE TYRANNY OF CORPORATIONS. 
 The men of 1776 did not shake off the tyranny of G-eorge III. to 
 leave their descendants under a worse tyranny —the tyranny of 
 corporations — the tyranny of money. 
 
 " Shall we who struck the lion down 
 Pay the wolf homage 1 " 
 
 Our ancestors fled from their native lands to escape the despotism 
 of hereditary lords, whose pretensions were sanctified by the tradi- 
 tions of centuries. Shall we submit to the tyranny of shoddy lords, 
 petroleum aristocrats, men of yesterday, who from their palace cars 
 and mills look down upon the multitude as ^' hewers of wood and 
 drawers of water " 'i 
 
 Our nation was born of a fight about a stamp act and a tea-tax; 
 shall it quietly submit to the doctrine that the creations of our own 
 legislation, the railroad corporations, have " vested rights " to tax 
 our industry to the limits of their discretion; to reduce us if they 
 will to a peasantry; to send us back to the era of spinning-wheels and 
 wooden shoes, and that we have no remedy from this absolute des- 
 potism save revolution or emigrsition^. —Speech to Grangers, 1873. 
 
 The Spirit World. For instance, he added, there might be 
 right here, in this very hall, the houses and work-shops and mar- 
 kets of a multitude of beings, who swarmed about us, but of such ex- 
 treme tenuity that they pass through our substance, and we through 
 theirs, without the slightest disturbance of their continuity. All 
 that we knew of Nature taught us that she is tireless in the prodi- 
 gality of her creative force, and boundless in the diversity of her 
 workmanship ; and we now knew that what the ancients called spirit 
 is simply an attenuated condition of matter. — Ccesar^s Column. 
 
 Liberty and Equality. Our nation is based upon the hberty 
 and equahty of all men. What do liberty and equality mean ? 
 Simply, justice. Liberty assures us that no higher power shall 
 oppress us, and so deprive us of our just rights; equality, that at 
 the polling-place, in the law court and in the legislative hall we 
 shall have exactly the same rights as our fellow-men. How little 
 and how plain a thing is this, and yet it has assured the growth 
 
BXTBACTS AKD ^EL:^CTI0NS. ir>7 
 
 and happinoss of a migbly nation '. And througli what seas of bat- 
 tle and blood has mankind waded to reach these few simple prin- 
 ciples f — Memorial Address, 1884. 
 
 A Human Shark. This was Lawyer Buryhill. We all have 
 our instincts, and mine warned me against this man from the very 
 first. And yet he was not ill-lo.oking. He was a medium-sized 
 man, of dark complexion, active in his motions and pleasant in his 
 manners; but there was a look out of his furtive, rapidly-rolhug 
 black eyes, as if they would grasp everything they encountered — a 
 greedy, cruel look. And his hair stood up, especially upon the mid- 
 dle line of his bead, in a way that reminded me unpleasantly of the 
 bristles I once observed on the back of a hyena in a menagerie. 
 The suavity of his mouth and the softness of his mellifluous voice 
 were strongly and promptly contradicted by the hardness and the 
 greed of his eyes, which, as from a watch-tower, looked out over 
 tlie sham of his face, and seemed to say to the observer, '' Do not be 
 deceived by these wrecker's hghts ; here is the real man. Beware 
 of the rocks. " Indeed, it always seemed to me that he regarded those 
 about him in a sort of rapacious, proprietary way, very like a man- 
 eating tiger who drools a little at the mouth as he contemplates the 
 group of unconscious Hindoos he is about to spring upon. So when 
 Buryhill looked at his fellow-man it was as if his softly working mouth 
 tasted the pleasant flavor of property. — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 The Winds. 
 The bat-like winds, 
 Dim-winged in desolation. — 1850. 
 
 The Color Line. There is a general misconception as to the 
 color of the European and American races. Europe is supposed to 
 be peopled exclusively by white men ; but in reality every shade 
 of color is represented on that continent, from the fair complexion 
 of the fairest of the Swedes to the dark-skinned inhabitants of the 
 Mediterranean coast, only a shade lighter than the Berbers, or 
 Moors, on the opposite side of that sea. Tacitus spoke of the 
 '' Black Celts," and the term, so far as complexion goes, might not 
 inappropriately be apphed to some of the Itahans, Spaniards and 
 Portuguese, while the Basques are represented as of a still darker 
 Ime. Tylor says {Anthropology, p. 67), '' On the whole, it seems 
 
168 DONNMLLIANA. 
 
 that the distinction of color, from the fairest Engiishnian to the 
 darkest African, has no hard and fast hnes, but varies gradually 
 from one tint to another." — Atlantis. 
 
 The Clergymen of the Twentieth Century. The audi- 
 ence were evidently keenly intellectual and highly educated, and 
 they listened with great attention to this discourse. In fact, I began 
 to perceive that the office of preacher has only survived, in this 
 material age, on condition that the priest shall gather up, during 
 the week, from the literary and scientific publications of the whole 
 world, the gems of current thought and information, digest them 
 carefully, and pour them forth, in attractive form, for their delec- 
 tation on Sunday. As a sort of oratorical and poetical reviewer, 
 essayist and rhapsodist, the parson and his church had survived 
 the decadence of religion. — Gcesafs Column. 
 
 THE STORY OF THE GRANITE. 
 
 And even here we stumble over a still more tremendous fact : 
 
 It has been supposed that the primeval granite was the molten 
 crust of the original glowing ball of the earth, when it first hardened 
 as it cooled. 
 
 But, lo ! the microscope (so Professor Winchell tells us) reveals 
 that this very granite, this foundation of all our rocks, this ancient 
 globe-crust, is itself made up of sedimentary rocks, which were 
 melted, fused and run together in some awful conflagration which 
 wiped out all life on the planet. 
 
 Beyond the granite, then, there were seas and shores, winds and 
 rains, rivers and sediment gathered into the waters to form the rocks 
 melted up in this granite; there were countless ages; possibly there 
 were animals and man; but all melted and consumed together. 
 Was this, too, the result of a comet visitation ? 
 
 Who shall tell the age of this old earth ? Who shall count the 
 ebbs and flows of eternity"? Who shall say how often this planet 
 has been developed up to the highest forms of life, and how often 
 all this has been obliterated in universal ^re'^^Eagnarok. 
 
 The Illusions of Love. I received a cordial invitation from 
 the Colonel to visit the Ruddiman mansion ; and I accompanied my 
 beloved in the stage which bore her to the parental roof. It was a 
 hot and dusty ride, over a country parched by the excessive heat of 
 
EXmACrs AX J) SELECTIONS. \m 
 
 the seiisoD; but such is the chanu of love that, as I l(Kjk back upon 
 it, it seems to me that I rode through the valleys of the Hesperides, 
 fanned by cooling breezes from the Holy Mountains, the whole 
 landscape ablaze with many-hued flowers and foliage.^- Doctor 
 Huguet. 
 
 What we Call Shakespeare. Imagine a mighty spirit, such 
 as he vas who wrote these plays. A mighty spuit! Aye: for 
 what other name is fitted to stand by that which we call Shake- 
 speare"? Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Dante, Moliere, Goethe — 
 giants of time they were, but they shrink into mediocrity in this 
 august presence. All of dramatic power the most wonderful; of 
 poetry the most resplendent; of art the most subtle; of philosophy 
 the most profound ; of learning the most universal ; of genius the 
 most subhme — this is Shakespeare. Increasing civilization has 
 simply enlarged our capacity to comprehend these wonderful writ- 
 ings; they dominate the race; they are taking possession of the 
 brain and blood of the wliole world. — ArticJe in North American Be- 
 vietv, June, 1887. 
 
 Diversifying your Industries. Yes; and when they have 
 by unwise legislation — by criminal legislation— built up India and 
 Russia, and ruined wheat-raising in America, they tell the farmers 
 to '' diversify their industries. " Yes, I say so, 'too. I would advise 
 them to raise wheat — and raise oats — and raise barley — and raise 
 corn — and raise h — 1. [Great laughter and applause.] — Speech in 
 the Northwestern Waterivays Convention, 1885. 
 
 Numbers. What are numbers to God? A man may have 
 more microbes in his left leg than there are stars in the universe. — 
 Journal, 1885. 
 
 A WORLD WITHOUT OPPRESSORS. 
 
 And how little it costs to make mankind happy I 
 And what do we miss in all this joyous scene ? Why, where are 
 the wolves that used to prowl through the towns and cities of the 
 world that has passed away"? The slinking, sullen, bloody-mouthed 
 miscreants, who, under one crafty device or another, would spring 
 upon and tear and destroy the poor, shrieking, innocent people — 
 where are they f 
 
 Ah ! this is the difference : The government which formerly fed 
 
170 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 and housed these monsters, under cunning kennels of pei'verted 
 law, and broke open holes in the palisades of society, that they 
 might crawl through and devastate the community, now shuts up 
 every crevice through which they could enter, stops every hole of 
 opportunity, crushes down every uprising instinct of cruelty and 
 selfishness. And the wolves have disappeared, and our little world 
 is a garden of peace and beauty, musical with laughter. 
 
 And so mankind moves with linked hands through ha;^py lives 
 to happy deaths, and God smiles down upon them from His throne 
 beyond the stars.— (7<^5ar'5 Column. 
 
 The Woods of Sullivan Coui^ty, Pennsylvania. 
 
 We stumbled over the moldering trunks, 
 Half in the moss and the morass sunk; 
 And climbed the rifts in the ragged rocks, 
 
 Where the dark green laurels grew; 
 Shielding the while from our rifle-locks 
 
 The coldly scattered dew. 
 
 And we passed the white ash, lone and bare, 
 Standing a smooth, straight column there; 
 'Mid the trunks of brown and leaves of green, 
 A pillar of startling whiteness seen. 
 Many a log and branch around 
 Are broken and mixed on the mossy ground; 
 For ages and ages have passed away. 
 With their silent fall and their slow decay; 
 And rarely the foot of man hath been 
 On the paths obscure of this silent scene. 
 See how the wilderness roughens; — and here 
 Is the two-pronged track of the leaping deer ; 
 And through the brake, on the ridges there, 
 Groes the broad rough trail of the coward bear.— i55i. 
 Delia Bacon. We no longer burn men for their opinions, but 
 it is still uncomfortable, and sometimes dangerous, to run counter to 
 the universal belief of the unreasoning multitude. When Deha Bacon 
 announced her conviction, the result of great study and a life-time 
 of thought, that Francis Bacon wrote the Shakespeare Plays, all 
 society rose up in insurrection against her, and she was hounded 
 
EXTRACTS ANi) SELTJCTIONS. 171 
 
 UDct persecuted, ridiculed aud misrepreseuted, until the brain of the 
 poor woman — the best brain it was in America — gave way under 
 the inhuman pressure. And then her tormentors pointed to her 
 insanity, and have ever since continued to point to it, as conclusive 
 proof of the folly of her theory. As if there were not thousands of 
 women in the insane asylums who beheved that Shakspere wrote 
 the plays. As if insanity proved anything but physical degen- 
 eration. — Article in North American Bevieiv, June, 1887. 
 
 The Fate of the Octoroon. Abigail had many gloomy 
 moments which her mistress knew well how to interpret. The 
 seven-eighths of her blood protested against being dragged down 
 to servile life by the other eighth. She well knew what a dreadful 
 barrier of i^rejudice stood in the way of her becoming the wife of any 
 respectable white man; while she shrank, with Saxon horror, 
 against descending still lower in the social scale of marriage with 
 one of the darker stock. And yet she was fair and graceful and 
 intelligent, and fitted to make any man happy. But society had 
 placed gyves on her feet, and manacles on her hands; she could fall, 
 but she could not arise. The inextinguishable taint of the slave was 
 upon her; a taint more dreadful than leprosy ; more fearful than the 
 mark which the Lord God branded on the brow of the murderer Cain. 
 High walls of caste were built around her, and she could not see the 
 sun of hope shining into her prison-house, even at high noon. The 
 whole world was banded against her — against her, a white woman. 
 All that was bright and cultured aud beautiful in the world pointed 
 her downward to the abyss of dishonor, and with jeers and mock- 
 iugs told her that her white womanhood was fit only for degrada- 
 tion. — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 Francis Bacon. Imagine such a mighty genius as this, but 
 poor and powerless, living in little, dirty London; in petty England, 
 with its three million people, dominated by Elizabeth — 
 
 " a woman, though the phrase may seem uncivil, 
 As able and as cruel as the devil. " 
 
 Imagine how full such a brain and heart must have been : wrath, 
 revenge, sorrow, shame, pity, wisdom — and speechless. — Article in 
 North American Review, June, 1887. 
 
 The Farmer. A mind well informed, a body well covered; a 
 
172 BONNELLIANA. 
 
 stomach well fed, a heart well dh^ected, make a perfect mao ; and 
 this Minnesota of ours can give us all these as perfectly as any part 
 of the world. The farmer should be the best fed and the best in- 
 formed man on earth. He is too often the meanest fed and the 
 least intelligent. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 Its Duty. Religion should improve man's condition — not 
 merely teach him how to endure it. — Journal, 1885. 
 
 WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE. 
 
 I see no reason — in the nature of things — why women should 
 not vote as well as men. 
 
 They pay taxes and are governed by the laws. Why should 
 they not have a voice in imposing the one and making the other 'l 
 
 Woman, it is urged, is physically weaker than man. That 
 proves nothing. The right to vote is not a question of physical 
 strength. If it were, the pugilist would have more votes than the 
 philosopher. 
 
 But, it is said, women do not want to vote. The best way to 
 demonstrate that is to give them the right to refuse. 
 
 But, it is said, the exercise of the right of suffrage would unsex 
 a woman. That is the Turk's reason for keeping his wife's head 
 tied up in a towel. 
 
 The advancement of civihzation has not unsexed women by 
 freeing them from slavery. It has refined and elevated them. 
 
 But, it is said, why should vile and degraded women vote? 
 Why do vile and degraded men vote ? The good women far out- 
 number the bad, and the pure women are more numerous than the 
 pure men. The saloons are not maintained by women. 
 
 But, says one, would you have women scrambling at the poll- 
 ing-places, with tbe men ? Do they not scramble with them in the 
 street-cars, and at the post-ofiaces ? And why should they not vote, 
 as they do in Italy, by letter f 
 
 Let every election express the best sense of the whole people, 
 unbiased, unterrifled and unbought; — and especially the best sense 
 of the best and purest part of the community — the women.— 
 Journal, 1885. 
 
 Spirits. Just as there are sea-creatures that have not the 
 power to abstract the lime from the sea -water to make a shell, but 
 
EXTBACTS AND SELECTIONS. 173 
 
 remain formless pulp, so there are spiritual existences which cannot 
 gather matter around them, but remain invisible. And^ death is, 
 therefore, simply the arrestment of the power of the spirit to enforce 
 matter into its service. The error of our modern philosopheis is in 
 studying the shell and not its inhabitant. They pursue a sort of con- 
 cliology of the universe. — Journal, 1885. 
 
 Bacok's Cipher. He will give the world not only the greatest 
 dramatic and poetical compositions it has ever possessed, but he 
 will make them a cipher-work of incomprehensible industry and 
 ingenuity, weaving together, as in a majestic loom, fact, fiction, 
 history, comedy, poetry, biography, and making thereof a tapestry 
 fit to adorn the palace of the gods. — Article in North American Re- 
 view, June, 1887. 
 
 Raising Girl Babies. A writer in the Zumbrota Independent 
 is greatly exercised because some farmer in that town raises barley, 
 because, says he, the barley makes beer, and the beer makes the 
 drunk come. This gentleman must be a descendant of the man 
 who was found 
 
 '' Hanging of his cat on Monday, 
 For killing of a rat on Sunday." 
 
 A great deal of the vice and iniquity of this world is due to aban- 
 doned women — ergo (according to the Zumbrota philosopher), it is 
 a criminal thing to raise girl babies. — Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 THE EDITORS. 
 
 I don't wish to flatter you. You are no better than other men; 
 perhaps a little worse ; and yet perchance no worse than others 
 would be in your position. Mankind in the aggregate is honest — in 
 detail it is a scamp. There is more pressure put on an editor than 
 on his fellow-citizens generally. You might, perhaps, paraphrase 
 Falstafif and say: '' As I have more power than another man I have 
 more frailty." Frailty is commensurate with temptation. Let no 
 man boast until he has undergone the pressure. As Burns says : 
 
 '* "What's done we partly may compute ; 
 We know not what's resisted." 
 
 You have generally improved of late years. There is a higher 
 tone among you. 
 
 ^Yben you are able to praise a political opponent, who deserves 
 
174 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 praise, as fully and freely as you do one of your own party ; when 
 you are able to condemn one of your own friends, who is false to the 
 people, as vehemently as you do your enemies, then, indeed, will 
 the community look to you as absolute guides and leaders, and your 
 influence for good will be simply incalculable ; for you will speak, 
 like Deity, with the voice of absolute justice. — Speech to the Editors 
 of Wisconsin, 1889. 
 
 Maeeiage. But I do think that the union of man and wife 
 should be something more than a mere civil contract. Marriage is 
 not a partnership to sell dry goods — (sometimes, it is true, it is 
 principally an obligation to buy them) — or to practice medicine or 
 law together; it is, or should be, an intimate blending of two souls, 
 and natures, and lives ; and where the marriage is happy and per- 
 fect there is, undoubtedly, a growing-together, not only of spirit 
 and character, but even in the x>hysical appearance of man and 
 wife. Now, as these two souls came — we concede — ^out of heaven,, 
 it seems to me that the ceremony which thus destroys their individ-- 
 uality, and blends them into one, should have some touch and color 
 of heaven in it also.- 
 
 The Sixteenth Century. But these plays were written in 
 the sixteenth century, not in the nineteenth; in the reign of Ehza- 
 beth, not in the reign of Victoria and Grover. They were written 
 in an age when free thought and free speech led to the scaffold and 
 the stake ; when the direful odors of the flesh of burning human 
 beings filled the air, and their shrieks deafened the ears of men; 
 when the philosopher Bruno was perishing in the streets of Rome 
 and the unbehever Jett was dying in the flames of Smithfleld. — 
 Article in North American Bevietv, June, 1887. 
 
 Living on Corn Cobs. " And now we hail the arrival of boiled 
 corn-cobs on our humble table. ^'—Herald. 
 
 Aud mighty humble it must be, when you have to live on boiled 
 Gorn-cobs. It comes from publishing a Republican paper, Brother 
 Tyler ; if you had an Anti-Monopoly paper you would have ears of 
 corn, larger than your own, with corn on them.— Anti-Mo72opolist. 
 
 The Criminal Class. Behind them are dust, confusion, dead 
 bodies, hammered and beaten out of all semblance of humanity; 
 and, worse than all, the crimina] classes — fbat wretched aufl iue^^- 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 175 
 
 plicable residuum, who have uo grievance against the world except 
 their own existence — the base, the cowardly, the cruel, the sneak- 
 ing, the inhuman, the horrible I These flock hke jackals in the 
 track of lions. They rob the dead bodies; they break into houses; 
 they kill if they are resisted; they fill their pockets. Their joy is 
 unbounded. Elysium has descended upon earth for them this day. 
 Pickpockets, sneak -thieves, confidence-men, burglars, robbers, as- 
 sassins, the refuse and outpouring of grog-shops and brothels, all 
 are here. — Ccesafs Column. 
 
 Benevolence. From those to whom God has given the humane 
 spirit he expects much. His most precious gift is a benevolent 
 h^'HYt.— Journal, 1891. 
 
 The Age of Ciphers. The age of ciphers ended when the 
 age of liberty came. Despotism always begets secretiveness. To 
 speak is to die. — Article in North American Beview, June, 1887. 
 
 The Importance of Agriculture. In this country the basis 
 of everything is agriculture. We stepped into a candy shop, in St. 
 Paul, the other day, to buy some fruit. "How are times?" we 
 asked. " Well, " said the proprietor, casting a wise look, Micawber- 
 like, askance the sky, '' if these rains will only hold up so that the 
 farmers can save their wheat, we will pull through.'' Even the 
 candy shop rested on agriculture. We could not but think of the 
 indignation with which, a few years ago, our declaration was re- 
 ceived that the farms of the West were of more importance to this 
 nation than all the protected manufactures of New England. — Anti- 
 Monopolist. 
 
 FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCES. 
 
 '' Well, let us suppose," said Maximilian, "that you were not 
 immediately murdered by the men whose privileges you had de- 
 stroyed — even as the Gracchi were of old — what would you do 
 next? Men differ in every detail. Some have more industry, or 
 more strength, or more cunning, or more foresight, or more acquis- 
 itiveness than others. How are you to prevent these men from 
 becoming richer than the rest?" 
 
 " I should not try to," I said. " These differences in men are 
 fundamental, and not to.be abolished by legislation; neither are the 
 instincts you speak of in themselves injurioiis. Civilization, in tact, 
 
17G . BONNELLIANA. 
 
 reste upon them. It is only in their excess that they become de- 
 structive. It is right and wise and proper for men to accumulate 
 sufQcient wealth to maintain their age in peace, dignity and plenty, 
 and to be able to start their children into the arena of life sufficiently 
 equipped. A thousand men in a community worth $10,000, or $50,- 
 000, or even $100,000 each, may be a benefit, perhaps a blessing; 
 but one man worth fifty or one hundred millions, or, as we have 
 them now-a-days, one thousand millions, is a threat against the 
 safety and happiness of every man in the world. — G(Esafs Column. 
 
 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 At last, on the plains of Judea, in a remote province of the 
 Roman Euapire, holding very much such relation to Rome as New 
 Mexico does to-day to the United States, there rose up a being 
 who, in tbe very heyday and culmination of Roman greatness, sent 
 forth a wonderful declaration of principles to the world — not of 
 bloodshed, not of cruelty, not of conquest, but the grand doctrine 
 of universal charity, universal beuevolence and universal justice. 
 Lo ! what a great light has towered up to enlighten the darkened 
 world. And the white race, the race called dominant, are but the 
 instruments in the hand of God to carry these glorious principles to 
 the remotest regions of the world. 
 
 But these principles have had one long, dark, terrible struggle 
 from the day when they found their birth in Judea. First, they en- 
 couutered the hard, unprogressive spirit of Hebraism ; then the cruel 
 and licentious genius of the Roman people ; and then the fierce bar- 
 barians who poured in stormy hordes out of northern Europe. But 
 everywhere they triumphed over art and bigotry and barbarism and 
 cruelty, until to-day they possess the hearts of the entire white race 
 of the world with the doctrines of universal love and the brother- 
 hood of man. — Speech, 1889. 
 
 The Shakespeare :Myth. We are asked to believe that the 
 mightiest mind with which G-od ever blessed the race dwelt for 
 fifty-two years on this planet, in the midst of the busy, bustling age 
 of Elizabeth and James I., surrounded by wits, poets, philosophers, 
 pamphleteers, printers and publishers, and in contact with events 
 which affected the whole world and all history, and yet touched 
 these men and events at no point, and left not the slightest impress 
 
EXTRACTS ANV SELECTIONS. 177 
 
 on his age as an individual. It is as if a gigantic spirit had de- 
 scended from another sphere, strode unheeded throii^ii the busy 
 marts of men, dropped behind him carelessly vast and incalculable 
 works, and then, striding on, disappeared suddenly and utterly in 
 thin air. — Article in North American Bevieiv, June, 1887. 
 
 The Scarcity of Good Men. He laughed. " That is all 
 right, " he said; " good and unselfish men are so scarce in this world 
 that one cannot do too much for them. We must be careful lest, 
 
 like the dodo and the great auk, the breed becomes extinct." 
 
 Ccesar^s Colurrm. 
 
 Imperfect Lying. Josh Billings once remarked that " many 
 a man set up for a rascal who, if he had examined himself carefully, 
 would have found that God intended him for a fool." Postmaster 
 
 ■ — f of , is a case in point. He lies so glibly that 
 
 between breaths he forgets the lie he has just told ; and hence 
 there is not in his statements that artfully constructed continuity 
 of falsehood which the ingenious rogue always preserves. — TJie 
 Ant i- Monopolist. 
 
 A. T. STEWART. 
 
 In 1861 there was a rich merchant in this city, named A. T. 
 Stewart. Hundreds of thousands of men saw in the war only the 
 great questions of the Union and the abohtion of human bondage, 
 the freeing of four milhons of human beings, and the preservation 
 of the honor of the flag; and they rushed forward eager for the fray. 
 They were ready to die that the Nation and Liberty might live. 
 But while their souls were thus inflamed with great and splendid 
 emotions, and they forgot home, family, wealth, life, everything, 
 Stewart, the rich merchant, saw simply the fact that the war would 
 cut off communication between the North and the cotton-producing 
 States, and that this would result in a rise in the price of cotton 
 goods ; and so, amid the wild agitations of patriotism, the beating 
 of drums and the blaring of trumpets, he sent out his agents and 
 bought up all the cotton goods he could lay his hands on. He 
 made a million dollars, it is said, by this little piece of cunning. 
 But if all men had thought and acted as Stewart did, we should 
 have had no Union, no country, and there would be left to-day 
 neither honor nor manhood in all the world. The nation was saved 
 
178 JDONNELLIANA. 
 
 by those poor fellows who did not consider the price of cotton 
 goods in the hour of America's crucial agony. Their dust now bil- 
 lows the earth of a hundred battle-fields; but their memory will be 
 kept sweet in the hearts of men forever ! On the other hand, the 
 fortune of the great merchant, as it did no good during his life, so, 
 after his death, it descended upon an alien to his blood; while 
 even his wretched carcass was denied, by the irony of fate, rest 
 under his splendid mausoleum, and may have found its final 
 sepulchre in the stomachs of dogs ! — CcBsafs Column. 
 
 COULD A COMET STRIKE THE EARTH? 
 
 Reader, the evidence I am about to present will satisfy you, 
 not only that a comet might have struck the earth in the remote 
 past, but that the marvel is that the earth escapes collision for a 
 single century, I had almost said for a single year. 
 
 How many comets do you suppose there are within the limits of 
 the solar system (and remember that the solar system occupies but 
 an insignificant portion of universal space) ? 
 
 Half a dozen — -fifty — a hundred — you will answer. 
 
 Let us put the astronomers on the witness-stand: 
 
 Kepler affirmed that '' comets aee scatteeed theough the 
 
 HEAVENS WITH AS MUCH PEOrUSIO:N" AS FISHES IN THE OCEAN". " 
 
 Think of that ! 
 
