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PRICE FIFTY CENTS. 
 
 HON. 
 
 UNCLE SAM 
 
 BY 
 
 Viscount Valrose, 
 
 New York : 
 JOHN DELAY, 
 
 8i6 Broadway. 
 L&66. 
 
^~'\% 
 
 w. 
 
 Copyright 1888, 
 By JOHN DELAY. 
 
 fAil rights reserved.) 
 
 PRESS OF 
 
 JENKINS & McCOWAN, 
 New York. 
 
CONTKNXS. 
 
 CHAPTER • PAGE 
 
 I. The Orators 5 
 
 II. The Ladies 37 
 
 III. The Rhymesters 56 
 
 IV. The Pamphleteers 73 
 
 V. The Journalists ^ 87 
 
 VI. The Caricaturists 113 
 
 VII. The Preachers 131 
 
 VIII. The Poet 150 
 
 IX. The Diplomats 165 
 
 X. The Financiers 186 
 
 XL The Wits. 193 
 
 XII. The Philosophers 199 
 
Hon. Uncle Sam, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE ORATORS. 
 
 When I left Paris for Washington, over 
 seven years ago, I promised to send you, my 
 dear Count, some sketches of the poHticians 
 of Uncle Sam. 
 
 I now proceed to fulfill my promise. 
 
 If I were a cynic I would divide all politi- 
 cians here into two classes. I would speak 
 of the corrupt and the hypocritical. 
 
 But I am not a cynic ; I am simply a cos- 
 mopolitan, who has observed, read, tried to 
 learn, and who now endeavors to impart his 
 information to a valued friend. 
 
 Suppose we treat of the public men of the 
 United States as orators, pamphleteers, jour- 
 nalists, diplomats, preachers, caricaturists; 
 5 
 
6 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 and suppose we begin with a consideration 
 of the orators. 
 
 The arrangement is convenient, if not en- 
 tirely logical. 
 
 It would perhaps be a mistake to speak of 
 the President as an orator. 
 
 This big, portly man, with his bald head on 
 its heavy neck, his dull blue eyes, his stifif, 
 reddish-browai mustache, is a signer of doc- 
 uments rather than a speaker of speeches. 
 He has no personal magnetism, no readiness 
 of words, no grace of action. He is slow, 
 stolid, pompous at times. When he speaks 
 in public he invariably places one hand in 
 his Prince Albert coat, and one behind his 
 back, stands square and immobile, and says 
 what he has to say in a quiet, unimpassion- 
 ed manner. 
 
 The President is now in his fiftieth year. 
 He comes of humble though honorable stock, 
 received a common-school education, stud- 
 ied law, and practiced it with mediocre suc- 
 cess. Before he attained his present lofty 
 position, in 1884, he was successively Sheriff 
 of Erie County, Mayor of Buffalo, and Gov- 
 ernor of New York. 
 
 The President is a political accident. He 
 
THE ORATORS. 
 
 happened to make a brilliant run for the 
 Governorship of his State, and immediately 
 some of the leaders of his party looked upon 
 him as a Presidential candidate. By skillful 
 management he was nominated, and by a 
 slight majority he was elected. 
 
 The President is a plodding and method- 
 ical worker. 
 
 He takes off his coat and buckles down to 
 his task like any thousand-dollar clerk in the 
 service. 
 
 He is at his desk in the White House every 
 morning at 9, works till i, takes an hour 
 for lunch, works till 5, dines, drives. This 
 routine is varied on reception-days and on 
 days of Cabinet meetings. 
 
 The confidential man of the President is 
 Daniel S. Lamont. He is his private secre- 
 tary. The opposition cartoonists represent 
 him as a spaniel. 
 
 The duties of the President are various 
 and interesting. 
 
 Head of the executive department of the 
 Government, the President signs or vetoes 
 bills, manufactures messages, issues procla- 
 mations. 
 
 The President is, by courtesy, bound to re- 
 
S HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 ceive Senators, Representatives, judges, and 
 the office-seekers endorsed by them. These 
 gentlemen generally reward his hospitality 
 by criticism and abuse — when he does not 
 comply with their wishes. 
 
 The President is doomed by his position 
 to receive and smile upon foreign diplomats. 
 He is not familiar with their language, and 
 they use their language to dissimulate their 
 opinion of him. 
 
 The President is compelled, at public re- 
 ceptions, to welcome to his parlor thousands 
 of his countrymen, whose hand-shakes give 
 him the rheumatism. 
 
 For these services he receives $50,000 a 
 year. 
 
 The President is not, as I have already in- 
 timated, an orator in the great acceptation 
 of the word. But when before an humble 
 audience, when he does not try to be rhetor- 
 ical and important, he is singularly effective. 
 I remember one of the little speeches, deliv- 
 ered by him to the people of a village where 
 he passed some of his young days, as particu- 
 larly good. I reproduce it, and let you judge. 
 
 '• As I find myself here once more in this pretty village, 
 
THE ORATORS. g 
 
 the sports and pastimes of my youth come back to my 
 mind. I take warm interest in being with you once more. 
 Some of you, more than forty years ago, were my school- 
 fellows and playmates. I can recall the faces of some 
 who are now no more. I recall old Green Lake, and the 
 fish I tried to catch and never did, and the traditional 
 panther on its shores, which used to shorten my excur- 
 sions thitherward. I've heard so much howling in the 
 past two years that I don't think I should be frightened 
 by the panther now. If some of the old householders 
 were here, I could tell them who it was that used to take 
 off their front gates. I mention this because I have been 
 accused of so many worse crimes since I have been in 
 Washington, that I consider taking off gates somewhat of 
 a virtue. 
 
 " And so, you see, I've taken you and your village with 
 me, and, whether you are willing or not, I have made you 
 a part of this Administration. I have been a sad truant, 
 but now that you have seen me, keep your eyes ever upon 
 me as I strive to do my duty in behalf of the people of 
 this country. And it shall be my desire so to act that I 
 may receive the approbation of these, my oldest and best 
 friends." 
 
 The President, in a word, is not a great 
 orator or a great statesman, but he is, hke 
 Jules Grevy, a safe executive officer, a man 
 of respectable abilities. 
 
 Mr. Benjamin Harrison, of Indiana, the 
 rival of the President, is the grandson of a 
 grandfather who fought a little battle with 
 
lO HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 the Indians, beat them, and was elected Pres- 
 ident of the United States. 
 
 Mr. Benjamin Harrison is rather short in 
 stature, shaky in appearance. 
 
 He has small, squinting eyes, thin, reddish- 
 brown hair, and a scragg-y, unbarbered white 
 beard. 
 
 Mr. Benjamin Harrison is as insignificant 
 in appearance as M. Jules Ferry. 
 
 He is also rather distant in his bearing. 
 
 His reputation for integrity is good, but 
 his fame as a lawyer or a statesman is not 
 national. 
 
 He is a local man, selected because he was 
 available. 
 
 Mr. Benjamin Harrison smokes, but he 
 doesn't drink. 
 
 When he gave a dinner to Mr. Blaine, 
 some four years ago, there was no wine on 
 the table. 
 
 Mr. Harrison lives in Indianapolis. He 
 resides in a plain, unpretentious, two-story 
 house, set well back from the street, and 
 shrouded from vulgar gaze by shrubbery 
 and trees. 
 
 A big picture of his grandfather. General 
 Harrison, the old gentleman who beat the 
 
THE ORATORS. II 
 
 Indians in that little battle and became 
 President, hangs in the back parlor. 
 
 Mr. Benjamin Harrison was in the Senate 
 of the United States at Washington once 
 upon a time, but nobody seems to remem- 
 ber it. 
 
 He didn't make any speeches to distin- 
 guish himself. 
 
 During the late war he was an officer in 
 the army. 
 
 His friends like to tell how he enlisted. 
 
 One day he called on Governor Morton, 
 of Indiana, to ask for the appointment of a 
 friend to a military command. He found 
 the great war Governor gloomy at the fail- 
 ure to respond to the call for troops. He 
 took his caller to the window, and, pointing 
 to some housebuilders, marveled that they 
 could work when on the morrow there might 
 be no Government to protect their property. 
 
 Young Harrison consulted no friend, not 
 even his wife. He walked from the Govern- 
 or's office to a hat shop, where he donned 
 an army cap. Within an hour he was parad- 
 ing behind a fife and drum. 
 
 Mr. Harrison came out of the war a gen- 
 eral. 
 
12 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 Generals are as common in this country as 
 gendarmes are with us. 
 
 Two of the most prominent poHtical op- 
 ponents of the President are men who at 
 present hold no political office. 
 
 They are Mr. James G. Blaine and Mr. 
 Chauncey Depew. 
 
 Both of these men are men of national 
 reputation. 
 
 Mr. Blaine has been, in the course of his 
 life, a school teacher, a book canvasser, an 
 editor, a Congressman, a Senator, a Secre- 
 tary of State. 
 
 Mr. Depew has also been a politician and 
 a lawyer, but to-day he is president of the 
 big system of railroads controlled by Van- 
 derbilt. 
 
 How slick, sleek, specious, are both these 
 men ! 
 
 They are what they call " smart " men here. 
 
 Uncle Sam likes smartness above all things. 
 
 Both Mr. Blaine and Mr. Depew are rich 
 men, optimistic men, and both are orators. 
 
 They dazzle the eyes, entrance the ears. 
 
 Neither of them ever hems or haws. 
 
 Neither of them forgets the names and 
 faces of influential men. 
 
THE ORATORS. 
 
 13 
 
 Neither of them is ever at a loss. 
 
 Put either of them before an audience in 
 the smallest village, and he will say the right 
 thing. 
 
 When I read some of the speeches of Mr. 
 Blaine and Mr. Depew, both smooth, oily- 
 demagogues, I am reminded of what a 
 parodist of Webster maintained that that 
 orator once said to the citizens of a certain 
 small city in New York State. 
 
 " Men of Rochester, I am glad to see you, and I am 
 glad to see your noble city. Gentlemen, I saw your falls, 
 which I am told are one hundred and fifty feet high. 
 That is a very interesting fact. Gentlemen, Rome had 
 her Caesar, her Scipio, her Brutus, but Rome in her proud- 
 est days never had a water-fall one hundred and fifty feet 
 high ! Gentlemen, Greece had her Pericles, her Demos- 
 thenes, and her Socrates, but Greece in her palmiest days 
 never had a water-fall one hundred and fifty feet high ! 
 Men of Rochester, go on ! No people ever lost their lib- 
 erties who had a water-fall one hundred and fifty feet high !" 
 
 The crowd applauds. 
 
 A crowd is such an unreasoning mass ! 
 
 Mr. Allen Thurman, of Ohio, is another 
 prominent orator. 
 
 The Democrats call him " the noblest 
 Roman of them all." 
 
14 
 
 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 He has a striking, gray-haired head on a 
 small body. 
 
 He discards the mustache, but he wears 
 a chin-beard. 
 
 He is a fine lawyer and a well-read man. 
 
 I hear our Moliere is one of his favorite 
 authors. 
 
 Mr. Thurman blows his nose vociferously 
 in a red bandanna handkerchief. 
 
 Now, the Democrats want to make him 
 Vice-President. 
 
 They like him. 
 
 When he takes snuff, the whole Democracy 
 of Uncle Sam sneezes. 
 
 Mr. Blaine is tall, erect, high-shouldered. 
 
 He has a sallow, intelligent face, encom- 
 passed by a white beard. 
 
 His dark eyes are restive and uncertain, 
 behind heavy eyelids. 
 
 His nose is prominent, bulbous, a nose that 
 our Cham would have loved to caricature. 
 
 His manners are urbane. 
 
 He makes the most gracious bow in the 
 land. 
 
 They compare him here to Gladstone. 
 
 He is more like Beaconsfield. 
 
 Mr. Depew is rather corpulent. 
 
THE ORATORS. 1 5 
 
 His face, clean-shaven save for small 
 whiskers, indicates the self-sufficiency of a 
 bank president plus the conscious goodness 
 of a clerical. 
 
 He reminds me somewhat of M. Pouyer- 
 Quertier. 
 
 Allow me, now, to present you to another 
 type — Mr. Carl Schurz, of New York. 
 
 He was born in Germany. 
 
 tie speaks with an accent, and after much 
 preparation. 
 
 He has belonged to all parties in this coun- 
 try, and is liked by none. 
 
 He is one of the homeliest men in public 
 life — tall, thin-legged, with a long, protrud- 
 ing chin, a red beard, a flat nose. 
 
 Mr. Schurz has been a tutor, a revolution- 
 ist, an editor, a brigadier-general, an envoy- 
 extraordinary, a secretary of department at 
 Washington. 
 
 He is now busy writing his memoirs. 
 
 Any man can become anything in this 
 land of Uncle Sam's. 
 
 I have not told you that there are two great 
 parties in this country. 
 
 The dominant party is the Democratic, 
 the minority is the Republican, party. 
 
1 6 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 The Democrats believe in a strict interpre- 
 tation of the Constitution, in due power re- 
 served to the States, in low tariff, in an ex- 
 tensive foreign commerce. 
 
 The Republicans maintain that there should 
 be a broad construction of the Constitution ; 
 that there should be a strong central govern- 
 ment ; little power in the States ; protection 
 of home industries by high tariff ; and lavish 
 expenditure of the surplus money in the 
 treasury for educational and commercial pur- 
 poses. 
 
 These, in rough, are the dividing lines of 
 the two parties. 
 
 However they may differ in other respects, 
 they agree in one point. 
 
 They are all, at any time, ready to take 
 the emoluments of office. 
 
 They both interpret Civil-Service Reform 
 to mean that to the victor belong the loaves 
 and fishes and post-offices, 
 
 I have often attended the sessions of the 
 Senate and of the House of Representatives 
 in Washington. 
 
 Let me hit off some of the prominent mem- 
 bers for you. 
 
 The Senate, I should first remark, is pre- 
 
THE ORATORS. 
 
 17 
 
 sided over by the Vice-President of the 
 United States. 
 
 There are two Senators from each State of 
 the Union, and their salaries are $5,000 a 
 year each, with twenty cents per mile where- 
 with to travel to and from Washington. 
 
 These comfortable wise men of the Senate 
 — which has been called " the pleasantest 
 club in the country " — are elected by the 
 Legislature of their respective States for six 
 years. 
 
 The Democrats sit on one side of the Sen- 
 ate Chamber, the Republicans on the other. 
 
 They speak from their desks on the floor, 
 and not, as with us, from a tribune. 
 
 Senator John Sherman, of Ohio, is one of 
 the senior members of the Senate. An old- 
 time Republican, a former Secretary of the 
 Treasury, he is an authority on negro suffrage 
 and financial administration. 
 
 He is a slight man as to physique, with a 
 solemn face, a firm mouth, a stubby beard, 
 and a vinegar expression. 
 
 As an orator he is not a success. 
 
 He is as ennuyeux as M. de Broglie. 
 
 He deals in figures and policies and facts. 
 He never lets rhetoric run away with him. 
 
l8 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 Senator Edmunds, of Vermont, is a vener- 
 able looking- man. 
 
 He has a head that Bonnat would love to 
 paint. 
 
 He is a severe partisan, a thorough lawyer, 
 but he is not a magnetic speaker. When he 
 gives his views in the Senate, he keeps his 
 hands folded on his stomach, and proceeds 
 slowly, and in a low tone. 
 
 Senator Edmunds is a [chilly, unsympa- 
 thetic man. 
 
 I may compare him with M. Dufaure. 
 
 Senator Evarts, of New York, is one of the 
 ablest and wittiest men in the Senate. 
 
 He is a great lawyer, a fine scholar, an 
 agreeable after-dinner speaker. 
 
 He has been Attorney-General, Counsel 
 at the Geneva Tribunal, Secretary of the 
 State. 
 
 In personal appearance, though small of 
 stature, he is remarkable. 
 
 He has a big head on narrow shoulders. 
 His hat is always tilted back from his intel- 
 lectual brow. His clothes are seedy in the 
 extreme. His collar and cravat are of a large 
 and antique pattern. 
 
 His sentences are interminable. 
 
THE ORATORS. 
 
 19 
 
 As I look at him I am reminded of an 
 anecdote. 
 
 Pardon my love of anecdotes. 
 
 You remember what De Goncourt says of 
 them. 
 
 " L!a7iecdoie est la boutique a U7i sou de r his- 
 toire!' 
 
 When the Due de Choiseul, who was a 
 remarkably lean man, was sent to London 
 to negotiate a peace, Charles Townsend, 
 being asked whether the French Govern- 
 ment had sent the preliminaries of a treaty, 
 answered that he did not know, but that 
 they had assuredly sent the outline of an 
 ambassador. 
 
 In the same way it may be said that the 
 State of New York has sent to the Senate, m 
 the thin and fragile Mr. Evarts, the outline 
 of a Senator. 
 
 Senator Hiscock, of New York, tries to 
 copy Lord Byron in his neckwear. 
 
 His oratory, however, is not equal to his 
 lordship's poetry. 
 
 Senator Mahone. of Virginia, though the 
 smallest man in the Senate, considers him- 
 self one of the biggest. 
 
 To a correspondent, who asked him for 
 
20 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 his views, he answered that he was not writ- 
 ing history, he was making it. 
 
 Senator Riddleberger, of Virginia, is the 
 demagogic opponent of Great Britain. 
 
 He takes every opportunity to attack her. 
 
 They call that "twisting the lion's tail" 
 here. 
 
 It's a harmless pastime. 
 
 Senator Vance, of North Carolina, is a 
 fine racotitetu' of yarns such as men love to 
 tell over the almonds and raisins at dessert. 
 
 The periods of Senator Blackburn, of Ken- 
 tucky, have not the brilliancy of the diamond 
 pin which he is proud to wear on all occa- 
 sions. 
 
 Senator Hoar, of Massachusetts, with his 
 chubby face, his spectacles, his air of ultra 
 respectability, looks and speaks like a col- 
 lege professor. 
 
 I think they call him the dinner-bell. 
 
 When he begins to prose, there is certainly 
 a strong current toward the lunch-room of 
 the Senate, where whisky is called tea. 
 
 Senator Gorman, of Maryland, does most 
 of his oratory in lobbies and in bar-rooms. 
 
 He is an authority on vacancies in offices 
 and on their national game of base-ball. 
 
THE ORATORS. 21 
 
 enator Ingalls, of Kansas, tall, thin, angu- 
 lar, is the best-dressed man in the Senate, 
 and one of its most scholarly speakers. 
 
 He can be exceedingly bitter. 
 
 He is an extreme partisan. 
 
 When he gets excited, his eyes flash 
 through his glasses. 
 
 He does not fancy the fact that in twelve 
 months ending June, 1887, no less than 483,- 
 1 16 immigrants poured into six ports of the 
 United States. 
 
 Senator Hawley, of Connecticut, looks like 
 an old officer in our army. He is an effect- 
 ive orator and an able writer. 
 
 I should like him better than I do if, dur- 
 ing the last campaign, he had not said that 
 the love of the common people for Mr. Blaine 
 reminded him of the love of the common 
 people for Christ. 
 
 Senator Jones, of Nevada, has a silver elo- 
 quence, which is said to be generally pre- 
 pared for him by some literary menial. 
 
 It is more common than is supposed for 
 Senators and Representatives to have their 
 speeches written for them. 
 
 I have met several young men in Wash- 
 ington who do this kind of work. 
 
2 2 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 Speeches with classical quotations and 
 intricate tariff statistics fetch the. highest 
 figures. 
 
 Senator Voorhees, of Indiana, whom they 
 call the " Tall " something or other " of the 
 Wabash," is grandiloquently vague. 
 
 He would probably define a politician as 
 I once heard Surrogate Calvin define one at 
 a Tammany Hall meeting in New York : 
 
 " A politician is one who has an exalted 
 and appreciative idea of the beneficent feat- 
 ures of the Government." 
 
 This may mean something, and may not. 
 
 On certain subjects — high tariff or low 
 tariff, for instance — the average legislator 
 here is as cautious in giving you an out-and- 
 qut opinion — well, about as an actress is cau- 
 tious in giving you her age. 
 
 There are several orators who are members 
 neither of the Senate nor of the House of 
 Representatives, and who have great in- 
 fluence. 
 
 I have already spoken of Mr. Blaine and 
 Mr. Depew. 
 
 I wish to mention also Colonel Ingersoll. 
 
 What a rhetorician is he ! 
 
 What a keen wit in that white round head ! 
 
THE ORATORS. 23 
 
 What a lot of humor, sarcasm, power, 
 behind the red, flushed mask of that big fat 
 face ! 
 
 Ingersoll is a manufacturer of phrases and 
 a destroyer of reHgions. 
 
 He hates Democrats and God. 
 
 Your poUtical orators here never let the 
 storm and fury of their eloquence run away 
 with the interest of their pockets. 
 
 They have — most of them — five reasons 
 for this caution — a wife and four children. 
 
 They keep their eyes on King Mob, and 
 study his humor. 
 
 It is not pleasant to be elected to stay at 
 home because you have been too frank. 
 
 Senator Payne, of Ohio, got into the Sen- 
 ate, not because he is rich in the honey of 
 eloquence, but because he made his money 
 in oil. 
 
 Senator Leland Stanford, of California, has 
 a money-bag. 
 
 Who was so malicious as to say his mono- 
 gram, 
 
 £.S. 
 
 suited him exactly ? 
 
 Senators Hale and Frye, of Maine, are 
 blatant partisans of Mr. Blaine. 
 
24 ffOS'. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 Their speeches invariably smell of the ex- 
 ploded cartridges of the late war, or of stale 
 fish. 
 
 Senator Don Cameron, of Pennsylvania, 
 manly, red -headed, does not speak much. 
 He occupies his seat because his father, Mr. 
 Simon Cameron, occupied it before him. 
 
 The " Cameron machine" is all-powerful 
 in Pennsylvania. It governs the Legislature 
 of the State. 
 
 Senator Beck, of Kentucky, is a fine judge 
 of horse-flesh. 
 
 Most of the Senators are not great orators. 
 
 They have been sent to the Senate because 
 of their position at the bar ; because of their 
 money ; because they were friends to certain 
 powerful corporations ; because they had 
 procured offices or favors for the legislators 
 of their respective States. 
 
 One sometimes hears a good story about 
 these Senators, though. 
 
 A bitter partisan newspaper man from 
 Butler one day met Senator Kiernan in a 
 rain-storm, and offered him his umbrella. 
 
 "Thank you," curtly said the politician; " I 
 am not accustomed to such courtesy from 
 the press," 
 
THE ORATORS. 
 
 25 
 
 " But you surely will not refuse ! It is 
 raining very hard," rejoined the newspaper 
 man. 
 
 " Yes. as hard," answered the politician," as 
 abuse rains in your articles, though I don't 
 mean to say, sir, they are watery ! " 
 
 Most of the oratory in the Senate and the 
 House is nowadays confined to the Com- 
 mittee-room. 
 
 A scholarly writer, Mr. Woodrow Wilson, 
 in a book called " Congressional Govern- 
 ment," has recently demonstrated how secret 
 committee- work has usurped open parlia- 
 mentary discussion in this country. 
 
 M. De Tocqueville, in his " Democracy in 
 America," said that the town - meeting was 
 the nucleus of government in the United 
 States. 
 
 That is all changed now. 
 
 The centres of government are bar-rooms 
 and committee-rooms. 
 
 Just glance over this little table : 
 
 CITY. SALOONS. SALOONS TO 
 
 POPULATION. 
 
 Omaha 176 110426 
 
 Kansas City 405 i to 309 
 
 St. Louis 1 ,600 I to 312 
 
 Chicago 3,760 1 to 213 
 
26 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 CITY. SALOONS. SALOONS TO 
 
 POPULATION. 
 
 Cleveland 1,540 i to 129 
 
 Indianapolis 348 i to 288 
 
 St. Paul 600 1 to 221 
 
 San Francisco 2,799 i to 84 
 
 Brooklyn 3,oo6 i to 296 
 
 New York 9,i97 i to 138 
 
 Philadelphia 5)959 i to 142 
 
 Baltimore 2,655 ^ to 115 
 
 From the Senate, let us pa$s over to the 
 House of Representatives. 
 