 '* Three or four telescopic comets are now entered upon astro- 
 nomical records every year. Lalande had a list of seven hundred 
 comets that had been observed in his time. " 
 
 Arago estimated that the comets belonging to the solar system, 
 within the orbit of Neptune, numbered seventeen million five 
 hundred thousand ! 
 
 Lambert regards five hundred millions as a very moderate esti- 
 mate! . . . 
 
 But do these comets come anywhere near the orbit of the earth? 
 
 Look at the map on the preceding page, from Amedee Guille- 
 min's great work, The Heavens, and you can answer the ques- 
 tion for yourself. 
 
 Here you see the orbit of the earth overwhelmed in a complica- 
 tion of comet-orbits. The earth, here, is like a lost child in the 
 midst of a forest full of wild beasts. 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 179 
 
 And this diagram represents the orbits of only six comets out of 
 those seventeen millions or five hundred millions ! 
 
 It is a celestial game of ten-pins, with the solar system for a 
 bowling-alley, and the earth waiting for a ten-strike. 
 
 In 1832 the earth and Biela's comet, as I will show more particu- 
 larly hereafter, were both making for the same spot, moving with 
 celestial rapidity, but the comet reached the point of junction one 
 month before the earth did; and, as the comet was not polite 
 enough to wait for us to come up, this generation missed a revela- 
 tion. — Bagnarol:. 
 
 THE DEMOCRATIC COW-CATCHER. 
 
 And we must have in the constitution of human nature a con- 
 servative, an unprogressive, a hold -back party, which performs the 
 otilice of the back straps in the harness. This sentiment of conserva- 
 tism in many respects is advantageous, and it grows out of a natural 
 indisposition of the human mind to go forward. It grows out of the 
 natural disposition of the human heart to be content with what we 
 have. It is best illustrated in the case of that Greenlauder who, 
 when the captain of a whale ship was commiserating him upon his 
 ''miserable'' condition, replied, ^^ Miserable! Miserable indeed! 
 What do you call miserable? Have I not plenty of train oil, and a 
 fish bone through my nose?'^ And so there is no condition so 
 wretched but that you will find some one to defend its evils —some 
 one to hold fast to the train oil and the fish bones ! 
 
 In the constitution of mankind, in the very nature of man, there 
 must be these two parties ; and all I have to complain of in the Dem- 
 ocratic party is that they have been so slow in their movements ; in 
 fact, they have done nothing else but hold back. They have moved 
 so slowly that they have been like the trains upon the Hannibal and 
 St. Jo Railroad, during the war, where they had to put the cow- 
 catcher on the end of the back car to keep the cows from running 
 over the train. 
 
 I say this good-naturedly, simply as an admonition, for the future, 
 to my Democratic friends.— /S^eec/« at St. Paid, Minn., Jan. 8, 1869. 
 
 The Great Catastrophe. The Drift marks probably the 
 most awful convulsion and catastrophe that has ever fallen upon 
 the globe. The deposit of these continental masses of clay, sand 
 and gravel was but one of the features of the appalling event. In 
 
180 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 addition to this the earth at the same time was cleft with graat 
 cracks or fissures, which reached down through many miles of the 
 planet's crust to the central fires and released the boiling rocks im- 
 prisoned in its bosom, and these poured to the surface, as igneous, 
 intrusive, or trap-rocks. Where the great breaks were not deep 
 enough to reach the central fires, they left mighty fissures in the sur- 
 face, which, in the Scandinavian regions, are known as fiords, and 
 which constitute a striking feature of the scenery of these northern 
 lands; they are great canals— hewn, as it were, in the rock— with 
 high walls penetrating from the sea far into the interior of the land. 
 They are found in G-reat Britain, Maine, Nova Scotia, Labrador, 
 Greenland and on the western coast of North America. — Bagnaroh. 
 The Teue Kemedy. We regret to note the fact that the dan- 
 ger of labor troubles east and west seems to be on the increase. 
 This is all wrong. Violence will only be followed by repression, 
 and turbulence will be an excuse for greater injustice. The ballot- 
 box is the true remedy. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 THE WOKLD'S PROGRESS. 
 
 In our own country we present a spectacle which may well chal- 
 lenge the astonishment and admiration of the nations. Everywhere 
 growth, increase, industry, commerce, wealth, happiness. Even in 
 remote India the work of progress extends, and we see where four 
 thousand miles of railroad have been built at an expense of 440 
 miUions of dollars, advanced in subsidies by the British Government. 
 
 Turn to Egypt, which for thousands of years — from the time of 
 Cleopatra — has slept the sleep of death, and even there the awaken- 
 ing spirit of progress is present; and under the very shadow of the 
 pyramids and in sight of the tombs of the Pharaohs we find steam 
 plows of American manufacture turning up the sod, propelled by 
 steam made from coal brought from- Manchester and Newcastle. 
 
 Aye, my friends, we live in a glorious, in a wonderful age. Our 
 portion of mankind has always, since the revival of civilization in 
 Europe, moved forward. At first it progressed slowly and almost 
 imperceptibly. The movement of society was like the movement of 
 the old glaciers On the Alps— those great rivers of ice, where, to 
 mark the advance, Agassiz had to drive stakes, one in the adjacent 
 rock and one in the face of the glacier, and then watch for hours. 
 
KKTh'ACTs AM) SP^Lf^CTlONS. 181 
 
 perhaps lor days, to determine that any progrcBs had been njadc. 
 And even as the glacier in its slow but irresistible movement tore 
 and wore the breast of the rocks over which it passe'd, so this move- 
 ment toward liberty disrupted the very bosom of society. Now the 
 glacier has melted into the mighty river of human progress, broad 
 and rapid, gay with streamers, bright with white sails, bearing on 
 its bosom the wealth, the hopes, the happiness of mankind. This is 
 the river of modern civilization, moving under the impulse of Chris- 
 tianity.— ASi^^ec/^ to the Colored People of St. Paul, 1869. 
 
 The Heathen Gods. Man reasons, at first, from below up- 
 ward; from god-like men up to man-like gods ; from Caesar, the 
 soldier, to Caesar, the deity.— Magnarol: 
 
 The Progeny of Evil. As you sow, so must you reap. Evil 
 has but one child — death ! For hundreds of years you have nursed 
 and nurtured Evil. Do you complain if her monstrous progeny is 
 here now, with sword and torch? What else did you expect? Did 
 you think she would breed angels i—Coesafs Column. 
 
 The Chariot of Progress. The golden chariot of human 
 progress moves grandly down the avenue of time. It is laden with 
 flowers and fruit and laughing children; it is surrounded by the 
 revelry of delicious music; it is drawn by the tumultuous hopes of a 
 happy multitude. But its wheels are red,— red as the wheels of 
 Juggernaut,— with the blood of the milhons who, on a thousand 
 battle-fields, have vainly sought to stay its advance.— *S^eec/^ to 
 Farmers' Alliance, Feb., 1887. 
 
 The Poverty of Invention. Heaven was, in the beginning, 
 a heavenly city on earth; it is transported to the clouds; and there 
 its golden streets and sparkling palaces await the redeemed. This 
 is natural; we can only conceive of the best of the spiritual by the 
 best we know of the material ; we can imagine no musical instrument 
 in the hands of the angels superior to a harp ; no weapon better than 
 a sword for the grasp of Gabriel. This disproves not a spiritual 
 and superior state; it simply shows the poverty and paucity of our 
 poor intellectual apparatus, which, like a mirror, reflects only that 
 which is around it, and reflects it imperfectly.— J^rt^waroA'. 
 
 Crystalized. If, then, our form of government is simply 
 crystalized justice, our duty is to seek out and strike down injustice 
 
182 bONNMLLIANA. 
 
 wherever it may appear, or however specious and cunniug inay be 
 the mask with which it hides its repulsive features. — Memorial 
 Address, 1884. 
 
 The Amekican Flag. 
 
 On, stripe and star ! — On, stripe and star ! 
 
 Pointing the path of the first in war. 
 
 Where thou art seen is Victory seen ; 
 
 Where thou hast been hath glory been ; 
 
 And the mighty stars and the grand blue sea 
 
 And the red blood of triumph are met in thee. — 1853. 
 Legend and History. One hundred years ago the highest 
 faith was placed in written history, while the utmost contempt was 
 felt for all legends. Whatever had been written down was regarded 
 as certainly true ; whatever had not been written down was neces- 
 sarily false. But as time rolled on it was seen that the greater part 
 of history was simply recorded legends, while all the rest represented 
 the passions of factions, the hates of sects, or the servility and 
 venality of historians. Men perceived that the common belief of 
 antiquity, as expressed in universal tradition, was much more likely 
 to be true than the written opinions of a few prejudiced individuals, 
 — Ragnarok. 
 
 The Barefooted Christ. Why did they not listen to me? 
 Why did rich and poor alike mock me 1 If they had not done so, 
 this dreadful cup might have been averted from their lips. But it 
 would seem as if faith and civilization were incompatible. Christ 
 was only possible in a barefooted world; and the few who wore 
 shoes murdered him. What dark perversity was it in the blood of 
 the race that made it wrap itself in misery, like a garment, while all 
 nature was happy ? — Coesar^s Column. 
 
 God's Law. G-od wipes out injustice with suffering ; wrong with 
 blood ; sin with death. You can no more get beyond the reach of 
 His hand than you can escape from the planet. — Ccesar^s Column. 
 
 The Destruction of Mankind. And how did mankind come 
 to be reduced to a handful ? If men grew, in the first instance, out 
 of bestial forms, mindless and speechless, they would have propa- 
 gated and covered the world as did the bear and the wolf. But after 
 they had passed this stage, and had so far developed as to be human 
 
J^XTIUCTS AM) SKLKCTIONS. 183 
 
 in speech and brain, some cause reduced them again to a handful. 
 What was it? Something, say these legends, some fiery object, 
 some blazing beast or serpent, which appeared in the heavens, which 
 filled the world with conflagrations, and which destroyed the human 
 race, except a remnant, who saved themselves in caverns or in the 
 water; and from this seed, this handful, mankind again replenished 
 the earth, and spread gradually to all the continents and the islands 
 of the sea. — Bagnarok. 
 
 Freemen akd Slaves. The difference between freemen and 
 slaves is that the first govern themselves ; the last are governed by 
 some one else. The ballot-box, intelligentl} used, can alone save 
 the freemen from becoming slaves. Three-fourths of all the ills men 
 suffer arise from misgovernment. It follows, as a matter of course, 
 that whatever class rules the country will rule it for its own advant- 
 age. If the people rule, the people will prosper; if those who live 
 on the people rule, they will certainly grow rich at the expense of 
 the rest of the population.— Address of State Farmers^ Alliance, 1SS6. 
 
 I Political Equality Not Social Equality. Pohtical equality 
 does not imply social equahty, or physical equality, or race equahty. 
 When you go to the ballot-box to vote you find a group assembled 
 of white men, originally of different nationalities— Yankee, French, 
 German, Irish, Scotch — of different complexions, conditions, mental 
 power, education and knowledge. No two are ahke ; no two are 
 equal in any respect, and yet they all peacefully unite in expressing 
 their political preferences. The right to participate in the govern- 
 ment, in a republic, is like the right to breathe the atmosphere. 
 No man feels degraded because the air he inhales has already passed 
 through the lungs of his fellow-man, differing from him in every re- 
 spect and condition. We must all breathe to live, and we must all 
 vote if the republic is to live. Because a man votes beside me at 
 the polhug-place, it does not follow that I must take him into my 
 house, or wed him to my daughter, any more than those results fol- 
 low because w^e breathe the same air. — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 The Mississippi Valley. When 1 say the fall of Vicksburg— 
 what was it ? The opening of the Mississippi valley. And what is 
 the Mississippi valley'^ The nation; for all the rest are mere 
 suburbs.— ^Sp^^-c// at Meeting of Army of the Tennessee, Aug. 14, 1884. 
 
184 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 The Beains Take the Crop. You should, therefore, devote 
 all your leisure time and thought to the great questions of govern- 
 ment ; that is to say, to the questions which involve your own pros- 
 perity. Of what avail is it to economize and toil if some cunning 
 knave, who toils not, is to reap the fruits of your industry ? The 
 most valuable crop you can raise on the farm is brains. If the 
 brains are not inside the fence, they will be outside of it, and wher- 
 ever they are the crop goes with them. — Address of State Farmers' 
 Alliance, 1886. 
 
 The American^ Beauty. 
 
 Not the great, gaudy presence and rude charms 
 That kept, of old, contending camps in arms. 
 But delicate in figure, face and mind. 
 Formed to enchant and civilize mankind. 
 All the fine attributes of soul to move. 
 And fill the measure of fastidious love. — 1855. 
 
 What the Bied Thi:n"ks. The female bird says to herself, 
 ^' The time is propitious, and now, of my own free will, and nnder 
 the operation of my individual judgment, I will lay a nestful of eggs 
 and hatch a brood of children. " But it is unconscious that it is 
 moved by a physical necessity, which has constrained all its ances- 
 tors from the beginning of time, and which will constrain all its pos- 
 terity to the end of time ; that its will is nothing more than an 
 expression of age, development, sunlight, food, and " the skyey 
 influences. " If it were otherwise it would be in the power of a gen- 
 eration to arrest the life of a race. — Ragnarok. 
 
 Happy Nature. A whale spouted. Happy nature ! How cun- 
 ningly were the wet, sliding waves accommodated to that smooth 
 skin and those nerves which rioted in the play of the tumbling 
 waters. A school of dolphins leaped and gamboled, showing their 
 curved backs to the sun in sudden glimpses; a vast family; merry, 
 social, jocund, abandoned to happiness. The gulls flew about us as 
 if our ship was indeed a larger bird, and I thought of the poet's 
 lines wherein he describes — 
 
 " The gray gull balanced on its bow-like wings, 
 Between two black waves, seeking where to dive." 
 
 — Ccesafs Column. 
 
KXmACTtS AND SELBCTIONS. IS.') 
 
 LuxATics. A little while ago and the Greenbackers were dc- 
 nomioated " lunatics, " for demanding the remonetization of silver. 
 Who are the " lunatics " now ? Silver is partially remonetized, gold 
 has fallen, bonds have risen, and some faint glimpses of pros- 
 perity brighten the horizon. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 The True Pkinciple of Recoxstruction. The purpose of 
 government is the happiness of the people, therefore of the whole 
 people. A government cannot be half a republic and half a des- 
 potism — a republic just and equable to one class of its citizens, a 
 despotism cruel and destructive to another class ; it must become 
 either all despotism or all republic. If you make it all republic the 
 future is plain. All evils will correct themselves. Temporary dis- 
 orders will subside ; the path will lie wide open before every man, 
 and every step and every hour will take him farther away from error 
 and darkness. Give the right to vote and you give the right to aid 
 in making the laws ; the laws, being made by all, will be for the ben- 
 efit of all ; the improvement and advancement of each member of 
 the community will be the imj)rovement and advancement of the 
 whole community. — Speech in Congress. 
 
 The Wolfish Natures. Every honest man, who perceives 
 abuses in the world, should be a preacher, in the broad sense of the 
 word. There are, of course, wolfish natures, whose only instinct is 
 to sneak and leap and devour. To these men mercy is a mockery, 
 and humanity but another name for food. They are the cannibals 
 of civihzed life, and live upon their fellows. — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 The Prayers of the Heathei^-. Religions may perish ; the 
 name of the Deity may change with race and time and tongue; but 
 He can never despise such noble, exalted, eloquent appeals from the 
 hearts of millions of men, repeated through thousands of genera- 
 tions, as these Aztec prayers have been. Whether addressed to 
 Tezcathpoca, Zeus, Jove, Jehovah or God, they pass alike direct 
 from the heart of the creature to the heart of the Creator ; they are 
 of the threads that tie together matter and ^^uit.—Ragnarok. 
 
 Stand by jovv. Ow:n' Mex. There is another point we would urge 
 upon you : In war they employ sharpshooters to pick off" the officers. 
 If they can kill the generals, the army is half defeated. In politics 
 itis the same: they fire at the leaders. If any man is faithful to 
 
m i)OnNELLiANA. 
 
 jou he will be bitterly denounced. If he is corrupt, he will b6 
 praised by those who buy him. The moment he sells out the sharp- 
 shooters are withdrawn and the fire ceases. Be suspicious of any of 
 your own men who are praised by your enemies. — Address of State 
 Alliance, 1886. 
 
 The True Woman. Why should we not enjoy the sunshine, and 
 that glorious light, brighter than all sunshine — the love of woman f 
 For Grod alone, who made woman — the true woman — knows the 
 infinite capacities for good which He inclosed within her soul. And 
 I don't believe one bit of that orthodox story. I think Eve ate the 
 apple to obtain knowledge, and Adam devoured the core because be 
 w.as hnngrj.—Ccesafs Column. 
 
 As Accommodating Rise of Land. Why should the ice-sheet 
 move southward? Because, say the " glacialists, " the lands of the 
 northern parts of Europe and America were then elevated fifteen 
 hundred feet higher than at present, and this gave the ice a suffi- 
 cient descent. But what became of that elevation afterward? Why, 
 it went down again. It had accommodatingly performed its func- 
 tion, and then resumed its old place ! — Ragnarok. 
 
 A Question of the Future Life. Does every man, capable 
 of goodness in this world, continue to do good, with increased force, 
 forever after? — Journal, 1885. 
 
 No Substitute for Brains. If a man stands by you, stand by 
 him. In every county there are those who, by advocating your in- 
 terests, have made themselves targets for the arrows of calumny. 
 Other things being equal, these are the men for you to send to the 
 Legislature. ' Those who have ably advocated your cause before the 
 people will best advocate it in the Legislature. You want earnest, 
 honest men, and no blockheads. It is not sufficient to elect a man 
 who will vote right; he must be able to plan right, speak right, fight 
 right. There is no substitute for brains. Money needs tools. The 
 people want men. — Address of State Farmers^ Alliance, 1886. 
 
 Public Honors. I have already said that I am not naturally am- 
 bitious. The scrambles and squabbles of pubhc life have no charms 
 for me. I have no respect for that kind of honor which belongs not 
 to the man himself, but to the place he occupies, and which leaves 
 him as soon as he is sundered from the place. It seems to me to be 
 
EXTBACTS AND sELECflONS. isf 
 
 the smallest and the most unsubstantial of all human virtues. Who 
 can recall the long list of Roman consuls? And yet they were 
 mightier than kings in their day — dreaded to the uttermost limits 
 of the civilized world. But they are gone, while the memory of 
 Homer, of Plato, of Socrates is still fresh upon the tongues of men, 
 and they stand out, limned upon the background of the ages, as dis- 
 tinctly as the living men of our own era. — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 The Antlered Tree. 
 The sun, touching with its light 
 The rough black antlers of one mighty tree, 
 • Uplifted, 'mid green leaves. — m-^i. 
 A Tessellated Pavement. If we were to find, under the 
 dehris of Pompeii, a grand tessellated pavement, representing one 
 of the scenes of the Iliad, but shattered by an earthquake, its 
 fragments dislocated and piled one upon the top of another, it would 
 be our duty and our pleasure to seek, by following the clew of the 
 pictui-e, to rearrange the fragments so as to do justice to the great 
 design of its author; and to silence, at the same time, the cavils of 
 those who could see in its shocked and broken form nothing but a 
 subject for mirth and ridicule. In the same way, following the clew 
 afibrded by the legends of mankind and the revelations of science, 
 I shall suggest a reconstruction of this venerable and most ancient 
 work. If the reader does not accept my conclusions, he will, at 
 least, I trust, appreciate the motives with which I make the attempt. 
 — Bagnarok. 
 
 THE POWER OF GOD. 
 
 I looked into the grand depths of the stars above us; at that 
 endless procession of shining worlds; at that illimitable expanse of 
 silence. And I thought of those vast gaps and lapses of manless 
 time, when all these starry hosts unrolled and marshaled themselves 
 before the attentive eyes of God, and it had not yet entered into 
 His heart to create that swarming, writhing, crawhng, contentious 
 mass we call humanity. And I said to myself, " Why should a God 
 condescend to such a work as man? " 
 
 And yet, again, I felt that one grateful heart, that darted out 
 the living line of its love and adoration from this dark and per- 
 turbed earth, up to the shining throne of the Great InteUigence, 
 
188 DOy^A^J^LLlANA . 
 
 must be of inore moment aDd esteem iu the universe than milliotis 
 of tons of mountains — yea, than a wilderness of stars. For matter 
 is but the substance with which God works ; while thought, love, 
 conscience and consciousness are parts of God himself. We think, 
 therefore we are divine; we pray, therefore we are immortal. 
 
 Part of God ! The awful, the inexpressible, the incomprehensible 
 God. His terrible hand swirls, with unresting power, yonder innum- 
 erable congregation of suns in their mighty orbits, and yet stoops, 
 with tender touch, to build up the petals of the anemone, and paint 
 with rainbow hues the mealy wings of the butterfly. 
 
 I could have wept over man, but I remembered that God lives 
 beyond the stars. — Ccesar^s Column. 
 
 THE SILVER QUESTION SUMMARIZED. 
 
 Besolved, That silver coin constitutes one-half the real money 
 of the world; that it has been recognized as money since the time 
 of Abraham; that it is named in the Constitution of the United 
 States as legal tender money ; that to abolish it now throughout the 
 world would be to reduce the volume of metallic money one-half, 
 thereby doubhng the purchasing power of gold and decreasing in 
 like ratio the value of all forms of property, including labor. 
 
 Besolved, That we denounce any such attempt as the result of a 
 vast European conspiracy against human nature; a scheme to 
 double the mortgage and halve the farm ; to increase the national 
 debt and decrease the power of the people to pay it; to intensify 
 the struggle for food and life among the swarming milhons, that a 
 few thousands may riot in wasteful abundance ; in short, to build 
 up that meanest and crudest of all aristocracies, a moneyed aris- 
 tocracy, at the expense of the farmer reduced to a peasant, and the 
 workman reduced to a slave. 
 
 Besolved, That we demand of the Congress of the United States 
 the coinage of silver on precisely the same terms with gold. — Ad- 
 dress of the State Farmers^ Alliance, 1886. 
 
 THE GREAT ISSUE. 
 
 The issue upon which all other issues hinge to-day is whether 
 the condition of wretchedness and poverty to which the great ma- 
 jority of mankind are condemned is or is not irremediable? Is the 
 productive capacity of the earth sufiacient to give all its children an 
 
EXTUACTS AND SELECTIONS, 189 
 
 abundance? Do the want, the sorrow and the sin with which the 
 world now reeks spring from the laws, or are they inevitable under 
 any form of government ? Can human intelligence, which is gradu- 
 ally converting all the forces of nature into servants, yet solve the 
 problem, so that every mind will be educated, every stomach filled, 
 and every back clothed, in all Christendom? 
 
 We believe these questions will yet be answered in the affirma- 
 tive, and that a republic is simply a stepping-stone to these grand 
 results. That way the march of civilization lies, and that is what 
 the spirit of Christianity means. The day will come when our pos- 
 terity will regard this age, with its swarming, sufiering, struggling, 
 starving multitudes, as little better than an organized barbarism. — 
 TJie Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 The People's Party. I say that God does not intend that this 
 august civihzation shall go down under the brutal feet of a mob of 
 plutocrats. The same Divine Power which saved us, in our infancy, 
 from the overwhelming strength of the mother country, which 
 brought victory, union, peace and reconcihation out of our terrible 
 civil war, does not intend that this nation shall be destroyed. He 
 does not intend that our producing classes shall be reduced to 
 servitude and the wheels of civilization turned backward, and old- 
 world conditions established here on the face of this new continent. 
 — Speech to Cincinnati Convention, May 20, 1891. 
 
 The Origix of the Grayel. Moreover, if the waves made 
 these great deposits, they must have picked up the material 
 composing them either from the shores of the sea or the beds of 
 streams. And when we consider the vastness of the drift-deposits, 
 extending, as they do, over continents, with a depth of hundreds of 
 feet, it would puzzle us to tell where were the sea-beaches or rivers 
 on the globe that could produce such inconceivable quantities of 
 gravel, sand and clay. The production of gravel is limited to a 
 small marge of the ocean, not usually more than a mile wide, where 
 the waves and the rocks meet. If we suppose the whole shore of 
 the ocean around the northern half of America to be piled up with 
 gravel five hundred feet thick, it would, go but a httle way to form 
 the immense deposits which stretch from the Arctic Sea to Pata- 
 g( >n i a. — Baqnarol-. 
 
190 BONNELLIANA. 
 
 Tbe Cukse of the Age. The great curse of the whole 
 system of thought which dominates and afflicts our country is, that 
 man is nothing and property everything. In the eye of legislation a 
 single bank outweighs a county. Nobody thinks it of the shghtest 
 moment that milUons suffer for want of sufiflcient food ; that hundreds 
 of thousands of energetic and worthy merchants are bankrupted ; that 
 hundreds of thousands of workmen and mechanics are turned out to 
 tramp country roads like exiles and wild beasts, starving and dan- 
 gerous; but the cry goes on, "Hard money, contraction, specie- 
 payments, " and other catch-words to tickle the ears of fools. — The 
 Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 The Beauity of the Wokld. My soul rose up on wings and 
 swam in the ether like a swallow ; and I thanked God that he had 
 given us this majestic, this surpassing world, and had placed within 
 us the dehcate sensibility and capabihty to enjoy it. In the presence 
 of such things death— annihilation — seemed to me impossible, 
 and I exclaimed aloud: 
 
 ' ' Hast thou not heard 
 That thine existence, hero on earth, is but 
 The dark and narrow section of a life 
 Which was with God long ere the sun was lit, 
 And shall he yet, when all the hold, bright stars 
 Are dark as death-dust ? " 
 
 — CcBsar^s Column. 
 
 The Way It Wokks. One man invents a swindle; he lives 
 henceforth in ease and idleness; while ten thousand men toil and 
 moil, in heat and cold, to pay the interest on his capitalized rascal- 
 ity. And when both parties die, the knave transmits his bonds and 
 stocks to his children, while the honest men leave to their posterity 
 a legacy of life-long poverty, hardship, suffering and d^^ht.— Ad- 
 dress of State Farmers^ Alliance, 18S6. 
 