 There is more noise there, you notice, than 
 in the Senate; the members are less decorous. 
 
 They speak, chew, spit, smoke, cock their 
 feet on their desks, lounge on the sofas, 
 laugh, and shout. 
 
 The Speaker, elected by the House every 
 session, Mr. Carlisle, of Kentucky, raps on 
 his desk with his gavel for order. 
 
 He is as dignified a presiding officer as M. 
 Brisson used to be. 
 
 Congressmen are elected — i member for 
 every 100.000 of the population in a State — 
 for two years. 
 
 Mr. Speaker Carlisle, tall, wiry, clean- 
 shaven — a good head on broacj shoulders — 
 represents the low-tariff views of the Demo- 
 cratic party. 
 
THE ORATORS. 
 
 27 
 
 He is au fait in facts and statistics. His 
 lines of policy as a public man have been as 
 straight as the lines of a ledger or a day- 
 book. 
 
 Though somewhat severe of aspect, for- 
 bidding in manner, Mr. Speaker Carlisle can 
 unbend as well as the next man, and tell a 
 yarn over a glass of the whisky of his native 
 State. 
 
 One of his stories runs in this wise : 
 
 " A good old Kentucky Democrat, who has been wait- 
 ing twenty-five years for a post-office, owns a fine dog, 
 which is his constant companion. The other day the dog 
 had been having a run in the sunshine, and was resting on 
 the porch with his tongue hanging out. ' That's a boss 
 dog,' said a traveling man, who had been selling the old 
 man a bill of goods. 'You're right he is,' said the old 
 man, proudly. ' What makes him stick out his tongue 
 that way ?* 'Politics.' 'Politics! How?' 'Why, sir, 
 that dog knows Cleveland is elected, and he knows I want 
 a post-office, and he's got his tongue out already to begin 
 licking the stamps !' " 
 
 Mr. Samuel J. Randall, of Pennsylvania, 
 though a Democrat, is a high-tariff man. He 
 looks after the interests of pig-iron and 
 home manufacture. 
 
 Though, as a general thing, Democrats 
 
28 ^OX. CXCLE SAAf. 
 
 are for free trade or a liberal tariff, such as 
 come from protection districts fashion their 
 principles according to their constituencies. 
 
 The politicians of Uncle Sam look to votes 
 first, and theories afterward. 
 
 Viewed from profile. Mr. Randall has a 
 prominent chin. 
 
 He has something stern in his face, just as 
 Sieves had. 
 
 Mr. Randall is a matter-of-fact speaker. 
 He is as full of statistics, as a politician on 
 the night of an election is full of rum. 
 
 He has the figures at his fingers' ends. 
 
 Population 60.000,000 
 
 Natives of Germany 1,966,742 
 
 Natives of Ireland i .854,5 7 1 
 
 Voting Population in United States 10,048.061 
 
 United States Debt in iSSo $1,056,584,146 
 
 Exports in iSSo 751,988,240 
 
 Imports, iSSo 674.029,792 
 
 Gold producevl in United States in 1885. . . 31,800,000 
 Silver " " •* 1S85... 51,600,000 
 
 Cotton '* 1S86... 6,550,215 bis. 
 
 Tobacco " • • 1880.. 472.661.157 lbs. 
 
 Distilled Liquors produced in the United 
 
 States in iSSo, \'alued $49,063,663 
 
 Malt Liquors produced in the United States 
 
 in 18S0, A-alued ^01.058,355 
 
 Expenditures for Education 103.949.528 
 
THE ORATORS. 29 
 
 Mr. Randall, who affects a republican 
 simplicity in his daily life, has all these fig- 
 ures down as fine as you, my dear Count, 
 who do not affect this simplicity, have the 
 addresses of the prettiest women of Paris. 
 
 Let me continue our observations of the 
 House. 
 
 Mr. Holman, of Indiana, is called the 
 " Watch Dog of the Treasury," because he 
 never opens his mouth but to speak for re- 
 trenchment. 
 
 He is as maniaque on the subject of econ- 
 omy as M. Naquet is on the subject of di- 
 vorce. 
 
 Mr. Reed, of Maine, is one of the wits of 
 the House. 
 
 He is quick at repartee and ready in de- 
 bate. 
 
 He looks something like Rabelais — merry, 
 round, and comfortable. 
 
 Mr. Ignatius Donnelly is as fanciful in his 
 spoken arguments as he is in his printed 
 words. 
 
 He is the man, as you may have heard, 
 who tries to make people believe the plays 
 ascribed to Shakespeare were written by 
 Lord Bacon. 
 
30 
 
 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 Mr. Bourke Cochran, of New York, is fat, 
 bright, and eloquent. 
 
 Mr. John J. O'Neil, of Missouri, hardly 
 ever rises to his feet in the House without 
 patting- labor on the back. 
 
 Mr. Tim Campbell, of New York, does all 
 his talking in the lobbies, and talks with as 
 little grammar as the majority of his dis- 
 trict. 
 
 " Why, gintlemin," he said on one occa- 
 sion, " what's a little thing like the Consti- 
 tootion between frinds ?" 
 
 Mr. Springer, of Illinois, speaks with pleas- 
 ing facility. 
 
 Mr. Francis Spinola, from New York, is 
 famous for his burlesque loftiness of style 
 and the height and size of his collar. 
 
 Mr. Ben. Le Fevre, of Ohio, puts on demo- 
 cratic airs in his speeches, and talks a good 
 deal of the people and their rights. 
 
 Most of the western Congressmen, I should 
 remark, differ from their eastern colleagues 
 by a certain republican aggressiveness. They 
 hate foreigners — except such as have votes 
 — and believe in democracy. They never 
 tire of speaking of " the effete monarchies 
 of Europe " and lauding America. 
 
THE ORATORS. 
 
 31 
 
 " Our fellow-countryman is a model of a man quite 
 fresh from Natur's mould," said Mr. Pogram. " He is 
 a true-born child of this free hemisphere ; verdant as the 
 the mountains of our country, bright and flowing as our 
 mineral Licks ; unspiled by withering conventionalities 
 as air our broad and boundless Perearers ! Rough he 
 may be ; so air our Barrs. Wild he may be ; so air our 
 Buffalers. But he is a child of Natur', and a child of 
 Freedom, and his boastful answer to the despot and the 
 tyrant is, that his bright home is in the Settin' Sun !" 
 
 This style of oratory is quite as common 
 in the West to-day as it was when thus cari- 
 catured by Dickens some forty-odd years ago. 
 
 I said that the people of this country were 
 divided into two parties. There is a third 
 party — that of Labor — now springing up, 
 which promises to stir matters considerably 
 before long. 
 
 The head of this party of Labor in the last 
 Presidential election was Mr. Benjamin F. 
 Butler. 
 
 In the last mayoralty election in New 
 York the representative of the Labor party, 
 Henry George, polled 69,000 votes. 
 
 New problems will soon enter into politi- 
 cal discussions here. The age of romance 
 is over. The age of reality is begun. 
 
 Mr. Benjamin F. Butler, after having been 
 
T,2 HON. UNCLE MM. 
 
 a general during the war, became a Repre 
 sentative in Congress. 
 
 He was first a Democrat, then a RepubU 
 can. last a Laborer. 
 
 Tricky, able, plebeian, active, he has some 
 hold on the rabble. 
 
 Butler is a rich demagogue who travels ir 
 parlor-cars, accompanied by a colored valet. 
 
 Mr. Morrison, of Illinois, is as eloquent or 
 tariff matters as he is on horse-races. 
 
 Mr. Butterworth, of Ohio, has a mouth aj 
 firm as a bull-dog's. 
 
 Mr. McComas, of Maryland, has done 
 some good speaking in the House, but his 
 fame rests on the fact that he is the cham 
 pion baby-kisser. 
 
 You may not know that some of the poli 
 ticians of Uncle Sam ingratiate themselves 
 with the mothers, and therefore the fathers 
 of their districts, by kissing their babies. 
 
 Mr. McComas is one of this class. 
 
 Mr. Ryan, of Kansas, can have his hair cul 
 without taking his hat off. 
 
 Mr. W. W. Phelps, of New Jersey, is a 
 light-weight champion of Mr. Blaine. 
 
 He wears bangs. 
 
 Mr. Kelley, of Pennsylvania, and Mr 
 
THE ORATORS. 33 
 
 Frank Hurd, of Ohio, have the tariff ques- 
 tion on the brain. Mr. Kelley and Mr. Mc- 
 Kinley are the champion advocates of Protec- 
 tion. Mr. Hurd is the partisan of Free Trade. 
 
 Mr. Mills, of lexas, represents tariff reduc- 
 tion. 
 
 Sturdy in frame, self-reliant in manner, 
 Mr. Mills generally tugs away at his bristly 
 mustache as he speaks. 
 
 As though impressed with the importance 
 of his advocacy of the " Mills Bill," he 
 dresses habitually in solemn black. 
 
 Mr. Mills has a trood strontr voice and uses 
 forcible gestures. 
 
 He has a clever way of mixing dry fact 
 and apt illustration. 
 
 But Mr. Mills makes slow headway. 
 
 Mr. Mills speaks slowly, grinds slowly. 
 
 Mr. Long, of Massachusetts, is scholarly 
 and polished in his speeches. 
 
 I always feel like saying of him what the 
 poet Rogers wrote of Lord Dudley : 
 
 " Ward has no heart, they say, but I deny it : 
 He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it." 
 
 Mr. Collins, of Massachusetts, says com- 
 monplaces with uncommon fire. 
 
34 
 
 //().\: I'xcu: s.t.u. 
 
 Mr. RancU^lpli TiK-kcr. oi X'iiLiuiia. courtl) . 
 ditjnitiod. a scholar ami a jurist o( the old 
 school, is. for these vcr) reasons, an orator 
 who appeals to the few . 
 
 Mr. Tucker belon^^s to one oi tlie tirst fanv 
 ilies of X'iroinia. 
 
 These families, as you may not know, 
 consider themselves very ancient, are con- 
 sequently very proud, and are orenerally very 
 poor. 
 
 1 w ant to mention just two orators more. 
 
 The wits of the Mouse for a'Jony; time were 
 Mr. Samuel S. C\'>x. o{ New York, and Mr. 
 Proctor Knoll. o\ Kentuck\-. Both oi these 
 men are fond ot whiskv. and are excellent 
 •iit'Ofi/turs. 
 
 Loiter iii the corridors of \Villard"s Hotel, 
 the orcai rendezvous ot politicians in Wash- 
 inoton. and n on cannot fail to meet and 
 hear them. 
 
 The\- like to speak oi the public men oi 
 the past, and tell some short and pertinent 
 anecdote of ihem. 
 
 1 heard Mr. L'ox tell the following' : 
 
 " At a dinner given by a certain Senator. President 
 Gartield turned to Keilev and said : 'Judge, how do you 
 
'JJ/E OR A TOA'S. 
 
 35 
 
 account for the success you have attained in public life ?' 
 With great solemnity and impressiveness, Kelley answered: 
 * Gentlemen, I owe me present position in the eyes of me 
 country to the favor of Providence and me magnificent 
 voice.' " 
 
 And I heard Mr. Proctor Knott, in his 
 quiet way, relate the following : 
 
 " It was about the election time in South Carolina, and 
 Wade Hampton was running for Governor. One morning, 
 riding on the high-road, he met an old nigger with a bas- 
 ket in his hand. ' What have you in your basket there, 
 Sam ?' asked Hampton. 
 
 " ' Ah, Massa Hampton, teese two fine Republican pup- 
 pies.' 
 
 " The General looked at them and rode on. 
 
 " A few weeks after the election had taken place 
 and Hampton was declared Governor of South Caro- 
 lina, he rode along the same highway and met the .same 
 darkey. 
 
 " ' What have you got this morning in your basket there ?' 
 asked the successful candidate. 
 
 *" Ah, Massa Hampton,' replied Sam, doffing his cap 
 and grinning, 'teese two fine Democratic puppies.' 
 
 " The Governor looked at the beasts for a moment, and 
 then said, 'Why, you black rascal, these are the selfsame 
 puppies you showed me a week ago! You said they were 
 Republican pupjiies then ; now you say they are Demo- 
 cratic puppies.' 
 
 "'Ah, beg pardfjn, Massa Hampton,' j>romptly rcjjlied 
 Sam, 'they didn't hab their eyes open den yet !' 
 
HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 Enough of this, 
 
 I will now leave you for a while and drive 
 over to Chamberlain's for terrapin and white 
 wine. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE LADIES. 
 
 " All men are created equal," says Uncle 
 Sam in the Declaration of Independence. 
 
 The phrase is humbug. 
 
 There is no equality here, and there never 
 was. 
 
 " All men are created equal." 
 
 No, nor the women either. 
 
 You have but to spend one season in 
 Washington to discover the truth of this. 
 
 The head of fashionable life in the capital 
 is, of course, Mrs. President Cleveland. 
 
 They call her the "First Lady in the 
 Land." 
 
 She has a pretty, winsome face, rich cnest- 
 nut hair, a fair complexion, an elegant and 
 youthful form. 
 
 She is tall, graceful, easy in her move- 
 ments. 
 
 Mrs. Cleveland had always lived in seclu- 
 
 37 
 
38 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 sion prior to her doming to Washington, had 
 not even been sent to finish her education in 
 those centres of culture, New York and Bos- 
 ton. 
 
 But Mrs. Cleveland does very well. 
 
 She receives with equal affability the dip- 
 lomat from abroad and the rustic from the 
 backwoods. 
 
 The nieces of Uncle Sam have the wdnder- 
 ful gift of adapting themselves readily to all 
 circumstances. 
 
 Mrs. Cleveland has, to my knowledge, but 
 one fault. 
 
 She persists in playing on the piano. 
 
 Some will maliciously say that she com- 
 mitted a second fault when she married the 
 President about a year ago. 
 
 It is true he had been her father's trusted 
 friend and her own guardian, but — the Presi- 
 dent is fifty, and fat, and not fair. 
 
 Let us not meddle in other people's busi- 
 ness, however ; let us not imitate those 
 newspaper correspondents who, by special 
 train, followed the President and Mrs. Cleve- 
 land on their wedding trip, spied upon their 
 doings, and reported them at length in two- 
 column articles. 
 
TFIE LADIES. 
 
 39 
 
 The ladies of the members of the Cabinet 
 are Mrs. Cleveland's assistants at all public 
 receptions and affairs of state. 
 
 Mr. Secretary of State Bayard is a widow- 
 er, but his family is represented at receptions 
 by his daughter. 
 
 Miss Bayard is an excellent horsewoman. 
 
 Big with his own importance and that of 
 his ancestors, Mr. Secretary Endicott, who 
 was a judge before he entered the Cabinet, 
 is crusty and reserved, and Mrs. Endicott 
 follows his example. 
 
 Mr. Augustus H. Garland is the Attorney- 
 General. He is a bachelor, and lives with his 
 mother, to whom he is greatly attached. Mr. 
 Garland affects, or has, a genuine republican 
 simplicity of — I was almost going to say 
 dress. He never wears a swallow-tail coat, 
 and shuns the receptions at the White 
 House. 
 
 The Cabinet of the President consists of 
 seven officers. They are appointed by the 
 President; are his private advisers; responsi- 
 ble to him and not to Congress for the con- 
 duct of their respective departments. 
 
 They are not Ministers in the sense of the 
 term common in France and England. They 
 
40 !fOX. rXCLE ^AM. 
 
 ha\c no scat in the Ico^islativc body. They 
 never speak there. They have no poHey of 
 their own. 
 
 Members of the Cabinet send formal re- 
 ports of their departments to the President 
 once a vear. and the President forwards 
 these reports to Congress with his own an- 
 nual message. 
 
 The President holds a Cabinet meeting 
 once or twice a week during the sessions of 
 Congress. He holds the meeting in a large, 
 commodious room, around a long green 
 table, in the White House. 
 
 Mr. Secretary of the Treasury T^airchild is 
 the well-dressed son of a ricii man. 
 
 Mr. Tilden first pushed him into politics. 
 
 Mrs. Fairchild. a handsome woman, is 
 fond oi society, and society reciprocates the 
 attachment. 
 
 Mr. Secretary Vilas is an eloquent man. 
 
 Mrs. Vilas is an unassuming lady. 
 
 Mr. Secretary of the Navy Whitney is the 
 richest member of the Cabinet. 
 
 He was an ambitious, able young lawyer 
 in New Vork when he married Miss Payne, 
 of Ohio, a daughter of the wealthy oil man. 
 The Whitnevs live in what is here called 
 
'I /IE LA DIES. 
 
 4' 
 
 grand style. They have a home in Washing- 
 ton, a residence that cost over half a million 
 in New York, and a country-place in Lenox, 
 Massachusetts. 
 
 Mrs. Whitney is very fond of music. 
 
 Secretary of the Navy Whitney represents 
 in the Cabinet the aristocracy of money. 
 
 Secretary of War Endicott represents the 
 aristocracy of birth. 
 
 " All men are created equal." 
 
 Humbug, my friend, humbug ! 
 
 You see, about two hundred and fifty 
 years ago, a lot of emigrants from England 
 called Puritans came to this country in a 
 ship called the Mayflower". They were as 
 disagreeable a lot as ever lived, and would 
 not let others live. They wanted liberty for 
 themselves, but denied it to others. They 
 went to church three times a day. They 
 prosecuted those who did not believe as they 
 did. They burnt witches. They forbade 
 drinking. They hated new fashions. They 
 sang wheezy hymns. They read prosy books. 
 They mixed in their neighbors' affairs. They 
 ate abominable food. 
 
 Yet these same Puritans form the source of 
 an aristocracy on the domain of Uncle Sam! 
 
42 IJON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 Members of the Cabinet constitute the 
 private advisers of the President. 
 
 They are not public Ministers, as with us. 
 
 They have no seat or voice in the parHa- 
 ment. 
 
 Members of the Cabinet receive $8,000 a 
 year each for their services. 
 
 Looking- over what I have written, I find I 
 have wandered somewhat from my subject. 
 
 I am, in one respect at least, like Montaigne. 
 
 I start out by speaking of stage-coaches, 
 and end by treating of Caesar and Alexander 
 the Great. 
 
 I was saying, then, that in this Republic 
 of Uncle Sam the doctrine of political and 
 social equality was a pleasant fiction. 
 
 The novelists prove it, and if further proof 
 were necessary, observation would confirm 
 the novelists. 
 
 Society moves in circles in Washington. 
 
 Mrs. President Cleveland and the ladies 
 of the Cabinet form the first circle. 
 
 Mrs. Justice Stanley Matthews, Mrs. Jus- 
 tice Field, Mrs. Justice Lamar, compose the 
 leaders of the Supreme Court circle. 
 
 Then comes the Senate coterie, 
 
 Mrs. Sherman, Mrs. Ingalls, Mrs. Palmer, 
 
THE LADIES. 
 
 43 
 
 Mrs. Stanford, Mrs. Logan, Mrs. Don Cam- 
 eron, Mrs. Hawley, give the law here.. 
 
 Next comes the army circle — an aristocratic 
 circle. 
 
 Mrs. General Sheridan, aided by Mrs. Ad- 
 jutant-General Drum, is the moving power 
 in this set. 
 
 And last comes, the House of Representa- 
 tives circle. 
 
 Here Mrs. Speaker Carlisle presides. 
 
 These circles are controlled by rules of 
 etiquette quite as rigid as those in the Fau- 
 bourg St. Germain. 
 
 The ladies ape our system of calling. 
 
 They mimic our methods of leaving cards. 
 
 The Senators' wives consider themselves 
 better than the Congressmen's wives. 
 
 The Justices' wives consider themselves 
 better than the Senators' wives. 
 
 They all look down upon the women 
 clerks employed in the departments. 
 
 They all look up to the foreign representa- 
 tives in Washington. 
 
 The foremost position among the diplo- 
 mats is occupied by the Hon. Sir L. S. Sack- 
 ville West, Envoy Extraordinary and Minis- 
 ter Plenipotentiary of Her Britannic Majesty. 
 
44 
 
 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 When his name is bawled out by a valet 
 at a reception, there is a respectful mur- 
 mur. 
 
 I am inclined to think Uncle Sam dearly 
 loves a lord — when he comes from England. 
 
 The presence at receptions of the Hon. 
 Henry Edwards, Secretary of the British 
 Legation, of Captain Henry Kane, Naval 
 Attache, of Horace Helyar, Esq., Second 
 Secretary, is sufficient to make the recep- 
 tions a success. 
 
 I am mistaken. Pardon ! I forgot to men- 
 tion Mrs. Horace Helyar. 
 
 She is one of the most beautiful and re- 
 fined ladies at the capital. 
 
 M. Theodore Roustan, the Minister of the 
 French Republic, does not occupy as high a 
 position in Washington as does Sir L. Sack- 
 ville West, the Minister of Great Britain. 
 
 Is it because he has no title ? Is it because 
 he is a republican ? 
 
 In spite of speeches and toasts at the in- 
 auguration of the Bartholdi statue, the Unit- 
 ed States does not admire or sympathize 
 with France. 
 
 Uncle Sam. when his protege, Erin, is not 
 around, is rather fond of John Bull. 
 
THE LADIES. 
 
 45 
 
 Baron de Struvc, the Minister from Russia, 
 is popular in society. 
 
 The Americans rather Hke the Russians. 
 
 The Government of Uncle Sam remembers 
 the friendly attitude maintained toward it 
 by the Government of the Czar during the 
 Civil War. 
 
 Count Arco, of Germany, Senor Romero, 
 of Mexico, Count Lippe - Weissenfeld, of 
 Austria, Baron Fava, of Italy, Senor Don 
 Muruaga, of Spain, add brilliancy to the 
 receptions at the White House by their uni- 
 forms and decorations. 
 
 The smaller the country, the larger the 
 decorations, the more brilliant the uniforms. 
 
 The ladies do not generally care as much 
 for the Ministers as they do for the attaches. 
 
 To dance with Count Sala, of France, with 
 Senor Don Miguel de Flores Garcia, of Spain, 
 with Baron Paumgartten, of Austria, with 
 Count Gaston d'Arschot, of Belgium, with 
 Count Albert de Foresta, of Italy, with 
 Baron von Zedtwitz, of Germany, is an honor 
 that any girl will remember all her life. 
 
 Especially popular and sociable here is 
 Mr. Alexandre Greger, of the Russian Lega- 
 tion. He has done much to make life in the 
 
46 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 " City of Magnificent Distances " more en- 
 durable. 
 
 These foreigners, as a general rule, bore 
 themselves to death at the capital. 
 
 In order to make time pass, they go to 
 parties, balls, receptions, theatres. 
 
 Theatres remind me. 
 
 Dr. Kane, of Baltimore, tells a story about 
 the actor Edwin Forrest and Abraham Lin- 
 coln, the relation here between politics and 
 the stage. 
 
 " One night during the war, Forrest was in Washington. 
 The play was ' RicheHeu.' President Lincohi, accompa- 
 nied byForney, Seward, and several prominent members 
 of the Administration, was seated in a private box at the 
 left of the stage. In political opinions Forrest was directly 
 opposed to them. When the grand apostrophe to the pen 
 occurred Mr. Forrest rose, solemnly and deliberately 
 facing the President's box. With pen held majestically 
 aloft, his eyes flashing fire, the tones of that wonderful 
 voice vibrating through the theatre, and speaking with 
 unusual deliberation and emphasis, he gave such a render- 
 ing of Bulwer's lines as must have astonished the Presi- 
 dent 
 
 " ' Beneath the rule of men entirely great 
 
 The pen is mightier than the sword. 
 
 Take away the sword ! 
 
 States can be saved without it. ' 
 
 " He looked the whole party squarely in the face, as 
 much as to say, ' And that's my personal opinion, too.' 
 
THE LADIES. 
 