 Icebergs did not Cause the Dkift. It is simply impossible 
 that the Drift was caused by icebergs. I repeat, when they floated 
 clear of the rocks, of course they would not mark them ; when the 
 water was too shallow to permit them to float at all, and so move 
 onward, of course they- would not mark them. The striations 
 could occur only when the water was just deep enough to float the 
 berg, and not deep enough to float the berg clear of the rocks; 
 and but a small part of the bottom of the sea could fulfill these 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 191 
 
 conditions. Moreover, when the waters were six thousand feet deep 
 in New England, and four thousand feet deep in Scotland, and over 
 the tops of the Rocky Mountains, where was the rest of the world, 
 and the life it contained ? — Ragnarok. 
 
 The Dark-Skinned Races. And yet many an Egyptian 
 Pharaoh had taken to his breast, and covered with his crown, beau- 
 ties that were many shades darker than the skin I looked upon. 
 Caesar, and Cicero, and Pompey, and Cato, had loved and wedded 
 women more dusky of hue than this fair creature. In the abandon 
 of our pride over the whiteness of our skin, bleached by thousands 
 of years of northern storms and ice and snow, we forget that the 
 greatest part of mankind, including all the great nations of antiquity, 
 Egyptians, Hindoos, Assyrians, Greeks and Romans, were much 
 darker than ourselves; that it is only of late years that the pale-faced 
 Goth is leading the advance of the world, and that, if we take out 
 of the accumulations of the past those arts, inventions, works and 
 thoughts derived from people as shadowy in hue as our own 
 mulattoes, there would be little left for our civilization to brag of. — 
 Doctor Huguet. 
 
 Equal Rights. The farmer's dollar is just as good as the rail- 
 road man's dollar, and the farmer, if the Declaration of Independence 
 amounts to anything, is the political equal of the railroad-builder. 
 When the farmer's dollar and the railroad man's dollar bear the 
 same rate of interest, this will really be a country of free and equal 
 people. Now the farmer's dollar pays httle or no interest, while the 
 railroad-builder collects a high rate of interest on his dollar, and an 
 equally high rate of interest on two or three other dollars which he 
 never owned, and the farmer pays it all. — Address of State Farmers^ 
 Alliance, 1886. 
 
 CESAR'S HEAD. 
 
 *' My God," said Max, '^ it is Caesar's head!" 
 
 I looked, and there, sure enough, upon the top of the long pole I 
 had before noticed, was the head of the redoubtable giant. It 
 stood out as if it had been painted in gory characters by the light 
 of the burning house upon that background of darkness. I could 
 see the glazed and dusty eyes, the protruding tongue, the great 
 lower jaw hanging down in hideous fashion, and from the thick, bull- 
 like neck were suspended huge gouts of dried and blackened blood. 
 
192 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 ^' It is the first iu-stinct of such mobs," said Max, quietly, '' to 
 suspect their leaders and slay them. They killed Caesar, aud then 
 came after me. . When they saw the air-ship they were confirmed 
 in their suspicions; they believe that I am carrying away their 
 treasure." 
 
 I could not turn my eyes from that ferocious head. It fascinated 
 me. It waved and reeled with the surging of the mob. It seemed 
 to me to be executing a hideous dance in mid-air, in the midst of 
 that terrible^cene; it floated over it like a presiding demon. The 
 protruding tongue leered at the blazing house and the unspeakable 
 horrors of that assemblage, lit up, as it was, in all its awful features, 
 by the towering conflagration. — Ccesar^s Column. 
 
 THE FALL OF MAN. 
 
 How petty, how almost insignificant, how schoolboy-like are 
 our historians, with their little rolls of parchment under their arms, 
 containing their lists of Enghsh, Roman, Egyptian and Assyrian 
 kings and queens, in the presence of such stupendous facts as these ! 
 
 Good reader, your mind shrinks back from such conceptions, of 
 course. But can you escape the facts by shrinking back? Are 
 they not there? Are they not all of a piece — Job, Ovid, Eama, 
 Ragnarok, Genesis, the Aztec legends; the engraved ivory tablets 
 of the caves, the pottery, the carved figures of pre- glacial Europe, 
 the pottery-strata of Louisiana under the Drift, the copper and iron 
 implements, the brick pavements and cisterns, and this coin, dragged 
 up from a well-hole in Illinois? 
 
 And what do they af&rm ? 
 
 That this catastrophe was indeed the fall of man. 
 
 Think what a fall ! 
 
 From comfort to misery, from plowed fields to the thistles and 
 the stones, from sunny and glorious days in a stormless land to the 
 awful trials of the Drift Age ; the rains, the cold, the snow, the ice, 
 the incessant tempests, the darkness, the poverty, the coats of hides, 
 the cave-life, the cannibalism, the Stone Age. 
 
 Here was a fall m^QQ^.—Bagnaroh. 
 
 Sqtjeezikg Out a Mas', Somebody says- that Wheelock wrote 
 those Wilder letters. Shouldn't wonder ; they sound like him . If you 
 were to draw Wheelock between your finger and thumb you would 
 
EXTUA (JT>; A XD SELECTIONS. 1 93 
 
 squeeze out of him just such a pile of slang- whangiug adverbs and 
 adjectives as the foregoing, and there would be nothing left of him 
 but a small residuum of plunder and an ill-flavored skin. — The 
 Anti-3fono2)olisf. 
 
 Large Legislatures. We doubt if true economy demands the 
 reduction of the Legislature, especially the House. A small body is 
 easily bought, and it is bought always at the expense of the people, 
 who in the passage of one bill may lose enough to pay the expense 
 of running the Legislature for five years. The New England States 
 have found it safe to keep the House very large, in some cases five 
 times as large as our own. It is not so important to pass a multitude 
 of bills as to prevent the passage of those that plunder the people. — 
 The Anti-MonopoUst. 
 
 The Circus Procession. There are really but two parties in 
 this State to-day — the people and their plunderers. The only issue 
 is: Shall the people keep the fruits of their own industry, or shall 
 the thieves carry them away? The clamors of the contending 
 political parties are, too often, hke the bands and banners of a cir- 
 cus procession, which absorb the attention of the populace, and 
 draw them to the front windows, while the thieves, who accompany 
 the show, are robbing the houses from the rear. — Address of State 
 Farmers^ Alliance, 1886. 
 
 The Conservatives. God has greatly blessed us and all our 
 people. There were a few conservatives who strenuously objected 
 at first to our reforms; but we mildly suggested to them that if they 
 were not happy, and desired it, we would transfer them to the out- 
 side world, where they could enjoy the fruits of the unhallowed sys- 
 tems they praised so much. They are now the most vigorous sup- 
 porters of the new order of things. And this is one of the merits of 
 your true conservative. If you can once get him into the right 
 course he will cling to it as tenaciously as he formerly clung to the 
 wrong one. They are not naturally bad men ; their brains are sim- 
 ply Incapable of suddenly adjusting themselves to new conceptions. 
 — CcBsafs Column. 
 
 Our National Motto. The English have a motto : '' God and 
 my rights. " The motto of this country promises to become : '' God 
 and my dollars. ''—The Ant i -Monopolist. 
 
194 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 The Supply of Gold. " The amount of gold iu the world at 
 this time is estimated at seven railhons. And yet we are having an 
 awful tussle to get a few millions corralled iu our treasury for 
 resumption purposes. The world's stock of gold is only equal to a 
 block seventeen feet high, twenty-eight feet wide and fifty-six feet 
 long. " — ExcJmnge. 
 
 Think of the entire business, progress, growth and prosperity of 
 the whole human family chained to that block of gold, the size of 
 an ordinary meeting-house ! —The Ant i- Monopolist. 
 
 A Difficulty. It too often happens that the honest men are 
 impractical, and the practical men are rascals.— /Speec/^, 1884. 
 
 The Income Tax. The old G-reeks had a law that whenever 
 a man's fortune exceeded a given hmit, he was obhged to build a 
 ship, or equip a regiment, or do some other work for the state. This 
 was also the theory that underlay the income tax law, passed during 
 the war. Men of small fortunes paid nothing, while the tax was 
 increased in proportion to the individual's income — he that had 
 most paying most. Bat one of the first steps of the money-power 
 was to abohsh this law, and thus iucrease the burdens of the poorer 
 and middle classes.— T/^e Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 The True Conservative. The Rev. Sydney Smith once said 
 that there was a kind of men into whom you could not introduce a 
 new idea without a surgical operation. He might have added that 
 when you had once forced an idea into the head of such a man, you 
 could not deliver him of it without instruments. — Bagnarok. 
 
 A Spasmodic and Suspicious Outburst. Sir, I beheve it to 
 be one of the spasmodic outbursts of the gentleman [Elihu Wash- 
 burne] which we have witnessed here, Congress after Congress. 
 Why, sir, I can look back and recall how, at the opening of almost 
 every Congress, the gentleman has risen here, and, if the word was 
 parliamentary, I would say, howled, against the railroad communi- 
 cation between New York and this city, and demanded an air-hne 
 railroad, splitting the very heavens with his outcries. Suddenly 
 there followed a dead calm, 
 
 "And silence, like a poultice, came 
 To heal the wounds of sound," 
 
 and we heard no more upon the subject until the next Congress met. 
 — From the Washlnirne Speech in Congress, Mriy ,?, 1868. 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 195 
 
 The Claws. The capacity to do evil is rarely united with the 
 desire to do good. God gives the claws to the beasts.— Speech, 1884- 
 
 The Arabs. But, after a time, we catch sight of the blue and 
 laughing waters of the Mediterranean, with its pleasant, bosky 
 islands. This is gone, and in a little while the yellow sands of the 
 great desert stretch beneath us, and extend ahead of us, far as the 
 eye can reach. We pass a toiling caravan, with its awkward, shuf- 
 fling, patient camels, and its dark attendants. They have heard 
 nothing, in these solitudes, of the convulsions that rend the world. 
 They pray to Allah and Mahomet, and are happy. The hot, blue, 
 cloudless sky rises in a great dome above their heads; their food is 
 scant and rude, but in their brains there burn not those wild fevers 
 of ambition which have driven mankind to such frenzies and hor- 
 rors. They live and die as their ancestors did, ten thousand years 
 ago— unchangeable as the stars above their heads; and these are 
 even as they shone clear and bright when the Chaldean shepherds 
 first studied the outlines of the constellations and marked the path- 
 ways of the wandering planets. — Ccesafs Column. 
 
 THE BOOK OF JOB. 
 
 And so, stumbhng through these texts, falling over mistransla- 
 tions and misconceptions, pushing aside the accumulated dust of 
 centuried errors, we lay our hands upon a fossil that lived and 
 breathed when time \\;as new : we are carried back to ages not only 
 before the flood, but to ages that were old when the flood came upon 
 tlie earth. 
 
 Here Job lives once more; the fossil breathes and palpitates 
 — hidden from the fire of heaven, deep in his cavern. Covered witli 
 bruises and burns from the foiling debris of the comet, surrounded 
 by his trembling fellow-refugees, while chaos rules without and liope 
 has fled the earth, we hear Job, bold, defiant, unshrinking, pourin-- 
 forth the protest of the human heart against the cruelty of nature; 
 appealing from God's awful deed to the sense of God's eternal 
 justice. 
 
 We go out and look at the gravel -heap— worn, rounded, ancient, 
 but silent, the stones he before us. They have no voice. Wo \wv\\ 
 to this volume, and here is their voice, here is their story; here avo 
 have the very thoughts men thought — men like ourselves, hut 
 
196 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 sorely tried — when that gravel was falling upon a desolated world. 
 
 And all this buried, unrecognized, in the sacred book of a race 
 and a TQligion.—Itagnarok. 
 
 The Union Pacific Railroad — A Statesman Described. 
 But he says I voted for this because I held an annual pass over 
 the road. Ah! Mr. Speaker, this is almost too much for human con- 
 tempt to reach. An annual pass upon a road that I have never 
 seen ; over which I have never traveled a mile ; over which I do not 
 expect to travel until that great day when a line of railroad commu- 
 nication shall extend unbroken from New York to San Francisco! 
 On that day, standing on the Pacific coast, in sight of the Golden 
 Gate, looking back over that mighty work, wedding in everlasting 
 marriage the mightiest oceans of the globe, spanning the continent 
 as God's great bow of promise spans the heavens, the glory of our 
 nation, the marvel of our age, it will then, Mr. Speaker, be a conso- 
 lation to know that that mighty work has been resisted and opposed 
 by every blatant, loud-voiced, big-chested, small-headed, bitter- 
 heavted demagogue in all this land. — The Washburne Speech in 
 Congress, May 2, 1868. 
 
 What a Eepublic Means. And what does this form of gov- 
 ernment mean? This: — the advancement of mankind; the lifting 
 up of the masses; absolute justice in the laws; and the wiping out 
 of all impediments that may hinder the progress of the people. — 
 Memorial Address, 1884. 
 
 Sound Advice. If you would lose your friend, make him your 
 creditor. — Journal, 1885. 
 
 THE NORTH AND SOUTH COMPARED. 
 
 It must be admitted that our people are a big-hearted, hospitable 
 race, who can never do too much for those they respect or love, or, 
 I might add, too little for those they dislike. Their loves and hates 
 partake of the heat of their summer suns ; all their opinions are 
 convictions ; all their feelings passions. But the strong sense of 
 personal honor has survived here, while it seems to be dying out 
 under the blight of the commercial, trading spirit of the North. 
 Beyond Mason and Dixon's line politics are an individual grab for 
 profits; in the South they are devotion to ideas and theories of 
 statecraft, which may not be correct, but are always respectable 
 
EXTRACTS AM) SKLIA'TIONS. 197 
 
 from their sincerity. One of the most beautiful traits of Si)uihern 
 character is its fiery devotion to the great men of its section. The 
 South stands by them with passionate partisanship, exaggerating 
 their best qualities, and ignoring their weak ones. It honors them 
 living, and worships them dead. In the North to be a great man i.^ 
 simply to invite unsympathetic criticism of every detail of the 
 individual's career and character; to become the conspicuous target 
 for limitless abuse and insult while living, and to receive halting, 
 grudging praise when dead, with the promise of a monument which 
 is rarely built. The South regards genius with grateful eyes lifted 
 to heaven ; the North, with its nose in the air, to smell out the faults 
 of its victim. — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 England. England, the land where the Gulf-stream empties its 
 stomach. — Journal, 188.2. 
 
 Max's Power Limited. But, I said to myself, while God 
 permits man to wreck himself, he denies him the power to destroy 
 the world. The grass covers the graves ; the flowers grow in the 
 furrows of the cannon balls; the graceful foliage festoons with 
 blossoms the ruins of the prison and the torture-chamber ; and the 
 corn springs alike under the foot of the helot or the yeoman. — 
 Ccesar^s Column. 
 
 An Advice to the Clergymen. It would be a great deal 
 better if these ministers would study the questions of government 
 and finance which underlie the prosperity of the people and give 
 sound advice to their people thereon, instead of praying to God to 
 aid them. It is recorded that, when the wagoner of old found his 
 wagon stuck in the mud, he besought the god Hercules to help him 
 out, and Hercules replied by telling him to " put his own shoulder 
 to the wheel." " God helps those who help themselves. " The ca- 
 lamities of this country were not produced by the Almighty ; they are 
 the work of knaves, who have absorbed the products of the people's 
 industry into their own i30ckets by cunning laws. The remedy is to 
 suppress the knaves and repeal the laws. — The Ant i- Monopolist. 
 
 Dr. Ox's Hobby. Who shall say how often the characteristics 
 of our atmosphere have been affected by accessions from extra- 
 terrestrial sources, resulting in conflagrations or pestilences, in fail- 
 ures of cropS; and in famines? Who shall say how far great revolu- 
 
1 OS D ONNELLIA IStA . 
 
 tioDs and wars and other perturbations of humanity have been due' 
 to similar modifications'? There is a world of philosophy in that 
 curious story, "Dr. Ox's Hobby," wherein we are told how he 
 changed the mental traits of a village of Hollanders by increasing 
 the amount of oxygen in the air they breathed.-— i^a^/waroA'. 
 
 VicioiJSNESS. You may set two plants side by side in the same 
 soil — one will draw only bitterness and poison from the earth, while 
 the other will gather, froDa the same nurture, nothing but sweetness 
 and perfume. 
 
 " ' For virtue, as it never will be moved, 
 
 Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven; 
 So lust, though to a radiant angel linked, 
 Will sate itself in a celestial bed. 
 And prey on garbage.' " 
 
 — CcBsar^s Column. 
 
 Popular Ixtelligekce. Let the great work go on. Its tasks 
 are but half completed. Let it go on until ignorance is driven 
 beyond our remotest borders. This is the noblest of all human la- 
 bors. This will build deep and wide and imperishable the foimda- 
 tions of our government; this will raise up a structure that shall 
 withstand the slow canker of time and the open assaults of violence. 
 The freedom of the people resting upon the intelhgence of the peo- 
 ple! Who shall destroy a nation founded upon this rock? — Speech 
 in Congress, Feb. 1, 1866. 
 
 Speing. 
 Like a child's voice amid the deep w^oods heard, 
 When the sun browns the blushing breast of spring, 
 And the light laugh walks, 'mid the greeting vales, 
 Or peoples with its ringing chime the trees, 
 Or flings its fragment-beauties to the rocks, 
 Till they grow echoes in the crevices. — 1850. 
 
 Robberies Under Patent Laws. Take, for instance, the 
 injustice practiced on us under the patent laws. A sewing-machine 
 costs for the work and material $12. We pay $70 for it. The same 
 machines arc exported to Europe and sold for $32, after paying 
 freight across the Atlantic. I found in the Belfast News of Decem- 
 ber 4, 1872, an advertisement of the Singer sewing-machine for 
 ^6 105— about $32.50 of our money. We pay the difference of 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 109 
 
 rio.niy $40, under our i);il(Mit laws, fiir itciuo- fj,c most pat i cut (i ml 
 l/ul/ihic fools that ever pretended to a capncity for self-government. 
 AlcCormick gave evidence, in a law-suit recently, that his reapers 
 cost $37 to manufacture. We pay nearly $200 for them. The 
 threshing-machine, for which we pay $700, could, I am informed, be 
 built for $150. And so of all other implements. — Speech to Gran- 
 gers, 1873. 
 
 Our Ixxer Self. It is customary with us all to think that our 
 intellect is our self, and that we are only what we think; but there 
 are in the depths of our nature feelings, emotions, qualities of the 
 soul, with which the mere intelligence has nothing to do; and 
 which, when they rise up, like an enraged elephant from the jungle, 
 scatter all the conventionnlities of our training and all the smooth 
 and automaton-like operations of our minds to the winds. — Ccesafs 
 Column. 
 
 The Funeral of an Angel. Her tears burst forth afresh. 
 I was shocked — inexpressibly shocked. True, it was joy to know 
 she would hve; but to think of that noble instrument of grace and 
 joy and melody silenced forever ! It was hke the funeral of an 
 angel ! God, in the infinite diversity of His creation, makes so few 
 such voices —so few such marvelous adjustments of those vibrating 
 chords to the capabilities of the air and the human sense and the 
 infinite human soul that dwells behind the sense — and all to be the 
 spoil of a ruftian's knife ! — C^vsafs Column. 
 
 The Tempest. Did you ever observe the distressed look of 
 the trees assaulted by a tempest ? Their leaves are flattened down 
 like the ears of a flying rabbit. — Journal, 1884. 
 
 Sensuality. And your gospel of Love. What is it but beast- 
 liness? Like the old Greeks and Romans, and all undeveloped a?:- 
 tiquity, you deify the basest traits of the fleshly organism ; you 
 exalt an animal incident of life into the end of life. Tou drive Oa"- 
 of the lofty temples of the soul the noble and pure aspirations, the 
 great charities, the divine thoughts, which should float there forever 
 on the pinions of angels; and you cover the floor of the temple 
 with crawling creatures, toads, lizards, vipers — groveling instincts, 
 base appetites, leprous sensualities, that befoul the walls of the 
 house with their snail-hke markings^ and climb, and climb, until 
 
200 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 they look out of the very windows of the soul with such repellant 
 and brutish eyes that real love withers and shrinks at the sight, 
 and dies like a blasted flower. — GcBsar^s Column. 
 
 The Epitok's Legs. Hy B 's legs are so long that when- 
 ever he approaches a subject he puts his foot in it. — The Anti- 
 Monopolist. 
 
 The Nohthmen. And I said to myself: " This is the stuff of 
 which was formed the masterful race which overran the world under 
 the names of a dozen different peoples. Ice and snow made the 
 tough fiber, mental and physical, which the hot sun of southern 
 climes afterward melted into the viciousness of more luxurious na- 
 tions. Man is scourged into greatness by adversity, and leveled into 
 mediocrity by prosperity. This little fellow, whose groans die be- 
 tween his set teeth, has in him the blood of the Vikings." — Ccesafs 
 Cohmin. 
 
 The Conservatism of Unthinkingness. The conservatism 
 of unthinkingness is one of the potential forces of the world. It 
 lies athwart the progress of mankind like a colossal mountain-chain, 
 chilling the atmosphere on both sides of it for a thousand miles. 
 The Hannibal who would reach the eternal city of Truth, on the 
 other side of these Alps, must fight his way over ice and hew his 
 way through rocks. — Bagnarok. 
 
 RAILROAD COMPETITION. 
 
 The people have built the railroads of the West by their land 
 grants, and their traffic sustains them. They recognize the value of 
 the roads ; they are not inimical to them. But they feel that the same 
 com]oetition. should exist between railroads that exists between 
 blacksmiths, carpenters, grocers and dry-goods merchants. What 
 would the people of a town think if their merchants held a public 
 meeting to pool their i:)rofits and i)at up the price of their commodi- 
 ties fifty -per cent ? There would be a riot in that town. And yet 
 W€ sit patiently by and see, year after year, in our newspapers, re- 
 ports of great conventions of the railroad men to prevent competi- 
 tion, to pool earnings, and keep up the cost of transportation of our 
 productions. The impudence of the thing is as colossal as is the 
 injustice. Vainly, it has been said, is the snare of the fowler set in 
 
J^X TliA CTS A Nl) SELECTIONS. 20 1 
 
 the^igiit of the bird; but here the fowler calls the attention of the 
 bird to his little game, and the bird is rather pleased with it. 
 
 We are entitled to competition. If one railroad can carry cheaper 
 than another we are entitled to that lower rate, on our wheat, and 
 corn, and pork, and dry goods, and groceries. It means higher prices 
 for our commodities and lower prices for what we buy; it means 
 more money in our pockets; more wealth in our community ; more 
 l)rosperity for farmer, merchant and artisan ; more home comfort 
 and a higher civilization. — Speech at Glencoe, 1887. 
 
 FIRING JACKASSES. 
 
 In the C'ongressioual campaign of 1884, Governor Donnelly's 
 opponents brought a number of efficient speakers into the field 
 against him, and at last William G. Le Due " took the stump, " and 
 denounced Governor Donnelly savagely. He was a very poor speaker, 
 however, and every speech he made helped the man he was attack- 
 ing. When Governor Donnelly came to reply, before an immense 
 meeting in Hastings, where Le Due lived, he told this story, and 
 the effect was such that the oiDpositiou withdrew Le Due from the 
 contest. Le Due never had an opportunity to retaliate until he 
 took the stand, as a witness in the great libel suit, and revengefully 
 tried to swear away Governor Donnelly's character. 
 
 " Fellow citizens," said Governor Donnelly, "Major Strait has 
 got some able advocates in the field, but, not satisfied with these, he 
 has unlimbered Le Due, who is now exploding all over this district. I 
 feel a good deal as the Indian did in one of our frontier wars. 
 
 " A party of our soldiers were traveling through an Indian coun- 
 try. They broke one of the wheels of the carriage of a small field-piece. 
 Not wishing to lose their cannon, the officer in command strapped it 
 on the back of a mule. While camping at noon, on a little hill, they 
 were surrounded and attacked by an overwhelming force of Indians. 
 The issue appeared very doubtful, but they defended themselves 
 bravely. In the midst of the battle the captain remembered that 
 the field-piece was loaded, and he undertook to fire it off, at the sav- 
 ages, from the back of the mule; but the animal was frightened and 
 restive from the uproar and the flying bullets and the howling Indi- 
 ans, and, just as the gun went off, it wheeled around, and the load 
 was discharged over the heads of our own men. But the effect on 
 the mule was disastrous. It was standing at the time on the edge of a 
 
202 DCmKELLIA'NA: 
 
 sleep declivity, aod the rebound of the gun sent it flying and rolling' 
 down the hill; heels over head; toward the Indians. These latter took 
 to their heels and fled in the wildest panic, and never returned ; 
 and the little force of soldiers was saved. 
 
 " A year or two afterward, at a treaty-council, the captain of 
 the squad met the chief who had been in command in that attack, 
 and he asked him why they all ran away that day, when they so 
 greatly outnumbered the whites. 
 
 '' The red man drew himself up to his full stattire, struck his 
 naked breast a resounding blow, and said : 
 
 " ' Injun heap brave ! Injun heap brave ! ' 
 
 '' ^Yes, I understand that,' said the captain; ^but what did you 
 run away for ? ' 
 
 '' ^ Injun heap brave ! Injun lo 'fraid of little guns or big guns, 
 — but when white man fire whole jackasses at Injun, Injun run ! ' 
 
 "Now, fellow -citiz en s, " continued Governor Donnelly, "that 
 Indian represents my state of mind exactly. I could stand it as 
 long as they brought their great orators against me — I was ^ heap 
 "brave' — but when it comes to firing Le Due at me, I feel like with- 
 drawing from the campaign. " 
 
 The roars of laughter which followed lasted for several minutes, 
 and no politician has ever since had the temerity to put Le Due on 
 the stump in the State of Minnesota. 
 
 A QuESTioi!^ OF MouRiSTEES. " A. T. Stcwart left his widow 
 the bulk of his immense fortune. His mourners were few, but very 
 select. It is said he never gave a promissory note. " — The Citizen. 
 
 Do you mean by this that he had few mourners because he gave 
 no promissory notes ? If that is the rule, we would suggest that 
 there are some newspaper men in Minnesota who will be more pro- 
 foundly lamented, when they pass in their checks, than George 
 Washington was.— T/^e Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 The Adjustment of Values. As a corollary to these prop- 
 ositions, we decree that our Congress shall have the right to fix the 
 rate of compensation for all forms of labor, so that wages shall never 
 fall below a rate that will afford the laborer a comfortable living, 
 with a margin that will enable him to provide for his old age. It is 
 simply a question of the adjustment of values. This experiment has 
 been tried before by different countries, but it was always tried in 
 
EXTBACTS AM) sELECriONS. 203 
 
 the interest of the employers; the laborers had no voice in the mat- 
 ter; and it was the interest of the upper classes to cheapen labor; 
 and hence Muscle became a drug and Cunnvig invaluable and 
 masterful ; and the process was continued indefinitely until the 
 catastrophe came. Now labor has its own branch of our Congress, 
 and can defend its rights and explain its necessities.— (7<^.9ar'5 
 Column. 
 
 CHEAP TRANSPOKTATION IN 1873. 
 
 In 1866 it cost nineteen cents to carry a bushel of wheat from 
 Chicago to New York. 
 
 In 1873 it costs thirty -seven cents — nearly double! 
 
 Why? There are now more railroads to carry the produce and 
 more produce to be carried than in 1860. The reason is there is more 
 rohbery. 
 
 It costs twenty to twenty-five cents to carry a bushel of wheat 
 from any inland town in Minnesota to Milwaukee, say 250 miles. It 
 costs the same to carry a bushel of wheat from Milwaukee to Liver- 
 pool — 3,000 mileS; as ships go. There it is: 250 miles and 3,000 
 m\\Q^, and the cost. of transportation the same! . . . 
 
 In New York in April last there were 2,700,000 bushels of Indian 
 corn. It was worth at the market rates in New York $1,620,000. 
 How was this divided ? 
 
 The men that raised the corn got $540,000. 
 
 The men that carried the corn got $1,080,000. 
 
 Yet there are 5,525,000 persons engaged in agriculture in the 
 United States, and only 200,000 persons engaged in railroading. But 
 the 200,000 get two dollars where the five miUions get one dollar. 
 
 The farms of thirteen Western States are worth eleven billions 
 of dollars. All the railroads in the United States cost two billions. 
 Yet where the farmer gets one dollar for raising his corn the railroad 
 gets two dollars for carrying it ! — Speecli to Grangers. 
 
 Human Nature. They knew something of human nature when 
 it was written, in the old time : 
 
 " He that is despised and hath a servant is better than he that 
 honoreth himself and lack eth bread, "—/o^^mrt/, 1885. 
 
 The Oppositiox to Cheap School Books. And now the gen- 
 tle book agent counts out greenbacks in the corner, and the en- 
 lightened legislator begins to have doubts whether it is constitu- 
 
204 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 tional to force a poor man to take a school book for fifty cents when 
 his soul fairly languishes to pay $1.50 for ii.~The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 CLIMATIC CHANGES OF THE WHITE KACE. 
 
 " Is it any more strange,". I continued, " than the fact that the 
 reddish-brown Arabs, according to Burckhardt and others, have 
 become black in Africa? In fact, equatorial Africa has swallowed 
 up scores of hghter-colored races, the Abyssinians, Mandingoes, 
 Joloffs, Gallas, etc., and tnrned them all black. Why, we see the 
 same physiological effects even in this country: the people of 
 malarial regions grow darker in color than those of the colder sec- 
 tions; already, in a hundred years, there have developed marked 
 differences between the man of Maine and the man of Louisiana; 
 there is no mistaking the one for the other. Toucan even observe 
 an unlikeness between tbe Canadian and the man of the Ohio 
 valley. Some argue that the white race is slowly approximating 
 the characteristics of the red man ; this is the more marked in those 
 whose ancestors belong to the dark Iberian stock, miscalled Celtic. 
 The progress toward the Indian type is so rapid in these that one is 
 often inclined to ask, even in the North, whether a dark-skinned, 
 lank-haired, black-eyed, lantern-jawed individual, of supposed pure 
 European blood, has not a large contribution of the Indian in his 
 pedigree. It would almost seem like an ancient type gravitating 
 rapidly toward its original, when restored to the original habitat. " 
 — Doctor Iluguet. 
 
 The Purposes of Government. We declare in the preamble 
 to our constitution that " this government is intended to be merely 
 a plain and simple instrument to insure to every industrious citizen 
 not only hberty, but an educated mind, a comfortable home, an 
 abundant supply of food and clothing, and a pleasant, happy life." 
 Are not these the highest objects for which governments can exist? 
 And if government, on the old lines, did not yield these results, 
 should it not have been reformed so as to do so ? —Cmsar^s Column. 
 
 A Prophecy. But the country and its liberties will not perish. 
 As soon as events are plain and startling enough to overwhelm the 
 subtle arguments of hired newspapers and politicians, the people 
 will rise in one mighty revolution, and not only save the govern- 
 ment, but so far reform it as to make such calamities impossible in 
 
EKTUACTS AND SELECTIONS. 205 
 
 all the fiituie. Liberty may be quietly manacled, but it will not 
 perish without a world-shaking convulsion; and when that convul- 
 sion comes it will brush away all forms of oppression and injustice, 
 not only here, but in the old world.— T/^e Anti- Monopolist, 1874. 
 
 THE RENEWED EAKTH. 
 
 All this means that the fragments and remnants of humanity 
 reassemble on the plain of Ida — the plain of Vigrid — where the 
 battle was fought. They possess the works of the old civilization, 
 represented by Thor's hammer; and the day and night once more 
 return after the long midnight blackness. 
 
 And the Vala looks again upon a renewed and rejuvenated 
 world : 
 
 " She sees arise 
 
 The second time, 
 
 From the sea. the earth, 
 
 Completely green, 
 
 The cascades fall, 
 
 The eagle soars, 
 
 From lofty mounts 
 
 Pursues its prey." 
 
 It is once more the glorious, the sun-lighted world ; the world of 
 flashing seas, dancing streams, and green leaves; with the eagle, 
 high above it all, 
 
 " Batting the sunny ceiling of the glohe 
 "With his dark wings ; " 
 while 
 
 " The wild cataracts leap in glory." 
 
 What history, what poetry, what beauty, what inestimable pic- 
 tures of an infinite past have lain hidden away in these Sagas — 
 the despised heritage of all the blue-eyed, light-haired races of 
 the world ! —Bagnarok. 
 
 How THE Patent Lavts Should be Amended. Moreover, 
 they should frame an amendment to the patent laws which would 
 fix a limit of reasonable compensation for the inventor, say $100,000; 
 he should keep an account in the Patent Office of every machine sold, 
 and whenever his profits amounted to that sum, the invention should 
 be thrown open to the world. Then we might have manufactories 
 of all these implements in our towns, Instead of creating a few 
 
1>06 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 millionaires, as by the present system of robbery, we should improve 
 the condition of the milUons now engaged in agriculture, by reduc- 
 ing, by four-fifths, the cost of their implements.— /S^jeec/i to Grangers, 
 1873. 
 
 THE EFFECT OF MICROBES ON HUMAN HISTORY. 
 
 What region of the earth's surface can be compared to this high 
 table-laud of the continent of America — this water-shed — includ- 
 ing Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and the two Dakotasf Where is 
 there such fertihty ? The valley of the Nile might be stowed away 
 in one of our counties. Where is there such an atmosphere ? The 
 very breath of God, blowing fresh from the centers of creation. 
 
 The historian of the future will show that the great events of the 
 earth's history, its marches, battles, emigrations, literatures, civil- 
 izations, were all dependent on the i^resence or absence of those 
 invisible forms of life, the parents of disease, the bacteria. Rome 
 fell from malaria. The conquering hordes of the North conquered 
 because they came from a country too cold to maintain the bacilli. 
 Cast a bird's-eye view over the world and you will find that the insig- 
 nificance and imi)otence of man is in exact proportion to the abun- 
 dance of those swarmiug but invisible forms of life. You read the 
 secret of the important part that England has played in the history 
 of the world in the fact that thousands dwell every year in boat- 
 houses upon the Thames River, untouched by malaria. 
 
 Their evil influences withdrawn, there was evolved a great ■ 
 brained, big-chested, rosy-cheeked race, that has expanded to all 
 parts of the world ;. and that will maintain its supremacy in other 
 lands until the microbes destroy the results of generations of healthy 
 liviag. — Address to the Editors of Wisconsin, 1889. 
 
 The Woi^der. When one looks at the shop windows of a great 
 city, with their displays of food and clothes, money and jewelry, and 
 nothing but a pane of fragile glass between these treasures and the 
 hungry, cold, degraded, scowhng creatures who pass them by, the 
 wonder is not that there are thieves, but that there is any security at 
 all for life and property. — TJie Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 CoMPLiMENTAKY TO A MoNEY Shake:. A loug-lcgged, grasp-. 
 
 ing, grinding fellow named H , with an ice-house in his belly, 
 
 and the devil in his heart, has been pitching into us because we 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 207 
 
 thought the rights of debtors should be protected and uot abridged 
 iu these trying times. H lends money for a Connecticut insur- 
 ance company, and he would like a law to enable him to sell the 
 debtor and his family into slavery if he didn't pay up. He regards 
 us as a very bad man, and we are — from his standpoint.— T//e Anti- 
 Monopolist. 
 
 The Imagination. We are not to despise the imagination. 
 There never was yet a great thought that had not wings to it : there 
 never was yet a great mind that did not survey things from above 
 the mountain-tops. — Ragnarok. 
 
 The Ice Giants. There is no doubt that here and then were 
 developed the rude, powerful, terrible '' ice giants " of the legends, 
 out of whose ferocity, courage, vigor and irresistible energy have 
 been evolved the dominant races of the west of Europe — the land- 
 o-rasping, conquering, colonizing races;, the men of whom it was 
 said by a Roman poet, in the Viking Age : " The sea is their school 
 of war and the storm their friend; they are sea-wolves that prey on 
 the pillage of the world." They are now taking possession of the 
 glohG.— Ragnarok. 
 
 Protecting Creditors. " The old Enghsh system of impris- 
 onment for debt would doubtless be far preferable to our present 
 [bankrupt] law."— C/</ca(/o Times. 
 
 Precisely; the rights of the creditor must be protected. Would 
 it uot be better to adopt the Chinese system and permit the money- 
 lender to levy on the debtor's family and sell them ? Good-looking 
 unmarried girls would fetch a high price nowadays.— T/^e Anti- 
 Monopolist. 
 
 The Public Schools. We abohsh all private schools, except 
 the higher institutions and colleges. We believe it to be essential 
 to the peace and safety of the commonwealth that the children of 
 all the people, rich and poor, should, during the period of growth, 
 associate together. In this way, race, sectarian and caste preju- 
 dices are obliterated, and the whole community grow up together 
 as brethren. Otherwise, in a generation or two, we shall have the 
 Xieople split up into hostile factions, fenced in by doctrinal bigotries, 
 sns]Mcious of one another, and antagonizing one another in politics, 
 b'l Iness and everything else. — Cfrsar\^ Colump, 
 
208 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 The Distinguishing Characteristic of Science. The Col- 
 onel possessed a good-sized library, the result of the accumulations 
 of several generations ; and an odd conglomeration of books it was — 
 romances, histories, narratives of travel, religious works and scien- 
 tific treatises. The latter were a generation or two old, and of little 
 practical value ; for it is the peculiar and distinguishing character- 
 istic of science that every ten or twenty years its conclusions are all 
 reversed and. set aside, as ridiculous absurdities, and a new set, 
 brand-new, adopted, to be in turn east overboard, but to rule with 
 pope-like infallibility while they are accepted. — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 Man. 
 
 A point, a dot, a little something here, 
 For every gnawing, driveling, petty spite ; 
 
 The center of drawn arrows, and the sphere 
 Where wrangling passions struggle and unite. . . . 
 
 He sleeps. The spark — identity — is gone, 
 
 But the eternal restlessness ends not; 
 The usurer elements reclaim their own 
 In modes, and forms, and shapes, we know not what. 
 
 Who, had he choice, would be a thing like this? 
 
 A speck in the great universe, a mite ; 
 Nameless and placeless; that is not, yet is; 
 
 A lost, stray spark in a great world of light. — 1857. 
 
 Surprises. I have no faith in men, like Vilas, of Wisconsin, 
 who are surprises— who start up, without antecedent labor; who 
 leave a luminous streak upon the darkness of popular astonishment, 
 and burst at their culmination into showers of evanescent sparks, 
 leaving nothing behind them but a hollow shell and a bad smell. — 
 Journal, 1885. 
 
 Mistaken Theories. "I have known vast quantities of non- 
 sense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don't 
 trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare you out of 
 countenance, any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by 
 it." — Charles Dickens. 
 
 Very true, and on the other hand we have known some very 
 good people shame-faced to the last degree. This theory is a good 
 deal like that other time-honored delusion that you can master a 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 20;) 
 
 bull -dog if yoii can only catch his eye. We knew a man who tried 
 it once. He caught the dog's eye, and the dog caught the primary 
 strata underlying the seat of his pants. And the dog had the best 
 of it. — Tlie Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 Protecting Oueselves Against Ourselves. Having talcen 
 all steps necessary to protect ourselves from others, we then began 
 to devise means by which we m\gh.t protect ourselves from ourselves; 
 for the worst enemies of a people are always found in their own 
 midst, in their passions and vanities. And the most dangerous foes 
 of a nation do not advance with drums beating and colors flying, but 
 creep upon it insidiously, with the noiseless feet of a fatal malady. 
 — CcBsar^s Column. 
 
 The World Arrayed Against the Republic. Who can 
 anticipate the quarter from which the next blow will descend ? It 
 should never be forgotten that nearly all the nations of the world 
 are arrayed against us, and that the enemies of liberal principles 
 are numerous and active everywhere. While we may not fall upon 
 that " universal war of opinion " foretold by Mr. Seward, neverthe- 
 less we must expect many open and not a few insidious attacks 
 upon our life. Be assured of this, that if by neglect we leave the 
 avenues that lead to the national heart unguarded, they will swarm 
 with our enemies. — Speech in Congress, Feb. i, 1866. 
 
 THE WHEAT RING IN MINNESOTA. 
 
 Liberty means property. It means that the fruit of a man's in- 
 dustry shall not be taken from him without compensation. When he 
 is taxed he expects to receive a good government, peace, order and 
 social safety in exchange. The English revolution was in defense 
 of the rights of property against the exactions of monarchy. Our 
 own revolution of 1776 was in defense of the property rights of the 
 colonists against taxation levied in a parliament in which they had 
 no voice. Liberty means' justice; justice means the right to your 
 own. When the property of a people is taken from them by any 
 devices, without compensation, government is at fault; and the 
 party in power can be justly held responsible for it. 
 
 What is our condition ? The price of wheat in every tawn in 
 Minnesota is daily fixed by a gentleman in Minneapolis, the repre- 
 sentative of a combination of mill -owners of that city. There is no 
 
210 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 competition. If competing buyers appear they are driven off by 
 putting up the price far beyond what tfce wheat is really worth ; and 
 as soon as the outsiders withdraw the price is lowered again to the 
 old standard, or even a little lower, to cover the loss incurred in 
 driving off the competing buyers. 
 
 Artemus Ward long ago remarked that " there is a good deal of 
 human nature in a man after all." We are all made substantially 
 after the same pattern. If you, gentlemen, had the power to go 
 into the mills of Minneapolis and buy their flour at your own price, 
 would you pay more for it than it was worth ? Would you pay as 
 much as it was worth ? Why should you give six dollars a barrel 
 for flour if you could get it for five ? Why five if you could get it 
 for three ? Would you not feel, after a few days of this kind of 
 trading, that the miller ought to be very well satisfied if you gave 
 him anything? — Speech at Glencoe, 1884. 
 
 Heavenly Justice. You were blind, you were callous, you 
 were indifferent to the sorrows of your kind. The cry of the poor 
 did not touch you, and every pitiful appeal wrung from human souls, 
 every groan and sob and shriek of men and women, and the little 
 starving children — starving in body and starving in brain — rose up 
 and gathered like a great cloud around the throne of God ; and now, 
 at last, in the fullness of time, it has burst and come down upon 
 your wretched heads, a storm of thunderbolts and blood. — Ccesafs 
 Column. s 
 
 Divine Destiny. Blessed is the man who can feel that God 
 has singled him out from among his fellows, and that the divine 
 hand has shaped his destiny; and yet such men usually bear on 
 their hearts and minds a burden of life-long woe. Those whom God 
 so honors he agonizes. — Doctor Huguet. ' , 
 
 Le Due's Stock Faem. The old Grange, in Minnesota, refused 
 to have anything to do with politics; it emasculated itself; it re- 
 duced itself to the level of Le Due's stock farm, which, it was said, 
 consisted of a steer, a gelding and an Angora goat. — Speech at Her- 
 man, 1SS6. 
 
 PoMtiCAB Independence. " He hit it, that he ^nenr Sentinel 
 roati; Donnellyis/nobody's child,' and he seems to ehjoy the dis- 
 tinction. " — St. Paul Dispatch. 
 
 '^ The child is father to the man " in this case. We rotate upon 
 
EXTBACTS AND SELECTIONS. 211 
 
 our own axis and are a solar system to ourself. Better be " nobody's 
 child " than somebody's servant. The full-blooded politician walks 
 with one knee crooked, his cap in his hand and a basket on his arm 
 for scraps and dog's meat. We thank God that he didn't make us 
 after that pattern. We would rather storm a redoubt than hang 
 around the sutler's wagons.— T/^e Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 Rizzio TO Mart, Queen of Scots. 
 
 Remember, dear, remember 
 That one fond, fond heart to thee 
 Looks with the last long look of hope, 
 
 Up from its agony ; 
 That doubts and fears, and woes and strife, 
 Now at the shaking gates of hfe 
 
 Storm fearfully. 
 
 Though from the gazer's lifted glass 
 The night and all its glories pass, 
 Still, with returning eve, his eye 
 Seeks confident his star on high. 
 And smiles to see its twinkhng light 
 Shine to him through the wide, wide night. 
 
 So in this dark world of woe. 
 
 Of gloom above and grief below. 
 
 My heart looks up, looks up to thee — 
 
 Looks up and hopes perpetually. 
 
 It will not doubt, it cannot fear, 
 
 But thou, in light, wilt reappear; 
 
 And as o'er heaven that little star 
 
 Comes bright and glorious from afar. 
 
 So wilt thou come, my own, my own. 
 
 And fill all heaven with thee alone.— iSoS. 
 
 A Suggestion. Cyclones and thunder-storms are simply the 
 brutalfashion in which the electricity of the atmosphere and earth 
 is equalized. If balloons (fed by a current of gas through a flexible 
 pipe to keep them afloat, with many steel points and conducting 
 wires) were raised, say 1,000 feet, and securely anchored by cables, 
 would they not ofier a peaceful and continuous outlet for the streams 
 
212 jDONNELLIANA. 
 
 of positive and negative electricity, and thus prevent the convulsions 
 of cyclones and thunder-storms which now afflict the world?— 
 Journal^ 1885, 
 
 THE GENESIS OF A COMET. 
 
 Now, what is the genesis of a comet? How did it come to be ? 
 How was it born? 
 
 In the first place, there are many things which seem to connect 
 them with our planets. 
 
 They belong to the solar system: they revolve around the 
 sun. 
 
 Says Amedee G-uillemin : 
 
 " Comets form a part of our solar system. Like the planets, they 
 revolve about the sun, traversing with very variable velocities ex- 
 tremely elongated orbits. " 
 
 We shall see reason to believe that they contain the same kinds 
 of substances of which the planets are composed. 
 
 Their orbits seem to be reminiscences of former planetary condi- 
 tions : 
 
 " All the comets having a period not exceeding seven years 
 travel in the same direction around the sun as the planets. Among 
 comets with periods less than eighty years long, five-sixths travel in 
 the same direction as the planets." 
 
 It is agreed that this great globe of ours was at first a gaseous 
 mass ; as it cooled it condensed hke cooling steam into a liquid 
 mass; it became in time a molten globe of red-hot matter. As it 
 cooled still further, a crust or shell formed around it, like the shell 
 formed on an egg, and on this crust w^e dwell. 
 
 While the crust is still plastic it shrinks as the mass within 
 grows smaller, by further cooling, and the wrinkles so formed in the 
 crust are the depths of the ocean and the elevations of the mount- 
 ain-chains. 
 
 But as the ages go on and the process of cooling progresses, the 
 crust reaches a density when it supports itself hke a couple of great 
 arches ; it no longer wrinkles ; it no longer follows downward the 
 receding molten mass within ; mountains cease to be formed ; and 
 at length we have a red-hot ball revolving in a shell or crust, with 
 a space between the two, like the space between the dried and 
 shrunken kernel of the nut and the nut itself. 
 
Volcauoes are always found on sea-shores or on islands. Why ? 
 Through breaks in the eartli the sea- water finds its way, occasion- 
 ally, down upon the breast of the molten mass; it is at once converted 
 into gas, steam ; and as it expands it blows itself out through the 
 escape-pipe of the volcano : precisely as the gas formed by the gun- 
 powder coming in contact with the fire of the percussion-cap drives 
 the ball out before it, through the same passage by which it had 
 entered. Hence, some one has said, " No water, no volcano." 
 
 While the amount of water which so enters is small because of 
 the smallness of the cavity between the shell of the earth and the 
 molten globe within, this process is carried on upon a comparatively 
 small scale, and is a safe one for the earth. But suppose the process 
 of cooling to go on uninterruptedly until a vast space exists between 
 the crust and the core of the earth, and that some day a convulsion 
 of the surface creates a great chasm in the crust, and the ocean 
 rushes in and fills up part of the cavity; a tremendous quantity of 
 steam is formed, too great to escape by the aperture through which 
 it entered, an explosion takes place, and the crust of the earth is 
 blown into a million fragments. 
 
 The great molten ball within remains intact, though sorely torn-, 
 in its center is still the force we call gravity; the fragments of the 
 crust can not fly off into space; they are constrained to follow th". 
 master-power lodged in the ball, which now becomes the nucleus of 
 a comet, still blazing and burning, and vomiting flames, and wear- 
 ing itself away. The catastrophe has disarranged its course, but it 
 still revolves in a prolonged orbit around the sun, carrying its 
 broken debris in a long trail behind it. 
 
 This debris arranges itself in a regular order : the largest frag- 
 ments are on or nearest the head, the smaller are farther away, 
 diminishing in regular graduation, until the farthest extremity, the 
 tail, consists of sand, dust and gases. There is a continual move- 
 ment of the particles of the tail, operated upon by the attraction 
 and repulsion of the sun. The fragments collide and crash against 
 each other; by a natural law each stone places itself so that its 
 longest diameter coincides with the direction of the motion of the 
 comet ; hence, as they scrape against each other they mark each 
 other with lines or strice, lengthwise of their longest diameter. The 
 fine dust ground out by these perpetual coUisions does not go off 
 
214 TxmnELLIANA. 
 
 into space, or pack around the stones, but, still governed by the 
 attraction of the head, it falls to the rear and takes its place, like 
 the small men of a regiment, in the farther part of the tail. 
 
 Now, all this agrees with what science tells us of the constitution 
 of the clay. — Bagnarok. 
 
 The Geeat Decision, which is now Reveesed. A few years 
 ago, when we asserted that the State had the right to control and 
 regulate the railroad companies within its limits, we were denounced 
 as a lunatic or a communist. We have filled whole columns of this 
 paper with arguments to prove that either the people must control the 
 corporations or the corporations must control the people ; and that, 
 in the nature of things, a free people could not submit their i^ros- 
 perity, their possessions and their happiness to the unlimited domi- 
 nation of irresponsible railroad companies and common carriers. 
 That between the two alternatives of leaving the corporations at 
 the mercy of the people, or the people at the mercy of the corpora- 
 tions, we could not hesitate for an instant. And now comes the 
 Supreme Court of the United States and affirms our view in every 
 particular. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 What is a Demagogue? That man is the true demagogue 
 who, finding the people filled with fierce passions and the victims of 
 general errors, fans those passions and flatters those errors, and 
 thereby rides into power and wealth. But he who, in the face of 
 several thousand majority, leads the forlorn hope of a minority, and 
 talks up-hill against the preconceptions of a ijeople, may be in 
 error, but he is no demagogue. [Applause.] It is so much easier 
 to go with the current than to attempt to turn it, that all the drift- 
 wood of life, the mere carcasses of politics, that float by their own 
 rottenness and shine by their own decay, go with the flood, even 
 though it take them out to sea. It requires strength and vigor and 
 an earnest, honest purpose to buifet the tide, 
 
 " Stemming it with heart of controversy." 
 
 The dishonest man does not attempt it. — Speech at Glencoe, 1884. 
 
 Statesmanship. For good purposes and honest instincts we 
 may trust to the multitude ; but for long-sighted thoughts of phi- 
 lanthropy, of statesmanship and statecraft, we. must look to a few 
 superior intellects. It is, however, rarely that the capacity to do 
 
EKTHACTS Als'D SELECTIONS. 215 
 
 54*00(1 and the desire to do good are found united in one msin.—CcBsar^s 
 Column. 
 
 A Comfortable Creed. Mary devoured everything in this old 
 library, even to the prosiest sermons of forgotten divines, who had 
 proved conclusively, to their delighted congregations, that all the 
 human family, except a favored portion of their own little segment 
 of a creed, were hurrying, at railroad speed, to everlasting damna- 
 tion. — Doctor Hiiguet. 
 
 Great Parties. Great parties represent in their beginnings 
 great principles ; — in their old age great prejudices.— /oi«rwa^, 1883. 
 
 Necessity for Cooperation. All life is a struggle and a 
 destruction. In human society there are but two classes — the 
 victors and the victims ; those who eat and those who are eaten. If 
 the sheep would escape the wolves they must unite in measures for 
 their own defense. It would be madness for them to wait in the 
 hope that the wolves would meet some day in mass convention 
 and adopt resolutions of justice, mercy and generosity. — Speech to 
 Grangers, 1873. 
 
 Who is Free i But gentlemen seem to forget that slavery is 
 not confined to any precise condition. Every country tolerating 
 slavery has affixed to it conditions peculiar to itself. The old 
 Roman slavery was in many essentials different from the Southern 
 institution; and modern slavery has presented many dififerent 
 phases. Slavery consists in a deprivation of natural rights. A man 
 may be a slave for a term of years as fully as though he were held 
 for life; he may be a slave, when deprived of a portion of the wages 
 of his labor, as fully as if depinved of all ; he may be held down by 
 unjust laws to a degraded and defenseless condition as fully as 
 though his wrists were manacled; he may be oppressed by a con- 
 vocation of masters, called a legislature, as fully as by a single 
 master. In short, he who is not entirely free is necessarily a slave. 
 — Speech in Congress, Feb. 1, 1866. 
 
 Mostly Fools. " Douglas Station, on the St. Paul and Pacific 
 Railroad, is now the city of Donnelly. Woe to the usurer, the wheat 
 scalper or the grasshopper that tries to pitch his tent therein.''— 5^ 
 Paul Dispatch. 
 