 47 
 
 The shot hit its mark. There ensued some whispered 
 remarks between Forney and Lincoln, and a deprecatory 
 shake of the head on the part of the latter, accompanied 
 by dubious elevation of the eyebrows, as much as to say, 
 ' Well, I never heard that passage read that way before.' " 
 
 Mr. President Garfield used to say that 
 the only real coats-of-arms in this country 
 were shirt-sleeves. 
 
 The phrase is pretty, but, like most epi- 
 grams, it isn't true. 
 
 Hon. Uncle Sam is perfectly delighted to 
 hob-nob with a lord of genuine pedigree, or 
 a lady of high descent. 
 
 Novelists, preachers, and newspaper men 
 never weary of upbraiding their republican 
 country-women for their love of titled for- 
 eigners. 
 
 I remember not long ago reading in Toivn 
 Topics, a society paper of New York, brill- 
 iantly edited by Mr. Alfred Trumble, a list 
 of nieces of Uncle Sam who have mated 
 abroad. 
 
 Miss Jerome, of New York, married Lord 
 Randolph Churchill, and one of her sisters 
 married Sir John Leslie, Baronet. Miss Con- 
 suelo Yznaga married Viscount Mandeville, 
 and Sir John Lister Kaye married Lady Man- 
 
48 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 deville's sister. Miss Stephens married Lord 
 Alfred Paget. Lady Anglesey, Lady Ver- 
 non, Lady Abinger, Lady Hesketh, Mrs. 
 Ernest Chaplin, Mrs. L'Estrange, of Hun- 
 stanton, the Hon. Mrs. Plunkett, Lady 
 Kartwright, the Hon. Mrs. Carington, Mrs. 
 Edward Balfour, the Hon. Mrs. OHver North- 
 cote, Mrs. Baring, Mrs. Cavendish Bentinck, 
 Jr., Mrs. Beresford Hope, Lady A. Butler, 
 and the Duchess of Marlborough, are Amer- 
 icans by birth. 
 
 I make no mention of alliances between 
 the daughters of oil men, coal men, fur men, 
 whisky men, tobacco men, cotton men, with 
 the dukes of Belgium, the viscounts and 
 counts of France, the marquises and princes 
 of Italy, the grandees of Spain, and the well- 
 born and impecunious barons of Germany. 
 
 I am not compiling an " Almanach de 
 Gotha." 
 
 I simply endeavor to give an idea of the 
 tendencies of what the papers call the high- 
 est society of Uncle Sam. 
 
 Democracy, while it is supposed to have 
 the effect of leveling the classes, in reality 
 first vulgarizes and then divides them. 
 
 The very platitude, the very unpictur- 
 
THE LADIES. 
 
 49 
 
 esqueness, of everything in this repubHc of 
 Uncle Sam, forces those with leisure and 
 money to manufacture variety, to set up arti- 
 ficial distinctions, to imitate foreign models. 
 
 Those who are not captivated by exotic 
 nobility pay the homage of admiration to 
 Vanderbilt and Gould, Mackey and Crocker. 
 
 Politics is a favorite topic of conversation 
 in all circles of society. 
 
 Politics in America do not estrange and 
 separate families, as they do in France. 
 
 You meet people of all political complex- 
 ions at a reception of the President. 
 
 The politicians fight during a campaign, 
 but when the vote is cast, they clasp hands. 
 
 They forgive and forget. 
 
 The politicians of Uncle Sam, whatever 
 else may be said of them, are not petty. 
 
 They do not, as with us, change the names 
 of streets and the heads on postage-stamps, 
 with every change of administration. 
 
 Soi_ie of the old politicians of Uncle Sam are 
 very amusing in a parlor. They will speak 
 as though they were on the hustings. 
 
 I have been told an interesting example. 
 
 During the Grant-Greeley campaign some 
 one ventured to remark, at an evening party, 
 
50 
 
 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 that anything ought to be done to beat 
 Grant. 
 
 Without regard to the ladies and gentle- 
 men of different opinions present, Colonel 
 Mason drew himself up and shouted : 
 
 " Beat Grant ! Build a worm fence round 
 a winter supply of summer weather, catch 
 thunderbolts in a bladder, break a hurricane 
 to harness, hang out the ocean on a grape- 
 vine to dry, but never, never expect to beat 
 Grant ! " 
 
 I alluded to the love which girls in this 
 country have for titled personages. 
 
 I knew of one girl, however, who was not 
 to be taken by the tinsel. 
 
 Her name was Dora Dion. 
 
 She was an actress at the time. 
 
 Afterward she married a wealthy gentle- 
 man of Newport. 
 
 "No, I do not like this country at all," 
 languidly remarked a noble attache of the 
 Austrian Legation to her one evening ; " and 
 what execrably bad French you all speak 
 here in Washington ! " 
 
 ' Ah, Monsieur le Comte, you see," re- 
 plied Dora Dion, quickly, " we have not, 
 like you, had the advantage of having 
 
THE LADIES. 
 
 51 
 
 the French twice in our capital to give us 
 lessons." 
 
 But this is an aside. 
 
 It proves little, nothing. 
 
 Most of the so-called society here Is unre- 
 publican. 
 
 Do not think I exaggerate. 
 
 To find out that society and politics in the 
 United States are substantially as I sketch 
 them, you have only to read the novelists. 
 
 Read " Uncle Tom's Cabin," by Mrs. 
 Stowe, and " A Fool's Errand," by Tourgee. 
 
 Procure that wicked little book, " Sub 
 Rosa," by Murray — a sketch on the Washing- 
 ton of the days of Mr. President Arthur. 
 
 Read " Through One Administration," by 
 Mrs. Burnett, and "Democracy," by Mrs. 
 Adams. 
 
 Read the " Breadwinners," by Mason, and 
 the " Moneymakers." by Keenan. 
 
 There you will see pictures of the aristoc- 
 racy, plutocracy, of Uncle Sam. 
 
 Hail a cab, drive to the theatre, buy a 
 ticket, and witness some of their plays that 
 have political tendencies. 
 
 They are not great plays, like those of 
 Sardou or Dumas — we should call them 
 
52 
 
 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 charges — but they will do to give you an idea 
 of the types and opinions and words of the 
 politicians of Uncle Sam. 
 
 There is Frank Mayo as Davy Crockett 
 in the play of that name by Murdock. 
 
 There is J. T. Raymond as Colonel Mul- 
 berry Sellers in the " Gilded Age, " by Mark 
 Twain. 
 
 Sellers, as you don't remember, is the poli- 
 tician who goes in " for the old flag — and an 
 appropriation ! " 
 
 There is J. T. Raymond, again, in " For 
 Congress," a satire in five acts by David D. 
 Lloyd. 
 
 The relations of the stage and politics are 
 not as intimate here as with us. 
 
 But the politicians of Uncle Sam are not 
 sensitive about allusions to themselves on 
 the stage. 
 
 They do not imitate Sir Robert Walpole, 
 who went behind the scenes one night and 
 caned an actor who, in " The Beggar's Op- 
 era," alluded satirically to one of his pet po- 
 litical schemes. 
 
 President Cleveland, I hear, laughed 
 heartily when told that they parodied his 
 Western trip at Dockstader's. 
 
THE LADIES. 
 
 53 
 
 Mr. Blaine, at the Casino, in New York, 
 about a year ago applauded as much as any 
 one Francis Wilson's hits at him in a topical 
 song. 
 
 Mr. Butler shook with merriment when, 
 during the run of Rice's " Evangeline," he 
 saw himself burlesqued on the boards. 
 
 Judge Thurman, when they introduced 
 his personality in Strauss's " Night in Ven- 
 ice," smiled and said : " We politicians are 
 public property. These fellows are only 
 doing for us what Aristophanes did for the 
 politicians of Athens over two thousand 
 years ago." 
 
 I spoke of Dockstader. 
 
 Permit me to give an instance of quick 
 repartee by that minstrel. 
 
 Warbling a ditty one night on the stage, 
 about Canada being the Mecca to which the 
 political defaulters of Uncle Sam escape, he 
 was somewhat surprised to hear some hisses 
 mingled with the applause. 
 
 Turning around quickly, he looked stead- 
 ily in the direction whence came ^he hissing, 
 and remarked: 
 
 " I was not aware that there were any 
 boodlers in the house, but if I have hurt the 
 
54 
 
 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 feelings of any one by that song I am sorry 
 for them." 
 
 If you ever come to New York, you must not 
 fail to go to Harrigan's. At that theatre you 
 can see the different types of local and na- 
 tional politicians most pungently caricatured. 
 
 And then there is William J. Florence 
 as the Hon. Bar dwell Slole, in " The Mighty 
 Dollar," a popular play by Woolft. 
 
 And " The Crucible," by Oakey Hall, for- 
 merly Mayor of New York, now the witty 
 correspondent of the New York Herald, 
 from London. 
 
 What do we see in all these plays ? 
 
 We see scheming, selfish, money-seeking, 
 pompous, flatulent politicians. There may 
 be exaggeration, there may be caricature, in 
 these portraitures ; but there are also many 
 striking resemblances. 
 
 We meet characters in these plays whom 
 we may come across at any reception in 
 Washington — Senators, Congressmen, office- 
 seekers, judges, claimants, patent and pen- 
 sion agents, railroad lawyers. 
 
 We meet lobbyists who receive $15,000 a 
 year for their services in engineering bills 
 and claims through Congress. 
 
THE LADIES. 
 
 55 
 
 We meet interesting orphans and sympa- 
 thetic widows who have been placed as 
 clerks in the departments at $900 a year, or 
 $1,200, by the influence of some friendly 
 legislator anxious for his own, their, and 
 his country's good. 
 
 But why speak of this any further ? 
 
 I know you are not over-fond of politics 
 just now. 
 
 I can readily imagine you humming with 
 Beranger : 
 
 " Oh, mistress mine, on whom I dote, 
 Though you complain 'tis hard 
 That to my country still I give 
 Too much of my regard ! 
 If politics — nay, even to lash 
 Abuses — be a bore. 
 Be reassured, sweet mistress mine, 
 I'll talk of them no more !" 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE RHYMESTERS. 
 
 " Our statesman true and grand ! 
 We clasp once more the hand 
 Of freedom's chief — The noble man of Maine ! 
 All hail ! all hail ! the chief !" 
 
 Men who write and sing political rhymes 
 have always played an important part in the 
 domain of Uncle Sam. 
 
 Rhymes please the ears of the masses, and 
 are easily retained by untrained memories. 
 
 It is sound, rather than sound sense, which 
 takes the crowd. 
 
 The land where there is little reason in 
 politics, is the land where there is much pol- 
 itics in rhyme. 
 
 " Pardon me, Mesdemoiselles," said M. 
 Paul Albert, addressing a class of fashion- 
 able young ladies on history one afternoon — 
 " pardon me for the few historical facts I 
 am compelled to give you !" 
 
 S6 
 
THE RHYMESTERS. 
 
 57 
 
 I make the same apology, blow the dust 
 from the exceedingly dry and unpicturesque 
 history of this land of pork and plutocrats, 
 and proceed to dazzle you with my newly 
 acquired information. 
 
 Philip Freneau, a journalist, ship-captain, 
 magazine - writer, government clerk, seems 
 to have been one of the most effective 
 rhymesters of the American Revolution. 
 He was a cross between a libeler of the 
 Fronde in France and a ballad writer of the 
 time of the Great Rebellion in England. 
 There is never the grace, the elegance, the 
 wit, of some of our political chansonniers 
 about this fellow. He strikes as hard as a 
 clergyman, when excited, thumps his pulpit 
 desk. He is interesting, however, and he 
 never minces matters. 
 
 One of his squibs runs after this wise : 
 
 " When a certain great King, whose initial is G, 
 Forces stamps upon paper, and folks to drink tea, 
 When these folks burn his paper, like stubble. 
 You may guess that this King is coming to trouble." 
 
 Rivington, editor of the Gazette, was one 
 of the men whom Freneau hated. He told 
 him many unvarnished truths. 
 
5 8 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 " You must know as well as I, 
 Your first great object is to lie." 
 
 His hatred of Rivingtoii was only exceed- 
 ed by his hatred of Great Britain. He prayed, 
 in 1775. that God may deHver us — 
 
 " From the Caitiff, Lord North, who would bind us in 
 
 chains, 
 From our noble King Log, with his tooth-full of brains, 
 Who dreams, and is certain [while taking a nap] 
 He has conquered our lands as they lay on his map. 
 From a kingdom that bullies, hectors, and swears, 
 I send up to heaven my wishes and prayers, 
 That we, disunited, may freemen be still, and Britain go 
 
 on — to be damned, if she will." 
 
 During the administration of Washington, 
 when, as you know, there was some danger 
 of a rupture with France, the epigramma- 
 tists and rhymesters flooded the papers with 
 their squibs, their skits, and theiv couplets. 
 One of the best of these ephemeral produc- 
 tions is the epigram on William Smith, who 
 moved ten resolutions for defense, and after- 
 ward added two more. 
 
 " Twelve motions Smith in one day made, 
 Yet the mountain brought forth but a mouse. 
 The next motion he makes, let us pray, 
 He may move himself out of the House." 
 
THE RHYMESTERS. 
 
 59 
 
 In the political contests which ensued be- 
 tween Federalists and Republicans, between 
 Democrats and Whigs, between Republicans 
 and Democrats, the jingle of the political 
 rhymesters was most distinctly audible and 
 markedly influential. 
 
 Robert Treat Paine, whose political song, 
 " Adams and Liberty," contains such excru- 
 ciating lines as — 
 
 " For ne'er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves, 
 While the earth bears a plant or the sea rolls a wave," 
 
 — this man headed the list of political cam- 
 paign rhymesters. 
 
 This is a select and dreaded body of 
 v'ersifiers, who every four years vie 
 with the prose writers and stump speakers 
 of Uncle Sam in making a great hulla- 
 baloo. 
 
 They publish fulsome encomiums on their 
 own candidates. They lie about the candi- 
 dates of the other side. 
 
 We would wonder how " My Country, 'tis 
 of Thee," by Smith, ever conquered the place 
 it holds, if we did not know what rubbish 
 are the words of even the " Marseillaise," by 
 Rouget de Lisle. 
 
6o HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 " Let music swell the breeze, 
 And ring among the trees 
 Sweet freedom's song ! 
 Let mortal tongues awake, 
 Let all that breathe partake, 
 Let rocks their silence break. 
 The sound prolong !" 
 
 The crowd does not care for the words of 
 rhymes and songs ; in fact, it hardly ever 
 knows more than one stanza and half a 
 chorus ; but the crowd cares a great deal for 
 the tune. 
 
 The patriots who during the war had sung 
 themselves hoarse with " Yankee Doodle," 
 trolled the " Battle of the Keys " of Francis 
 Hopkinson, later shouted in the " Hail Col- 
 umbia" of Joseph Hopkinson, and, still later, 
 were fired to enthusiasm by the " Star 
 Spangled Banner" of Francis Key. 
 
 This political song, I should remark, was 
 first written on the back of an old letter in 
 1 8 14. while the author watched the bombard- 
 ment by the British of Fort McHenry, near 
 Baltimore. 
 
 " On that shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep, 
 Where the foe's haughty host in silence reposes, 
 What is it that the breeze o'er the towering steep. 
 As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses ? 
 
THE RHYMESTERS. 6l 
 
 Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, 
 In full glory reflected now shines in the stream, 
 'Tis the Star Spangled Banner, oh long may it wave, 
 O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave !" 
 
 Pretty, is it not, and patriotic ? 
 
 Oh, get these gentlemen well aroused, and 
 they will do ! 
 
 Now the rhymester of the Democrats sings 
 such lines as these : 
 
 " We are Cleveland standard-bearers, marching with the 
 
 mighty throng ; 
 You can see our colors waving, you can hear our battle 
 
 song. 
 From the hill-tops and the valleys they are gathering in 
 
 their might 
 For Cleveland and for Thurman, and for justice, truth, 
 
 and right. 
 We stand upon a platform without a plank that's loose, 
 And we will show these pigtail candidates just how to 
 
 cook a goose. 
 
 "We will shake the red bandanna till the rats run in their 
 holes ; 
 Grandfather's name can't save them when we rally at the 
 polls. 
 
 *' Their loud talk on the tariff and of ' free trade ' is too 
 thin ; 
 The people now are finding out ju^t where the laugh 
 comes in ; 
 
62 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 Monopolists and millionaires of course will loudly bawl, 
 
 But they cannot fool the workingmen, who'll get right 
 there this fall. 
 
 The frauds they've played in years gone by we're watch- 
 ing for again ; 
 
 Their party lies are getting stale; their object is too plain." 
 
 And the champion of the Republicans 
 gives vent to his feehngs thus : 
 
 '* Protection forever ! ring out your loyal cry, 
 Pull down the red bandanna, raise the Stars and the 
 
 /Stripes on high ; 
 With Harrison and Morton we will make free trade fly. 
 Shouting the battle cry, ' Protection.' 
 
 /d 
 
 Free trade has proved the country's bane whenever it 
 was tried — 
 Our industries were crying for ' Protection '; 
 isaster followed in its wake, with ruin far and wide. 
 Till every one called loudly for ' Protection.' 
 
 ' Good wages paid for honest work ' is written on our 
 flag. 
 
 Such is the spirit of Protection ; 
 And every banner lacking this is but a worthless rag. 
 
 Affording not a single soul 'Protection.' 
 
 • We believe in giving every man a chance to earn his 
 bread, 
 Shouting the battle cry, * Protection.' 
 No matter how he labors, with his hands or with his head, 
 Shouting the battle cry, ' Protection.' 
 
THE RHYMESTERS. 
 
 63 
 
 "We extend to all deserving ones a welcome to our land, 
 Shouting the battle cry, ' Protection.' 
 They help us much in building up a nation truly grand, 
 Shouting the battle cry, ' Protection.' 
 
 " They raise on high the good old flag, and haste to join 
 our band. 
 Shouting the battle cry, ' Protection.' 
 And soon the glorious cause will spread throughout this 
 favored land. 
 And every one will raise the shout. ' Protection.' " 
 
 Though the Americans were not and are 
 not, Hke the French, a *' peuple chansonnier," 
 a song -loving people, though they do not, 
 hke the old partisans of the Fronde, when 
 meeting in the street, ask in rhyme — 
 
 " Etes vous du parti, 
 Mon ami, 
 Du Conde, Longueville, et Conti ? " 
 
 The nephews of Uncle Sam have always 
 had a fancy for such stuff as this : 
 
 •' Adams, the Great, 
 In envied state. 
 Issued a Proclamation 
 That each free State 
 Abstain from meat 
 With deep humiliation, 
 
64 IION. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 Let 'Ristocrats, 
 
 Those scurvy brats, 
 
 Keep fast with fear and mourning." 
 
 But most of the campaign rhymes produc- 
 ed here have the merit of brevity. The bal- 
 lad writers of Uncle Sam produce their verse 
 somewhat as the pedant Porson said Charles 
 James Fox produced his sentences : they 
 throw themselves into the middle of it, and 
 trust to God Almighty to get them out 
 again. 
 
 One of the most popular and absurd of the 
 political rhymes ever written in any land 
 outside of Zanzibar was the campaign ditty 
 " Tippecanoe, and Tyler too," concocted by 
 Ross to help a nobody into the White House 
 in Washington. I read this jingle only the 
 other day in the Congressional Library — a 
 building, by-the-way, where the cuspidores 
 are ranged in better order than the books. 
 
 " Oh, what is causing this great commotion, motion, 
 
 motion, our country through ? 
 It is the ball that's rolling on for Tippecanoe, and Tyler 
 
 too ! 
 For Tippecanoe, and Tyler too. 
 And with them we'll beat little Van, Van, Van, 
 Van, oh he's a used-up man ! " 
 
THE RHYMESTERS. 
 
 65 
 
 It was at that time, in 1840, that Tuplett, 
 of Kentucky, had the audacity to quote such 
 a campaign catch as this in the House of 
 Representatives. 
 
 " No Prices or Swartwouts, or such deceivers, 
 Shall be appointed cash receivers, 
 And no man who is given to grabbin'. 
 Shall ever enter this log-cabin." 
 
 Such lines caught the popular taste. 
 
 The herds who gather in public halls at 
 campaign time, full of enthusiasm and 
 whisky, do not mind the nonsense of the 
 lines they bellow. They rather shout : 
 
 " Yankee Doodle, keep it up, 
 Yankee Doodle dandy, 
 Mind the music and the step 
 And with the girls be handy." 
 
 The rhymesters do not generally mind the 
 advice contained in the third line of this 
 stanza. They meet the requirements of the 
 fourth, however. I have observed them at 
 balls and parties. The politicians of Uncle 
 Sam, be they poets, pamphleteers, orators, 
 diplomats, or journalists, soon adapt them- 
 selves to circumstances. 
 5 
 
66 IfOX. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 The Civil War. the fiijht between the North 
 and South about union and slavery, from 
 1 86 1 to 1865, of course produced battahons 
 of rhymers. Most of their work is below 
 notice. The Government of the United 
 States offered a prize of $500 for the best 
 verses on the struggle, a national hymn, and 
 though eleven hundred and fifty patriotic 
 poems were sent in, none was adjudged 
 worthy of the laurel. They had songs like 
 " John Brown," and " Battle-cry of Freedom," 
 and '• Hang Jeff Davis." lots of war hymns, 
 battle songs, but there was no great nation- 
 al rhyme. 
 
 No. my dear Uncle Sam. you cannot manu- 
 facture a great poem as you do a patent 
 wash-wringer. 
 
 I single out the verses of Richard H. 
 Newell, who wrote under the pseudonym 
 " Orpheus C. Kerr." as the one representative 
 rhymer of rebellion days. 
 
 He wasn't great, but he was original. 
 
 His ballads in dialect, with odd humor 
 in every line, with wit. sarcasm, banter, in 
 almost every stanza, are thoroughly represen- 
 tative. 
 
 Read to-dav. thev tire us a little. 
 
THE RHYMESTERS. 
 
 67 
 
 Read in the midst of the fray, they must 
 have been very effective. 
 
 In his " Carol of the Confederate Beggar " 
 he ridicules the depreciation of Southern 
 currency and the loftiness of Southern pride. 
 
 " Though but fifty thousand dollars 
 Be the sum of all I own, 
 Yet I'm merry with my begging 
 And I'm happy with a bone ; 
 
 " Nor with any brother beggar 
 Does my heart refuse to share, 
 Though a thousand dollars only, 
 Be the most I have to spare. 
 
 " I am shabby in my seven 
 Hundred dollar hat of straw, 
 And my dinner's but eleven 
 Hundred dollars in the raw ; 
 Yet I hold my head the higher, 
 That it owes the hatter least, 
 And my scanty crumbs are sweeter, 
 Than the viands of a feast." 
 
 Above I spoke of the rejected national 
 rhymes. One of Newell's best letters, dated 
 Washington, August, 1861, was written on 
 this very subject. He gives specimens of 
 some supposed hymns sent in to the Com- 
 
 <'A 
 
68 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 mittee, and parodies the style of some well- 
 known authors. 
 
 It is extremely difficult to choose from 
 among Newell's many rhymes. 
 
 I select the poem he calls " Repudiation," 
 published at the beginning of the war. 
 
 " 'Neath a ragged Palmetto a Southerner sat, 
 A-twisting the band of his Panama hat, 
 And trying to lighten his mind of a load 
 By humming the words of the following ode : 
 ' Oh for a nigger, and oh for a whip ! 
 Oh for a cocktail, and oh for a nip ! 
 Oh for a shot at old Greeley and Beecher ! 
 Oh for a crack at a Yankee school-teacher ! 
 Oh for a captain, and oh for a ship ! 
 Oh, for a cargo of niggers each trip ! ' 
 And so kept oh-ing for all he had not, 
 Not contented with owing for all that he had got." 
 
 1 am not surprised to hear that when a 
 new ballad by Newell appeared in its day, 
 President Lincoln, with his feet up, read the 
 rhyme to his Cabinet officers seated around 
 the table. 
 
 Of late years political rhymers have ap- 
 peared on the stage of the different theatres 
 throughout the Union. They do for politi- 
 cians here almost as much as Paulus did for 
 General Boulanger in Paris. 
 
 J 
 
THE RHYMESTERS. 69 
 
 Popular comedians, like Edward Harrigan, 
 Nat Goodwin, Digby Bell, Lew Dockstader, 
 De Wolf Hopper,Tony Pastor, Jimmy Powers, 
 Henry Dixey, Francis Wilson, have, while 
 playing operette, or local farce, or burlesque, 
 introduced " topical songs," which allude 
 to passing political events in a humorous, 
 sarcastic strain. 
 
 The " topical song " is immensely popular. 
 
 Hewitt, author of " It's English, you 
 know," satirizing the Anglomaniacs, made a 
 fortune for Dixey. 
 
 The comedian who has a good topical song 
 at his tongue's end is sure of his encores. 
 
 Harrigan sings these verses descriptive of 
 a local politician : 
 
 " In a quiet little room. 
 
 At the back of a saloon 
 That stands at the top of Cherry Hill, 
 
 Where men from tinemints 
 
 Hould lengthy argymints 
 On everything beside th' liquor bill ; 
 
 The owner of the place 
 
 Has a Connemara face, 
 A leader — d'ye hear me ? — thro' and thro'; 
 
 When he comes in the dure 
 
 We all bow t' th' flu re 
 With 'Old Boss ]-5arry, how d'ye do ?' 
 
HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 Then it's * Old Boss Barry, how d'ye do ; 
 Is there anything that we can do for you ? 
 
 Come, tell us of your plan, 
 
 We're wid you to a man, 
 For Old Boss Barry hip hurroo ! ' 
 
 " He's a dude in the ward. 
 And he's perfectly adored 
 
 By those to the front and in th' rear; 
 And to his constituents 
 He speaks wid eloquence 
 
 So flowingly beside a keg o' beer. 
 For county an' th' State, 
 He's th' maker of the slate. 
 
 A leader — d'ye hear me ? — thro' and thro'; 
 Sure th' rank an' th' file 
 They greet him all the while 
 
 With ' Old Boss Barry, how d'ye do ? ' 
 
 " He'll have his men in line, 
 
 'Round about election time — 
 Yes, all from the top of Cherry Hill. 
 
 Sure he could colonize 
 
 And really paralyze 
 The party that would vote agin his will; 
 
 No office would he take. 
 
 Just let him take a rake 
 Of boodle — d'ye hear me ? — thro' and thro' 
 
 Sure he's in and never out. 
 
 That's why the people shout, 
 Old Boss Barry, how d'ye do?' " 
 
 I 
 
THE RHYMESTERS. 7 1 
 
 One of the wittiest, cleverest writers of 
 the " topical song " is Sydney Rosenfeld. 
 
 He is in reality a Frenchman who has lost 
 his way in America. 
 
 To a foreigner the full meaning of a " top- 
 ical song " referring to local politics is not 
 always entirely clear, but Rosenfeld always 
 manages to write with point and pith. 
 
 While witnessing " Erminie," at the beau- 
 tiful Casino in New York, I heard Francis 
 Wilson sing the following verses alluding to 
 the closing of music-halls by the police. 
 
 "Tell us, Dickie birds, do, 
 What makes Sunday laws so blue 
 And likewise won't you please to make it clear, 
 Why it is considered wrong, 
 Ven you're listening to a song, 
 To vet your whistles with a glass of beer ? 
 Does the beer spoil the song? 
 Or the song spoil the beer ? 
 That is what don't appear werry clear. 
 Is it a sin to drink gin, when the fiddlers are gay ? 
 I wonder what the Dickie birds say ?" 
 
 Like everything that is popular here, the 
 travesty and the " topical song " are being 
 done to death. 
 
 Too many comedians allude to local poli- 
 
72 J^OX. UNCLK SAM. 
 
 tics, to the detriment of the play which they 
 interpret. 
 
 I have seen some of the leading; fig^ures in 
 the poHtics of the country travestied on the 
 stage. Comedians boldly make up behind 
 the footlights as IngersoU, or Ben Butler, or 
 Conkling, or Thurman, or Garland. 
 
 Too much " topical song " is a nuisance. 
 
 Wilson is right when he sings : 
 
 " I wish I had nodings to do all de night 
 But to sing local songs to give you delight, 
 But de duties I owe, don't you see, to the house, 
 Compel me to turn my attention to Strauss. 
 And local allusions dough great in effect. 
 Ain't treating his nibbs mit sufficient respect. 
 Besides, the foundation of genuine fun 
 Ish to shtop before the fun is all done. 
 Yen a ditty is not witty, it most always sometimes bores. 
 And there should be some Committee, some Committee 
 
 on encores. 
 Vat a pity, pity, for a vitty ditty 
 There's no Committee on encores." 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE PAMPHLETEERS. 
 
 I HAVE sometimes thought that Colonel 
 Tom Ochiltree, of Texas, would have made 
 a capital political pamphleteer. 
 
 He is such an irrepressibly audacious 
 speaker that he would, I am certain, have 
 made a readable public writer. 
 
 The old hat, the red hair, the yarns of 
 Colonel Tom Ochiltree, have become proverb- 
 ial here. 
 
 Let me illustrate his presence of mind by 
 an anecdote. 
 
 " There was a section of Texas," Captain Davis relates, 
 " which was populated almost entirely by sheep-raisers ; 
 consequently the wool, and the tariff thereon, was of much 
 importance to them, and always entered into political argu- 
 ments. Now, Ochiltree knew as much about wool and the 
 tariff as he does now about the inside of Trinity church, 
 but he had to make a speech for all that. After talking 
 for some time without saying anything that seemed to 
 have the slightest effect upon the sheep men, Ochiltree 
 was suddenly inspired. His eye beamed, his smile died 
 73 
 
74 
 
 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 away, leaving an expression of extreme horror and fear- 
 fulness, and his right hand was raised warningly. ' I'll 
 tell you something, gentlemen, that I had hoped to be 
 able to spare you,' said Ochiltree, in impressive tones. 
 * You are not yet aware that the opposing party is about 
 to visit upon your devoted heads a most terrible infliction.' 
 
 " Here the crowd showed signs of awakening, and be- 
 trayed some interest, 
 
 " ' Yes,' continued the orator, * they have invented and 
 are about to import into this fair State a most horrible 
 thing — a polariscope, they call it, and to such intelligent 
 men that is enough to say. Yes, gentlemen, a polariscope ! 
 Think, then, of your misery and woe should those robbers 
 get into power ! It is against such men that I ask you to 
 elect me.' 
 
 " A deep silence followed for a moment. The crowd 
 grew fearful. What danger threatened them they did not 
 know, and the awful uncertainty increased their terror. 
 Finally the suspense was too great, and a dozen rose to 
 their feet at once and asked, 'What is a polariscope?' 
 
 "Ochiltree paused, and viewed the crowd with pitying 
 glances, as though sincerely regretting their illiteracy. 
 The question was repeated louder and stronger than before. 
 Ochiltree shifted uneasily from one foot to another, took 
 a glass of water, coughed, and then looked at the crowd, 
 now clamoring wildly for knowledge of the terrible danger. 
 
 " Ochiltree was cornered. The cries grew louder. The 
 speaker waved his hand, and there was silence. Then the 
 candidate leaned over his deal table and said, confiden- 
 tially and quietly, ' Boys, I'm blest if I know what it is, 
 but it'll kill all your sheep, sure as thunder !' 
 
 "That was enough, and they voted for him." 
 
THE PA M PI ILK PEEKS. 
 
 75 
 
 " Oh, lend me that ! " exclaimed the Em- 
 press Eug-enie to Gustave Flaubert at Com- 
 piegne one day, as she perceived him surrep- 
 titiously showing- a copy of the forbidden 
 Lantej-ne, by Rochefort, to a friend. " It must 
 be witty. I want to read it." 
 
 No one, to my knowledge, ever said the 
 same thing, expressed the same anxiety to 
 read a pamphleteer of Uncle Sam. 
 
 But I run before my horse to market. 
 
 Let us see what the pamphleteers have 
 done, and then decide. 
 
 Two of the greatest pamphleteers who 
 ever did service in the politics of Uncle Sam 
 were born on the soil of John Bull. 
 
 I mean Thomas Paine and William Cob- 
 bett. 
 
 They found pamphleteering a very brisk 
 business when they landed in this country, 
 and they went into the business with all the 
 zest of Prynne and Lilburne, of Roger L' Es- 
 trange and Daniel Defoe. 
 
 Though Adams and Otis, Jefferson and 
 Dickinson, had written pamphlets on public 
 affairs, not one of their pamphlets had at- 
 tracted the attention which, in 1776, was 
 aroused by the ** Common Sense " of Thomas 
 
7^ 
 
 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 Paine. Terse, incisive, simple in style, this 
 thin duodecimo was purchased throughout 
 the country with as much eagerness as is a 
 novel or a play suppressed by the author- 
 ities. 
 
 The opening words have become historic. 
 
 "These are the times that try men's souls." 
 
 The body of the work abounds in maxims 
 as pithy as any in Bacon and as full of horse- 
 sensfe as any in Franklin: 
 
 " The nearer any Government approaches 
 to a republic, the less business there is for a 
 king." " The sun never shone on a cause 
 of greater worth. 'Tis not the affair of a 
 city, a county, a province, or a kingdom, but 
 of a continent — of at least one-eighth part of 
 the habitable globe. 'Tis not the concern of 
 a day, a year, or an age ; posterity are virtu- 
 ally involved in it even to the end of time." 
 
 There are passages in " Common Sense" 
 as lofty in style as any in the pamphlets of 
 Edmund Burke, a man whom Thomas Paine 
 most cordially detested. 
 
 " Freedom hath been hunted round the 
 globe : Asia and Africa have long expelled 
 her ; Europe regards her like a stranger ; and 
 England hath given her warning to depart. 
 
THE PAMPHLETEERS. yj 
 
 Oh, receive the fugitive and prepare an asy- 
 lum for mankind ! " 
 
 For the service thus rendered, Paine re- 
 ceived much honor from opponents of Great 
 Britain, and, Vv^hat he probably hked better 
 than honor, a gift of two thousand five hun- 
 dred dollars from Pennsylvania. 
 
 His " Crisis," his " Rights of Man," his 
 " Age of Reason," were pamphlets which all 
 had a tremendous run. 
 
 Paine was given to drink. 
 
 The boys in New York used to sing : 
 
 " Tom Paine is come from far, from far, 
 His nose is like a blazing star ! " 
 
 He was hated, feared, or loved, in Phila- 
 delphia and New York, in Paris and London. 
 
 He hit hard, and he was hard hit. 
 
 Bitter against Washington, because he had 
 not intervened for him when in a French 
 prison, Paine, in 1796, poured out his wrath 
 on the head of the nation. 
 
 The " Letter to George Washington, Presi- 
 dent of the United States of America, on 
 Affairs Public and Private, . by Thomas 
 Paine" will, for virulence and vigor, compare 
 with some of the pamphlets of Jonathan Swift. 
 
yS HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 In the opinion of the pamphleteer, Wash- 
 ington was gifted with " a sort of non-describ- 
 able, chameleon -colored thing called pru- 
 dence" rather than with high -principled 
 character. 
 
 Washington, according to Paine, was an 
 ungrateful and vain, self-conscious man. 
 
 "Treacherous in private friendship [for that you have 
 been to me, and that in the day of danger], and a hypo- 
 crite in public life, the world will be puzzled to decide 
 whether you are an apostate or an impostor ; whether you 
 have abandoned good principles, or whether you ever 
 had any. 
 
 Party feeling never ran higher in the 
 United States than during the early years of 
 the Government. Voltaire, who on visiting 
 London was surprised at the violence of the 
 party passion which dubbed the Duke of 
 Marlborough a coward, and Alexander Pope 
 a fool, would, on visiting America in the first 
 decade of the century, have found plenty of 
 men who were even more bitter and partisan. 
 
 Politics in democracies is nothing but the 
 madness of the many for the benefit of 
 the few. 
 
 The Republicans and Federalists of those 
 
THE PAMPIILE 1 'EERS. 
 
 79 
 
 days grew fierce and vituperative, so that the 
 Jeffersons, the Hamiltons, and the Burrs 
 mig-ht profit by their evil passions. 
 
 Tis much the same to-day as when Ben- 
 jamin FrankHn wrote these youthful dog- 
 gerel verses in a local paper : 
 
 " The retail politician's anxious thought 
 Deems this side always right and that stark naught. 
 He foams with censure, with applause he raves, 
 A dupe to rumors, and a tool to knaves." 
 
 William Cobbett was a pamphleteer of 
 that time and for that time. If he had lived 
 in the days of the Great Rebellion, he would 
 have overwhelmed Cromwell and the Round- 
 heads with his pamphlets. As he lived in 
 the era of a young Democracy, he assailed 
 Jefferson, and the Republicans with them. 
 
 The titles of his pamphlets, like those of 
 so many of the olden time, were quaint and 
 lengthy. 
 
 There were, among others : 
 
 " Comprehensive Story of a Farmer's Bull." 
 
 " Democratic Memoirs." 
 
 "The Bone to Gnaw for the Democrats." 
 
 "The Democratic Principles." 
 
 Issued under the noted pen name of " Peter 
 
So HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 Porcupine " these pamphlets raised Cobbett's 
 reputation to the highest pitch, and provoked 
 a swarm of rephes, with titles as quaint and 
 as lengthy. 
 
 They were, "Twig of Birch for a Butting 
 Calf." 
 
 "A Roaster, or a Check to the Progress 
 of Political Blasphemy," 
 
 " A Pill for Porcupine " and " The Impos- 
 tor Detected." 
 
 Who cares for them now? Who reads 
 them now ? 
 
 One passage in one pamphlet from the 
 pen of Peter Porcupine — his " Life and Ad- 
 ventures," published in 1796 — has survived 
 time. 
 
 It is the famous comparison between his 
 ancestry and that of Benjamin Franklin 
 Bache, his rival pamphleteer and constant 
 opponent. 
 
 " Every one will, I hope, have the good- 
 ness to believe that my grandfather was no 
 philosopher. Indeed he was not. He never 
 made a lightning-rod nor bottled up a quart 
 of sunshine in his life. He was no almanac- 
 maker nor quack, nor chimney doctor, nor 
 soap - boiler, nor ambassador, nor printer's 
 
THE PAMPHLETEERS. 8l 
 
 devil. Neither was he a deist ; and all his 
 children were born in wedlock. The lega- 
 cies he left were his scythe, his reap-hook, and 
 his flail. He bequeathed no old and irre- 
 coverable debts to a hospital. He has, it 
 is true, been suffered to sleep quietly be- 
 neath the greensward ; but if his descend- 
 ants cannot point to his statue over the door 
 of a library, they have not the mortification 
 to hear him daily accused of having been a 
 profligate, a hypocrite, and an infidel." 
 
 This may be plain language, but it is de- 
 cent language compared with that which 
 was too common in the pamphlet literature 
 of that day. 
 
 Men who signed Americus, Camillus, Bru- 
 tus, and Cato, Lucius and Franklin Bache, 
 John Wood, William Duane, and James Thom- 
 son Callender, each one of these pamphlet- 
 eers indulged in epithets such as Junius dealt 
 out to the Duke of Grafton, and such as Mil- 
 ton poured over Claude Saumaise. 
 
 But the pamphleteers of Uncle Sam had 
 none of the other qualities which make us 
 overlook the epithets of Junius and Milton. 
 
 Their work is, from a literary point of view, 
 absolutely worthless. 
 
 6 
 
82 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 What grace, wit, elegance, was possessed 
 by Paul Louis Courier, the pamphleteer who 
 opposed the absolutism of the Bourbons, and 
 who by his " Pamphlet des Pamphlets " pub- 
 lished at the same time a master-piece of 
 style and a master-piece of argument ! 
 
 There is not a single pamphleteer of Uncle 
 Sam's who comes up to the literary excel- 
 lence of Courier. 
 
 Now and then I run across some pamphlet 
 that reads somewhat like those scattered 
 abroad in France or England. 
 
 Take, for instance, " A Shorter Catechism," 
 issued in 1784, and read : 
 
 " What is patriotism ?" 
 
 " A hobby-horse." 
 
 " What is liberty ?" 
 
 " Licentiousness unbridled." 
 
 The only men of that early period of 
 Uncle Sam's history who could, if they 
 would, have been excellent political pam- 
 phleteers, were James K. Paulding, William 
 Irving, and Washington Irving, the editors 
 of the pamphlet periodical, '' Salmagundi." 
 
 They touched very seldom on public 
 affairs, and, when they did so, it was in a 
 borrowed style. 
 
THE PAMPHLETEERS. 83 
 
 Take, for instance, this extract from a 
 " Letter of Mustapha Rub-A-Dub Keli Khan 
 to his friend Assem Hachem, Slave Driver 
 to his Highness, the Bashaw of TripoH." 
 
 It is, of course, an imaginary letter, but it 
 is based on observation of real life. 
 
 '' Politics, a word which, I declare to thee, has perplex- 
 ed me almost as much as the redoubtable one of economy, 
 on consulting a dictionary of this language I found it de- 
 noted the science of Government, and the relations, sit- 
 uations, and dispositions of States and Empires. Good ! 
 thought I ; for a people governing themselves there would 
 not be a more important subject of investigation. I there- 
 fore listened attentively, expecting to hear from ' the most 
 enlightened people under the sun ' — for so they modestly 
 term themselves, sublime disputations on the science of 
 legislation, and precepts of political wisdom that would 
 not have disgraced our great prophet and legislator him- 
 self ! But alas, Assem ! how continually are my expecta- 
 tions disappointed ? How dignified a meaning does this 
 word bear in the dictionary ! how despicable its common 
 application ! I find it extending to every contemptible 
 discussion of local animosity, and every petty altercation 
 of insignificant individuals. It embraces, alike, all man- 
 ner of concerns ; from the organization of a divan, the 
 election of a bashaw or the levying of an army, to the ap- 
 pointment of a constable, the personal disputes of two 
 miserable slang whangers, the cleaning of the streets, or 
 the economy of a dirt-cart. A couple of politicians will 
 quarrel, with the most vociferous pertinacity, about the 
 
84 J^ON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 character of a bum bailiff whom nobody cares for, or the 
 department of a little great man whom nobody knows; and 
 this is called talking politics !" 
 
 This may be clever, but the manner is that 
 of Montesquieu, who wrote the " Lettres 
 Persannes," in which he satirized Paris, and 
 the style is that of Goldsmith, who wrote 
 the "Chinese Letters," in which he satirized 
 London. 
 
 There is little originality in the pamphlet 
 literature of Uncle Sam. 
 
 It is almost all copied after that of Great 
 Britain. 
 
 Benton, who wrote a " Thirty Years' View 
 of American Politics," had perhaps the stuff 
 of a pamphleteer in him. He certainly had 
 virulence enough in his nature, as witness 
 his attack on Gushing : 
 
 " He is a man of learning, of talent. 
 of industry — unscrupulous, double - sexed, 
 double -gendered, and hermaphroditic in 
 politics." 
 
 Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, a young man who 
 divides his time between reforming politics 
 and shooting grizzly - bears, might be a 
 pamphleteer if strong partisanship were an 
 essential quality in the composition of one. 
 
THE PAMPHLErEERS. 
 
 85 
 
 " A sneaking doctrinaire with a constitu- 
 tional proclivity to untruth." 
 
 That is the way Mr. Roosevelt recently 
 wrote of Jefferson. 
 
 Some pamphleteers, like White and Hos- 
 mer, had great success during the time of the 
 Civil War, but nobody remembers them now. 
 
 The trouble with them all is that they are 
 heavy and soporific. 
 
 Mr. Andrew Carnegie, a rich manufac- 
 turer, published a pamphlet recently called 
 "Triumphant Democracy," a plea for this 
 country. 
 
 It is a stupid work — all scissors and paste- 
 pot. 
 
 We may, in fact, say of most of the pam- 
 phleteers of Uncle Sam what Canning is 
 reported to have said of Sir John Hippisley's. 
 
 They are so heavy that the Post-office re- 
 fuses to carry them in an official frank. 
 
 Men with pamphleteering propensities 
 here now go into journalism, or write history, 
 or mount the platform. 
 
 They also contribute to the Forum and the 
 North American Revieiv, two monthly maga- 
 zines which are themselves capital remedies 
 for insomnia. 
 
86 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 Religious tracts, the annual reports of cor- 
 porations, campaign documents, are the only 
 pamphlets now read on the domain of Uncle 
 Sam. 
 
 I generally use them wherewith to light 
 my cigarettes. 
 
 I light one now, and as the rings of smoke 
 curl upward, I wish I were over your way, 
 my dear Count, sitting with you in front of 
 a cafe on the boulevard. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE JOURNALISTS. 
 
 " In the United States," once wrote Henry 
 Ward Beecher, " every worthy citizen reads 
 a newspaper, and owns the paper which he 
 reads." 
 
 If you ride in a street-car in the morning, 
 in any city or town of this country, you are 
 convinced of the truth of this dictum. 
 
 There are 5,500 daily newspapers pubhshed 
 in Germany ; 4,092 published in France ; 
 4,000 published in Great Britain. 
 
 There are 15,000 daily newspapers issued 
 on the territory of Uncle Sam. 
 
 The first newspaper, such as it was, appear- 
 ed in Boston. 
 
 Its title was comprehensive : 
 
 Public k Occurrences y 
 
 Both Foreif^n and Domestic. 
 
 Boston, Thursday, September 25, 1690. 
 
 Harris was the publisher. 
 87 
 
88 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 Then came the Bosto7i News Letter, \\\^ Phil- 
 adelphia Mercm-y, and the Neiv Yoj^k Gazette. 
 
 In those days the post - chaise between 
 Boston and New York, a distance of eight 
 hours by rail, set out once a fortnight in the 
 winter months. 
 
 To-day the great daihes of New York are 
 sold in Washington — a distance of six hours 
 — at 1 1 o'clock in the morning. 
 
 One of the early journalists of Uncle Sam 
 was John Peter Zenger, of the New York 
 Weekly Joiirnal. 
 
 In 1734 Zenger was arrested for alleged 
 libel of the provincial Government and 
 thrown into jail. He wrote letters and 
 verses from his place of confinement. His 
 spirit was strong, but his rhyme was weak. 
 
 " Oh cruelty unknown before 
 To any barbarous savage shore, 
 Much more when men so much profess 
 Humanity and Godliness !" 
 
 The influential papers in the Colonies at 
 the opening and during the struggle of the 
 nephews of Uncle Sam against John Bull 
 were three or four in number. 
 
 Samuel Adams issued The Independent 
 
THE JOURNALISTS. . 89 
 
 Advertiser ; Edes and Gill published The 
 Boston Gazette ; and Philip Freneau publish- 
 ed the Fr e email s Journal m Philadelphia. 
 
 The history of early journalism in the 
 United States was not without interesting- 
 incidents. 
 
 Alexander McDougall, an editor of the 
 /ournal, was put into prison in 1770 for libel 
 on the Assembly. He had received so many 
 sympathetic visitors while in jail that he had 
 to issue a card stating that he would be glad 
 to have the honor of their company between 
 3 and 6 o'clock. 
 
 James Rivington, of the reactionary Royal 
 Gazette, one day found his office invaded by 
 the patriot, Colonel Ethan Allen. 
 
 A huge mob howled outside. 
 
 A bottle of excellent Madeira stood on the 
 table. 
 
 "■ Sir, I have come " — said the officer, per- 
 emptorily 
 
 " Not another word, my dear Colonel," re- 
 plied the editor, " till you have taken a seat 
 and a glass of that old Madeira." 
 
 The patriot and the anti- patriot drank 
 quietly, deeply, long, while the mob contin- 
 ued to howl outside. 
 