 Thanks ! What a paradise we would make of Minnesota if we 
 had the power. But alas ! —we may apply to our beloved State the 
 
216 LONNELLIAKA. 
 
 lajiguage of Carlyle; in reference to Great Britain : — " Great Britain, '^ 
 saidCarlyle, *' contains twenty-seven million people — mostly fools. " 
 — The Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 God's JuoaMENTS. In the race of life God — who sits on the 
 judges' stand — does not reward those only who make the fastest 
 time, but all who get as much speed out of their beasts as they are 
 capable of. — Journal, 1882. 
 
 WHAT IS LIBERTY? 
 
 We have a mighty stake in the preservation of the republic. 
 Liberty is not merely a name ; the flag is not simply an ornament. 
 
 The destruction of our beautiful, peaceful, equal form of govern- 
 ment means the restoration of old-w^orld conditions. A "strong 
 government " is but another name for a despotism ; an aristocracy 
 of mone> is but an untitled nobility. Continue the evolution which 
 we have witnessed in our Eastern States for fifty years longer, and 
 the world will behold a ruling class as despotic, as arrogant, as self- 
 ish and as powerful as any in Europe, and a working and farming- 
 class as wretched and poverty-stricken and as desperate as the 
 poorest peasantry of Ireland or Russia. 
 
 What is needed to arrest this development ? A great political 
 sentiment, representing an intelligent public opinion, thoroughly 
 devoted to liberty and justice, (conscious that when justice dies, 
 liberty sickens) ; watchful against every invasion of popular rights; 
 ready to resist every aggression of that blind Sampson, Monopoly, 
 who, unrestrained, would soon pull down the pillars of the temple 
 and bury himself in the ruins. — Speech at Glencoe, 1884. 
 
 Establishing New Towns. We further decree that when 
 hereafter any towns or cities or villages are to be established, it 
 shall only be by the nation itself. Whenever one hundred::p&rspns 
 or more petition the government, expressing their desire to build a 
 town, the government shall then take possession of a sufficient tract 
 of land, paying the intrinsic, not the artificial, price therefor. It 
 shall then lay the land out in lots, and shall give the petitioners and 
 others the right to take the lots at the original cost price, provided 
 they make their homes upon them. We shut out all specula^tors. 
 No towns started in any other way shall have railroad or mail 
 facilities. — CcBsafs Column. - 
 
EXTHACTS AKlJ SELECTtOlSfS. 'Ill 
 
 G-OOD. " The residence ul" Gen. Pillow was sold at bankrupt sale 
 recently at Memphis. There was no competition in the bidding, and 
 the residence, worth probably $8,000, was bought by one gentleman 
 for twenty-six dollars, an,d the valuable library by another for eleven 
 dollars, and both presented to Mrs. Pillow." 
 
 Good ! This shows there is something noble yet in human 
 nature. In a whole city there was not to be found a single knave 
 or sharper who would take advantage of the gallant old soldier's 
 sorrows and necessities. Things like this make one think better of 
 our common humanity. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 The Co:nception of God. The bigger the mind, the more room 
 there is in it for the conception of God. You can't get that idea 
 into crevices of craniums. — Journal, 1882. 
 
 Igfora:nce in Public Me:n^. Napoleon said a blunder was 
 worse than a crime. It may be set down as an axiom that ignor- 
 ance in a public man may be as criminal as corruption, and some- 
 times ten times more destructive. — Speech at Glencoe, 1884. 
 
 Out of the Ranks. "Yes," I said, "that was hloocV^ 
 " There is as good stuff in the ranks," he replied, " as over came 
 out of them. The law of heredity is almost as unreliable as the law 
 of variation. Everything rises out of the mud, and everything goes 
 back into it." — Ccesafs Column. 
 
 THE NECESSITY FOR IMPARTIAL SUFFRAGE. 
 
 Sir, all history teaches us that man would be safer in the claws 
 pf wild beasts than in the uncontrolled custody of his fellow-men. 
 And can any man doubt that he who lives in a community and has 
 no share in the making of the laws which govern him is in the un- 
 controlled custody of those who make the lawsf The courts simply 
 interpret the laws, and what will it avail a man to appeal to the 
 courts if the laws, under every interpretation, are against him ? Set 
 a man down in the midst of a community, place the mark of Cain 
 upon his brow, declare him an outlaw, take from him every protec- 
 tion, and you at once invite everything base, sordid and abominable 
 in human nature to rise up and assail him. Is there any man within 
 the sound of my voice who thinks so highly of our common humanity 
 that he would dare trust himself in such a position for a day or for 
 an hour ? — Speech in Congress, June 7, 1867. 
 
218 t)ONNi:LLlAnA. 
 
 TRUTii Hibernating, " Ignatius Donnelly is going to assemble 
 himself in convention again. He does it every year, and the result 
 is the same — nothing; and yet he never gets discouraged. The 
 Minnesota people look on and are amused by the harmless exhibi- 
 tion. This year he will meet at Owatonna on March 29, and will 
 choose delegates to the National Grreenback Convention at Indian- 
 apolis. '' — The New York Tribune. 
 
 And is it not a cheerful sight in this degenerate age to see one 
 bold man, year after year, proclaiming the truth, even with no hope 
 of success or reward ? We are, in an humble sphere, what Horace 
 Greeley was, an educator of public opinion. Truth is a crop whose 
 seed sometimes has to hibernate through many winters. But sooner 
 or later it matures to the harvest. — The Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 Significant Facts. But this is not all. We paid direct and 
 indirect taxes to the Government of the United States from 1864 to 
 1872 to the amount of $3,402,536,432. Think of it ! Three bill- 
 ions four hundred millions to the nation, one billion and twenty- 
 three millions to the manufacturers ! The total paid in seven years, 
 $4,426,520,656; about twice the amount of our national debt! In 
 other words, we raise enough money, by direct and indirect taxes, 
 to pay the national debt twice over, and yet all we really paid of it 
 in that time was $427,396,541, or one-tenth of what was collected ! 
 
 Where did it go % Go look at the palaces down East, and then 
 come back and look at the mortgages on your own farms ! You 
 have built up the prodigious fortunes of the nabobs of your country, 
 as the slaves of the Pharaohs built up the pyramids. The rich soil 
 of the virgin West has been drained to enrich the barren rocks of 
 New England. Cunning brains have reduced honest muscles into 
 serfdom. — Speech to Grangers, 1873. 
 
 The Two Worlds. Living in one worlds of which we know 
 little, and surrounded by another, of which we know less. — Jour- 
 nal, 1887. 
 
 The Coal Monopoly. And the worst feature of this abomin- 
 able monopoly is not the enhanced price of coal to consumers, al- 
 though that is represented in many a pinched and cowering family 
 around darkened stoves, and in consequent suffering, disease and 
 death ; but the saddest feature of this reduced production of fuel is 
 starvation among the miners. These poor rden are familiar only 
 
ilXTHACTS AND SELECTIONS. 210 
 
 with their one laborious and melancholy pursuit; which they follow 
 deep down in the bowels of the earth. Surely they well earn the 
 miserable pittance which repays their day's toil. But wbat shall be 
 said of the knaves who step between the labor that produces and 
 the labor that consumes the coal, and, without adding a dollar to its 
 value, wring a vast and impoverishing tribute from both miners and 
 purchasers '^.—The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 A PRE-GLACIAL POMPEII. 
 
 Permit me to close this chapter with a suggestion : 
 
 Is there not energy enough among the archaeologists of the 
 United States to make a thorough examination of some part of the 
 deep clay deposits of Central lUinois, or of those wonderful remains 
 referred to by Mr. Curtis ? 
 
 If one came and proved that at a given point he had found indi- 
 cations of a coal-bed or a gold-mine, he would have no difficulty in 
 obtaining means enough to dig a shaft and excavate acres. Can 
 not the greed for information do one-tenth as much as the greed for 
 profit? 
 
 Who can tell what extraordinary revelations wait below the vast 
 mass of American glacial clay"^ For it must be remembered that 
 the articles already found have been discovered in the narrow holes 
 bored or dug for wells. How small is the area laid bare, by such 
 punctures in the earth, compared with the whole area of the coun- 
 try in which they are sunk! How remarkable that anything should 
 have been found under such circumstances! How probable, there- 
 fore, that the remains of man are numerous at a certain depth! 
 
 Where a coin is found we might reasonably expect to find other 
 works of copper, and all those things which would accompany the 
 civihzation of a people working in the metals and using a currency, 
 such as cities, houses, temples, etc. Of course, such things might 
 exist, and yet many shafts might be sunk without coming upon 
 any of them. But is not the attempt worth making?— i?a^war(?A;. 
 
 To Stop Political Bolting. Says a correspondent of the 
 OJiio Farmer: "At certain seasons of the year, rams are apt to 
 develop their combative propensities, and those who keep several 
 of them together often have trouble on account of their injuring each 
 other. It is well known that they always ^back-up' to get a start to 
 butt. Stop their backing up and you disconcert them entirely. To 
 do this, take a light stick (a piece of broom-handle will do)'^ about 
 
220 BOnNELlIANA. 
 
 two or two aud a half feet loDg. Sharpen one end and lash the other 
 end securely to his tail; the sharpened end will then draw harm- 
 lessly on the ground behind as long as his majesty goes straight 
 ahead about his business, but on the attempt to ' back-up ' he is 
 astonished to find an effectual brake in the rear. " 
 
 If S S had had one of those things fastened to him last 
 
 fall henever would have " gone back " on his party the way he did. 
 And as he is apt to " develop his propensity " to run for office soon 
 
 again, we would suggest to Major K that he carefully adjust a 
 
 broom-handle with a sharp point, in his rear, so that when he backs 
 up to get " a good ready," his luminous mind may be directed to 
 another train of thought. — The Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOE IN OLD ENGLAND. 
 
 From remote antiquity in England the lower classes owned 
 certain rights of common in tracts of land. Prof. Thorold Eogers 
 says : 
 
 " The arable land of the manor was generally communal, i. e., 
 each of the tenants possessed a certain number of furrows in a com- 
 mon field, the several divisions being separated by balks of un- 
 plowed ground, on which the grass was suff"ered to grow. The 
 system, which was almost universal in the thirteenth century, has 
 survived in certain districts up to living memory. '' 
 
 This able writer shows that the condition of labor steadily im- 
 proved in England up to the reign of Henry YIIL; from that period 
 it steadily declined with the recent times. He makes this remark- 
 able statement in the preface to his work : 
 
 " I have attempted to show that the pauperism and the degrada- 
 tion of the English laborer were the result of a series of acts of Par- 
 liament and acts of government, which were designed or adopted 
 tvith the express purpose of compelling the laborer to tvork at the 
 lowest rate of ivages possible, and which succeeded at last in effect- 
 ing their purpose. " 
 
 Among these acts were those giving the Courts of Quarter Ses- 
 sions the right to fix the wages of laborers ; and hence, as Prof. 
 Rogers shows, while the inflowing gold and silver of Mexico and 
 Peru were swelling the value of all forms of property in England, 
 the value of labor did not rise in proportion ; and the common 
 people fell into that awful era of poverty, wretchedness, degradation, 
 crime, and Newgate-hanging by wholesale, which mark the reigns 
 of Henry VIII. and his children.— The Great Cryptogram. 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 221 
 
 The Bigotry of Caste. But the events which preceded the 
 great war against the aristocracy in 1640, in England; the great 
 revohition of 1789, in France; and the greater civil war of 1861, in 
 America, all show how impossible it is, by any process of reasoning, 
 to induce a privileged class to peacefully yield up a single tittle of 
 its advantages. There is no bigotry so blind or intense as that of 
 caste; and long estabhshed wrongs are only to be rooted out by fire 
 and sword. And hence the future looks so black to me. The upper 
 classes might reform the world, but they will not : the lower classes 
 would, but they cannot. — Ccesar^s Column. 
 
 Forest Culture. In the treeless regions every spot of land 
 which shows a tendency to grow to brush should be carefully pro- 
 tected from fire and cattle. Such a spot is nature's hint — the 
 prophecy of a forest. Where experiments are made they should be 
 made upon such lands or those of a kindred quality. The banks of 
 lakes, streams and marshes should be taken advantage of, for there 
 the moisture in the earth will compensate in part for the dryness of 
 the atmosphere, while even the atmosphere itself is modified by the 
 proximity of any considerable body of water. The farmer should 
 plant his groves on those sides of his land from which the prevail- 
 ing winds blow, and in such form as will afford the greatest amount 
 of protection to the growing crops. The subject of forest planting 
 should be taken up by the agricultural journals and farmers' clubs 
 of the West, and premiums be given to those who do most to de- 
 velop the subject, either by essays or experiments. — Speech in Con- 
 gress, 1868. 
 
 Hard on the Bachelors. ^' There is no Mrs. Tilden. Conse- 
 quently the next President will not have a host of his wife's disrepu- 
 table relations to provide for." — St. Paul Dispatch. 
 
 That is a compliment fit for a eunuch. The man who will reach 
 old age, unmarried, in a land so full of sweet, beautiful, amiable 
 women as this America, is unfit to hold any office of honor, trust 
 or profit in the gift of the people. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 Good Advice for Christmas Time. We trust our readers 
 will remember at this time rather the blessings they enjoy than 
 their misfortunes, and will compare their condition with those below 
 them, rather tban with those above them; and will thus enter upon 
 Christmas time with bright and cheery hearts, and with good will 
 
222 BONNELLIANA. 
 
 toward all mankind. Then let them adorn their homes with ever- 
 greens, bring together family and friends, and give free vent to 
 hospitality and happiness, not forgetting the many in whose darkened 
 homes the sad specter Want sits waiting. — Tlie Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 Political Abuse. I trust the time is not far distant when all 
 ferocity will disappear from our politics, and all abuse of political 
 opponents from the daily press of our country. As we are the most 
 warlike people in the world, we can afford, therefore, to be the most 
 courteous and the most gentle. It is only the coward that is cruel ; 
 only the degraded that are abusive. As we march higher up the 
 slope of civilization the time will come when the antiquarian will 
 look back upon the fierce slanders of to-day as we now regard the 
 burning at the stake of 300 years ago — a sort of horrible com- 
 mentary upon the imperfectly developed condition ot the people. — 
 Speech, 1885. 
 
 What is Education ? It is a means to an end — the intelligent 
 action of the human faculties. He who is opposed to education is 
 opposed to the enlightenment of the people, and must necessarily be 
 their enemy; since he seeks to himself some advantage out of their 
 ignorance, and tries to obscure their judgment that he may the 
 better mislead them. It is not necessary to demonstrate the im- 
 portance of education. The common sense of mankind approves it ; 
 the success of our nation attests it ; a million happy homes in our 
 midst proclaim it. Education has here fused all nations into one ; 
 it has obliterated prejudices; it has dissolved falsehoods; it has 
 announced great truths ; it has flung open all doors ; and, thank 
 God, it has at last broken all the shackles in the land ! When the 
 Englishman described the North as a land " where every man had a 
 newspaper in his pocket," he touched at once the vital point of our 
 greatness, and the true secret of our success. — Speech in Congress, 
 Feb. 1, 1866. 
 
 MAN AND THE BIRDS. 
 
 In our intense egotism we are very apt to forget that there is 
 anything eise in the universe besides ourselves. But we look out 
 through the open window, and there, amid the green leaves, the 
 great drama Of life goes on; and the little winged particles are full 
 of love, hate, ambition, industry, selfishness, paternal affection and 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 223 
 
 a great many more of the emotions that sway our souls. Home is 
 the same to them that it is to us; public opinion has its voice among 
 them as among ourselves, and who can tell what philosophic specu- 
 lations they may have in their little heads, touching the nature of 
 things and the causes of the elemental changes? Does God give 
 to all his creatures, some recognition, however imperfect, of Bim- 
 ^qM"^.— Journal, 1885. 
 
 Absorption without Assimilation. As a physician, I knew 
 there were diseased conditions of the system when the patient con- 
 sumed very large quantities of food, and remained thin and sickly 
 in spite of it all, or perhaps because of it all. The appetite was 
 insatiable, but there was no assimilation of that which was absorbed. 
 So there are minds that read, and read, and read, and profit 
 nothing. A mass of information sweeps over the surface of the 
 brain, but nothing sticks. There are novel-readers of this kind, 
 who can remember not one thing of or about the romance they 
 read a month ago; who can scarcely keep in their recollection the 
 
 names of the characters of the novels which they are perusing. 
 
 Doctor Huguet. 
 
 Newspaper Abuse. You must not be misled by volleys of 
 newspaper abuse. All that is easily purchased; and it might 
 be said of such journals, " Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been 
 slave to thousands." The longest purse always commands such 
 Gatling guns of vituperation.— ^S^eec/i at Glencoe, 1884. 
 
 The Full Mind. It is no effort for the fountain to pour itself 
 out. So is it with the full mind. — Journal, 1883. 
 
 A Maximum of Property. I should estabhsh a maximum 
 beyond which no man could own property. I should not stop his 
 accumulations when he had reached that point, for with many men 
 accumulation is an instinct ; but I should require him to invest the 
 surplus, under the direction of a governmental board of manage- 
 ment, in great works for the benefit of the laboring classes.— C^5«r'5 
 Column. 
 
 The Profounder Religion. I shall not say that as he ad- 
 vanced in Hfe his views did not change, and that depth of philosophy 
 did not, to use his own phrase, " bring his mind about to religion, " 
 even %3 the belief in the great tenets of Christianity. Certain it is 
 
224 BONNELLIANA. 
 
 that no man ever X-)Ossessed a profounder realization of the existence 
 of God in the universe. How subhme, how unanswerable is his 
 expression : 
 
 '' I would rather believe all the fables in the Talmud and the 
 Koran than that this universal frame is without a mind ! " 
 
 Being himself a mighty spirit, he saw through " the muddy vest- 
 ure of decay " which darkly hems in ruder minds, and beheld the 
 tremendous Spirit of which he was himself, with all created things, 
 but an expression.— T/^e Great Cryptogram. 
 
 The Use of Political Pakties. Parties are well enough in 
 their way. As agglomerations of men holding the same opinions 
 and purposes, they are a necessity ; and during periods when the 
 national safety or any other great interest is at stake the partisan 
 sentiment should, perhaps, be encouraged. But in periods of peace 
 the voice of reason should be heard above the clamor of prejudice. 
 A sensible man should always hold his mind open to the appeal of 
 argument. The most ignorant man in the world is the one who is 
 incapable of a new idea, even though he may have all the learning 
 of the schools.— T/^e Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 DIYES. 
 
 Be assured of one thing — this world tends now to a deification 
 of matter. Dives says: '' The earth is firm under my feet; I own 
 my possessions down to the center of the globe and up to the 
 heavens. If fire sweeps away my houses, the insurance company 
 reimburses me ; if mobs destroy them, the government pays me; if 
 civil war comes, I can convert them into bonds and move away 
 until the storm is over; if sickness comes, I have the highest skill at 
 my call to fight it back ; if death comes, I am again insured, and my 
 estate makes money by the transaction ; and if there is another 
 world than this, still am I insured; I have taken out a policy in the 
 
 church, and pay my premiums semi-annually to the minister." 
 
 — Bagnarok. 
 
 Ai^Ti-MoNOPOLY. The Anti-Monopoly sentiment is as old as 
 constitutional government. The struggles of the people of England 
 against the monopolies of food, clothes, etc., created by the crown, 
 paved the way to the Cromwellian revolution, and laid the founda- 
 tions of free government. As long as any man, men or corporations 
 
EXTBACTS AND SELECTIONS. 225 
 
 grasp and concentrate in themselves rights and privileges at the 
 expense of many, the Anti-Monopoly sentiment is justifiable, and 
 an Anti-Monopoly party a necessity. And it is most evident that 
 during the next century the struggle in this country will he to pre- 
 vent organized capital absorbing the rights of the people. In such 
 a battle, " Anti-Monopoly" means everything; — " Democracy " is 
 a barren generaUzation. — TJie Anti- Monopolist, 1S75. 
 
 Money Scarcity. Scarcity of money strengthens the aristoc- 
 racy at the expense of the common people. Scarcity of money 
 eventuates in the destruction of free institutions, by degrading the 
 people below the standard of self-government. Its path is toward 
 feudalism for the few and barbarism for the many. It is incompati- 
 ble with progressive civilization and human freedom. — The Anti- 
 Monopolist. 
 
 Wants. What the world wants:— Clear heads, full bellies, 
 warm backs and honest hearts. — Journal, 1884. 
 
 Inherited Ideas. There are some thoughts and opinions 
 which we seem to take by inheritance; we imbibe them with our 
 mother's milk; they are in our blood; they are received insensibly 
 in childhood. — Bagnarok. 
 
 Justice and Fair Play. What do those platforms unite 
 in demanding? Simply justice and -fair play for the farmers, 
 the workingmen, — for all men. That the chances of success shall 
 not be rendered greater, bi/ law, for one man than another; 
 that one locality shall not, b?/ law, be robbed to enrich another; 
 that one man shall not pay double taxes, bt/ laiv, on his lands, that 
 another may escape ; . that the burdens and benefits of govern- 
 ment shall be, fc«/ law, shared' equally by all; that one man's 
 dollar shall not bear little or no interest, while another man col- 
 lects heavy interest on dollars that never existed ; in short, that 
 the rights of property shall never rise superior to the rights of man- 
 kind. — Speech at Caucus of Farmer Members of Legislature, Jan. 
 3, 1887. 
 
 Complimentary. " Nowhere else but in Ireland would they 
 think of celebrating Daniel O'Connell's birthday on the 5th, 6th and 
 7th of August." — Minneapolis Tribune. 
 
 It takes several days for a great man, like O'Connell, to enter the 
 world. The editor of the Tribune was born in the eighteenth part 
 
22G DONNELLIANA. 
 
 of a second, and his birthday will never be celebrated in time or 
 eternity. The day of his execution, however, may yet be remem- 
 bered by a grateful people. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 The Irish. The Irish will compare favorably in point of genius 
 with any people on the earth. Turn to England and ask her who 
 was her great general, who saved her from the army of Napoleon ? 
 Sir Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, who was not only 
 born in Ireland, but his pedigree shows that his blood was largely 
 Irish. Edmund Burke, another Irishman, and the greatest orator 
 that ever spoke the English tongue, saved English aristocracy dur- 
 ing the French revolution. Go to England to-day and ask who is 
 their foremost general ? The answer is Wolsey, an Irishman. Re- 
 turn to America and ask them who is the great general who is to- 
 day commanding the army of the United States, and they will reply 
 that it is that concentrated little thunderbolt of war, Phil. Sheridan. 
 I tell you, gentlemen, there never was a little land on earth so 
 oppressed, so downtrodden and under such unfortunate circum- 
 stances that has produced such an array of brilliant talent. — Speech 
 at Grand Forks, D. T., 1884. 
 
 A Minnesota Giel. The Chicago Times tells the following 
 story of one of our Minnesota girls : A girl in -^ — , Fillmore County, 
 dressed up and went down town the other day. She was in a hurry, 
 and threw her good clothes on rather carelessly. Her dress got 
 caught some way so it did not come down behind as far as it should, 
 leaving about two feet of white skirt exposed. This in itself would 
 have made the boys smile, but they laughed all over when they 
 observed some printed letters pn the skirt. It was made of some 
 flour sacks, and the brand hadn't become obliterated. The girl 
 waltzed around town, advertising herself as " A No. 1 first quality; 
 for family use — warranted." 
 
 Well, what of it ? If she was an average Minnesota girl she fully 
 corresponded with the brand. We have got the brightest, smartest, 
 healthiest, rosiest and most practical girls in the world ; and we 
 pity the man who would publicly deny it.— The Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 The Serfdom of the Producers. It was settled in the great 
 anti-slavery contest that one individual could not be safely left to 
 the unlimited control of another. If a few men are allowed to de- 
 termine the degree of the farmers' prosperity, by determining how 
 much they are to take from him. and how much they are to leave 
 
EXTBACTS AND SELECTIONS. 227 
 
 him, it is but another form of serfdom. The essence of slavery is 
 the robbery of the fruits of labor. All slaves are not sold on the 
 auction block. The 'negro, dancing his wild dances in the cane- 
 brakes, was a cheerful picture compared with thousands of homes in 
 this great laud, where intelligent, Christian white people sit to-day 
 eating the bread of bitter poverty, and gnawing at their own hearts 
 in sorrow, conscious that others are rioting in the fruits of their 
 to\\.— Speech at Caucus of Farmer Members of Legislature, Jan. 3. 
 1887. 
 
 Commodore Vanderbilt. Commodore Vanderbilt has given 
 nothing by his will for pubhc purposes or for charitable uses. Cold, 
 heartless, grasping, grinding, he died as he had lived, without a 
 single benevolent thought. He got a good scare as death ap- 
 proached, and sang hymns to God Almighty to save him; and talked 
 about his being " poor and needy, sad and wounded; " and yet he 
 would not leave a dollar to relieve those starving workingmen of 
 New York, who were almost crying at his door for something to eat. 
 The voice of mankind ought to cover such specimens of monu- 
 mental selfishness with universal execration. — The Anti-Monopo- 
 list. 
 
 Wise Moderation. The possession of power makes a just man 
 conservative, and he is indeed a sorry creatute who will use pubhc 
 place to wreak private revenges. — Speech at Caucus of Farmer 
 Members of Legislature, 1887. 
 
 MAN AND THE DOLLAR. 
 
 This is another illustration of the fact that all our laws are 
 made in the interest of the creditor and against the debtor. This 
 poor woman had invested $55 in a sewing-machine, while the com- 
 pany had but $10 in it ; and yet the law permits the $10 owned by 
 the creditor to wipe out the $55 owned by the debtor. In other 
 words, one dollar belonging to the macliine company outweighs five 
 dollars belonging to the seamstress. 
 
 This is neither fair nor right. It is a part of the old barbarism 
 of the feudal ages ; the creditor stands to the debtor in the same 
 relation that the baron stood to the serf. The creditor and debtor 
 should be equally protected. Instead of allowing the machine 
 company to swallow up the $5.') paid by the seamstress they should 
 
228 BONNELLIANA. 
 
 be compelled to ^ell the machine and pay her back at least all over 
 the $10 due to them. 
 