90 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 The circulation of papers in these days 
 was very Hmited. Campbell did not sell 
 more than 300 copies of his N'ews Letter 
 when Boston had a population of 8,000. 
 Rivington published only 3,600 copies of 
 the Gazette in i -j'j^, though New York had a 
 population of something like 21,876 — I was 
 going to say souls, but I remember what 
 Wendell Phillips once said on this point : 
 
 " Fifty millions of — not souls, gentlemen," he ex- 
 claimed, in speaking of the population, " for it would be 
 a great mistake to say that every man, woman, and child 
 in this country has a soul." 
 
 During the Revolutionary struggle — 1 776- 
 81 — some of the anti-patriot journalists had 
 a hard time. 
 
 I have already mentioned Rivington. 
 
 I cite another case. 
 
 John Mein, of the Boston Chrouiele, was 
 obliged to flee on account of his royalist 
 opinions. 
 
 It was customary in those days, in Boston, 
 to drag an effigy of the Pope and the Devil 
 through the streets on the 5th of Novembti 
 of every year. 
 
 Men and boys made an effigy of the un- 
 
THE JOURNALISTS. gi 
 
 popular editor, and tacked on to it the fol- 
 lowing verses : 
 
 " Mean is the man, Mein is his name, 
 Enough he's spread his hellish fame. 
 Infernal furies hlirl his soul 
 Nine millions times from pole to pole !" 
 
 After the Revolution, the political party 
 press was most acrimonious. 
 
 Thomas Greenleaf, James Cheetham, Philip 
 Freneau, carried on a deadly war with quills, 
 
 Russell, of the Massachusetts Sentinel, and 
 Austin, of the Chronicle, were bitter enemies. 
 The one was a Federalist, the other a Repub- 
 lican. Austin one day spoke contemptuously 
 of his rival in Faneuil Hall, and, by way of 
 reciprocity, Russell met Austin on 'Change, 
 and spat into his face. 
 
 Though Cobbett was as staunch a Feder- 
 alist as himself, Russell didn't like him. 
 
 " This imported, or transported, beast," he wrote of him, 
 " has been kept as gentlemen keep a fierce ^////Z)^^^ against 
 thieves, Jacobins, and Frenchmen, and as such he has been 
 a good and faithful dog, and has been fed and caressed ac- 
 cordingly. " 
 
 Such was the style of journalistic inter- 
 course in those days. 
 
92 
 
 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 The papers I have written about were not 
 daihes. The first daily newspaper "pubHshed 
 in the United States was issued in 1784 in 
 Philadelphia by Benjamin Franklin Bache. 
 It was styled the Avicrican Daily Advertiser. 
 
 The second daily was the Neiu York Daily 
 Advertiser, published in 1785. 
 
 One of the oldest papers in the country, still 
 issued, is the Ei'eni}ig Post, of New York. It 
 first appeared on the i6th of November,! 801, 
 as the organ of the Federalists. William Cole- 
 man was its editor, and among its contribu- 
 tors were Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. 
 
 Cheetham, of the Ameriean Citizen, and 
 Duane, of the Aurora, were not always par- 
 liamentary. 
 
 In those days, patriot orators would make 
 us believe everybody was wise, good, and 
 happy. 
 
 The good old days ! 
 
 Cheetham called Duane a " low-bred for- 
 eigner," and Duane retorted by branding 
 Cheetham as " a base wretch." 
 
 But why dwell longer on the past ? Why 
 bother over long-forgotten worthies ? 
 
 Let us come to the present. 
 
 Mr. James Gordon Bennett, of the Herald, 
 
THE JOURNALISTS. 93 
 
 Mr. Whitelaw Reid, of the Tribwie, Mr. 
 George Jones, of the Times, Mr. Joseph Pul- 
 itzer, of the World, Mr. Charles A. Dana, of 
 the Stm, represent the great morning dailies 
 of New York. 
 
 Mr. Bennett edits the Herald by telegraph, 
 from his yacht, from Paris, from anywhere 
 he happens to be. 
 
 The elder l^ennett founded the paper in 
 1835, and soon made it a brilliant success. 
 
 To-day it claims to have a legitimate daily 
 circulation of 195,000. The Bennetts both 
 were quick to use the most improved meth- 
 ods for gathering news. In 1846 the Herald, 
 under the elder Bennett, first received tele- 
 graphic news from Washington. In 1887 
 yoimg Bennett spent more money than any 
 other newspaper editor for telegraphic news 
 from all parts of the world. 
 
 Young Mr. Bennett has a scar over the 
 bridge of his nose, received in a duel, or 
 fight, or something. 
 
 Old Mr. Bennett was a capital story-teller. 
 He used to recount, with a certain gusto, the 
 history of the duel between Clinton and 
 Swartwout. There were three shots ex- 
 changed without effect. 
 
94 
 
 HOy. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 " Is your principal satisfied ?" asked Riker, 
 Clinton's second, after each fire. 
 
 " He is not," replied Swartvvout's second. 
 
 The fourth shot was then exchanged, and 
 Swartwout received Clinton's ball in the calf 
 of his leg. 
 
 " Is your principal satisfied now ?" again 
 asked Riker. 
 
 " He is not." 
 
 The fifth ball was discharged, and Clin- 
 ton's ball again lodged in Swartwout's leg. 
 
 " Is your principal satisfied now ?" asked 
 Riker. 
 
 Swartwout, bleeding profusely, told the 
 second he was not." 
 
 "Well, well !" exclaimed Clintoji ; " he may 
 go to the devil ! I'll fire no more." 
 
 Though the Herald is a success, the World, 
 Luuler Mr. Joseph Pulitzer, is pressing it hard. 
 Three years ago this paper had a circula- 
 tion of from 15,000 to 20,000. To-day. if 
 the attesting notary lie not. it boasts of 
 150,000. 
 
 Mr. Pulitzer came to New York from St. 
 Louis. He is a political speaker, too. and de- 
 livers himself in the staccato fashion charac- 
 teristic of Emile de Girardin. 
 
THE JOURNALISTS. 95 
 
 The best thing about him is his beautiful 
 wife. 
 
 The Herald is independent in poHtics; the 
 World is mildly Democratic. 
 
 The New York Tribune is the representa- 
 tive organ of the out-and-out Republicans. 
 Mr. Whitelaw Reid, an associate of Horace 
 Greeley, who founded the paper, is its editor. 
 
 He married a lady, a daughter of D.. O. 
 Mills, whose ducats aided him considerably. 
 
 The founder of the New York Times, 
 which is the professed organ of the Independ- 
 ent Republicans, was Henry J. Raymond. 
 The present editor is Mr. George Jones. 
 
 Horace Greeley once called Henry Ray- 
 mond " little villain." 
 
 The present editors, successors of Greeley 
 and Raymond, hate each other cordially 
 even unto this day. 
 
 Mr. Jones thinks nothing of calling Mr. 
 Reid a liar, and Mr. Reid is not backward in 
 implying that Mr. Jones is a thief. 
 
 A big metropolitan daily is a valuable prop- 
 erty, estimated at over $1,000,000. 
 
 Editors are as kings. Reporters, correspon- 
 dents, agents, all over the world are their 
 ambassadors. Politicians crowd their ante- 
 
96 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 rooms and court their favor. To gain their 
 good graces the aspiring statesman will do 
 much, and to reward them, if successful, 
 statesmen have ever been prompt and ready. 
 
 I cannot begin to give you a list of the 
 journalists who have received foreign mis- 
 sions in return for newspaper services. 
 
 Mr. Charles A. Dana, of the New York 
 Sun, is an out-and-out Democrat, by profes- 
 sion. He can say disagreeable things in the 
 most artistic way. 
 
 At heart he is an aristocrat, with a fondness 
 for bric-a-brac and fine pictures. 
 
 His paper throws milk-sops to the poor 
 workingman. 
 
 Mr. Murat Halstead, of the Cincinnati 
 Gazette, is one of the most violent journal- 
 ists in the country. This man, who during 
 the late war wanted Sherman turned out 
 of the army for insanity, and Grant for 
 drunkenness ; who thought Lincoln ought to 
 be taken by the heels and dashed against a 
 wall — this hot-tempered literary cow-boy now 
 amuses himself by attacking the President. 
 
 "The fraudulent President of the United States," said 
 he, recently, " has taken the back track on the rebel flag 
 question. He has, as the Indian said, vamoosed, absquat- 
 
THE JOURNALISTS. 97 
 
 ulated, puccageed, retired. In a word, he has heard from 
 the country and has heeded. Public opinion has pene- 
 trated the hide of the Executive rhinoceros. The gigantic 
 neck that is the boast of the muscular Democracy has 
 been bowed in stolid submission. The prestige of Mr. 
 Cleveland, built upon a series of fictions and assumptions, 
 has suffered irreparable damage. He has been knocked 
 down and dragged out. This is the slashing beginning 
 of the speedy end of him." 
 
 That is a specimen of Western journalism. 
 
 When these men wish to be strong, they 
 become brutal. 
 
 That's an Anglo-Saxon trait. 
 
 Mr. Henry Watterson, of the Louisville 
 Coui'i^r -Journal, is an adept poker player, a 
 doughty drinker, and a ready and forcible 
 writer. 
 
 Some of his sentences are as pithy as those 
 of Vacquerie. 
 
 " Appointments mean disappointments," 
 said he, apropos of some of the President's 
 nominations to office. 
 
 I do not know whether we ought to be 
 grateful to Mr., Henry Watterson for having 
 first advocated Mary Anderson in print as a 
 great actress. 
 
 That frigid beauty bores me terribly. 
 
 Mr. Edwin Godkin, of the Evening Post, 
 
 7- 
 
gS HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 of New York, is one of the ablest and best- 
 informed newspaper men in the country. 
 "He is an Irishman by birth, an EngHsh Lib- 
 eral by conviction, and an American Inde- 
 pendent by profession. 
 
 His manner is patronizing. His tone is 
 ironical. 
 
 He delights in a sneer quite as much as 
 Gibbon did. 
 
 It was he, I believe, who alluded to the 
 loungers on the city park benches as "our 
 leisure classes." 
 
 Mr. Godkin hates Mr. Blaine, and Mr. Dana 
 hates Mr. Godkin. 
 
 New York is full of bright political writers. 
 
 Mr. Joseph Howard, Jr., quick, forward, 
 and familiar, is a chipper, gossipy, feuilleton- 
 esque writer. 
 
 The ladies of the stage like him. 
 
 Mr. Charles R. Miller, of the Thnes, polite 
 and genial, a linguist and a diner-out, writes 
 a hand like Horace Greeley. His copy, too, 
 is somewhat like that of Choate. 
 
 It looks like a gridiron struck by lightning. 
 
 What Mr. Amos Cummings, of the Sun, 
 Mr. Horace White, of the Post, Mr. Ballard 
 Smith, of the World, Mr. Benjamin Wood, 
 
THE JOURNALISTS. gg 
 
 of the Nezvs, don't know of politics, you can 
 put into your match-box. 
 
 Mr. Cummings is also a Representative in 
 Congress, from New York. 
 
 He speaks quite as picturesquely as he 
 writes. 
 
 Most of the editors of Uncle Sam, I should 
 add, are much better informed on our poli- 
 tics than we are on theirs. 
 
 The newspapers of New York are not as 
 influential throughout the United States as 
 the newspapers of Paris are throughout 
 France. 
 
 There is no centralization of intelligence 
 here. 
 
 Chicago, St. Louis, New Orleans, San 
 Francisco, Boston, Cincinnati, rival New 
 York in journalistic enterprise. Mr. Medill, 
 of the Chicago Tribune, Mr. McLean of the 
 Cincinnati Eftquirer, Mr. McClure, of the 
 Philadelphia Times, Mr. Field, of the Chi- 
 cago News, Mr. Childs, of the Philadelphia 
 Ledger, are most powerful. 
 
 Some of the editors have a tremendous 
 opinion of their importance. 
 
 Mr. Dorsheimer, of the New York Star, 
 was one of these. 
 
lOO IIOX. rXCLE SAM. 
 
 He was walking- along a country road on 
 a summer day and met William R. Travers, 
 the witty clubman, in a buggy. He was 
 asked to jump in and take a seat. 
 
 " I am afraid there isn't room," said Air. 
 Dorsheimer. 
 
 " D-d-don't y-you think," replied Travers, 
 stuttering, " that, that p-p-p-perhaps. you. 
 vou. aren't such a b-b-b-bior man as vou think 
 
 vou are 
 
 \ I I" 
 
 Self-interest is largely at the bottom of 
 the politics of most of the editors of Uncle 
 Sam. Mr. Pulitzer, of the U^or/d, disliked 
 President Cleveland for some time because 
 he did not appoint his friend Gibson to the 
 post of Minister at Berlin. Mr. Whitelaw 
 Reid. of the Tribune, advocated Mr. Blaine 
 for President because he knew that under 
 his administration he would get a Cabinet 
 oiTice. Mr. Bennett, of the Herald, supports 
 Cleveland because Cleveland appointed Mr. 
 Isaac Bell, Jr., his brother-in-law, Minister to 
 the Netherlands. The opposition of Mr. 
 Dana, of the Sun, to President Cleveland had 
 its root in the unwillingness of President 
 Cleveland to appoint his friend Bartlett to 
 some office. 
 
THE JOURNALISTS. lOI 
 
 William Henry Hurlbert, who used to be 
 the brilhant editor of the World, and who 
 wrote strong letters to the Herald for Cleve- 
 land during" the last campaign, now bitterly 
 hates the President. 
 
 He expected a mission, and didn't get it. 
 
 We read of vituperation in the early his- 
 tory of the journalism of Uncle Sam. Duff 
 Green hated James Watson Webb. Major 
 Noah and Park Benjamin hated James Gor- 
 don Bennett. We have seen that Clinton 
 and Swartwout hated each other so thor- 
 oughly that they exchanged not only adjec- 
 tives, but pistol-shots. 
 
 In the old slavery days, when Brooks, of 
 South Carolina, attacked Sumner, of Massa- 
 chusetts, with a cane in the Senate Chamber, 
 and knocked him senseless, the Richmond 
 Whig wrote: "The only regret we feel is 
 that Mr. Brooks did not employ a horse-whip 
 upon his slanderous back instead of a cane." 
 
 The Petersburg Intelligencer spoke of" the 
 blackguard Sumner." 
 
 This was all very bad, but it was hardly 
 worse than what Mr. Dana wrote of Presi- 
 dent Cleveland just before his election about 
 three years ago. 
 
I02 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 " If his mode of life is beastly ; if he is given to coarse 
 intrigues and purchased amours ; if he is, in short, not a 
 man, but an animal, then we do not want him for President 
 of the United States. We do not believe the American 
 people will knowingly elect to the Presidency a coarse 
 debauch^, who would bring his harlots with him to Wash- 
 ington and hire lodgings for them conveniently to the 
 White House." 
 
 There are libel laws in this country, but 
 they are seldom called into use. 
 
 I have spoken, en passant, of the great 
 editors. 
 
 I want to say a word of their correspond- 
 ents at Washington. 
 
 There are about 102 of them here, repre- 
 senting 105 daily papers. 
 
 The dean of them all was Ben Perley 
 Poore, of the Providence Joni-nal and the 
 Boston Biidoet. 
 
 General Henry V. Boynton, a soldier as 
 well as a writer, represents the Cincinnati 
 Commercial Gazette. Mr. Charles Nordhoff 
 is the representative of the New York 
 Herald. 
 
 These older men, thrown in with several 
 generations of politicians, have a great fund 
 of anecdotes. 
 
 It is amusing to sit in the offices of their 
 
THE JOURNALISTS. IO3 
 
 papers in Washington, and hear them speak 
 of the past. 
 
 Ben Perley Poore was an authority on 
 Lincoln. 
 
 " Mr. Lincoln was hardly installed in the 
 White House," he tells us, " before the wild 
 hunt for office commenced. Among other 
 good stories told of him was one of a man 
 who came day after day asking for a foreign 
 mission. At last the President, weary of his 
 face, said : * Do you know Spanish ?' ' No,' 
 said the eager aspirant, ' but I could soon 
 learn it.' ' Do so,' said Mr. Lincoln, ' and I 
 will giv^e you a good thing.' The needy 
 politician hurried home and spent six months 
 m studying Ollendorf's Grammar. He then 
 reappeared at the White House with a hope- 
 ful heart and a fine Castilian accent, and 
 the President presented him with a copy of 
 * Don Quixote,' in Spanish." 
 
 The lobby — that great devil-fish whose 
 tentacles clutch clammily at the National 
 Treasury — could never get on the blind side 
 of Mr. Lincoln. He treated them with cour- 
 tesy, but would never encourage their 
 schemes. His favorite among the Washing 
 ton correspondents was Mr. Simon B. Hans- 
 
I04 ^^^^' U^^'CLE SAM. 
 
 com, a shrewd Bostonian, who had been 
 identified with the earher anti-slavery move- 
 ments, and who used to keep Mr. Lincohi 
 informed as to what w^as going on in Wash- 
 ington, carrying him what he heard, and sel- 
 dom asking a favor. " I see you state," 
 said the President to Hanscom one day, 
 " that my administration will be the ' reign 
 of steel.' Why not add that Buchanan's 
 w-as the reign of stealing ?" 
 
 Mr. Boynton relates what Forney, of the 
 Philadelphia Press, told him of his autograph 
 collection. 
 
 " Washington's state papers, his letters and his accounts, 
 are models of order and cleanliness, rather set off by his 
 anticiue spelling. James Madison wrote a small, beauti- 
 ful hand, in keeping with his chaste and classic oratory. 
 General Jackson wrote with the direct boldness of his 
 nature, though somewhat indifferent as to his orthography. 
 James Buchanan prided himself upon his cautious style, 
 his careful spelling, his exact punctuation, and the absence 
 of interlineations. Henry Clay wrote plainly, like an out- 
 spoken and intrepid soul. Webster's hand, without being 
 ornate, was strong. George M. Dallas was a master of 
 the art : nothing could be more exquisite or more grace- 
 ful, in manner and matter, than his notes and letters. 
 John Van Buren was not nearly so exact as his great 
 father. Albert Gallatin wrote like copper-plate. Stephen 
 A. Douglas dashed off his letters without much regard to 
 
THE JOURNALISTS. IO5 
 
 appearance. He seemed to be always under a high pres- 
 sure, and what he wrote was written with intense feehng. 
 John C. Fremont signs his name boldly, a little after the 
 Dickens style. William H. Seward was excessively par- 
 ticular in the preparation of his speeches, and composed 
 with deliberation. I heard an old stenographer say that 
 after he had taken down Mr. Seward, literally, in one of 
 his greatest efforts, and presented him the full report, the 
 statesman recast the whole discourse, and sent it to the 
 printer's in his own hand." 
 
 Mr. Nordhoff, of the Herald, often goes 
 back to the past. 
 
 " The visitors at the house of the late 
 Mr. Seaton, of \k\^ Natio7ial Intelligencer ,' he 
 will tell you, perhaps, " included all the 
 leading personages of the day ; and even 
 John Randolph was softened by the accom- 
 plishments of Mrs. Seaton. Mr. Randolph 
 sat near Mr. Seaton, and on one occasion, 
 when Mr. Clay, speaking in his not unusual 
 personal and self - sufficient strain, said, 
 among other things, that * his parents had 
 left him nothing but indigence and ignor- 
 ance,' Randolph, turning to Mr. Seaton, 
 said in a stage whisper to be heard by the 
 company : ' That gentleman might continue 
 the alliteration, and add insole^ice! " 
 
 I come to some more correspondents. 
 
I06 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 Mr. Elbridge G. Dunnell represents the 
 New York Times. He is a master statisti- 
 cian, a clear writer. He looks young, but is, 
 in experience, old. 
 
 Mr. M. G. Seckendorf is the correspondent 
 of the New York Trtbziue. He is distingue 
 in appearance, and reliable. 
 
 Mr. T. C. Craw^ford writes to the New 
 York World. 
 
 Most of these regular correspondents at 
 Washington belong to the ** Gridiron," a club 
 where good-cheer and good-fellowship go 
 together. 
 
 The biggest politician in Washington 
 treats the visiting-cards of the leading corre- 
 spondents with respect. These men often 
 make public opinion, voice it, all through the 
 dominion of Uncle Sam. 
 
 Every large daily in the country has its 
 regular office in Washington, and it is kept 
 up at great expense. The communications 
 with the home office are carried on by tele- 
 graph. 
 
 If Mrs. Cleveland takes a drive on Penn- 
 sylvania Avenue at 3 o'clock in the afternoon 
 in Washington, or Mrs. Secretary Whitney 
 is confined with a girl, the great news is 
 
THE JOURNALISTS. I07 
 
 known in San Francisco at 7 o'clock the next 
 morning-. 
 
 Mr. E. B. Wight, who is the correspond- 
 ent of the Chicago Intei^ - Ocean and the 
 Boston Jotirnal, looks very much like M. de 
 Blowitz. 
 
 Mr. Harrington is the New York corre- 
 spondent of the Chicago Tribzme, and an 
 amiable and able man he is, too. 
 
 Mr. William C. McBride is one of the most 
 pungent of the journalists here. 
 
 I remember he once compared the head 
 of a certain politician to a prize pumpkin at 
 a fair. 
 
 Mr. Frank G. Carpenter, of the Cleveland 
 Leader, signs his letters " Carp," just as that 
 well-known journalist, Mr. George Alfred 
 Townsend, now in New York, signs his 
 " Gath." 
 
 They both have a wide acquaintance with 
 public men, they both write in an entertain- 
 ing, if in the long run somewhat monotonous, 
 way. 
 
 I don't remember whether it was Mr. Car- 
 penter or Mr. Townsend who recently told 
 this story of Judge Poland, of Vermont. 
 
 I produce it, all the same : 
 
I08 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 " Judge Poland dined at the St. Johnsbury House one 
 day, and remarked to some friends that he was feeling un- 
 usually well. ' Monday,' he said, ' I am to speak^at Hyde 
 Park ' ; and this recalled a bit of experience in speech-mak- 
 ing, which he recounted in his own inimitable way. ' It 
 was at the county fair in Bradford,' he said, ' some years 
 ago, and I was down for an agricultural speech. Some 
 distance from the stand a trial of working oxen was in 
 progress. But I had a good audience, and was just get- 
 ting warmed up to my subject when, '■'■ Gee ! Haw ! Buck !" 
 came from the testing-ground, and in another instant my 
 audience was gone. Those oxen could draw and hold an 
 audience better than I could.' " 
 
 Let us resume our promenade on " News- 
 paper Row," in Washington. 
 
 Messenger boys run against us. The 
 sound of the telegraph chcks in our ears. 
 
 Here is Colonel Cockrill, of the World, the 
 able right-hand man of Mr. Pulitzer. 
 
 He looks like a man who would shoot a 
 man in self-defense, and he did shoot Slay- 
 back, of St. Louis, some years ago. 
 
 Cockrill affirms that Slayback came into 
 the office and threatened his life. 
 
 Mr. Ouinton Washington represents the 
 New Orleans Picayune, Mr. John M. Carson 
 writes for the Philadelphia Ledger. Mr. 
 Frederick Perry Powers telegraphs to the 
 
THE JOURNALISTS. IO9 
 
 Chicago Times. Mr. A. M. Lyman is the 
 correspondent of the New York Sun. Mr. 
 O. O. Stealey does good work for the Louis- 
 ville Cou7'ier-J ournaL Mr. Edmund Hudson 
 sends letters to the Boston Herald. Mr. 
 Frank H. Richardson corresponds for the 
 Baltimore Sun. Mr. Charles T. Towle finds 
 time to write to the Ti^aveller, of Boston. 
 Mr. R. J. Wynne wires to the Globe-Democrat, 
 of St. Louis. 
 
 What do you care about these names ? 
 What do most people, even here, know or 
 care about them ? 
 
 Journalists here rarely sign their articles. 
 People read them without asking by whom 
 is written what they read. 
 
 The difference between an Englishman 
 and a Frenchman, says Theodore Child, can 
 be told immediately by observing how each 
 regards a woman on horseback. 
 
 The Englishman looks first of all at the 
 horse, the Frenchman first of all at the 
 woman. 
 