 The whole tendency of modern civihzation is to exalt the rights 
 of the dollar above the rights of man.— T/^e Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 A Word of Encouragement to the Keformers. The great 
 anti-slavery contest has passed into history : it is seen through the 
 heroic mist of time. Around the fact of emancipation cluster those 
 noble colossi, —Lincoln, Chase, Seward and Greeley, —to-day 
 honored and glorified of all men. But we can remember the dark 
 and stormy days of misrepresentation, detraction, slander and 
 hatred in which they lived and labored. But they fought against a 
 wrong a thousand miles away, — beyond a geographical, sectional 
 line. We are warring against an injustice right in our own midst, 
 whose roots penetrate into every part of the body politic. Let us 
 strive to do our duty in our day and generation, as they did in theirs. 
 — Speech at Caucus of Farmer Members of Legislature, 1877. 
 
 THE UNITED STATES UNDER GRANT. 
 
 Violence, bulldozings, whippings, arson and murder on the one 
 side ; and cunning, trickery, false -returns, perjury and carpet-bag- 
 gery on the other. 
 
 Sixty thousand of&ce-holders ready to plunge the country into 
 civil war to hold their places; and one hundred and eighty thou- 
 sand more ready to go to war to get them. 
 
 A million people so hard driven to obtain a living that they have 
 lost all courage to resist ; while millions more are below even that 
 grade, and would welcome violence as a refuge from starvation. 
 
 While over all sits a silent, grim, dangerous man, with one hand 
 on the rudder, and the other holding a lighted torch — ready to 
 beach the ship or blow her up. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 Love. Love, after all, is simply a primal instinct imposed on hu- 
 manity for the perpetuation of the race. We are all automata. Civil- 
 ized man submits love to the supervision of his judgment, and there 
 can be no permanent love where the natural physical affinity is not 
 supplemented by the approval of a trained and cultured intelligence. 
 — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 The Seductions that Surround Legislators. But we 
 must not forget our constituents — even the poorest and humblest 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 220 
 
 of theiil — and we must labor to execute tbeir wishes, as we undei- 
 stood tbem on election day. We uuist try to be as earnest as tbey 
 are. A great city has its seductions and bewilderments, and a few 
 weeks sometimes creates a gulf between the weak-minded repre- 
 sentntive and those who elected him. And when a nabob takes him 
 by the arm he forgets the scattered hamlets, and feels that he is 
 himself a nabob. — Speech at Caucus of Farmer Memhers of Legisla- 
 ture, 1887. 
 
 THE COLORED RACE ON TRIAL. 
 
 Remember that there are four millions of colored people in these 
 United States, surrounded by forty millions of white people. Your 
 race is on trial in this country. On trial, I say, at the bar of 
 pubhc judgment. The eyes of the American people are upon you. 
 Eveiy step you take is marked. You cannot, any of you, degrade 
 yourselves without degrading your race? True, there is prejudice 
 in this world, but there is, also, deep in the heart of man, a some- 
 thing which God has implanted there ; it is the divine sense of 
 justice. The white people of this country watch you with varied 
 emotions and ask, what will this people do? Will they work 
 out an honorable destiny among the nations of the earth? I feel 
 confident you will. I recollect, my friends, that you are the only 
 race on this earth that ever came in close and intimate contact with 
 the white race, and did not perish before it. See how the Fhmic 
 race has disappeared from the face of Europe. Once it occupied 
 the continent ; now it is found only upon the remote capes and 
 fastnesses of the North — in broken fragments of Lapland tribes. 
 As they came in contact with the white race, they disappeared. 
 Look at the Indian of our own country. As the white man advances 
 the Indian perishes. He is rapidly becoming like the deer and the 
 bison, a thing of the past — fast disappearing from the face of the 
 earth. Why f Because he has not the civilizable characteristics 
 of the colored man. — Speech to the Colored People of St. Paul, Jan. 
 1, 1869. 
 
 The Chinese Question. China has 440,000,000 inhabitants; 
 the United States have 40,000,000. China could place two or three 
 workmen alongside of every workman in the United States, and 
 scarcely miss them from their swarming masses. The American 
 workman has to live like a civilized human being, educate hia 
 
230 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 children to perform the duties of citizens, and feed and clothe his 
 family as American republicans should be fed and clothed. The 
 Chinaman can live on twenty-five cents' worth of rice per week. He 
 has no wife, no children, no books, no newspapers, no schools. Com- 
 petition with such a laborer is simply impossible. This government 
 of ours is based on the intelligence, the virtue, the self-respect of 
 the laboring masses. If these are destroyed, then come anarchy 
 and despotism ; and individual virtue and intelligence cannot exist 
 in the midst of Idleness and starvation. It is true that this nation 
 owes hospitality to the poor and oppressed; but what would be said 
 of the man who gave the bread of his children to strangers, and 
 left his own flesh and blood to starve ? — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 The Scandinavian Legend. Rome and Greece can not par- 
 allel this marvelous story. 
 
 "The gods convene 
 On Ida's plains, 
 And talk of the powerful 
 Midgard-serpent ; 
 They call to mind 
 The Fenris-wolf 
 And the ancient runes 
 Of the mighty Odin." 
 
 What else can mankind think of, or dream of, or talk of, for the 
 next thousand years, but this awful, this unparalleled calamity 
 through which the race has passed? 
 
 A long-subsequent but most ancient and cultivated people, 
 whose memory has, for us, almost faded from the earth, will here- 
 after embalm the great drama in legends, myths, prayers, poems 
 and sagas, fragments of which are found to-day dispersed through 
 all literatures in all lands; some of them, as we shall see, having 
 found their way even into the very Bible, revered alike of Jew and 
 C hristian . — EagnaroJc. 
 
 The Powee of the Corporations. We must not underrate 
 the task before us. It is a gigantic one. Legislature after legisla- 
 ture has met the enemy and gone home beaten and baffled. And 
 as each new tempest of public opinion sent its breakers roaring 
 into these halls, it was only to waste away in froth and foam upon 
 the solid shores of corruption and cunning. — Speech at Caucus 
 of Farmer Members of Legislature, 1887. 
 
 The Fate of Atlantis. It is not surprising that when this 
 
i^XmACTS AND SELECTIONS'. 'I'M 
 
 tnighty nation sank beneath the waves, in the midst of terrible con- 
 vulsions, with all its millions of peoi^le, the event left an everlasting- 
 impression upon the imagination of mankind. Let us suppose that 
 Great Britain should to-morrow meet with a similar fate. What a 
 wild consternation would fall upon her colonies and upon the whole 
 human family ! The world might relapse into barbarism, deep and 
 almost universal. WiUiam the Conqueror, Richard Coeur de Lion, 
 Alfred the Great, Cromwell and Victoria might survive only as the 
 gods or demons of later races ; but the memory of the cataclysm in 
 which the center of a universal empire instantaneously went down 
 to death would never be forgotten ; it would survive in fragments, 
 more or less complete, in every land on earth; it would outlive the 
 memory of a thousand lesser convulsions of nature ; it would survive 
 dynasties, nations, creeds and languages; it would never be forgot- 
 ten while man continued to inhabit the face of the globe. — Atlantis. 
 A Plea for Darwin. Why should the religious world shrink 
 from the theory of evolution? To know the path by which God has 
 advanced is not to disparage God. — Bagnarok. 
 
 The Truly Great Men. It is not the men who drift with the 
 current and hurrah with the crowd who really serve the cause of 
 humanity. It is the bold men wlio are ready to fight the crowd and 
 turn back the current who alone make revolution and reformation 
 possible. — The Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 A PROPHECY MADE IN 1874. 
 
 The more the people are plundered the more contemptible they 
 will become; the more successful the corporations are, the more 
 arrogant they will grow; they will thus advance step by step, from 
 point to point, until legislatures become a mockery and newspapers 
 a farce. A struggle will then come which will either wipe out repub- 
 lican institutions in one-half the nation, or will forever prevent the 
 existence of a corporation in our midst. The States will take pos- 
 session of the road-beds and allow private parties to run trains 
 thereon as they now run steamboats on the rivers, paying only such 
 toll as will cover the interest on original cost. 
 
 In uttering these views we must not be understood as desiring 
 to produce such a convulsion. The man who foretells the approach- 
 ing hurricane does not create it. But when we see corporations^ 
 
232 DONNELLtANA. 
 
 established simply for purposes of transportation, becoming immense 
 land -owners, reducing a vast population of laborers to the direst 
 poverty, and at the same time driving hundreds of tradesmen out 
 of business in a single city; and then witness their matchless 
 effrontery on the one hand and the abject submission of the people 
 on the other, we can see but one termination to such a state of 
 affairs. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 THE CONSERVATISM OF KELIGION. 
 
 Nor need it surprise us to find traditions perpetuated for thou- 
 sands upon thousands of years, especially among a people having a 
 religious priesthood. 
 
 The essence of religion is conservatism; little is invented ; noth- 
 ing perishes ; change comes from without ; and even when one re- 
 ligion is supplanted by another its gods live on as the demons of the 
 new faith, or they pass into the folk-lore and fairy stories of the 
 people. We see Votan, a hero in America, become the god Odin or 
 Woden in Scandinavia; and when his worship as a god dies out 
 Odin survives (as Dr. Dasent has proved) in the Wild Huntsman of 
 the Hartz, and in the Robin Hood (Oodin) of popular legend. The 
 Hellequin of France becomes the Harlequin of our pantomimes. 
 William Tell never existed; he is a myth; a survival of the sun- 
 god Apollo, Indra, who was worshiped on the altars of Atlantis. 
 
 "Nothing here but it doth change 
 Into something rich and strange." 
 
 The rite of circumcision dates back to the first days of Phoenicia, 
 Egypt, and the Cushites. It, too, was probably an Atlantean cus- 
 tom, invented in the Stone Age. Tens of thousands of years have 
 passed since the Stone Age ; the ages of copper, bronze and iron 
 have intervened ; and yet to this day the Hebrew rabbi performs the 
 ceremony of circumcision with a stone knife. — Atlantis. 
 
 The Wrecks Caused by Corriiptiok. We all know that our 
 elections have become of late saturnalia of corruption and orgies of 
 drunkenness. And the man who sells others sells himself, and 
 when he would wreck others he wrecks himself. All over this great 
 nation you will find these stranded disasters, cast away upon the 
 shores of public contempt. Once they walked erect, the hope and 
 admiration of their fellow-men, but the subtle seducer touched them 
 with his wand of twisted serpents, and they collapsed and fell by 
 
i^XTliACTS AND SELECTIONS. 233 
 
 the roadside, the rotteu corpses of men, filling the ;iir with the 
 stench of their disintegration. — Speech to Caucus of Farmer 3Iemhers 
 of Legislature, 1887. 
 
 The Age of Iconoclasm. '' A statute of Queen Eleanor, Avife 
 of Edward I., has been placed upon the extension of the new parish 
 church of All .Saints at Harby, in England. 8he died in 1290 in the 
 liouse of Kichard de Weston, close to the site of the church. Queen 
 Eleanor is famed in fable for having sucked the i3oison from her 
 husband's arm, communicated by the poisoned dagger of an assassin 
 in the Holy Land. She did nothing of the kind. The wound was 
 operated upon by cutting, and the lady, who opposed the operation 
 by her vehement outcries, w\^s hustled out of the King's tent." 
 
 That's the way it goes. William Tell is proved to be a myth, 
 Nero a patriot, Richard the Third a philanthropist, Pocahontas a' 
 strumpet, and now Queen Eleanor, instead of sucking the poisoned 
 wound, with her eyes rolled up to heaven, goes out bellowing before 
 her husband's boot-toe. Where is this thing to end? — The Anti- 
 Monopolist. 
 
 THE AGE OF TOLERATION. 
 
 However strongly we may be convinced of the great and funda- 
 mental truths of religion, it must be conceded that freedom of con- 
 science and governmental toleration are largely the outgrowth of 
 unbelief and indifference. 
 
 In an age that realized, without doubt or question, that life was 
 but a tortured hour between two eternities ; a thread of time across 
 a boundless abyss ; that hell and heaven lay so close up to this 
 breathing world that a step would, in an instant, carry us over the 
 shadowy line into an ocean of flame or a paradise of endless de- 
 lights, it followed, as a logical sequence, that it was an act of the 
 greatest kindness and humanity to force the skeptical, by any tor- 
 ture inflicted upon them during this temporary and wretched exist- 
 ence, to avoid an eternal hell and obtain an eternal heaven. But 
 so soon as doubt began to enter the minds of men ; so soon as they 
 said to one another, *' Perchance these things may not be exactly 
 as we have been taught; perchance the other world may be but a 
 dream of hope; perchance this existence is all there is of it," the 
 fervor of fanaticism commenced to abate. Not absolutely positive 
 in their own minds as to spiritual things, they were ready to make 
 some allowance for the doubts of others. Thus unbelief tamed the 
 
234 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 fervor even of those who still beUeved, and modified, in time, pubhc 
 opinion and public law. 
 
 But in Bacon's era every thoughtful soul that loved his fellow- 
 man, and sought to advance his material welfare, would instinct- 
 ively turn away from a system of belief which produced such holo- 
 causts of martyrs and covered the face of the earth with such cruel 
 and bloody wars. — The Great Cryptogram. 
 
 Philosophy. No philosophy is true the essence of w^hich can- 
 not be stated in a single sentence. — Journal, 1883. 
 
 The Connectio:n^ of Our Civilization with the Eemote 
 Past. Our circle of 360 degrees ; the divison of a chord of the cir- 
 cle equal to the radius into 60 equal parts, called degrees; the di- 
 vision of these into 60 minutes, of the minute into 60 seconds, and 
 the second into 60 thirds ; the division of the day into 24 hours, 
 each hour into 60 minutes, each minute into 60 seconds ; the division 
 of the week into seven days, and the very order of the days — all 
 have come down tons from the Chaldeo- Assyrians; and these things 
 will probably be perpetuated among our posterity " to the last syl- 
 lable of recorded time." — Atlantis. 
 
 THE EEAL ISSUES. 
 
 An age will come to which this era, with its vast monopolies, 
 grinding oppressions, and impoverished laborers, will be as " the 
 dark ages. " The republic never will be perfected until not a single 
 form of injustice remains. 
 
 It is to this mighty problem the mind of the age should address 
 itself; not to a dirty wallowing in the dregs of civil war. 
 
 How can the rich man be protected in his just rights'? How can 
 the poor and worthy man be lifted up ? How can industry be made 
 secure of the fruits of its labor? How can every home in the land 
 be made to abound with plenty and shine with intelligence and 
 virtue ? 
 
 These are the real issues of to-day. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 Naturally Enough. H. P. Hall telegraphs from the Demo- 
 cratic convention in St. Louis, " This is h 1 itself. " And natur- 
 ally enough Hall is in the midst of it. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 The Courts and the Railroads. Hiram T. Gilbert in his 
 work, The Bailroads and the Courts, published in 1885, at Ottawa^ 
 
EXTBACTS AXtJ SELECTIONS. 235 
 
 jllliiiois, shows thiit out of a total of seventeen judgments, for acci- 
 tlents at crossings, rendered by circuit courts against the four lead- 
 ing Illinois railroads, during eleven years, the Supreme Court of the 
 State of Illinois reversed sixteen and affirmed one, by a divided 
 court, after the judgment had been twice reversed. Out of a total 
 of twenty- seven lower court judgments for injuries of all kinds, but 
 three were affirmed. Out of sixty-three jury judgments against rail- 
 road companies for negligence fifty- three were reversed, and five 
 of the ten affirmations only came after the third review. In the 
 same years out of fifty-three criminal cases, in which the corporations 
 were not interested, the Supreme Court affirmed not less than 
 thirty-two I— Speech, 1886. 
 
 Stand Firm. Stand firm, my friends. There is something 
 more of life than to live. We must work together to abolish that 
 state of things where cunning impoverishes industry and then em- 
 ploys part of the plunder to corrupt the poverty-stricken represent- 
 atives of the people. — Speech to Caucus of Farmer Members of Legis- 
 lature, 1887. 
 
 Ehue! When Elihu Washburne received but four votes for 
 President, in 1876, in the Republican national convention, con- 
 taining 750 votes, the Anti-Monopolist said : " Four votes for 
 Elihu! Ehue!! Phew!!! Pooh!!!!" 
 
 A SOPHISM EXPOSED. 
 
 "Is there any real conflict between labor and capital? None 
 whatever." 
 
 Now let us see how it will work out. The Helper says : 
 " What is a capitalist f A man who has saved a part of his past 
 labor and now has it to use. " 
 
 Ergo, a rag-picker is a capitalist, for out of his past labor he has 
 bought a basket and a stick : — " and he now has them to use. " Is 
 there any danger of such a man as that oppressing the laborers of 
 this country ? Not the slightest. Cheering reflection ? 
 
 Or let us try it again : Is there any real distinction between 
 light and darkness ? No ; because there is a point called twihght 
 where darkness and light so merge into each other that you can't 
 tell where night ends and day begins; and hence (according to the 
 Patron^ s Helper) there is neither day nor night ! 
 
236 tiONNElLlANA. 
 
 The veriest loafer in New York owns something, if it is only a 
 tattered shirt ; hence he is in so much a capitalist. Jay Gould 
 works day and night at his great schemes of plunder ; hence he is in 
 so much a laborer ; — and hence there is no difference between labor 
 and capital. This is the Patron^s Helpers logic. 
 
 But it won't hold water. Between the concentrated capital of 
 great corporations, engaged in carrying the farmers' products, and 
 the labor which created those products, there is a necessary antago- 
 nism; — not a necessary hostility or hate; but such a diversity of 
 interest as tends to array the capital in the roads against the labor 
 on the farms. It is the interest of the road to get as much for carry- 
 ing the wheat as possible ; it is the interest of the farmer to give as 
 little as possible. If the road compels the farmer to give too much, 
 it oppresses him. If the condition is reversed the farmer oppresses 
 the road. Hence there is an antagonism which should be regulated 
 by aw so that neither shall oppress the other. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 THE GODS OF GREECE THE KINGS OF ATLANTIS. 
 
 Here, theU; in conclusion, are the proofs of our proposition that 
 the gods of Greece had been the kings of Atlantis : 
 
 1. They were not the makers, but the rulers of the world. 
 
 2. They were human in their attributes ; they loved, sinned, and 
 fought battles, the very sites of which are given; they founded cities. 
 and civilized the people of the shores of the Mediterranean. 
 
 3. They dwelt upon an island in the Atlantic, " in the remote 
 west, . . . where the sun shines after it has ceased to shine- on 
 Greece." 
 
 4. Their land was destroyed in a deluge. 
 
 5. They were ruled over by Poseidon and Atlas. 
 
 6. Their empire extended to Egypt and Italy and the shores of 
 Africa, precisely as stated by Plato. 
 
 7. They existed during the Bronze Age and at the beginning of 
 the Iron Age. 
 
 The entire Greek mythology is the recollection, by a degenerate 
 race, of a vast, mighty and highly civilized empire which in a 
 remote past covered large parts of Europe, Asia, Africa and 
 America. — Atlantis. 
 
 The Eeal Standaed of Greatness. She told me 1 must 
 
EXTliACTS AND SELECTIONS. 237 
 
 shake off ray lethargy, I must rouse myself to do justice to my 
 genius. The South — the new South, th3 unhappy South, darkened 
 by the shadows of its great disasters, humbled, by failure, in the eyes 
 of the unthinking nations, overwhelmned by the numbers, wealth 
 and intellectual power of the North — needed such men as I, to hft 
 her up, and guide her to greater and brighter destinies. The stand 
 ing of a country did not depend, she said, upon mere population, or 
 the number of bales of cotton it produced, or even upon the splendor 
 of its cities, or the wealth of its people, but upon the God-given 
 intellects of which it could boast. — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 A Note of Warning to Corruptionists. He who defeats 
 the just hopes of a great community prepares the way for anarchy. 
 When the courts fail the mob rises ; when the legislatures fail, the 
 day of the Commune is at hand. — Speech to Caucus of Farmer 
 Members of Legislature, 1887. 
 
 Revolution. Revolution — God's gang-plow, which crushes the 
 weeds and tears up the torpid soil for new harvests. — Journal, 1882. 
 
 Richard III. In Richard III. we have a horrible monster, a 
 wild beast; a liar, perjurer, murderer; a remorseless, bloody, man- 
 eating tiger of the jungles. — The Great Cryptogram. 
 
 Intelligence not Incompatible with Religion. The 
 
 duty of the patriot and statesman, then, who believes liberty and 
 equality to be essential to the happiness of the multitude, is to main- 
 tain the cause of universal secular education against all comers; at 
 the same time to lend the aid of his voice, pen and energy to all 
 those influences which tend to suppress vice and ennoble the moral 
 nature of man. We cannot be made to believe that intelligence is 
 incompatible with religion or reUgion inimical to Uberty. — The Anti- 
 Monopolist. 
 
 Human Love. The very tendrils of our being seemed to be 
 intertwining and interlacing with each other, like the roots of two 
 plants growing closely together, in an inseparable, indistinguish- 
 able mass. I realized, for the first time, what the despised passion 
 called love really meant. I perceived that it was a going out of 
 one's self — a divine unselfishness — a grand necessity imposed on 
 humanity by Him who made us all — a merging together of two 
 minds, souls, natures; a lifting up, a glorifying of the whole creature. 
 
238 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 I could realize that God had enforced upon us this passion, for His 
 own purposes ; He did not vilely enslave us to it, but treated us as 
 his friends and co-workers, and covered our instincts with splendor 
 and beauty, in which the hard lines of fact disappeared, buried in 
 flowers. — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 Development and Design. There are two things necessary 
 to a comprehension of that which hes around us — development and 
 design, evolution and purpose ; God's way and God's intent. Neither 
 alone will solve the problem. These are the two limbs of the right 
 angle which meet at the first life-cell found on earth, and lead out 
 until we find man at one extremity and God at the other.— Bagnarok. 
 
 Reformation or Revolution. We need reformation or revo- 
 lution. Why should a man who perhaps does not, and who certainly 
 need not, own a foot of real property, fasten himself like a wood- 
 tick on the throat of laborious productive industry, and suck the 
 life out of it ? —The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 Where the Black and White Men Came From. We are 
 told by Ovid that it was the tremendous heat of the comet-age that 
 baked the negro black; in this Ovid doubtless spoke the opinion of 
 antiquity. Whether or not that period of almost insufferable tenl- 
 perature produced any effect upon the color of that race I shall not 
 undertake to say; nor shall I dare to assert that the white race was 
 bleached to its present complexion by the long absence of the sun, 
 during the Age of Darkness. 
 
 It is true that Professor Hartt tells us that there is a marked dif- 
 ference in the complexion of the Botocudo Indians who have lived in 
 the forests of Brazil and those, of the same tribe, who have dwelt 
 on its open prairies ; and that those who have resided for hundreds, 
 perhaps thousands, of years in the dense forests of that tropical 
 land are nearly white in complexion. If this be the case in a merely 
 leaf-covered tract, what must have been the effect upon a race 
 dwelhng for a long time in the remote north, in the midst of a humid 
 atmosphere, enveloped in constant clouds, and much of the time in 
 almost total da.rknGSs'^. —Bagnarok. 
 
 Christianity. Are you blind? Can you not see that Christian- 
 ity was intended by God to be something better and nobler, super- 
 imposed, as an after-birth of time, on the brutality of the elder world ? 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 239 
 
 Does not the great doctrine of Evolution, in which you beheve, preach 
 this gospel ? If man rose from a brute form, then advanced to human 
 and savage life, yet a robber and a murderer ; then reached civiUty 
 and culture and philanthropy, can you not see that the finger-board 
 of God points forward, unerringly, along the whole track of the 
 race ; and that it is still pointing forward to stages, in the future, 
 when man shall approximate the angels? — Ccesar^s Column. 
 
 THE GENESIS OF MAN. 
 
 The spirtual force was first expanded into multitudinous forms of 
 spiritual existence, until all space was filled with them. 
 
 Then out of the will of the Creator was born matter. 
 
 Then God took thought to wed dead matter to living spirit, and 
 put life into the clods. 
 
 By a vast mass of cunning mechanisms — the most curious of 
 which is the digestive apparatus — he makes it possible for matter 
 to be converted into appliances for hfe and thought. 
 
 Then he infused into the Uving clods that sense of right, and 
 that power to think of God, which had been before the exclusive pos- 
 session of his angels. 
 
 Man's existence is a vast, persistent mivaoXe.— Journal, 1890. 
 
 Religion axd Science. Religion and science, nature and spirit, 
 knowledge of God's works and reverence for God, are brethren who 
 should stand together with twined arms, singing perpetual praises 
 to that vast atmosphere, ocean, universe of spirituality, out of which 
 matter has been born; of which matter is but a condensation ; that 
 illimitable, incomprehensible, awe-full Something, before the concep- 
 tion of which men should go down upon the very knees of their 
 hearts in adoration. — Ragnarok. 
 
 Universal Moral Rottenness. This nation has nothing to 
 fear from foreign invasion or domestic insurrection, but its govern- 
 ment threatens to fall a prey to universal moral rottenness. The 
 very fountain, the people itself, is becoming corrupted. If it were 
 possible to impress one thought more deeply than all others on the 
 mind of the people, it should be this: That the man who sells his 
 vote, and betrays thereby his constituents, is the worst enemy the 
 republic has. He brings disrepute and distrust on self-government, 
 an<l does all that in him lies to set bark civilization itself: for when 
 
240 BONNELLIANA, 
 
 liberty falls the world falls, and inexpressible misery must be in- 
 flicted on mankind for untold generations. — Speech to Caucus of 
 Farmer Members of Legislature, 1887. 
 
 The Power of the Cohporations. A distinguished Repub- 
 lican, and member of the State Senate, writing from Southern Min- 
 nesota, says : " I am glad you are re-elected. Why is your life so 
 burdened with severe couflicts? It really seems cruel to me that 
 you, whose public record olScially stands above blot or blemish, 
 should have such severe opposition at every turn. " We thank him 
 for his kind words; but we cannot answer the question he asks. 
 We only know that if we were pound-master of the township of Nin- 
 inger, we should have the whole State agitated to drive us out of the 
 position. — The Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 The Moon. 
 
 Say, dost thou look 
 Where, on the vine-clad hills, the shadows lie, 
 Like earth-chained giants mocking at the light; 
 While through the grape -leaves stirs the rising song, 
 And busy feet tread out each maze in joy ? 
 Or dost thou glide, fearful, and pale, and cold, 
 Adown the slanting ice-banks of the North, 
 Where chilled life totters like a weary wight. 
 Slow trembhng to the grave? The white bear comes 
 Sheeted with spangling spray, and lays him down, 
 Lapping his broad paws in thy quiet beam ; 
 The solitary walrus loves thy light, 
 And eyes thee with a thoughtful, human look, 
 While gazmg o'er the gently heaving sea. 
 And in my own chme thou art stealing down, 
 Weaving thy white arms through the breezy wheat, 
 And linking blessings 'round the farmer's home. 
 