 We in France look immediately to the foot 
 of an article for the signature. 
 
 Is it signed by Weiss ? by About } we 
 ask ; by Sarcey ? by Lemoinne ? 
 
I lo HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 They do not ask that question here. 
 
 One of the few journaUsts in Washington 
 who signs his articles is Mr. Crawford, of 
 the World. 
 
 He is a great interviewer, an interesting, 
 newsy writer. 
 
 I remember his paper on Governor Curtin, 
 ex-Minister to Russia. 
 
 On one occasion, he tells us : 
 
 " Mr. Curtin went to London for a little rest and change. 
 Napoleon III. was then at Chiselhurst. During Curtin's 
 stay in London, Chevalier Wyckoff called upon him. He 
 asked him if he would like to call upon the ex-Emperor. 
 Mr. Curtin replied that he would not think of calling upon 
 him without receiving an intimation from Napoleon that 
 he wished to see him. The next day one of the aides-de- 
 camp of Napoleon called upon him and asked him to visit 
 the ex-Emperor at his earlist convenience. Mr. Curtin 
 named 3 o'clock the next day. He was received with a 
 great deal of warmth. The ex-Emperor talked for a long 
 time about his own career, his poverty, his former life in 
 London, and his visit to New York. Finally, after nearly 
 two hours of talk, he came to the real point of his desire 
 to see Curtin. He said to him : ' You are on intimate terms 
 with Gortschakoff. Have you any objection to telling me 
 what are his real views upon the subject of the re-estab- 
 lishment of the Empire ? ' 'I know what his sentiments 
 upon this subject are,' said Mr. Curtin, 'but they are of 
 such a nature that I do not feel at liberty to communicate 
 them to you.' ' I understand you,' said the ex-Emperor, 
 
THE JOURNALISTS. HI 
 
 'and am much obliged to you for your civility in 
 calling.' 
 
 " Gortschakoff's opinion, which Mr. Curtin withheld, had 
 been very vigorously expressed. He said that this ' dam- 
 ned French scoundrel ' should never have any help from 
 him in getting back his throne, as he regarded him as a 
 man dangerous to the peaceful condition of affairs in Eu- 
 rope. When Curtin returned to St. Petersburg. Gortscha- 
 koff invited him to dinner. During the dinner he said to 
 Curtin, * You have been away ?' ' Yes ; in London.' 'You 
 saw many people there?' 'Yes.' 'A number of dis- 
 tinguished people ? ' ' Yes, I saw some prominent Ameri- 
 can friends of mine.' ' I am told that you also saw the 
 man who at one time seemed to hold in his hands the 
 destinies of Europe.' 'Yes, I saw him,' said Mr. Cur- 
 tin. ' Have you any objections to telling me the nature 
 of the conversation you had with him ? ' * It was not im- 
 portant,' was the reply ; ' it was mainly upon personal 
 topics.' Here Gortschakoff said, with a very knowing 
 look, ' I know all the details of that conversation. I am 
 very much obliged to you for your discretion in not com- 
 municating to Louis Napoleon my views upon the re- 
 establishment of the French Empire.' As there was no 
 third person present at the interview between Mr. Curtin 
 and the ex-Emperor, this interview gave him a very high 
 opinion of the completeness of the Russian spy service." 
 
 However all these journalists may differ 
 in politics, intelligence, rectitude, they all 
 have one point in common : they are all 
 anxious for news ; they look down on the 
 past ; they crave for the present. 
 
I I 2 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 We are told that a young writer one day 
 came to Larousse with a manuscript. 
 
 "What is the subject of your paper?" 
 asked the atheist journahst of the timid as- 
 pirant. 
 
 " Monsieur, the subject of the paper which 
 I have the honor to submit to your consider- 
 ate attention is God — " 
 
 Ca vianquc tVactualitc, blandly replied the 
 newspaper man. " Your copy lacks newsi- 
 ness, timeliness ! " 
 
 Four out of five of the journalists of Uncle 
 Sam would have said the same thmg. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE CARICATURISTS. 
 
 We have been in many lands together, my 
 dear Count; we have observed carefully, and 
 we have read much. 
 
 I, for my part, have found no country 
 where there are so many oddities, incongru- 
 ities, absurdities, abuses, as in this land of 
 freedom. 
 
 What a field, this, for a caricaturist ! 
 
 How Aristophanes would have rubbed 
 his hands to have as his subjects the politi- 
 cians of Uncle Sam ! 
 
 I will divide the caricaturists here into 
 two classes. 
 
 I will speak of those who caricature with 
 the pen, and those who caricature with the 
 pencil. 
 
 Mr. James Russell Lowell is one of their 
 cleverest caricaturists with the pen. He has 
 hit, as no one else has done, those familiar 
 figures in politics here called tlie " sages," 
 
 8. 113 
 
114 
 
 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 men who look wise, live in retirement, and 
 speak in slow and ponderous and ambiguous 
 fashion on public affairs. 
 
 Turning- the pages of the *• Biglow Pa- 
 pers," written against the Mexican War, you 
 run across such a " sage," the portrait of 
 Robinson, of Massachusetts, as drawn by 
 one of his admirers. 
 
 " We were gettin' on nicely up here to our village, 
 
 With good old idees o' what's right and what ain't. 
 We kind o' thought Christ went agin war and pillage, 
 And that eppylets weren't the best mark of a saint; 
 But John P. 
 Robinson he 
 Sez this kind o' thing's an exploded idee. 
 
 " Parson Wilber sez he never heard in his life 
 
 Thet th' Apostles rigged out in their swyller-tail coats 
 And marched round in front of a drum and a fife, 
 To git some on 'em office, and some on 'em votes, 
 But John P. 
 Robinson he 
 Sez they didn't know everything down in Judee. 
 
 " Wal, it's a marcy we've quiet folks to tell us 
 
 The rights an' the wrongs o' these matters, I vow. 
 God sends country lawyers, and other wise fellers, 
 To drive the world's team when it gets in a slough, 
 Fer John P. 
 Robinson he 
 Sez the world'U go all right, ef he hollers out 'Gee !' " 
 
THE CA RICA TUNIS TS. 
 
 "5 
 
 Do you note the sarcasm mingled with 
 exaggeration in this dialect caricature ? 
 
 Can you understand it ? 
 
 The leading cartoonist with the pencil, 
 for a long time, was Mr. Thomas Nast. 
 
 He is a German by birth, short, stumpy, 
 natty. 
 
 His work is to be found in Harpei^' s 
 Weekly, and he has many admirers. 
 
 He made his hit at the time when Tweed, 
 a New York politician, by his patronage of 
 office, distribution of pelf, and stuffing of 
 ballot-boxes, virtually held the metropolis 
 in his hand. The ring of thieves under the 
 leadership of Tweed put their fingers into 
 the city treasury and helped themselves. 
 
 Nast was untiring in his efforts to break 
 this ring. 
 
 Week after week he issued cartoons 
 against them. 
 
 His greatest success was the companion 
 caricatures, " Wholesale and Retail." 
 
 On one side he represented Hall, Tweed, 
 Sweeney, and Connolly, filling their pockets 
 with the contents of the State safe, and then 
 coming out unmolested into the street, 
 saluted by two lines of policemen. 
 
Il6 HON. UNLLE SAM. 
 
 This was " Wholesale." 
 
 On the other side, the cartoonist repre- 
 sented a poor man breaking into a baker's 
 shop and stealing a loaf of bread in the 
 window. His starving wife and child stand 
 at a corner of the street. Policemen run up, 
 beat him and seize him. 
 
 This was " Retail." 
 
 What a contrast ! What a lesson ! 
 
 Everybody understood it. 
 
 Tweed feared and hated Nast. 
 
 *' I don't care what they say or write about 
 me," he remarked, " but I wish those infer- 
 nal pictures were stopped. They hurt." 
 
 The leading colored cartoon paper here is 
 Puck; its leading artist is Mr. Joseph Kep- 
 pler. 
 
 Tall, dashing, picturesque in dress he is, 
 like Nast, a native of Germany. 
 
 He was, by turns, an actor, a manager, a 
 confectioner. 
 
 To-day he is rich; has a villa on the Hud- 
 son; dines with the President when he comes 
 to Washington. 
 
 Mr. Keppler, who is an excellent draughts- 
 man, uses his pencil with especial skill 
 against temperance fanatics, against ambi- 
 
THE CAKICA TURISTS. 
 
 17 
 
 tious ecclesiastics, against the pretended 
 friends of the workingman. 
 
 They say the ideas of his cartoons are 
 given him by his friends. 
 
 The execution of them, however, is all his 
 own. 
 
 Bosses with big heads' big bellies, big dia- 
 monds, are his pet game. 
 
 John Kelly, who used to rule New York, 
 was an especially favorite subject of Mr. 
 Keppler's. 
 
 The insolence of political bosses, the exag- 
 gerations of political campaigns, the corrup- 
 tion of high officials, are pet topics for the 
 caricaturists. 
 
 The representative cartoon paper of the 
 Republicans is Judge, published in New 
 York. 
 
 Mr. Bernhard Gillam, a medium-sized, 
 thin man, with bright, quick eyes, is its 
 leading artist. He was born in England, but 
 he received his education in New York. 
 
 Somewhat wooden in his artistic methods, 
 uncertain in his execution, wretched in his 
 coloring, Gillam is full of ideas and very 
 versatile. 
 
 He originated the " Tattooed Man," rep- 
 
I I 8 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 resenting- Mr. Blaine during the last cam 
 paig-n as covered with all the marks of 
 political corruption. Mr. Gillam, who was 
 formerly on Puck, and rather coquetted with 
 the Democracy, is now out-and-out for the 
 Republicans. 
 
 Political sunmiersaults are quite as com- 
 mon among- newspaper men and cartoon- 
 ists of Uncle Sam as among us. 
 
 They could have a " Dictionnaire des Gi- 
 rouettes " quite as interesting as that by 
 Proissy d'Eppes. 
 
 Toujours l' argent. 
 
 One odd characteristic of American picto- 
 rial caricature is this : 
 
 The cartoonists habitually put the name of 
 a politician on some part of his picture — just 
 as though the public did not recognize him 
 without this precaution ! 
 
 This is primitive and unartistic. 
 
 When I see this done, I always feel like 
 exclaiming : 
 
 " Libel the politicians, gentlemen, but do 
 not label them." 
 
 The leading comic paper of the West is 
 the Wasp, in San Francisco. It is run by a 
 man by the name of Gassaway, and is bold 
 
THE CA RICA TUKIS TS. 
 
 119 
 
 and unscrupulous in its methods. I am 
 sometimes amazed how terribly he lashes 
 the powerful railroad magnates. 
 
 But politicians and magnates don't seem 
 to mind these things here. 
 
 One day in the Senate, we are told, Senator 
 Voorhees exhibited a cartoon from the Wasp, 
 in which a fox, with Mr. Blaine's head, lay 
 pretending to be dead in a field, but with 
 one eye very wide open indeed. A flock of 
 geese, each wearing the face of some Presi- 
 dential possibility, such as Senators Sher- 
 man, Evarts, Hoar, Hiscock, etc., were trip- 
 ping cautiously up to see if Mr. Fox was 
 really dead. 
 
 Nobody in the Senate Chamber was more 
 amused than the illustrious gentlemen satir- 
 ized by the disrespectful artist. Senator 
 Sherman held it off at arm's length, and 
 laughed the peculiar low chuckle which does 
 duty as a laugh for him until he was tired. 
 Senator Hoar grinned sympathetically. Sen- 
 ator Hiscock and Senator Evarts exchanged 
 dignified jokes on the subject. It was the 
 only thing that occurred in the Senate dur- 
 ing the whole week that was not as dull as 
 ditch-water. 
 
I20 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 Mr. Thomas Worth, of Texas Siftings, 
 is an adept at depicting the comicaUties of 
 low poHtical hfe. The newly enfranchised 
 negro is his especial hobby. He is skillful, 
 too, in portraying the typical Uncle Sam in 
 his high hat, his short trousers, his swallow- 
 tail coat, with his hooked nose, his firm 
 mouth, and his goatee. 
 
 Mr. Rogers, of Life, manufactures his po- 
 litical cartoons for the boudoir and the parlor. 
 
 Mr. Zimmerman and Mr. Taylor, oi Judge 
 and Puck respectively, are bold, original, and 
 effective 
 
 Mr. McDougall, of the World, has an oc- 
 casional squib on local politicians. 
 
 He is rather coarse in his methods. 
 
 I have often wondered that none of the 
 clever cartoonists of Paris has ever come 
 over here and made caricatures of the politi- 
 cians of Uncle Sam. 
 
 The French, by-the-way, do not play an 
 important role in this country. 
 
 According to the census of i8So, there 
 were only 106,971 of French nativity in the 
 United States. 
 
 They flock to New York, San Francisco, 
 New Orleans, and settle there for a time. 
 
THE CARICATURISTS. 121 
 
 But the French take Httle interest in pub- 
 lic affairs. 
 
 They read the Cou7'ier des Etats Unis, of 
 New York, forget Httle, and learn little. 
 
 Mr. Philip Cusachs, of the Graphic, is a 
 fertile political cartoonist. 
 
 Like most of his American colleagues, 
 however, he makes portraits rather than cari- 
 catures. 
 
 Mr. Cusachs speaks French and rolls cigar- 
 ettes with ease. 
 
 Mr. Constantin de Grimm is fitted for 
 Berlin or Paris rather than for New York. 
 
 He has not at all penetrated himself with 
 the spirit of the politics of Uncle Sam. 
 
 His work is redolent of the Boulevard des 
 Italiens and the Maximilianstrasse. 
 
 Though the caricaturists of the pencil are 
 clever, I think those of the pen are more so. 
 
 Take Mr. Newell's parody of the style 
 of the " lady correspondents " at Wash- 
 ington. 
 
 The writer is supposed to describe a scene 
 in the East Room of the White House dur- 
 ing a reception. 
 
 " The charming Mrs. L., of lUinuis, was richly attired 
 in a frock and gloves, and wore a wreath of flowers from 
 
122 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 amaranthine bowers. She was affable as an angel with a 
 new pair of wings, and was universally allowed to be the 
 most beautiful woman present. 
 
 "The enthralling Miss C, from Ohio, was elegantly 
 clad in a dress, and wore number four gaiters. So brill- 
 iant was her smile that, when she laughed at one of Lord 
 Lyons's witticisms, all one corner of the room was wrapped 
 in a glare of light, and several nervous dowagers cried 'Fire!' 
 Her beauty was certainly the most beautiful present. 
 
 *' The fascinating Miss L., of Pennsylvania, was su- 
 perbly robed in an attire of costly material, with expensive 
 flounces. She wore two gloves and a complete pair of 
 ear-rings, and spoke so musically that the leader of the 
 Marine band thought there was an yEolian harp in the win- 
 dow. She was certainly the most beautiful woman present. 
 
 "The bewitching Mrs. G., from Missouri, was splendidly 
 dressed in a breast-pin and lace flounces, and wore her 
 hair brushed back from her forehead like Mount Athos. 
 Her eyes reminded one of diamond springs sparkling in 
 the shade of whispering willows. She was decidedly the 
 finest type of beauty present. 
 
 " The President wore his coat and whiskers, and bowed 
 to all salutations like a graceful door-hinge." 
 
 We in Europe consider ourselves of su- 
 preme importance, and yet our politics some- 
 times seem ridiculously small to the carica- 
 turists here. 
 
 Read what Mr. Alden, of the Times — now 
 Consul at Rome — wrote of our French-An- 
 dorran complications, a few years ago. 
 
THE CA RICA TURIS TS. I 2 3 
 
 " It is evident that Europe is on the verge of another 
 great war. France has announced that in case the Repub- 
 Hc of Andorra shall persist in refusing to satisfy certain 
 claims, offensive operations against that obstinate State 
 will be begun at once. This is clearly an ultimatum, and 
 as Andorra has never been lacking in self-respect and 
 courage, it is highly improbable that she will accede to 
 the peremptory demand made by France. 
 
 " Andorra has been hitherto singularly fortunate in 
 escaping war. In 1831 there was a diplomatic dispute 
 between Andorra and France. A large Frenchman, who 
 was riding on horseback along the northern frontier of 
 Andorra, was thrown over the fence, and before he could 
 regain his feet, he had unintentionally laid waste a large 
 tract of cultivated territory. Andorra's demand for dam- 
 ages was, however, promptly met by the French Govern- 
 ment, and the danger of. a collision averted. Two years 
 later there was a dispute between Andorra and Spain rela- 
 tive to the invasion of the Andorran back fence by Spanish 
 cats. These animals were accustomed to sit on the fence 
 at night and keep the entire population awake; and the 
 loss of public and private bottles, boots, and other articles 
 thrown at the cats, was a serious drain upon the resources, 
 of the republic. A demand was made that Spain should 
 keep her own cats at home, but the demand was rejected. 
 Fortunately, the annual Carlist insurrection broke out 
 just at that time, and the Carlists devoured every cat in 
 the north of Spain, thus averting the bloody conflict 
 between Spain and Andorra which had seemed to be in- 
 evitable. 
 
 '' At the present moment Andorra is straining every 
 nerve to make ready to repel French invasion. The Min- 
 
124 ^^^''^' ^^'^^^ •^^^^• 
 
 ister of the Marine has, with his own hands, drawn the 
 navy on shore, painted it, and supplied it with a new pair 
 of oars. The Government Arsenal is working day and 
 night to repair the lock of the musket belonging to the 
 Second Army Corps. The Government has advertised for 
 bids for the construction of a wheelbarrow for the Com- 
 missary Department, and has made a contract with a 
 Manchester firm for the delivery of a seven-barreled 
 revolver. The First Army Corps has been sent to the 
 frontier, and the Second will follow as soon as his musket 
 is repaired." 
 
 This is typical American caricature. The 
 caricaturist says the drollest, most incongru- 
 ous things, and yet keeps a perfectly straight 
 face. 
 
 Mr. Bill Nye and Mr. Mark Twain are 
 masters of that quiet, unctious humor which 
 .seems to be an indigenous product of the 
 country. If either of these men attacks a 
 politician's foibles, there is sure to be a 
 broad smile throughout the land. 
 
 1 remember having read, several years ago, 
 Mr. Bill Nye's caricature of the pomposity 
 of certain small officials. 
 
 It was in the form of a letter supposed to 
 have been written by one of these small 
 officials to the head of the Government. 
 
 Here are some extracts. 
 
THE CARICATURISTS. 
 
 125 
 
 ••Post Office Divan, \ 
 
 Laramie City, W T., Oct. i, 1883- f 
 " To THE President of the United States. 
 
 " Sir : I beg leave at this time to officially tender my 
 resignation as postmaster at this place, and in due form 
 to deliver the great seal and the key to the front door of 
 the office. The safe combination is set on the numbers 
 33, dd, and 99, though I do not remember at this moment 
 which comes first, or how many times you revolve the 
 knob, or which direction you should turn it at first, in 
 order to make it operate. 
 
 " There is some mining stock in my private drawer in 
 the safe, which I have not yet removed. This stock you 
 may have, if you desire it. It is a luxury, but you may 
 have it. I have decided to keep a horse instead of this 
 mining stock. The horse may not be so pretty, but it 
 will cost less to keep him. 
 
 "You will find the postal - cards that have not been 
 used under the distributing-table, and the coal down in 
 the cellar. If the stove draws too hard, close the 
 damper in the pipe and shut the general delivery 
 window. 
 
 " Looking over my stormy and eventful administration 
 as postmaster here, I find abundant cause for thanksgiv- 
 ing. At the time I entered upon the duties of my office, 
 the department was not yet on a paying basis. It was 
 not even self-sustaining. Since that time, with the active 
 co-operation of the chief executive and the heads of the 
 department, I have been able, to make our postal system 
 a paying one, and, on top of that, I am now able to reduce 
 the tariff on average-sized letters from 3 cents to 2. I 
 might add that this is rather too too, but I will not say 
 
120 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 anything that might seem undignified in an ofiicial resig- 
 nation which is to become a matter of history. 
 
 " Through all the vicissitudes of a tempestuous term of 
 office I have safely passed. I am able to turn over the 
 office to-day in a highly improved condition, and to pre- 
 sent a purified and renovated institution to my successor. 
 
 " Mr. President, I cannot close this letter without 
 thanking yourself, and the heads of Departments at Wash- 
 ington, for your active, cheery, and prompt co-operation 
 in these matters. You can do as you see fit, of course, 
 about incorporating this idea into your Thanksgiving proc- 
 lamation, but rest assured it would not be ill-timed or 
 inopportune. It is not alone a credit to myself : it reflects 
 credit upon the Administration also." 
 
 This is a good specimen of the caricature 
 of Uncle Sam. You find it in almost all 
 the sheets, from Maine to California. The 
 American has no bump of respect on his 
 cranium. 
 
 He ridicules everybody. 
 
 He feels that all officers of the law are 
 elected by him, and he looks upon them as 
 creatures of his own. 
 
 Even the Regular Army, which consists of 
 some 26,058 men — a compact, effective body 
 — is often the subject of laughter. Only a 
 short time ago Mr. Henry Guy Carleton, in 
 the World, gave a hazardous but witty cari- 
 cature of army life. 
 
THE CARICATURISTS. 
 
 127 
 
 Even the Navy, an eminently conservative 
 institution — 89 vessels, tonnage 76,730; 
 number .of guns 542 — even this compact, 
 aristocratic branch of the public service, is 
 the butt of caricature. I found this squib in 
 the Hatchet, of Washington, some time ago : 
 
 " Commodore,'^ said Secretary Chandler to Commo- 
 dore Walker last Monday evening, '' how many boats 
 have we now in the navy ?" 
 
 " Four" replied the commodore. 
 
 " What kind are they ? " inquired the secretary. 
 
 " We have a canoe that is being repaired ; a bateau 
 which is also being repaired ; a skiff in good condition, 
 and a dugout that has four holes in its bottom." 
 
 " How many guns do they carry ? " continued the 
 strong man of the Cabinet. 
 
 " How many what ? " repeated Commodore Walker. 
 
 *' Guns ! " said the Secretary. 
 
 " Guns, guns ! — why, what are guns ? " queried the 
 officer. 
 
 " Things that are loaded and go off," replied Mr. 
 Chandler. 
 
 " Well, Mr. Secretary," said Commodore Walker, with 
 a puzzled expression, " the only things I know of in the 
 Navy that get loaded and go off are the officers." Secre- 
 tary Chandler discontinued the conversation. 
 
 Mr. Mark Twain is, perhaps, Uncle Sam's 
 leading caricaturist. 
 
 His real name is Clemens. 
 
128 !JOA'. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 He used to be pilot on a Mississippi River 
 boat. 
 
 Now he lives in a fine house near Hart- 
 ford, rich and dignified. 
 
 You may remember his humorous carica- 
 ture-sketch of the duel between M. Gambetta 
 and M. de Fourtou. 
 
 Mark Twain, like most of the nephews of 
 Uncle Sam, has touched on politics. Did you 
 ever read his take-off on the troubles of a 
 senatorial private secretary in Washington ? 
 
 " I am not a private secretary to a Senator any more, 
 now. I held the berth two months in security and in 
 great cheerfulness of spirit, but my bread began to return 
 from over the waters, then — that is to say, my works came 
 back and revealed themselves. I judged it best to resign. 
 The way of it was this. My employer sent, for me one 
 morning tolerably early, and as soon as I had finished 
 inserting some conundrums clandestinely into his last 
 great speech upon finances, I entered the presence. There 
 was something portentous in his appearance. His cravat 
 was untied, his hair was in a state of disorder, and his 
 countenance bore about it the signs of a suppressed storm. 
 He held a package of letters in his tense grasp, and I 
 knew that the dreaded Pacific mail was in. He said: 
 
 " ' I thought you were worthy of confidence.' 
 
 " I said, * Yes, sir.' 
 
 " He said, 'I gave you a letter from certain of my con- 
 stituents in the State of Nevada, asking the establishment 
 
THE CARICATURISTS. 
 