 — TheMournefs Vision, 1850. 
 
 Andrew Johnson. Andrew Johnson is dead. However much 
 we may have differed from him in our political views, we have 
 always regarded him as a great and honest man. He was a sincere 
 lover of his country; a sincere friend of constitutional liberty; a 
 man of the roost unshaken firmness, and of the most undoubted 
 
KXTliACTS AND SELECTIONS. 241 
 
 purity of public aud private life. His services to the cause of the 
 Union, during the Civil War, were of inestimable importance. 
 
 Time is fatal only to slander aod injustice; all that is noble in 
 the career of a great man survives oblivion. Andrew Johnson the 
 partisan and the politician Is dead. Aridrew Johnson the states- 
 man and patriot will survive forever. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 Political Abuse in Amekica. I expect that the tlood-gates 
 of abuse will be let loose on my poor head. In America a man might 
 just as well take a bath in his own cess-pool as run for any high 
 office. When I wrote my first book, and the newspapers all over 
 the country were devoting columns to it, generally of praise, I 
 held my breath and trembled, aud said to myself: '' When will the 
 blackguarding begin ? When will they commence to call me a liar 
 and a horse-thief f " And when nothing of the sort happened, I 
 almost doubted my own identity. I was like the fellow who buried 
 a scolding wife. Said he to a friend the next day : " When I went 
 to bed last night and did not find Maria thrashing around and rais- 
 ing the devil, I began to think I had moved into a new country."— 
 Speech at Glencoe, 1884. 
 
 Good and Evil. There are two things which cannot be confined 
 to the sources which beget them — good aud evil. They are like the 
 expansive gases — they will dilate until reduced to inappreciable 
 quantities. No limit can confine them, no hands can fetter them. 
 Hence when you put a man in the way of doing good you benefit all 
 men around him; when you confin© him to evil he gives off evil in- 
 fluences like a pestilence. — Spieech in Congress, May 7, 1868. 
 
 A TEMPERANCE LECTURE. 
 
 We experienced a twinge of pain when we read the following : 
 
 *' Mrs. John Neuffer, proprietress of the Cascade Brewery, at 
 Rochester, was recently fined $25 and costs, in a justice's court, in 
 that city, for selling beer to Captain D. H., an intemperate person, 
 contrary to the statute. The costs amounted to $15. " 
 
 Alas and alas ! It reads like an inscription on a headstone, 
 sacred to the memory of a bright, able, genial, generous, old-time 
 friend. 
 
 God pity us all in our weaknesses. 
 
 Friends, rum is an athlete no man ever wrestled with aud flung. 
 
242 DONNELLIANA, 
 
 Sooner or later it "breaks tlie back of the stoutest, and leaves him a 
 limp and helpless wreck, stretched in the mud. 
 
 Talk about strength of mind to resist it ! As if the mind was a 
 distinct entity, instead of being, in a materialistic sense, at least, 
 the outcome of the physical system, varying with every alteration of 
 the stomach or the liver. A colic will derange it; a pill will put it 
 to sleep ; a drop of prussic acid on the end of the tongue will snuff 
 it out. The mind indeed ! The stomach is a much more respecta- 
 ble organ ; and the mind follows it about " like Mary's little lamb. " 
 
 Never put that into your abdomen, then, as Shakespeare says, 
 " that will steal away your brains." There are occasions when a 
 debilitated system can take alcohol with advantage ; as it can some 
 times take strychnine, opium and arsenic ; but a sensible man would 
 just as soon think of making a daily beverage of the one as the 
 other. 
 
 Above all, take care of your health. Nine-tenths of the intem- 
 perance, not created by custom or social habits, results from dys- 
 pepsia. An overworked mind or body reacts on a weak stomach, 
 and that dehcate and complicated chemical laboratory fails to 
 extract from the food the elements needed in the mysterious work- 
 shops of life, and then comes the craving for the artificial force of 
 stimulants. So, frie"nds, treat your stomachs with becoming respect. 
 They are, for you, life and happiness. See that the laboratory is 
 well supplied and has a fair chance to do its work. Don't look upon 
 your stomach as a mere bag to stuff '' grub " into, like Jack the 
 Giant-Killer's leather sack, into which he poured the giant's gruel. 
 It is the seat of life; it is the carpenter, the blacksmith, the 
 machinist, the weaver, the artisan, that renews the machine called 
 yourself; it patches up the exhausted muscles, it repairs the worn- 
 out nerves, it pours into the brain that incomprehensible force which 
 comes forth as energy, will, power, conscience; as poetry, philosophy, 
 eloquence and that masterful ability which sways the world. 
 
 In the great future the stomach, instead of being regarded as a 
 mere food-hole, will come to be respected, as it deserves. Men will 
 learn that the battle of temperance reform must be largely fought 
 out on the tables of the people. Food and modes of cookery will be 
 studied with a view to their effects on health and longevity. — The 
 Anti-Monopolist. 
 
EXTliACTS AND SELECTIONS. 243 
 
 The Foot-eule or the Heavens. To creatures like our- 
 selves, measuriDg our stature by feet and inches, a Drift-deposit 
 three hundred feet thick is an immense afiair, even as a deposit a 
 toot tliick would be to an ant; but, measured on an astronomical 
 scale, with the foot-rule of the heavens, and the Drift is no more 
 than a thin coating of dust, such as accumulates on a traveler's 
 coaf . Even estimating it upon the scale of our planet, it is a mere 
 wrapping of tissue-paper thickness. In short, it must be remem- 
 bered that we are an infinitely insignificant breed of little creatures, 
 to whom a cosmical dust- shower is a cataclysm. — Bagnarok. 
 
 The Office Vacant. Referring to a very small man, who 
 wore a very big hat, and who had been removed from ofi&ce, the 
 Anti-Monopolist remarked : " It is said that Charley's appointment 
 is due to that bath Toddy took last summer. When Toddy took off 
 his hat and clothes there was so little left of him that Bill King de- 
 clared the ofiice vacant." 
 
 Our Treatment of the Indians. What has been the treat- 
 ment of the Indians by our Oovernment ? 
 
 No sadder or more gloomy page presents itself in all our annals. 
 Error, neglect and crime are written all over it. 
 
 Instead of regarding the Indians as savages — helpless as brutes 
 and improvident as children, to be cared for and protected as the 
 courts of law protect idiots and minors — our great nation has de- 
 scended from the eminence of its Christianity and civilization, and 
 has entered into a struggle to drive the best possible bargains with 
 the savage for his lands. The sight has been a sad one. On the 
 one side, one of the great governments of the globe, of unequaled 
 wisdom, sagacity and power, represented by shrewd and able 
 agents; and on the other a parcel of poor untutored savages, scarce 
 comprehending the transaction in which they are engaged, unable 
 to read or sign the " treaty " they make, and living, while they ne- 
 gotiate, upon the bounty of the very government which professes to 
 meet them on terms of equality. It is needy barbarism, pinched by 
 a thousand wants, competing with an affluent and all-powerfui 
 gov3rnment. What savage virtue can stand up against the allure- 
 ments which are spread before it f Even should the tribe have 
 judgment enougb to resist ihe terms proposed to them, are not the 
 chiefs purchasable ? And that which blankets and beads, guns and 
 
244 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 hordes cannot effect, shall not rimi accomxjlislif Should the chiefs 
 sign and the tribe resist, do not the latter become savage outlaws, 
 and who shall write their history?— ^i^eec/^ in Congress, Feb. 7, 
 1865. 
 
 " Too Teue. " A friend writes us : 
 
 " What a little thing is a drop of water in the ocean ! What a 
 trivial thing is a moment of time amid the rolling centuries ! What 
 a very little thing is a grain of sand in the great round globe ! What 
 an unimportant factor is a single individual among forty millions ! " 
 In the language of Artemus Ward, we reply, '' Too true, too true ! " 
 And we add : What a little thing is five bushels of wheat to the 
 acre with which to support all our ofQce-holders. Think of that and 
 weep \—The Anti- Monopolist 
 
 The ORiGi:tTAL Biethplace of Mankind. " The original birth- 
 place of the human race who shall tell? It was possibly in some 
 region now under the ocean, as Professor Winchell has suggested ; 
 there he was evolved during the mild, equable, gentle, plentiful, 
 garden age of the Tertiary; in the midst of the most favorable con- 
 ditions for increasing the vigor of life and expanding it into new 
 forms. It showed its influence by developing mammalian life in one 
 direction into the monstrous forms of the mammoth and the masto- 
 don, the climax of animal growth ; and in the other direction 
 into the more marvelous expansion of mentality found in man.— 
 Bagnarok. 
 
 The Ceiminal Class. Vice is weakness. The criminal class 
 are the moral and mental cripples. They are unequal to the battle 
 of life. The demands of civilization are too great for them, and 
 they fall back into barbadsm. The prostitute is a recurrence to 
 that period which antedated marriage ; the thief belongs to that 
 era when all property was held in common ; and the ruffian repre- 
 sents an age when it was man's highest glory to kill his fellow man. 
 The criminal class are the uncivilized class. —The Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 The Money-Powee. The truth is that all forms of property lie 
 prostrate and helpless at the feet of the money-power. That alone 
 thrives in the general ruin. It is all wrong. The profits on money 
 should not exceed the average profits of industry. Money is now 
 the dragon which is devouring men, women and children and whole 
 
\illages. Where is the Hercules who is to restrain the ravages of 
 this monster? — The Ant i- Monopolist. 
 
 What Race Will be the Final Inheritors of Civiliza- 
 tion? It is the destiny of the white man to overrun the world; hi.t 
 it is as plainly his destiny to carry in his train the great forces which 
 constitute his superiority — civilization and Christianity. We are 
 exhibiting to-day the unequaled spectacle of a superior race sharir'j;' 
 its noblest privileges with the humblest of mankind, and lifting up 
 to the condition of freedom and happiness those who frou>tho dawn 
 of time have been either barbarians or slaves. One touch of nature 
 makes the whole world kin. Let us, then, be merciful in our judg- 
 ment of the races of men. We know not to whose hands the torch 
 of civilization may yet be committed ere the work of God, through 
 man, is completed on the face of the earth. It was little anticipatetl 
 by the great nations of antiquity that the rehgious mind of the 
 world would be dominated, for centuries, by the intellect of an ob- 
 scure branch of the Arab race. — Sj^eecU in Congress, Feb. 7, 1865. 
 
 Misfortune a Tonic. Misfortune is a tonic to strong natni-es 
 and a poison to weak. There is a plant in South America, a plain - 
 looking, knobbed stock, apparently flowerless ; but when the wind 
 blows fiercely and agitates it, the rough lumps open and the odor- 
 ous blossoms protrude. So there are men the splendor of whose 
 faculties is never revealed until they are assailed by the cruel winds 
 of adversity. — The Great Cryptogram. 
 
 The Great Souls of the Human Race. " In every gen- 
 eration there are, it seems to me, but a few great souls, and one 
 may go through life without meeting with a single one of them. It 
 has never been my good fortune to encounter any person who stood 
 much above his fellows. But here, in this library, are all the great 
 souls of Greece and Rome, and modern Europe and America, down 
 to the present day. It is as if they sat around this table, ready to 
 talk to me ; ready to give me their choicest and most select thoughts 
 — the distilled wisdom of then- Uves. I cannot help but think how 
 many millions of boobies and envious detractors time has swept 
 away into oblivion, while it has left this galaxy of greatness undis- 
 turbed. It is the privilege of genius to survive whole generations 
 of maligners. The contiagration of time, which consumes the mean, 
 illumines the great. "— Doctor Hiiguet. 
 
1>4() , BONlSfELLIAy A . 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE CHINESE. 
 
 The Citizen is glad to bring the Chinaman under Christian influ- 
 ences, even though the white Christian is thereby starved to death I 
 Our own labor force may be destroyed, our workmen turned into 
 tramps and thieves, and their daughters driven to x^rostitution, in 
 order to enable a few Chinamen to have a chance at the blessings of 
 Christianity. 
 
 Let the Citizen turn its attention to the swarming alleys and pris- 
 ons of America ; to the seething sea of crime which threatens to 
 engulf our civilization; to the horrible catalogue of murders, burg- 
 laries, suicides, divorces, adulteiies, and embezzlements, with 
 which our daily press teems, before thrusting its doctrinal dogmas 
 on outside pagans. God has given Christianity charge of the white 
 race of the world. The perfection of the moral condition of that 
 race will be the best argument why other races shonld accept it. If 
 Christianity fails to keep our own people from barbarism and deg- 
 radation there is no reason why other races should be inoculated 
 with it. 
 
 And when a ^' religious " paper coolly admits that a lot of pagans 
 '' can live on what an American would starve on,'' and that they 
 will destroy the value of American labor, to wit, the means of life of 
 the great body of our own people; and at the same time thinks we 
 " ought to be glad " to have them come and produce these results, 
 it exhibits a cruel heartlessness which a decent Buddhist would be 
 ashamed of. 
 
 We think this, our highest race, has the highest religion ; but it 
 must look to the welfare of its " own household," rather than neg- 
 lect its children to grasp at the stranger. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 Americait Law. In America the law is ef&cient only against 
 the miserable. — Journal, 1884. 
 
 The New Ethnology. The tendency of scientific thought in 
 ethnology is in the direction of giving more and more importance to 
 the race characteristics, such as height, color of the hair, eyes and 
 skin, and the formation of the skull and body generally, than to 
 language. The language possessed by a people may be merely the 
 result of conquest or migration. For instance, in the United States 
 to-day, white, black and red men, the descendants of French, 
 Spanish, Italians, Mexicans, Irish, Germans, Scandinavians, Africans, 
 
h\ri:A(TS AXD SJ'JLECTIONS. 247 
 
 all s[)t'ak the English language, and by the test of language they are 
 all Englishmen ; and yet none of them are connected by birth or 
 descent with the country where that language was developed.— 
 Atlantis. 
 
 General Le Dec and the Goats. The General's first report 
 will be mainly devoted to goats. The goat is an interesting animal. 
 It has a manly beard, an imposing strut, strong virile propensities, 
 and what it lacks in brains it makes up in hair ; — and therein it 
 greatly resembles some men. Le Due himself has a fine beard.— T//c 
 A nti- Monopolist. 
 
 Public Schools. The public schools have yielded one magnifi- 
 cent result little dwelt upon : they have amehorated and nearly 
 destroyed the old, bitter, terrible rage of religious intolerance. If 
 there are no longer religious riots in this country, such as twenty- 
 live or thirty years ago burned churches and murdered citizens in 
 the name of God, it is due to the fact that the rising generations, of 
 all religions, have mingled freely with each other in the public 
 schools, Jew and UniversaUst, Catholic and Protestant ; and they 
 have formed friendships and associations in the years of childhood 
 which have softened the asperities of religious intolerance; so that 
 each has learned to respect all the good which he foundin the others. 
 To separate the different religious now, into different pens, like wild 
 beasts in a menagerie, would, in thirty years, breed destructive re- 
 sults to that peace and harmony which should exist among the people 
 of the country. The old Romans believed that the Christians sacri- 
 ficed and devoured children in their secret assemblages. Divide the 
 people of this country, during the period of youth, into separate 
 sects, and distrust and bigotry would resume old-world propor- 
 tions.— The Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 That Depends. The Pioneer-Press says P is broad-gauged. 
 
 That depends upon which end you contemplate him from.— T//6' 
 Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 His Politics. Our readers know that we have not professed to 
 be a Democrat ; and certainly we cannot take rank as a Eepubhcan ; 
 we represent the " come-outers " of both parties. We have held 
 back from the Democracy, simply because we doubted whether they 
 had the capacity to grasp the mighty issues of the present and for- 
 
2-t8 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 get the settled issues of the past. But names are nothiog, and the 
 man who is governed by prejudice is next door to the savage, — 
 The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 God. We do not rid ourselves 'of the idea of a law giver when 
 we recognize the law. The law presupposes the power that Im- 
 poses the law. The statute-book presupposes the legislature.— 
 Journal, 1885. 
 
 The Authoe's Thought. The least part of an author's 
 thought is that which he writes down. — Journal, 1883. 
 
 The Monopolies Rule Everythixo. We are reaching a 
 dangerous pass. We have educated our people so that they are too 
 intelligent to bear slavery, and then we are crowding them into 
 slavery. What will the result be? Anarchy. The monopolies rule 
 everything in this country, and even from a convention like this 
 their hired emissaries are not absent. — Speech in the Northwestern 
 Watenvays Convention, St. Paul, 1885. 
 
 THE RIGHT TO THE SOIL. 
 
 The first great right struck at by the barbarism of man is the 
 right of the individual to a share of the land. Conquest in the old 
 time meant confiscation of the soil and its absorption into a few 
 hands; hence serfdom, wretchedness and degradation. Progress 
 now means simply carrying into effect the plain, simple, benevolent 
 rules which God meant for his earth. The earth is for man. As 
 the race cannot exist without the support aflbrded by the produc- 
 tions of the soil, so the individual man cannot rest with safety upon 
 any basis save his right to a share in that soil. 
 
 The great end of government is the improvement of the condi- 
 tion of the individual ; and what can more tend to his welfare than 
 a share in the great source of all wealth — -the cultivable surface of 
 the earth "^ For, when we consider it closely, civilization itself rests 
 upon agriculture. The world's wealth has been taken from its 
 bosom. This prolific mother, never wearied, has been giving of her 
 strength and richness to her children through uncounted genera- 
 tions. — Speech in Congress, May 7, 1868. 
 
 A Refusal. An irreverent friend writes us that he saw a mule 
 at the St. Louis Fair, and that " it was a remarkable animal — all 
 
li:XmACTS AND SELECftONS. 249 
 
 legs aud ears — like H B ." But wc refuse to publish any 
 
 such slanders against one of the clearest-headed and longest-legged 
 men in the State.— T//c Anti- Monopolist 
 
 INTERNATIONAL PAPEK MONEY. 
 
 The human family is increasing at a tremendous rate, and the 
 business and commerce of the world are increasing in like proportion; 
 but all values are fixed by a metal [gold] steadily rising in value from 
 its increasing scarcity, and which by its additional purchasing power 
 sends all other things in the world on a down grade. 
 
 The world is dealing on a constantly falling market ; this arrests 
 production, enforces idleness, increases discontent and puts a steadily 
 increasing strain on all forms of government. If the process con- 
 tinues the end of this century ivUl he as stormy and revolutionary as 
 was the fatal close of the last century. 
 
 There is but one remedy — but that the world is not apt to adopt 
 — and that is for the great nations to unite, by treaty, for an issue of 
 paper currency in each nation, not to exceed a fixed ratio to popula- 
 tion, for which not only the faith of the nation shall be pledged, but 
 every foot of property in those nations ; this currency to be exclusive 
 legal tender, not only in the nation that issues it, but in all tho 
 other great nations party to the contract. 
 
 This would be a her ic remedy, but it may be necessary to save 
 civilization. Certainly this intelligent and warlike age cannot be 
 forced back into the condition of Europe before the discovery of 
 America led to the importation of the accumulated gold of Mexico 
 and Peru hoarded through many centuries. 
 
 Given the two elements of the problem, a constantly increasing 
 population and constantly decreasing basis of currency, and the 
 results cannot but be disastrous to the peace and safety of mankind. 
 
 All the paper money of the world, notes, bills of exchange, 
 checks, have been simply devices to supply the inadequacy of the 
 metallic currency. A great civilized world must move forward on 
 the same line, and estabhsh a currency that will be good throughout 
 the whole world, and that can be increased in exact proportion to 
 the increase of population. 
 
 This question of the world's currency Ues at the base of civiliza- 
 tion, of progress, of morality, of intellectual growth, of religious 
 
250 DONNMLLIANA. 
 
 purity. If the intelligence of the world is not able to solve the prob- 
 lem, the time is not far distant when it will have to choose between 
 despotism and anarchy. — Speech at Duluth, Oct. 7, 1885. 
 
 The Age of Man. If civilization and population increase for 
 the next three hundred years as they have for the past one hundred, 
 the pressing problem will be how to subsist the greatest number of 
 people on the smallest space of ground. Everything that does not 
 serve the purposes of man will be exterminated, and man will cover 
 the habitable globe. Geologists tell us that there was once an age 
 offish, and afterward an age of reptiles. We are approaching " an 
 age of man." If the progress of the race is arrested, and the race 
 nearly exterminated, by some gigantic convulsion of nature, such as 
 another glacial or drift period, the future explorer will stand amazed 
 at the Innumerable memorials of the race, even as' we survey to-day 
 with wonder rocks hundreds of feet thick made up altogether of 
 sea-shells.— T7^e Ant i- Monopolist. 
 
 Society. '' Society '' is the mutual congratulation of those who, 
 having battled their way through the breakers, meet to shake hands 
 on the shore, with much love each for himself, and very little for each 
 other. The smell of the dead bodies cast up by the waves does not 
 disturb them. — Journal, 1885. 
 
 The Value of iNTELLiaENCE in a Eeptjblic. There is no 
 danger to society or order so long as intelligence opens the pathway 
 of opportunity for poverty. The stream of progress foams and thun- 
 ders into cataracts of revolution only when the craft and selfishness 
 of man erect barriers to arrest its waters. It is intelligence that 
 has brought us up from savagery. It is intelligence, conjoined with 
 the sentiment of justice and brotherly love, that must guide us 
 through the perils that now menace the world. Keform must come 
 either from above or below. If it comes from above, its work will 
 be lighted by the peaceful beacons of education and rehgion. If it 
 comes from below, the glare of the incendiary's torch will blaze red 
 and appalling amid the crash of falling institutions. — Speech at Cau- 
 cus of Farmer Members of Legislature, Jan. 3, 1887. 
 
 An Unpleasant Suggestion. Beecher has sold himself to the 
 devil and the gold-bugs. He preaches no hell and too much money. 
 He may see the day that he will have no money and too much hell. 
 He may find his " hard pan " a frying-pan. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
EXTMACTS AND SELECTIONS. 251 
 
 The Spirit of Unbelief. Unbelief, therefore, has uot arisen 
 from the public schools; it has descended into them from the adults. 
 It has not come from the alphabet and the Arabic numerals, but 
 from a spirit of skepticism in the age itself, attacking first the 
 thoughtful and penetrating downward among the multitude. The 
 remedy, in our judgment, is not the destruction or modification of the 
 public school system, but a greater vigilance and activity upon the 
 part of the churches. The school hours do not exceed thirty hours in 
 the week out of 1G8. Let the pastors use a portion of the remaining 
 time to train the moral nature of the young. Above all let them be 
 prepared to fight Unbelief with logic and enthusiasm. — The Anti- 
 Monopolist. 
 
 The Fueotture of the " New Rich." The dwellings of the 
 " new rich" look like warehouses of furniture-dealers; all is spick 
 and span new, until one is almost tempted, as he wanders through 
 the resplendent grandeur, to look around for the salesman and in- 
 quire the price. — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 The U:n-iversal Fear of Comets. We have seen the folk- 
 lore of the nations, passing through the endless and continuous 
 generations of children, unchanged from the remotest ages. In the 
 same way there is an untaught but universal feeling which makes 
 all mankind regard comets with fear and trembling, and which 
 unites all races of men in a universal behef that some day the world 
 will be destroyed by fire. — Eagnarok. 
 
 A Distinction in Thieves. In the United States there is one 
 great difference between the rich thieves and the poor ones : — the 
 former are in " society ; " the latter in the penitentiary.— Jowr^aZ, 
 1884. 
 
 THE LABOR ELEMENT. 
 
 It is probable that we may, as farmers, be called upon to co- 
 operate with those members and senators from the great cities who 
 distinctly represent the great labor element. That element has 
 been too long speechless. It is beginning to find a voice : a voice 
 that will yet fill the world. I need not urge upon farmers the pro- 
 priety and justice of co-operating with them. I can conceive of no 
 demand they can make inconsistent with the interests of the agricult- 
 ural class. They are producers. So are we. We are the two mighty 
 
wiugs of civilization. Our enemies are.' almost identical. In the 
 swarming workshops we find the market for our productions ; in our 
 fields they find the ultimate destination of their wares. Interest, 
 humanity, justice^ hnk us indissolubly together. If they are down in 
 the scale of mankind, the more reason why we should try to lift them 
 up. If they are oppressed, the more cause why we should defend 
 them. It is to the great honor of the English aristocracy that 
 they have liberahzed their government with every step of advance 
 taken by the common people. In our own country civilization 
 must move forward along the lines of justice, or the whole develop- 
 ment of the human race must be arrested. — Speech at Caucus of 
 Farmer Members of Legislature, Jan. 3, 1887. 
 
 A PROPHECY. 
 
 " The inventions of men to gather wealth, through rates of interest 
 and dividends on watered stocks, are unlimited in their gathering 
 power ; and the few have made it a constant work to befog the minds 
 of the great mass of producers of wealth, and at the same time invent 
 ways and means of robbing them of every dollar of wealth they pro- 
 duce." — IndianajJoUs Sun. 
 
 The slavery which applied the gyves to the limbs and the whip 
 to the back was seen and known of all men ; but the slavery which 
 cunningly builds a conduit from the muscles of labor and the brain 
 of enterprise into the pockets of idle capital is invisible, although its 
 fruits are palpable as sunlight. If republican institutions fail in 
 this country, it will be because the stupid many are overn.atched by 
 the adroit few. It was thought in the aforetime that — asMacaulay 
 phrases it — " ten thousand men who had had no breakfast and were 
 not sure where they would get their dinner would meet at the ballot- 
 box to decide the destiny of a great and wealthy community;" that 
 is to say, that the overthrow of the republic would come from the 
 labor force of the country. But events have demonstrated that the 
 labor force of the country is patient, honest and submissive ; ready 
 to suffer and fight for the preservation of society and free institu- 
 tions. But, on the other hand, the real danger which threatens 
 the republic comes from organized and aggressive capital, inter- 
 fering in pubhc affairs, controlling legislation, corrupting the ballot- 
 box and demoralizing society. The time is not far distant when this 
 country will witness a revolution, not as bloody, but certainly as far- 
 reaching as the old French Revolution ; and if the people come out 
 
EXTMACT.^ AN J) SELECTIONS. 253 
 
 of it triuLaphantly, they \Yill recast the institutions of this nation so 
 that human liberty will be forever safe from the dangers which now 
 threaten it. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 The Necessity for General Prosperity. The perfection 
 of society can only be reached through prosperity ; and prosperity 
 depends on wise and equal laws, and these again on the intelligence 
 of the people. And so at last we find the surest cure for vice and 
 immorality in the school-house and the church; the scliool-liousc! to 
 fit men to know what is for their best interests; and the church to 
 develop the moral nature, and save society from those peculiar vices 
 which are the outcome of superabundant prosperity.— T/^e Anti- 
 Monopolist. 
 
 Gilding the Pages of our National Kecord. A Wash- 
 ington writer to the Minneapolis Tribune says : 
 
 '' The Forty- third Congress of our glorious country met for the 
 opening session on Monday of the past week, and enrolled among 
 its many new members the name of Wm. S. King, who promises to 
 be one of the most brilliant and useful of the long list of illustrious 
 statesmen that gild the pages of our national record. We, of his 
 constituency, have reason to feel justly proud of our representative. " 
 
 Think of that ! " One of the most brilliant and useful of the 
 long list of illustrious statesmen that gild the pages of our national 
 record!!" And this is not said " sarkasticul, " as Josh Billings 
 expresses it, but in sober seriousness. And " we of his constituency 
 have reason to be proud of our representative ! " Great Heavings! 
 And if we are who has any right to complain? 
 
 All that we have to say is, that if Bill takes a contract to " gild 
 the pages of our national record," he'll steal the gilding and 
 abstract the record. — The Anti-Monopolist. 
 
 The True Source of Our National Greatness. This is 
 a continent in process of colonization, with the whole world flocking 
 in to take possession of it. The real cause of high wages is the 
 general prosperity, the demand for labor, the opportunities for grow- 
 ing rich, the sparseness of population compared with extents- of ter- 
 ritory. If you could run another Mississippi valley of vacant, or 
 half vacant, land, through the heart of Europe, the rush of settlers 
 to take possession of those lands would for a generation or two 
 raise the price of labor over all Europe. — Speech at Glencoe, 1884. 
 
254 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 The Orig-in or Sun Woeship. But when we realize the fact 
 that these ancient religions were built upon the memory of an event 
 which had really happened — an event of awful significance to the 
 human race — the difficulty which perplexed Mr. Miller and other 
 scholars disappears. The sun had; apparently, been slain by an 
 evil thing; for a long period it returned not, it was dead; at length, 
 amid the rejoiciugs of the world, it arose from the dead, and came 
 in glory to rule mankind. 
 
 And these events, as I have shown, are perpetuated in the sun- 
 worship which still exists in the world in many forms. Even the 
 Christian peasant of Europe still lifts his hat to the rising sun. — 
 Bagnarok. 
 
 THE INDIANS CONSTANTLY EOBBED. 
 
 The total number of Indians receiving annuities is 46,365. If we 
 estimate each family to consist of four persons, which is a moderate 
 calculation, and divide this sum of $150,000,000 among the chiefs or 
 heads of families, we shall find that for each of such chiefs the gov- 
 ernment has expended the sum of $13,000. 
 
 Where, now, is all this wealth? Has it reached the Indians'? 
 Have its accumulations descended from father to son ? Do we find 
 it represented to-day, among the tribes, by comfortable homes and 
 overflowing granaries'? No ! Upon our Western prairies are scat- 
 tered this miserable, degraded, impoverished people, an everlasting 
 reproach to our Christian nation and a disgrace to humanity. 
 Where, then, are these great sumsf They have gone to fill the 
 coffers of those who stood between the G-overnment and the Indian, 
 and deceived the one while they robbed the other. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, I feel that it is my duty to speak of these things. 
 The evil results of this pernicious system have descended upon my 
 own State in fire and blood. An innocent and unoffending popula- 
 tion of white settlers have XDaid the penalty for years of misgovern- 
 ment with their lives; and although the scenes of devastation and 
 ruin and horror have passed away from my State — I trust forever 
 — the system still hves, and is already preparing new stores of suf- 
 fering and calamities for other communities When I have looked 
 upon the humble home of the frontiersman in ashes and beheld the 
 coi-pse of its owner lying gashed and bloody beside it, I could not 
 but trace home the terrible responsibility for all this evil to this 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 2o') 
 
 Capitol aud to that system which, taking charge of a savage race, 
 retained them in barbarism, made no proper efforts for their civili- 
 zation, and at last turned them loose like wild beasts, to glut their 
 brutal passions and infuriated rage upon an unsuspecting people. 
 
 I assert unhesitatingly and upon mature reflection that not even 
 our white race could rise from barbarism to civihzation against the 
 pressure of such a system as that under and by means of which it is 
 proposed to civilize the Indians. — Speech in Congress, Feb. 7, 1865. 
 
 THE KANGAROO. 
 
 We don't propose to be outdone by The Farmer's Union, and so 
 we announce that our next illustration will be a Kangaroo. 
 
 We consider this a proper illustration for an agricultural paper, 
 for the self-evident reason that it has no connection with agriculture. 
 
 The Kangaroo is a highly interesting animal. It can sit on its 
 hind legs and balance itself on its tail ; a feat which no agricultural 
 editor in the United States, excepting Abernethy, has- ever yet been 
 able to successfully accomplish. 
 
 The Kangaroo carries its young ones in a pouch, in front, where 
 they lie completely concealed from view, like Abernethy's breed of 
 potatoes, which grow altogether under ground, and are thus grass- 
 hopper proof. 
 
 The young cling to their pouch and suck away like a lot of coun- 
 try editors in the bosom of a Congressman. And wherever the Kan- 
 garoo jumps the editors hang on, singiug, '' And whithersoever thou 
 goest there will I go ; and thy country shall be my country." 
 
 The difference between the young ones after they leave the pouch 
 and the young ones before they leave it, is precisely the difference 
 between the Democratic and Republican parties, viz : — one set is 
 out and the other set is in. That's all. 
 
 The fore paws of the Kangaroo are very small compared with his 
 feet; and herein it differs from the ordinary politician, whose capac- 
 ity to grab is out of all proportion to the rest of his organization. 
 
 Few animals can look so wise with so small a head. In which 
 respect also it reminds us of Abernethy. 
 
 The culture of the Kangaroo should be introduced into Minne- 
 sota. The grasshopper will not eat him, — nor, in fact, will any- 
 thing else. To those who desire to diversify the crops, we would 
 cordially recommend the Kangaroo. When the Fox and Wisconsin 
 
256 BONNELLIANA. 
 
 canal comes into operation tbe Kangaroo will bo invaluable to jamp 
 over the sand-bars, where it is too wet to go afoot and not wet 
 enough to float a boat. A peck of wheat could be fastened to the 
 tail of each Kangaroo, and thus that great work of internal com- 
 munication be made a brilliant success. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 Oun Theology. Our theology, even where science has most 
 ridiculed it, is based on a great, a gigantic truth. Paradise, the 
 summer land of fruits, the serpent, the fire from heaven, the expul- 
 sion, the waving sword, the " fall of man," the " darkness on the 
 face of the deep," the age of toil and sweat — all, all, are literal 
 facts. And could we but penetrate their meaning, the trees of life 
 and knowledge and the apples of paradise probably represent like- 
 wise great and important facts, or events, in the history of our race. 
 — Bagnarok. 
 
 The Declaration of Independe:n^ce. We cannot fail to recog- 
 nize the all-fashioning hand of God as clearly in this sublime decla- 
 ration as in the geologic eras, the configuration of the continents or 
 the creation of man himself. What a world of growth has already 
 budded and flowered and borne fruit from tbis seed! What an 
 incalculable world of growth is to arise from it in the future! — 
 Fourth of July Speech. 
 
 BLIGHTED PEOSPECTS. 
 
 " The New York Post is ungenerous enough to assert that 
 Ignatius Donnelly cannot serve his country better than by bhghting 
 his own political prospects. We think, out here, that these ^ pros- 
 pects ' are pretty effectually 'blighted.' " — St. Paul Dispatch. 
 
 If it blights a man's political prospects in Minnesota to follow his 
 convictions of right and duty to the bitter end, ours may be con- 
 sidered as " effectually blighted." 
 
 But we remember that the same Boston which once pelted Will- 
 iam Lloyd Garrison with rotten eggs afterward carried him on its 
 shoulders, and will carry him in its heart forever. 
 
 We believe in doing right and letting the " political prospects " 
 take care of themselves. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 The MoifOPOLiSTS. If Congress had not interfered you would 
 have placed a Mongolian, who could live on rice and rats, at the 
 elbow of every American workman, and reduced him to Asiatic 
 wretchedness. Your deyilisli arts have filled American laborers 
 
EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 'J57 
 
 with discontent, despair and communism; you are undermining the 
 very foundation of the repubhc by creating a class who, having no 
 hope of any improvement in their condition, have come to regard 
 property and government as their mortal enemies; and on the slight- 
 est provocation they will break out into riots, such as those of Pitts- 
 burg and Cincinnati. From such anarchy there is no refuge, if your 
 policy is to continue, but a strong government, and that means the 
 end of free government. — Speech at Glencoe, 1884. 
 
 THE SEVENTH DAY. 
 
 And this process is still going on. Mr. James Geikie says : 
 
 " We are sure of this, that since the deposition of the shelly 
 clays, and the disappearance of the latest local glaciers, there have 
 been no oscillations, but only a gradual amelioration of climate.^' 
 
 The world, like Milton's lion, is still trying to disengage its 
 hinder limbs from the superincumbent weight of the Drift. Every 
 snow-storm, every chilling blast that blows from the frozen lips of 
 the icy North, is but a reminiscence of Ragnarok. 
 
 But the great cosmical catastrophe was substantially over with 
 the close of the sixth day. We are now in the seventh day. The 
 darkness has gone ; the sun has come back ; the waters have re- 
 turned to their bounds ; vegetation has resumed its place ; the fish, 
 the birds, the animals, men are once more populous in ocean, air, 
 and on the laud; the comet is gone, and the orderly processes of 
 nature are around us, and God is " resting " from the great task 
 of restoring his afflicted world. — Ragnarok. 
 
 Education. " The city swarms with book agents and represent- 
 atives of Eastern publishing houses, all of whom have an eye on the 
 eminent educators. " — Pioneer-Press. 
 
 Yes ; even as the shark followeth the emigrant ship, so the book 
 agent folio we th the eminent educator; and for the same purpose — 
 Something to eat ! The other day the book publishers held a meeting 
 and resolved to sell at low figures to book agents, school teachers, 
 etc., but to keep up prices to the common people. " Liberty! " 
 said Madame Roland, as she passed the statue of that goddess, on 
 her way to the place of execution, " ho w many crimes are committed 
 in thy name!" "0 Education!" we echo, "how many infernal 
 rascals steal themselves rich In thy name. " — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
23S BONNELLIANA, 
 
 DoiKG Justice to Donnelly. '' A correspondent asks us to 
 'do justice to Donnelly.' We can't. It isn't possible. Donnelly 
 will have to wait for justice till lie falls into the hands of old Beelze- 
 bub." — Grange Advance. 
 
 And when he does Beelzebub will exclaim : 
 
 " What ! that great and good man here ! This is another Ke= 
 publican trick. Here, you infernal devils, carry him up tenderly to 
 heaven, where he belongs. And see — cook!— broil me Young's 
 heart on the coals — and give me one of Joe Wheelock's hind legs 
 to pick my teeth with. " — Anti- Monopolist, 
 
 The Neutral Press. A new paper has been started at Reed's 
 Landing; called the Press. It has for its motto : 
 
 "Pledged to no party's arbitrary sway, 
 We follow Trutli where'er it leads the way." 
 
 That sounds pretty, but it generally means to shut both eyes 
 and sing sn;all. Such papers are too often like the fellow's canoe, 
 which was so delicately balanced that if he changed his chaw of to- 
 bacco from one side of his mouth to the other it would upset the 
 precarious craft. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 Public Life in America. As I said before, I have no ambi- 
 tion to shine, and I look upon public life as discredited, if not dis- 
 honored, by the kind of men who rule it. It appears to me as a 
 sordid and debased struggle of little creatures for honors that fade 
 from the memories of men almost as soon as they are won. Out 
 of the thousands of public characters who have taken part in our 
 national life, one can count upon the fingers of his two hands the 
 list of those statesmen who have really left any impress on their 
 age ; while a still smaller number will be remembered beyond the 
 termination of the century in which they lived. I turned, therefore, 
 from the temptations of this shallow and barren life to the quiet of 
 my own library and communion with the mighty souls of the past— 
 
 " Those dead but sceptered sovereigns who still rule 
 Our spirits from their urns " — 
 
 as one might turn from the sprawling and contemptible contentions 
 of dogs to a banquet of the gods. — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 Man cannot be Trusted to the Merct of his Fellow- 
 men. It is too evident that when you strip a man of all means of 
 self-defense, either through the courts or the laws, deprive him 
 
EXTMACTS ANU SELECTIONS. 25U 
 
 of education and leave him to tlie mercy of bis fellow -men, he must 
 suflfer all the pangs which our unworthy human nature is capable 
 of inflicting. Who is there believes that man can safely intrust 
 himself solely and alone to the mercy of his fellow-man ? Let such a 
 man step forward and select his master! Let him, in the wide circle 
 
 of the whole world, choose out that man — pure, just and humane 
 
 upon whose vast, all-embracing charity he can throw the burden of 
 his life. Alas ! there is no such man. — Speech in Congress, Jan. 17, 
 1865. 
 
 The Conflagration of Science. Have not Bacon's anticipa- 
 tions been reaUzed ? Does not the great conflagaration of science, 
 kindled by his torch, not only burn up the rubbish of many ancient 
 errors, and enlarge the practical powers of mankind, but is it not 
 casting great luminous tongues of flame, day by day, farther out into 
 the darkness with which nature has encompassed us? — The Ch'eat 
 Cryptogram. 
 
 Fetching it Home to a Man. If the 'hoppers lay their eggs' 
 again this fall in Watonwan County, next spring will find brother 
 
 S a first-class Anti-MonopoUst. It is extraordinary what a 
 
 clear perception of injustice an empty pocket brings.— T/^e Anti- 
 Monopolist. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 He who follows the gigantic Mississippi upward from the Gulf of 
 Mexico to its head-waters on the high plateau of Minnesota, will 
 not scorn even the tiniest rivulet, among the grasses, which helps to 
 create its first fountain. So he who considers the vastness for good 
 of this great force, Christianity, which pervades the world, down the 
 long course of so many ages, aiding, reUeving, encouraging, cheering, 
 purifying, sanctifying humanity, cannot afibrd to ridicule even 
 these the petty fountains, the head- waters, the first springs from 
 which it starts on its world-covering and age-traversing course. 
 
 If we will but remember the endless array of asylums, hospitals, 
 and orphanages ; the houses for the poor, the sick, the young, the 
 old, the unfortunate, the helpless, and the sinful, with which Chris- 
 tianity has literally sprinkled the world; when we remember the 
 uncountable millions whom its ministrations have restrained from 
 bestiality, and have directed to purer lives and holier deaths, he 
 
260 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 indeed is not to be envied who can find it in his heart, with mahce- 
 aforethought, to mock or ridicule it. — Bagnarok. 
 
 Mankikd. Battles cease, wars pass away, heroes perish, great 
 men die, only mankind survives. " Only mankind is the true man; " 
 only mankind is fit to toil and labor and die for. — Memorial 
 Address, 1884. 
 
 The Eagle. 
 
 The eagle flew in upper air ; 
 
 Its shadow crawled along the grass. 
 
 THE TEUE DOCTRINE. 
 
 There is a hearty glow of patriotism in this paragraph from the 
 Memphis Appeal which is extremely pleasant : 
 
 " Democrats we are, and Tennesseans, and full of love for our 
 thrice-blessed South -land; but over all there laps the claim of Union, 
 with its ^reat achievements and its greater destiny. God bless the 
 flag, and God bless the Union, and may He strengthen all hearts, 
 both north and south, to labor for an everlasting peace between the 
 States." 
 
 That is the true doctrine and the true spirit. God bless every 
 man who preaches it ! And may every wretch that seeks to rise by 
 planting hatred in the hearts of fellow-citizens of a common country 
 perish amid all the calamities which God can inflict on the basest of 
 mankind. 
 
 We must have a nation as grand in its moral as its material 
 features ; held together, not by force of law, but by force of love. 
 The soil on which love flourishes is justice. 
 
 Let us make our flag truly the representative of fair play, gener- 
 osity and brotherly love, so that if any foreign foe assails it the men 
 of the South will spring to arms to defend it as readily as the men 
 of the North. — The Anti-Monopolist, 1874. 
 
 The Plunderings or the Wheat Eing. But the excuses 
 do not end here. In addition to these flne discriminations as to 
 grade we have pretenses of all kinds : — one year the wheat is too 
 wet; another year it is frozen; another year it is smutted ; another 
 year it has too much cockle in it. And f len they go into 
 the question of the genealogy of the wheat. Fellows who have no 
 pedigree themselves insist that every kernel of wheat must have 
 one ; and to sell a load of wheat is equal to proving the title to an 
 
EXTRACTS ANh SELECTIONS l^Gl 
 
 estate. If it can be established that a fugitive kernel of " Lost 
 Nation " has strayed into one of his sacks, the farmer may have to 
 forfeit the whole profits on his entire crop. He might j ust as well 
 trace back his paternity to a man that was hanged, as to have the 
 buyer feel around in his sack and cry out triumphantly, " There's 
 Lost Nation ! ^'—Speech at Glencoe, 1884. 
 
 Tell the Teuth. Tell the truth. Brother H., if it loosens 
 your front teeth in the extraordinary effort. — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 The Elizabethan Period. To the average man and woman 
 around us that era-making Elizabethan period was bat a name. To 
 us it was the visible interference of the hand of God in the affairs 
 of men, through the mediumship of mighty intellects, who have 
 affected the minds of all subsequent generations, and whose power 
 will increase with the growth of population and the development of 
 civilization on the earth. — Doctor Huguet. 
 
 Intelligent Ignorance. We have always said that the people 
 of Zumbrota were the most intelligent and at the same time the most 
 stupid on the continent; for there is a kind of intelligence that is as 
 unprogressive, as intolerant and as conservative as ignorance itself; 
 it is the intelligence of the man who "knows it all,'' and whose 
 mental constitution is incapable of the reception of a single new 
 idea. Hence such a man is always the victim of cunning decep- 
 tions. — Tlie Anti-Monopolist, 1877. 
 
 City and Country. A poor man is oftentimes rich in the 
 country, while a rich man may be poor in the city. — Journal, 1883. 
 
 The Work of the Plow. Set the plow moving, and the re- 
 sult is wealth. But the wealth is only valuable as it is able to com- 
 municate and interchange itself with other wealth. Hence the 
 necessity for roads. Where these roads converge there are towns 
 and cities, and these give birth to greater roads, increasing hke the 
 veins as you approach the heart of commerce. What next? Re- 
 lieve the primal animal necessities of man, and his higher nature 
 comes into play — it begins to dart out and reach at new subjects. 
 It observes, it inquires, it reflects. New wants arise with new 
 knowledge, and these again beget other wants. GTive a man wealth, 
 and civilization comes to him clad in a thousand attractive shapes 
 and colors. It is said that the earth taken from the depths of mines. 
 
262 DONNELLIANA. 
 
 where it has slept for thousands of years, if exposed to the sun's rays 
 will develop all manner of novel and singular plants. So when 
 civihzation beams upon the mind of man, it awakens the seeds of a 
 multitude of new wants of which he was before unconscious. Soci- 
 ety is the interchange of wants. Whenever you afford man the 
 opportunity to improve his condition you widen the area of civiliza- 
 tion. Every bushel of wheat grown is a contribution to the wealth 
 of the world, and, therefore, to the comfort of the human family. 
 Hence we may say that every plow set moving on the plains of the 
 West is felt in its consequences through all the populations of 
 Europe. — Speech in Congress, May 7, 1868. 
 
 AmePvICA. What a divine task is this, given to each of us, to help 
 build up such a nation, on such an arena, and with such principles! 
 Is it not good to live in such a day, and to take part in such a work ? 
 — Memorial Address, 1884. 
 
 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD PROVED. 
 
 "Indeed!" I said, warming up, for I, too, was conscious of 
 Mary's presence. " Indeed ! why, you use the very intelligence 
 which God has given you to deny that there is an InteUigence in the 
 universe. You conceive of a great work-shop without a master me- 
 chanic. You perceive a million delicate adjustments in nature, and 
 you conclude that those adjustments adjusted themselves. You 
 would have design, but no designer. Consider it but a moment. 
 To permit you to deny God, with your thoughts and your tongue, 
 there have to be ten thousand curious and cunning inventions applied 
 to your own body, so subtle that science has not yet been able to 
 apprehend, much less explain, but a few of them. The process of 
 thought is inexplicable on any physical basis. How can a mass 
 of pulpy matter, which we call the brain, dart out lines of some- 
 thing that shall travel to the remotest borders of the milky way, 
 and weigh, as in a grocer's balance, the very planets and suns? If 
 you would deny God, you must begin by denying yourself, for the 
 power to think that there is or is not a God implies a thought-power 
 somewhere in the universe of which your intellect is a fragment or 
 fraction. It is impossible to conceive a vast creation without a gen- 
 eral intelligence. A creation possessing only spots of unconnected 
 intelligence, scattered here and there, self-born, self-luminous, and 
 mortal, cannot be." — Doctor Ruguet. 
 
EXTRACTS AND HF.Li:CTIONS. 263 
 
 TWO STOEIES. 
 
 Good old Abraham Lincoln used to tell a story of two drunken 
 Inen who got Into a fist fight. Each had an overcoat on.. They 
 " fit and they font, " they rolled and they tumbled, and when they 
 got through with the battle each man had fought himself out of his 
 own overcoat and into his opponent's overcoat. 
 
 The Minneapolis Tribune is now striving lustily to fight its way 
 into our overcoat. It is denouncing '' plundering railroad combina- 
 tions" and '^ robbers of the people" as vigorously as ever we have 
 done. And now, lo ! and behold! the Pioneer-Press, which, time out 
 of mind, has denounced all opposition to railroad rings as '' commu- 
 nism" of the most red republican stripe, is now trying hard to get 
 into our capacious overcoat also. 
 
 A Spanish cavalier was riding his mule one bright summer day; 
 a fly bit the mule's long ear; he lifted his leg to scratch off the offend- 
 ing insect, when hisfoot caught in the stirrup, and, unable to extricate 
 himself, he began to struggle about on three legs. ''Hold on! " 
 cried the astonished cavalier, " if you are going to get on I will get 
 off. " We feel very much the same way. If these Eepublican sheets 
 are determined to mount our hobby would it not be well for us to 
 seek another steed? — The Anti- Monopolist. 
 
 The Miracle of Life. The scientist picks up a fragment of 
 stone— the fool would fling it away with a laugh — but the philoso- 
 pher sees in it the genesis of a world; from it he can piece out the 
 detailed history of ages; he finds in it, perchance, a fossil of the 
 oldest organism, the first traces of that awful leap from matter to 
 spirit, from dead earth to endless life; that marvel of marvels, that 
 miracle of all miracles, by which dust and water and air live, 
 breathe, think, reason, and cast their thoughts abroad through time 
 and space and eternity. — Ragnarok. 
 
 The Public School System. The interest of the public school 
 system is the interest of the free institutions of this nation. No 
 blow can be struck at its existence that will not endanger the heart 
 of the repubhc. Co-eval in birth, co-equal in life, they will be con- 
 temporary in death. 
 
 When the golden sun ceases to shine upon the marble high 
 schools of the East, and the log-built schools of the Western clear- 
 ing, it will look its last upon our great and good government. If 
 
264 LONNELLIANA. 
 
 once, from the grasp of the poor man, shall be wrested this univei- 
 sal system of education, dearer to him than those liberties which it 
 interprets or protects; if once the exclusive university or the im- 
 practical college' shall supplant or suppress it, woe to that principle 
 which declared man equal with man — woe to that declaration which 
 brought down the British eagle flying and raised on high the ban- 
 ner of a free people. They will be neutrahzed — they will be for- 
 gotten. — Alumni Speech, 1853. 
 
 A VALENTINE TO A LITTLE GIRL. 
 
 Winds, blow fleetly to lady mine 
 
 This leaf of love from her Valentine. 
 
 Tell her I love her as angels love 
 
 Their starry harps in the realm above ; 
 
 Where never is sadness and never is sighing, 
 
 And never is wail unto wail replying ; 
 
 Where thoughts come not that are darksome and dreary ; 
 
 Where tasks rise not that are lonesome and weary ; 
 
 But all is as bright, in that blessed place, 
 
 As the laugh that lives on her sunny face. 
 
 Tell her I wait till her womanly bloom 
 
 Shall beam hke a rose in a bower of gloom ; 
 
 And all that is beauty's, and all that is worth's, 
 
 Shall mingle and meet in her features of gladness ; 
 And all that is heaven's, and naught that is earth's. 
 Shall touch her pure spirit with trouble and sadness. 
 
 —1853. 
 A Laugh. The fellow laughs as if it hurt him. A pang passes 
 over his face, but he controls it at once, and once more looks dejected. 
 —Journal, 1884. 
 
 Proofs of Deity. Who regulates the growth of the eye-brows 
 and eye-lashes^? If they grew like the hair or beard, the savage or 
 the beast could not see. The beasts have no scissors, and the sav- 
 age at first had no cutting instruments. Who is it watches every 
 hair, and puts his finger on the end of it, and says, " Thus far shalt 
 thou go, and no farther. "—JbwrwaZ, 1890. 
 
 The Leadership of Women. It is an auspicious sign for the 
 future of the human race when women, who in the olden time wer© 
 
KXTBACTS ANT) SELECTIONS. :>(i:> 
 
 the slaves or the playthings of men, prove that their more delieale 
 nervous organization is not at all incompatible with the greatest 
 mental labors or the profoundest and most original conceptions. 
 And if it be a fact — as all creeds believe — that our intelligences 
 are plastic in the hands of the external spiritual influences, then we 
 may naturally expect that woman — purer, higher, nobler and more 
 sensitive than man — will in the future lead the race up many of the 
 great sun-crowned heights of progress, where thicker-brained man 
 can only follow in her footsteps. — TJie Great Cryptogram. 
 
 [THE END.] 
 
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