 129 
 
 of a post-office at Baldwin's Ranche, and told you to 
 answer it, as ingeniously as you could, with arguments 
 which should persuade them that there was no real neces- 
 sity for an office at that place.' 
 
 "■ I felt easier. 'Oh! if that is all, sir, I did do that.' 
 " ' Yes, you did. I will read your answer for your own 
 humilation.' 
 
 " Washington, November 24. 
 " Messrs. Smith, Jones, and Others. 
 
 '■'■ Gentlemeii : What the mischief do you suppose you 
 want with a post-office at Baldwin's Ranche ? It would 
 not do you any good. If any letters came there you 
 couldn't read them, you know ; and besides, such letters 
 as ought to pass through, with money in them, for other 
 localities, would not be likely to get through, you must 
 perceive at once, and that would make trouble for us all. 
 No ; don't bother about a post-office in your camp. I 
 have your best interests at heart, and feel that it would 
 only be an ornamental folly. What you want is a nice 
 jail, you know — a nice, substantial jail and a free school. 
 These will be a lasting benefit to you ; these will make 
 you really contented and happy. I will move in the mat- 
 ter at once. 
 
 " Very truly, etc., 
 
 "Mark Twain, 
 
 " For James W. N , U. S. Senator." 
 
 " ' That is the way you answered that letter. Those 
 people say they will hang me if ever I enter that district 
 again, and I am perfectly satisfied they will, too ! Leave 
 the house! Leave it forever and forever, too ! ' 
 
 " I regarded that as a covert intimation that my service 
 could be dispensed with, and so I resigned. I never will 
 be a private secretary to a Senator again. You can't please 
 that kind of people. They don't know anything." 
 9 
 
I30 
 
 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 Such, my dear Count, are some of the 
 poHtical caricaturists I have found in this 
 country. 
 
 They have no Gavarnis, no Chams, here. 
 
 And yet, how gracefully have these cari- 
 caturists put cap and bells on the head of 
 Uncle Sam ! 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE PREACHERS. 
 
 Men with black frock-coats, white cravats, 
 uphfted eyes, men hand in glove with the 
 Eternal, have never been wanting on the 
 soil of Uncle Sam. 
 
 Though the affairs of Church and the 
 affairs of State are supposed to be separate 
 here, the preachers who dabble in politics 
 have been important factors in the history 
 of the country. 
 
 Armed with texts, blessings, anathemas, 
 they have, in great national crises, taken 
 sides for this party or that, or they have 
 been prudently tolerant of both. At all 
 times they have been ready to give counsel. 
 
 The politicians, if they do not court the 
 preachers, yet are anxious not to offend 
 them. 
 
 In the good old days, solemn gentlemen 
 like Cotton Mather, Jonathan Mayhew, Ezra 
 131 
 
132 ^/^^'■^■- r.w/./-: sAj/. 
 
 Stiles, seized upon any occasion to lecture 
 the people on public affairs. 
 
 Their ideal state was a good theocratic 
 bodv. God as ruler, and the elders as minis- 
 ters of His will. There was to be liberty, 
 but liberty as they understood it. There 
 was to be toleration, but toleration of what 
 they thought right. 
 
 Episcopalians, Quakers. Catholics, were 
 abominations. 
 
 I read recently some of the sermons of 
 these solemn political preachers. How dry 
 they are, but how interesting and how amus- 
 ing, too ! " 
 
 The State, according to these gentlemen, 
 was to watch over the daily acts of its 
 citizens. 
 
 Crabbed Cotton Mather did not believe in 
 drinking cider. 
 
 " Cyder, and a Spirit Extracted out of it, has been 
 much abused to Intemperance. Some observe that since 
 it has been so, a strange Blast has been upon the fruit 
 trees in many Places ; so as that some whose Orchards have 
 yielded 500 Barrels of Cyder in a year, now produce very 
 little. But there is another sort of Strong Drink imported 
 from the Sugar Islands, which has been of all others the 
 most fatal. It is now called Rum, but it once had another 
 name, and a ridiculous one, viz., A77/ £>e'vi7. Renowned 
 
THE PREACHERS. 
 
 ^Z2> 
 
 Mr. Wilson said it would rather have been called Kill 
 Me?i for the Detnl. 
 
 And in another of Mather's sermons, he 
 laments over " that worse than brutish sin 
 of drunkenness, which has become a pre- 
 vailing Iniquity all over the Countrey . . . 
 How has M^inc and Cyder, but most of all 
 Rimz, debauched multitudes of People, Young 
 and Old!" 
 
 Traces of this prohibitory, puritanic spirit, 
 in spite of the influence of Germans and 
 Irish, are still rife on the soil of Uncle Sam. 
 
 Indeed, the prohibition movement here is 
 a growing movement. Even in the State of 
 New York Prohibitionists have been steadily 
 gaining. Their vote in 1883 was 19.000; in 
 1884,25,000; nearly 31,000 in 1885 ; and over 
 36,000 in 1886. 
 
 John Calvin, who had dyspepsia, and John 
 Knox, who had the spleen, were the models 
 of the old political preachers of Uncle Sam. 
 Their sermons were over an hour long. They 
 preached three times of a Sunday. They 
 preached, I know not how often, during the 
 week. 
 
 "To be brief, I remark, eighteenthly," one 
 of them would say. 
 
134 f^ON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 The sexton of the church had a kind of 
 rod, to keep awake such of the congregation 
 as fell asleep. 
 
 The preachers interfered in everything, 
 from the election of a Governor to the estab- 
 lishment of a dancing-school. 
 
 Dr. John Witherspoon, who was President 
 of Princeton College, and a signer of the 
 Declaration of Independence, wrote a big 
 book against stage-players. 
 
 In 1684 Mr. Francis Stepney set up a dan- 
 cing-school in Boston. The ministers became 
 alarmed. They issued a tract : 
 
 " An Arrow against Profane and Promis- 
 cuous Dancing, Drawn out of the Quiver of 
 the Scriptures " (the title bearing the motto 
 of "The Dance is a Circle whose Centre is 
 the Devil "), and in this they informed their 
 fellow-townsmen that "such Church-mem- 
 bers in N. E. as have sent their children to 
 be Practitioners or Spectators of mixt Dan- 
 cing between Young Men and Maidens, have 
 cause to be deeply humbled." " But stand 
 still a while! What a word is here ! Church- 
 members and their children in New Eng- 
 land at mixt Dances ! Be astonished, O 
 ye heavens ! without doubt, Abraham is 
 
THE PREACHERS. 
 
 135 
 
 ignorant of us, and Israel knoweth us 
 not !" 
 
 One minister objected to long hair, as 
 " contrary to the word of God, and to na- 
 ture, and shamefuU." 
 
 Another minister found fault with " Hoop- 
 ed Petticoats," as " contrary to the Light of 
 Nature." 
 
 A third minister, intent on the public good, 
 declaimed against the tendency of men " to 
 set their Dwelling Houses at such a Distance 
 from the Place of Worship that they and 
 their families cannot well attend it." 
 
 The clergymen of Uncle Sam have kept 
 up their love of interference in the private 
 lives of candidates for office, and of politi- 
 cians in office. They constitute themselves 
 the censors of public and private morals. 
 
 Take the Jackson-Eaton affair: 
 
 When Jackson became President, he chose 
 as one of his Cabinet Senator Eaton, of Ten- 
 nessee. This Senator had as a wife a very 
 pretty woman. Both Jackson and Eaton 
 had known her as Peg O'Neil, the daughter 
 of a tavern-keeper, William O'Neil. She had 
 served them drinks many a time in her fa- 
 ther's hostelry in Washington. 
 
136 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 And now she was suddenly raised to social 
 prominence ! 
 
 Highbred ladies turned up their noses at 
 the Cabinet officer's wife. 
 
 All kinds of rumors were afloat. Peg had 
 been a bad girl. Peg had done this. Peg 
 had done that. Jackson had had relations 
 with Peg. Eaton, before marriage, had had 
 relations with Peg. 
 
 Who do you suppose aided the prudish 
 ladies of Washington in the diffusion of these 
 rumors ? Who do you suppose delighted to 
 dissect the character of Mrs. Eaton, n6e Peg 
 O'Neil, and whisper suggestive gossip about 
 her? 
 
 The clergy ! 
 
 Dr. Ely, of Philadelphia, took upon him- 
 self to write a long letter on the sub- 
 ject of the woman's honor to President 
 Jackson. 
 
 President Jackson wrote an elaborate de- 
 fense of his Cabinet officer's wife in reply. 
 
 Dr. Ely wrote another letter — asked for 
 further particulars — expressed himself as un- 
 satisfied. 
 
 President Jackson replied in more forcible, 
 more lengthy, terms. 
 
THE PREACHtlRS. 
 
 ^n 
 
 You must read that correspondence. It is 
 like a bit of comedy. 
 
 Now, just as Dr. Ely interested himself in 
 the love affairs of P^resident Jackson, so dur- 
 ing the last campaign Dr. Ball, of Buffalo, 
 interested himself in the private affairs of 
 President Cleveland. 
 
 fie communicated to the Republican Com- 
 mittee a detailed and highly flavored account 
 of Cleveland's ante-martial adventures, and 
 the committee set to work and flooded the 
 land with pamphlets giving an account of 
 this affair. 
 
 Editors discussed the matter in the papers; 
 preachers spoke of it in the pulpit. 
 
 Rev. Dr. Ball had done his duty well. 
 
 During the anti-slavery struggle the clergy 
 were divided in sentiment. 
 
 The preachers of the South were almost 
 without exception for slavery. Bishop Polk, 
 of Louisiana, considered it a divine institu- 
 tion. Were not the patriarchs and the proph- 
 ets slave-holders ? 
 
 Throughout the Northern States, most of 
 the clergy was perplexed, and sought to 
 avoid a break with the South on the issue. 
 
 Dr. Lord, of Dartmouth College, made 
 
138 HON. UXCl.E SAM. 
 
 some allusion to the curse the Lord had 
 heaped on the children of Ham. The slav- 
 ery of the Black Race, according to him, 
 was therefore a decreed and foreordained 
 fact. 
 
 Dr. Thayer, of Yale College, considered 
 it lawful to deliver up slaves for "the high, 
 the great, the momentous, interests of the 
 Southern States." 
 
 Dr. Orville Dewey declared that he would 
 rather " send his own brother and child into 
 slavery " than hurt the Union. 
 
 Dr. Moses Stuart, of the Andover Theo- 
 logical Seminary, thanked Webster for his 
 advocacy of the Fugitive-Slave Law. 
 
 But there were powerful dissenting voices 
 among the clergy of the North. 
 
 William Ellery Channing was pronounced 
 against all dalliance with what Sumner called 
 the harlot slavery. 
 
 Many clergymen of New Eagland sent 
 petitions against human bondage to Con- 
 gress. Senator Douglass, of Illinois, in open 
 Senate, called the petitioners profoundly 
 ignorant men. 
 
 Senator Mason, of \^irginia, oppose them 
 and called them arroo^ant men. 
 
THE rREACHERS. 
 
 139 
 
 "There hang beside me in my study as I write," said 
 Theodore Parker to Millard Fillmore, in 1850, anent the 
 Fugitive-Slave Law, " the gun my grandfather fought with 
 at the battle of Lexington — and he was a captain on the 
 occasion — and also the musket he captured from a British 
 soldier on that day ; the first taken in the war for inde- 
 pendence. If I would not peril my i)roperty, my liberty, 
 nay, my life, to keep my own parishioners out of slavery, 
 I would throw away these trophies, and should think I was 
 the son of some coward, and not a brave man's child." 
 
 Such was the spirit of Theodore Parker. 
 
 Such was the spirit also of Henry Ward 
 Beecher, son of Lyman Beecher, for thirty 
 years the head of Plymouth Church, in 
 Brooklyn. 
 
 There are very few political issues of Un- 
 cle Sam that Beecher has not treated. Ques- 
 tions the most diverse — slavery, union, 
 currency, local reforms, national elections, 
 continental wars, and revolutions — the big, 
 plethoric, eloquent man has essayed them all. 
 
 Beecher had a salary of $50,000 a year, and 
 he deserved it. 
 
 He was one of the first preachers here to 
 do away with uniform and pompous solem- 
 nity in sermons. 
 
 " I think, ' said he, "that the minister of 
 God has carte-blanche liberty to touch man's 
 
I40 
 
 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 mirthfulness. ... I regard all this supersti- 
 tious, unsmiling Christianity as a relic of the 
 old Vandal times." 
 
 His sermons were always full of points. 
 
 " I think mobs are God's providential 
 asses," he said in 1S59, on the eve of the 
 great war, "which he makes harrow up the 
 ground in time for seed-sowing. I am sorry 
 for any State that never had any mobs." 
 
 Optimistic as regards his country's future, 
 especially as he grew old, Beecher ever had 
 a quiet, sarcastic tone when speaking of pol- 
 iticians. 
 
 " I think I can show ambitious men who seek political 
 preferments their types on the seashore. There you will 
 see old worthless sticks of drift-wood come rolling in on 
 the crest of some wave: these are now the types of political 
 men coming into power. In the course of a year or so 
 they are sucked out into the sea again by the ebbing and 
 flowing of the tide: then they are types of political men 
 going out of power; and whether coming in or going out, 
 they are merely old, decayed water logs, which are fit for 
 nothing, not even to be burned." 
 
 During the last Presidential campaign, 
 Beecher, an old Republican, the friend of 
 Lincoln, Grant, Arthur, declared for Cleve- 
 land. 
 
THE PREACHERS. \^\ 
 
 You ought to have heard the howl of the 
 Republicans against him ! 
 
 They raked up the old history of his sup- 
 posed intimacy with Mrs. Tilton. 
 
 They accused him of sympathizing with 
 Cleveland because of Cleveland's ante- 
 marital affairs. 
 
 They ridiculed him as a dotard. 
 
 Whatever may have been said against 
 him, or may be said against him, Beecher 
 was a great orator. 
 
 It was one of his theories that no man 
 could be a great orator who hadn't body and 
 belly. He assuredly had plenty of both. 
 
 So had Gambetta. 
 
 Dr. Talmage, of Brooklyn, has not much 
 body, but he has much mouth. The carica- 
 turists love to draw that mouth. It goes 
 from ear to ear. 
 
 Dr. Talmage is a sensationalist, a circus- 
 man in the pulpit. 
 
 He is a typical preacher of Uncle Sam — 
 vulgar, humorous, pithy, pungent. He said, 
 on a Fourth of July, a short time ago : 
 
 "If heart and liver are all right, everything is right. Some 
 people fear that the new political theories promise trouble. 
 'I'hat is no such thing. It isn't what a man has, but what 
 
142 
 
 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 a man is that decides matters. It is impossible to divide 
 happiness evenly. The happiest people in the world are 
 the old apple-stand women. Many people don't seem to 
 be satisfied with America. Why don't they leave ? The 
 United States is the greatest country in the world. They 
 talk about the dissipation of to-day. Look at the ancient 
 sideboard, fashionable when the most sober of men used 
 to take a day to themselves. Compare the courtships of 
 to-day with those of a hundred years ago. Oh my ! Then 
 talk about the corruption of the age. Why, sixty years 
 ago the Governor of New York was compelled to disband 
 the Legislature on account of its corruption ! Think of 
 Aaron Burr coming within a vote of the* Presidency ! 
 Society was so much worse, than it is to-day, a hundred 
 years ago, that I can't understand how the fathers and 
 mothers of that time could be induced to stay in it. Still, 
 I am glad, for the sake of the present generation, that 
 they did stay. 
 
 " The United States is the greatest country in the world 
 in which to live, and millions are yearly discovering the 
 fact. If a man has weak lungs, he can go South ; if he 
 wants a more bracing atmosphere, he can come North; if 
 he feels crowded, he can go West; if he wants an expla- 
 nation of matters beyond our understanding, a call can be 
 made on the philosophers of Boston. Is there room for 
 many more millions of people ? Those who asked the 
 question have never been to Texas. America is the Lord's 
 darling." 
 
 That is Dr. Talmage's style. 
 That, too, in a measure, is the style of 
 Joseph Cook, of Boston ; of Robert Coll- 
 
THE PREACHERS. 
 
 143 
 
 yer, of Sam Small, of David Swing, of Chi- 
 cago. 
 
 These preachers touch on politics when- 
 ever they see fit. 
 
 Dr. Newman, who was a kind of court 
 chaplain to President Grant, habitually sniv- 
 els in politics. 
 
 He recently received a check for $1,000 
 from Senator Stanford, of California, for de- 
 livering a eulogy on his son. 
 
 He deserved the check. 
 
 He compared the young man to Christ. 
 
 The proceedings in both the Senate and 
 the House are opened each day by chaplains 
 who receive handsome salaries. 
 
 In their prayers they consult and argue 
 with God on national politics. 
 
 The country abounds, also, in army chap- 
 lains and preachers. 
 
 They keep up the old war ardor more than 
 the regular soldiers. 
 
 If there is a good warlike text in the 
 Old Testament, these preachers of the gos- 
 pel of peace and good -will of the New 
 Testament are sure to find it, and sure to 
 use it. 
 
 I was much surprised to find Rabbi Gott- 
 
144 
 
 JWX. UA'CLE SAM. 
 
 heil. head of the richest congregation of Jews 
 in America, advocate female suffrage. 
 
 In Wyoming and Washington Territories 
 women enjoy full franchise. 
 
 In Kansas they are allowed to vote in 
 municipal elections. 
 
 In Massachusetts and Vermont, female 
 suffrage has many advocates. 
 
 But that Rev. Dr. Gottheil should cham- 
 pion the political cause of the ladies — well, 
 I can't understand it. 
 
 It is interesting to study the attitude of 
 the clergy of the Catholic Church toward 
 the politics of Uncle Sam. 
 
 It is a cautious policy. 
 
 The Church does not push itself into the 
 foreeround. It works in the dark 
 
 The Church has increased its influence to 
 such an extent that it can afford to wait. 
 
 Cardinal Gibbons, of Baltimore, asked 
 for his opinion on the relations between 
 capital and labor, a short time ago, answered 
 vaguelv that those problems could be 
 solved by either party adhering to the 
 maxim oi Christ : " Whatsoever ye would 
 that men should do to you. do ye also to 
 them ! " 
 
THE PREACIIRRS. 
 
 45 
 
 Archbishop Corrigan, of New York, mixes 
 in local politics, but in an underhand way. 
 
 The priests of the diocese have their orders 
 how they are to instruct the faithful to vote. 
 
 Most of the priests are mere puppets in 
 politics, moved by archiepiscopal hands. 
 
 Dr. McGlynn, late of St. Stephens, New 
 York, is an exception. 
 
 He espoused Mr. Henry George s land 
 theories a few years ago, and advocated 
 Henry George for Mayor. 
 
 Archbishop Corrigan told him to desist, 
 but Dr. McGlynn would not desist. Then 
 Archbishop Corrigan suspended Father Mc- 
 Glynn from his functions at St. Stephens, 
 and he was ordered to Rome within forty 
 days. 
 
 Father McGlynn refused. 
 
 "I am a Catholic," said he, " but I am also 
 an American. The Pope can dictate to me 
 in matters of religion ; he cannot dictate to 
 me ip matters of poHtics." 
 
 Thereupon the Pope sent the thunder of 
 excommunication to Archbishop Corrigan 
 across the sea by steamer, and Archbishop 
 Corrigan sent them to Father McGlynn in a 
 registered letter. 
 
146 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 On the evening of that day the priest made 
 a violent speech. 
 
 He told some interesting political secrets. 
 
 He affirmed that the Archbishop and 
 clergy of New York opposed Cleveland 
 during the last Presidential campaign be- 
 cause Cleveland, when Governor, had ve- 
 toed an appropriation of $25,000 for a Cath- 
 olic Protectory. He stated that it was moot- 
 ed in ecclesiastical circles to have a repre- 
 sentative of Rome at Washington. Then 
 Dr. McGlynn said these bold words : 
 
 " As long as the Catholic people give the Pope to un- 
 derstand that he can do as he pleases, interfere in politics, 
 allow cardinals and bishops and priests to be elected mem- 
 bers of the French Assembly, and permit her Archbishop 
 to say to an American citizen that he must not dare to 
 make a platform speech of any character whatever [tre- 
 mendous applause], or to attend any political meeting 
 whatever in the future, without the permission of the Sa- 
 cred Congregation of the Propaganda — an Italian institu- 
 tion some 15,000 miles away ; governed by men who do 
 not know but that Florida is a suburb of New York, and 
 Mobile the name of a street in San Francisco — I say, as 
 long as Catholic people of Ireland and America will per- 
 mit the Roman machine, of which the Pope is a mere pup- 
 pet [Dr. McGlynn pronounced the word savagely], to do 
 all this, so long will the Roman machine continue to use 
 poor Paddy and the poor Polish fool as so many pawns 
 
THE PREACHERS. 
 
 147 
 
 upon their horrid chess-boards, to be sold at any time for 
 what they can get in return. The whole of this policy is 
 largely instigated by insane lust on the one hand, and hope 
 for the restoration of the Pope's rotten old temporal throne, 
 that everyone knows to be as dead as Julius Caesar." 
 
 However this Dr. McGlynn - Leo XIII. 
 affair may end, it is a noteworthy inci- 
 dent in the history of the pohtics of Uncle 
 Sam. Here w^ have a priest who wishes to 
 be a politician. Father McGlynn, after al], 
 is doing- openly what many preachers of the 
 Church of Rome before him have done in a 
 covert manner. 
 
 He is speaking as openly on politics as the 
 preachers of all the churches of Protestantism 
 are wont to do. 
 
 Orators of the pulpit like Heber Newton, 
 Phillips Brooks, Dr. Storrs, Dr. Chapin, Dr. 
 Hall, have never allowed great political ques- 
 tions to pass them by unnoticed. 
 
 During the last campaign Mr. Blaine tried 
 to get the clergy over on his side. The man 
 from Maine held a reception of reverend 
 gentlemen, attired in clerical black himself, 
 at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. 
 
 It was just on the eve of the New York 
 election. 
 
148 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 Many speeches were made, all compli- 
 mentary of Mr. Blaine, and the meeting was 
 being pronounced a great success. 
 
 Suddenly a contretemps, an accident, oc- 
 curred. 
 
 Rev. Dr. Burchard, an ardent friend of Mr. 
 Blaine, in the course of his remarks, made 
 an unfortunate alliteration. 
 
 He alluded to the Democratic party as 
 the party of " Rum, Romanism, and Rebel- 
 lion." 
 
 The remark was telegraphed all over the 
 country, and created a sensation. 
 
 Many Irishmen, who would probably have 
 voted for Blaine, felt themselves touched by 
 the alliteration of Rev. Dr. Burchard, and 
 voted against the man from Maine. 
 
 Mr. Blaine subsequently claimed that that 
 sentence had lost him the election. 
 
 Thus the clergy are often most injudicious 
 friends of the politicians. 
 
 Some of the clergy are sTirewd enough to 
 see that the politicians use them merely to 
 catch votes before an election, and then turn 
 their backs on them afterward. 
 
 Beecher once illustrated this by an anec- 
 dote. Said he : 
 
THE PREACHERS. 1 49 
 
 " Do not trust the politicians, when they suddenly con- 
 fess to have been converted to the principles of godliness 
 or to your political views. Especially do not believe 
 them when they make such a confession just before 
 an election. It takes long to be converted. They are 
 hardly ever converted when they say they are. I remem- 
 ber that there was, in a certain parish on the Hudson 
 River, a very pious clergyman, who had in his parish two 
 confirmed sinners. The one was a confirmed liar, and the 
 other was a confirmed stutterer. Now the pious clergyman 
 preached so long and so ardently that these two sinners 
 saw the error of their ways, came to him, and asked to be 
 baptized. The clergyman was delighted, and requested 
 them to accompany him to the river. 
 
 " It was winter, and the Hudson was frozen thick. So 
 the clergyman took an axe and chopped a cubic hole into 
 the river. Then he took the confirmed liar, and he ducked 
 him once, and he ducked him twice, and he ducked him 
 thrice. 
 
 " ' Are you cold.'' ' asked the clergyman, sympathetically. 
 
 "'Why, no,' promptly, chatteringly, replied the con- 
 firmed liar. ' Cold ! Not at all. Never felt so comfortable 
 in all my life ! ' 
 
 " Then the confirmed stutterer advanced and said : 
 
 " ' Mr-Mr-Mi-Minister, d-d-duck h-him a-a-ag-again — 
 d-d-d-duck him a-a-ag-ag-again-ain. H-he-he's n-not 
 c-con-convert-convert-converted yet ! ' 
 
 " My friends, before you believe m the professions, in 
 the promises, of a politician — before an election — duck 
 him again and again ! The chances are that you will find 
 out too late that, like the confirmed liar, ' he isn't con- 
 verted yet ! ' " 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE POETS. 
 
 Poets and politicians do not, as a general 
 thing, get along well together. 
 
 Thiers, when voting in the Academy, 
 would always vote in just the opposite way 
 to Victor Hugo. 
 
 "If he votes aye," he used to say, " I vote 
 nay. I will then be right.' 
 
 The practical politicians of Uncle Sam 
 have little use for the poets. 
 
 Roscoe Conkling, of New York, tall, ath- 
 letic, puffy, with a massive head and a curl 
 artistically arranged on his brow, was rhetor- 
 ical in his speech, but practical in his methods. 
 
 On one occasion when Senator Sumner, as 
 was his wont, quoted the poets, Conkling 
 impatiently remarked to Senator Carpenter, 
 of Wisconsin : 
 
 " He builds his arguments with vapor in- 
 stead of cement." 
 
THE POETS. 
 
 151 
 
 And yet most of the poets of Uncle Sam 
 have taken interest in his poHtics. 
 
 It seems strange, but it is so. 
 
 Though poHtics and poesy are realms 
 which seem so wide apart that the Hege sub- 
 jects of the one would scarce be expected to 
 have aught to do with those of the other, we 
 yet find that from the day of Alcaeus and 
 Pindar to the day of Tennyson and Hugo, 
 poets have not disdained to throw them- 
 selves into the political combats of their 
 time in order to aid with their verse and 
 their name an idea or a cause which they 
 held dear. 
 
 The poets of Uncle Sam have proved no 
 exception to this rule. 
 
 Few of them have not deserved the eulogy 
 v^hich Hale pronounced on Holmes : 
 
 " When the war cloud lowers 
 Above the lands, 
 The poet stands 
 And tells the coward how to try, 
 And tells the bravest how to die. 
 Tyrtseus cheers his boys and ours." 
 
 Few of them would not act as Milton did. 
 
 " When I was preparing to pass over into 
 
 Sicily and Greece," said he, " the melancholy 
 
1:^2 J^OX. rXCLE SAM. 
 
 intelligence which 1 received of the civil 
 coniniotions in Enoland made me alter my 
 purpose ; for 1 thought it base to be travel- 
 ing- abroad, while niv fellow-citizens were 
 fighting- for liberty at home." 
 
 There was but one of the poets of Uncle 
 Sam who may be called indifferent to what 
 went on around him. 
 
 That was Edgar Allen Poe. 
 
 He didn't care about the Republic any 
 more than Charles Baudelaire with us cared 
 about the Empire. 
 
 There have been no court sycophants in 
 this country like Racine. Boileau. Le Brun, 
 with us. 
 
 Not one of the poets of Uncle Sam, like 
 Edmund Waller, composed a eulogistic ode, 
 first to a Cromwell, and then wrote one 
 equally laudatory to a Charles II. You re- 
 member the anecdote that comes in here. 
 The monarch preferred the ode written in 
 honor of the usurper to the one written in his 
 own. and told the poet so. 
 
 •' Poets, sire." answered Waller, cynically, 
 wittily. " succeed better in fiction than in 
 truth." 
 
 The poets of Uncle Sam may be more sin- 
 
THE /'OI'/J'S. 
 
 53 
 
 cere in their praises, but could one of them 
 have made that remark ? 
 
 I will not weary you with a list of the 
 early political poets of Uncle Sam. 
 
 In fact, I am afraid I bore you quite too 
 often. 
 
 I sometimes think 1 hear you yawn across 
 the ocean. 
 
 I overload these letters, I fear, with dry 
 facts, bare statistics, empty names. 
 
 You will, I am afraid, consider me quite a 
 pedant. 
 
 But remember, my dear Count, that I have 
 long been an enforced exile in dreary Wash- 
 ington, that I do all this to fulfill a promise 
 and pass the time, and that the environment 
 has its influence. 
 
 I will not speak of the early poets. 
 
 Pope, who was the author most imitated 
 by these ambitious patriots, would assured- 
 ly have enrolled them in his " Dunciad " 
 that scroll of stupidity. 
 
 We are told that, when a mere boy, 
 William Cullen Bryant wrote the following 
 bitter verses on Thomas Jefferson : 
 
 " And thou, the scorn of every patriot name, 
 Thy country's ruin and her council's shame. 
 
154 fiON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 Poor servile thing ! Derision of the brave ! 
 
 Go span, philosophist, thy Sally's charms, 
 And sink supinely in her sable arms, 
 
 But quit to abler hands the helm of state. 
 Nor image ruin on thy country's fate ! " 
 
 We know that when the South fired on 
 Fort Sumter in 1861, Bryant, the man, was 
 ready with pen, purse, and verse. 
 
 ' Lay down the axe, fling by the spade, 
 Leave in the track the toiling plow. 
 The rifle and the bayonet blade 
 For arms like yours were fitter now ! 
 
 " And let the hands that ply the pen 
 Quit the light task and learn to wield 
 
 The horseman's crooked brand, and rein 
 The charger on the battle-field. 
 
 ''Our Country calls : away, away ! 
 To where the blood stream blots the green. 
 
 Strike to defend the gentlest sway 
 That Time in all his course has seen. 
 
 " See, from a thousand coverts, see, 
 Spring the armed foes that haunt the track; 
 
 They rush to smite her down, and we 
 Must beat the banded traitors back." 
 
 Longfellow, who was above all a scholar, 
 and cared little for the crush and rush of 
 active life, even this quiet student poet of 
 
THE POETS. 
 
 155 
 
 Cambridge-on-Charles was alive to his coun- 
 try's welfare. Not to speak of the national 
 bearing of such poems as " Evangeline," 
 " Miles Standish," and " Paul Revere's Ride," 
 not to mention the notes of warning in his 
 " Poems on Slavery," I would quote from his 
 *' Building of the Ship " such words as these : 
 
 " Thou, too, sail on, O ship of state ! 
 Sail on, O Union, strong and great ! 
 Humanity, with all its fears. 
 With all the hopes of future years, 
 Is hanging breathless on thy fate ! 
 
 '' In spite of rock and tempest's roar, 
 In spite of false lights on the shore, 
 
 Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea ! 
 
 Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee. 
 
 Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, . 
 
 Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, 
 
 Are all with thee — are all with thee! " 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, the philosopher, 
 was not so far lost in the clouds of his tran- 
 scendental system as not to occasionally 
 write poetry on politics. His ode at Con- 
 cord, in 1857, and his ode at Boston, in 1873, 
 would perhaps be intelligible to the few 
 His lines captioned " Politics " would most 
 assuredly not be so to the many. 
 
156 If ON. INCLE SAM. 
 
 " Gold and iron are good, 
 
 To buy iron and gold. 
 All earth's fleece and food, 
 
 For their like are sold. 
 
 *' Fear, Craft and Avarice 
 Cannot rear a State. 
 
 When the Muses nine 
 
 With the Virtues meet, 
 Find to their designs 
 
 n Atlantic seat. 
 By green orchard boughs, 
 
 Fended from the heat. 
 When the statesman ploughs 
 
 Furrows for the wheat — 
 When the Church is social worth, 
 
 When the State House is the hearth, 
 Then the perfect State is come. 
 
 The republican at home " 
 
 Do you understand what he is driving at? 
 
 I do not. 
 
 I Hke the poem by John Boyle O'Reilly, 
 entitled " America," better than any po- 
 litical poem from the pen of Waldo Em- 
 erson. 
 
 John Greenleaf Whittier is of the people 
 and for the people. Simple in his tastes, 
 with much ardor and little imagination, with 
 scant learning, but a good command of me- 
 
THE POETS. 
 
 157 
 
 tre, Whittier was the typical champion of 
 freedom, earnest, big-fisted. 
 
 How bitterly, sarcastically, Whittier wrote 
 in the old black slavery days ! 
 
 " Have ye heard of our hunting, o'er mountain and glen, 
 Through canebrake and forest — the hunting of men ? 
 The lords of our land to this hunting have gone, 
 As the fox-hunter follows the sound of the horn; 
 Hark ! — the cheer and the halloo ! — the crack of the 
 
 whip, 
 And the yell of the hound as he fastens his grip ! 
 AH blithe are our hunters, and noble their match, 
 Though hundreds are caught, there are millions to catch. 
 So speed to their hunting, o'er mountain and glen, 
 Through canebrake and forest — the hunting of men !" 
 
 No wonder the men who hunted runaway 
 slaves didn't like Whittier ! No wonder they 
 stopped the sale of his works in the South ! 
 
 " As the fox-hunter follows the sound of the horn, 
 
 Hark ! the cheer and the halloo ! the crack of the whip, 
 And the yell of the hound as he fastens his grip ! 
 All blithe are our hunters, and noble their match- 
 Though hundreds are caught, there are millions to catch. 
 So speed to their hunting, o'er mountain and glen, 
 Through canebrake and forest — the hunting of men ! " 
 
 Wendell Holmes puts into his verse much 
 of the waggery, the grace, the wit of Beranger. 
 
158 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 Though he at certain points gives you 
 an impression of being a dilettante, he is 
 generally heart and soul in his work. He 
 passes with wonderful nimbleness from gay 
 to grave. 
 
 You would hardly think that a man who 
 writes such couplets as : 
 
 " Now then, nine cheers for the stay-at-home ranger ! 
 Blow the great fish-horn and beat the big pan ! 
 First in the field that is furthest from danger, 
 
 Take your white feather plume, sweet little man !" 
 
 could write a stanza like this : 
 
 " When our land is illumined with Liberty's smile, 
 
 If a foe from within strike a blow at her glory, 
 
 Down, down with the traitor that dares to defile 
 
 The flag of her stars and the page of her glory ! 
 By millions unchained when our birthright was gained 
 We will keep her bright blazon forever unstained ! 
 And the Star Spangled Banner, in triumph shall wave, 
 While the land of the free is the home of the brave !" 
 
 James Russell Lowell, who was once a pro- 
 fessor at Harvard College, and lately acted 
 as Minister at the Court of St. James, has 
 always mingled his politics and his poesy 
 like the majority of his countrymen mix 
 their drinks. 
 
 When quite a young man he wrote, in a 
 
THE POETS. 
 
 59 
 
 barbarous dialect, the " Biglow Papers " 
 against the war with Mexico. When in mid' 
 die age, during the rebellion, he composed 
 the scholastic " Harvard Ode," in honor of 
 the students who had fallen in the war. 
 About ten years ago he composed the fol- 
 lowing characteristic poem on the general 
 corruption of his country's politics : 
 
 " But now that ' Statesmanship ' is just a way 
 To dodge the primal curse and make it pay; 
 Since Office means a kind of patent drill 
 To force an entrance on the Nation's till, 
 And peculation something rather less 
 Risky than if you spelt it with an S ; 
 Now that to steal by law is grown an art, , 
 Whom rogues the sires their milder sons call smart, 
 And ' slightly irregular ' dilutes the shame 
 Of what had once a somewhat blunter name; 
 With generous curve we draw the moral line; 
 Our swindlers are permitted to resign; 
 Their guilt is wrapped in deferential names, 
 And twenty sympathize for one that blames, 
 Add national disgrace to private crime, 
 Confront mankind with brazen front sublime. 
 
 ' Steal but enough, the world is unsevere, 
 Tweed is a statesman, Fisk a financier; 
 Invent a mine to be — the Lord knows what, 
 Secure at any rate, with what you've got. 
 The public servant who has stolen or lied, 
 If called on, may resign with honest pride; 
 
l6o HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 As unjust favor put him in, why doubt 
 Disfavor as unjust has turned him out ? 
 Even if indicted, what is that but fudge 
 To him who counted in the elective judge ? 
 Whitewashed, he quits the politicians' strife, 
 At ease in mind, with pockets filled for life: 
 His lady glares with gems, whose vulgar blaze 
 The poor man through his heightened taxes pays. 
 Himself content if one huge Kohinoor 
 Bulge from a shirt-front ampler than before.*' 
 
 Mr. Conkling", of whom I spoke, was, by 
 the way, a bitter opponent of Mr. Blaine. 
 
 They had had a debate in the Senate one 
 day, and. in the heat of discussion, trans- 
 gressed the rules of parliamentary decorum. 
 
 Mr. Blaine applied the term "turkey gob- 
 bler" to Mr. Conkling. 
 
 And the pompous Mr. Conkling, when 
 asked to speak in behalf of Mr. Blaine dur- 
 ing the last Presidential campaign, answered, 
 curtly : 
 
 " No, thanks ; I am not in criminal prac- 
 tice." 
 
 Mr. Conkling always considered Mr. Blaine 
 a corrupt man. 
 
 Walt Whitman is by some considered the 
 typical poet-politician of America. 
 
 He was something or other in the late war, 
 
THE POETS. l6l 
 
 and his verse in "Blades of Grass" and 
 " Drum Taps" is as rugged as a jog over 
 a stubble - field, as hearty as a trooper's 
 oath. 
 
 When Grant died, Whitman was sorely 
 grieved. 
 
 He took a long pull of whisky in his coun- 
 try hut in New Jersey, and, of course, wrote 
 a soruict. This is the way it runs : 
 
 • As one- by one withdraw the lofty actors, 
 
 From that great play on history's stage eterne, 
 
 That lurid, partial act of war and peace — of old and new 
 
 contending ; 
 Fought out through wrath, fears, dark dismays, and many 
 
 a long suspense ; 
 All past — and since, in countless graves receding, mellow- 
 ing, 
 Victors and vanquished — Lincoln's and Lee's — now thou 
 
 with them, 
 Man of the mighty days — and equal to the days I 
 Thou from the prairies ! — tangled and many-veined and 
 
 hard has been thy part. 
 To admiration has it been enacted." 
 
 There is a fellow who could never get into 
 our Academy. 
 
 Our green-coated word dilettantes would 
 never tolerate so radical a word-builder. 
 
 The Civil War, of course, called forth great 
 
1 62 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 numbers of political poets in both the Fed- 
 eral and Confederate camps. 
 
 Most of them wrote fudge. A few go to 
 the heart. 
 
 There is the jaunty, dashing rhyme, " The 
 Seventh," by Fitz-James O'Brien. 
 
 " Och, we're the boys, 
 
 That hearts desthroys 
 Wid making love and fighting ; 
 
 We take a fort, 
 The girls we court, 
 
 But most the last delight in. 
 To fire a gun 
 
 Or raise some fun, 
 To us is no endeavor ; 
 
 So let us hear 
 One hearty cheer — 
 
 The Seventh's lads forever ! " 
 
 There is the plain, determined " Soldiers' 
 Talk " of Charles J. Halpm. 
 
 ** The negro — free or slave — 
 
 We care no pin about. 
 But for the flag our father's gave 
 
 We mean to fight it out ; 
 And while that banner brave 
 
 One rebel rag shall flout, 
 With volleying arm and clashing glaive 
 
 By Heaven ! we fight it out ! 
 
THE POETS. 163 
 
 ** Oh, we've heard the rebel yell, 
 
 We have heard the Union shout, 
 We have weighed the matter very well, 
 
 And mean to fight it out. 
 In the flush of perfect triumph, 
 
 And the gloom of utter rout, 
 We have sworn on many a bloody field, 
 
 We mean to fight it out." 
 
 Both O'Brien and Halpin died in the ranks 
 which they did so much to keep at battle- 
 pitch with their rhymes. 
 
 " I never heard the old song of 'Percy and 
 Douglas,' " wrote Sir Philip Sidney, " that I 
 found not my heart more moved than with 
 a trumpet." 
 
 I confess that I am often stirred just that 
 way, when we hear some of these songs. 
 
 Read over " Sheridan's Ride," by Bu- 
 chanan Reid, and your pulse will beat 
 faster. 
 
 And when I wander among the graves in 
 the cemetery at Arlington, the dome of the 
 Capitol at Washington in the distance, the 
 setting sun sending its last rays upon me, 
 I repeat to myself that most beautiful 
 of martial elegies, the one by Theodore 
 O'Hara : 
 
164 I^ON. UNCLE SAM 
 
 " The muffled drum's sad roll has beat 
 
 The soldier's last tattoo ; 
 No more on life's parade shall meet 
 
 That brave and fallen few. 
 On Fame's eternal camping ground 
 
 Their silent tents are spread, 
 And glory guards, with solemn round, 
 
 The bivouac of the dead !" 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE DIPLOMATS. 
 
 It was Sir Henry Wotton, I believe, who 
 defined a diplomat as a man sent by his coun- 
 try to lie abroad. 
 
 The definition was as just as it was witty, 
 and holds good for the gentlemen of the 
 diplomatic service of Uncle Sam. 
 
 They have no schools of diplomacy in this 
 country as they have in Europe. There is 
 no fixed diplomatic service as with us. Men 
 are appointed to fill foreign posts by reason 
 of political service to the President and the 
 party in power, with little regard to anterior 
 training, actual fitness, or ultimate usefulness. 
 That accounts for the presence on the Conti- 
 nent of so many colonels, majors, generals, 
 captains, so-called, who do not speak our 
 language and who know so little of our his- 
 tory and people. 
 
 ** Can you teach ? " asks the Grande Duch- 
 esse in the operette. 
 
 165 
 
l66 ffON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 " No," answers Fritz ; " 1 go to learn ! " 
 
 After the diplomats of Uncle Sam have 
 learned their French, it sounds something 
 like the jumble overheard by Mr. Grenville- 
 Murray in the diplomatic gallery of the 
 Flouse of Commons during a debate. 
 
 " C'est un grand pays qui produit de telles 
 jeunes gens," remarked the French Ambas- 
 sador, shutting up his glasses and addressing 
 his American colleague. 
 
 " L'Angletaire ne produce pas boccoo de 
 ce joon gens," answered the American, in an 
 oracular way. 
 
 But, in critical moments, the diplomats of 
 Uncle Sam have done even better than our 
 trained men. 
 
 Take Franklin, the man sent by the colo- 
 nies to negotiate the alliance with France in 
 1778, and you have a born diplomat. Have 
 you ever read the note which he wrote to a 
 certain nobleman in 1 768 when in London ? 
 
 " Dr. Franklin presents his respectful compliments to 
 Lord Bathurst with some American nuts ; and to Lady 
 Bathurst with some American apples : which he prays they 
 will accept as a tribute from that country, small, indeed, 
 but voluntary." 
 
 What politeness ! What tact . 
 
THE DIPLOMATS. i^y 
 
 The tallow-chandler's son from Pennsyl- 
 vania held his own with the powdered states- 
 men of Versailles. 
 
 He never spoke a word too soon, says the 
 historian Bancroft, he never spoke a word 
 too late : he always spoke the right word in 
 the right place. 
 
 His conduct in Paris, said our philosopher, 
 Cabanis, of him, was a chef d'oeuvre. 
 
 Franklin did indeed snatch the lightning 
 from heaven and the sceptre from tyrants. 
 
 Passing from Franklin to Jefferson, we 
 find the same tact, the same politeness, the 
 same diplomatic shrewdness. The man from 
 Virginia made a hit at the very start, and he 
 made it with a witticism. 
 
 " Ah, you are sent to replace M. Franklin !" 
 said Vergennes to him, as he presented his 
 credentials. 
 
 " Pardon me," promptly replied Jefferson, 
 bowing low, " I come to succeed M. Franklin. 
 No one can replace him !" 
 
 And yet the history of the diplomacy of 
 Uncle Sam is not as full of bright sayings, 
 apt repartee, telling wit, as that of France. 
 
 They lack the polish of refined society, the 
 diplomats of this Republic ; the politeness 
 
i68 M)-\-. r.vci/-: sam 
 
 brod o( ancient tradition and rctincd asso- 
 ciation. 
 
 When M. de Bacourt was over here in 
 Washington as Minister Plenipotentiary of 
 Louis IMiillipe in the time ot" President Tvler. 
 he wrote thus of a dinner ^iven at the White 
 I louse : 
 
 •• Forty men wore present, but no women ; the latter 
 did not appear till after dinner. I was seated between Mr. 
 Spencer and Mr. Webster. The latter threw off the psendo- 
 dignity in which he constantly clothes his sad mediocrity ; 
 the Madeira, ot" which he drank too much, not only ren- 
 dered him agreeable, in the American fashion that is to 
 say, but caused him to become maudlin ; he clasped my 
 arm with both hands and said : ' My dear l^acourt, I am 
 exceedingly pleased to see you to-night ; I feel this 
 much more than 1 have previously done, though 1 cannot 
 tell why. Perhaps 1 have not hitherto been friendly enough 
 toward you, but if you will allow me, we shall now become 
 a pair of friends : you shall see that 1 am a good fellow. 
 Come and see medaily without ceremony ; that will please 
 me greatly, my dear Bacourt, because 1 really tind you 
 charming." This flattering avowal was made in halting- 
 phrase, and, I must tell you, with hiccups, which rendered 
 the neighborhood of the Secretary of State anything but 
 pleasant. All this occurred at the table of the head of 
 the State at a dinner given to the representatives oi all the 
 European powers." 
 
 Thiiios have ehanoed sorne in this respect, 
 hut tile nianners oi the diplomats of I'ncle 
 
THE D/rj.OMATS. i5q 
 
 Sam arc still stam[)cd with a kind of vulgar 
 disregard (jf foreign customs. 
 
 They used to laughingly speak at Secre- 
 tary Frelinghuysen's table of a certain con- 
 sul who, on meeting the son of the Prince 
 of Wales, slapped him familiarly on the 
 i)ack and said : 
 
 " 1 am glad to see you, my boy, I've 
 heard of your grandmother. She's a good 
 queen, and, no doubt, a good grandmother. 
 Glad to see you !" 
 
 What a contrast between the boorish 
 bluntness of Uncle Sam and the deferential 
 politeness of Prince GortschakofT ! Lord 
 Duflferin having asked him one day whether 
 the rimperor's cold was better, was rather 
 startled, we are told, to hear him answer, in 
 a reverent voice, with his head bent and his 
 eyes half closed: 
 
 *• His Majesty has deigned to feel a little 
 better this morning!" 
 
 I said that the diplomats from here are not 
 a«i witty as those abroad. Point out to me 
 in their history such apt replies as you find 
 in that of ICngland and TVance. 
 
 When Frederick the Great said spitefully 
 to Minister Elliot, on the occasion of the 
 
I/O 
 
 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 Te Deums over the reverses of Hyder Ali in 
 India, " I never knew that Providence was 
 one of your allies," Elliot replied, " The on- 
 ly one, Sire, whom we don't pay ! " 
 
 And on one occasion, when somebody 
 was lamenting to Talleyrand about the dis- 
 putes between Baden and Bavaria, which 
 seemed contemptible enough after the colos- 
 sal scale of the wars against Napoleon: 
 
 " Rassurez votes, 7no7i ami,'' said Talleyrand, 
 " tontes ces dissensions 7ie sont que badinage 
 et bava^'dage!' 
 
 The politicians of Uncle Sam lack much 
 of this brightness in tone and language. 
 
 They do very well to send home to the 
 Secretary of State a despatch on the hog 
 question, on the price of corn, on patent 
 guns. 
 
 They excel in finding boarding-houses for 
 their compatriots, and procuring tickets for 
 State balls and national museums. 
 
 But as dignified and imposing representa- 
 tives of their country they are signal failures. 
 
 They will chew tooth-picks. 
 
 They will cock up their legs. 
 
 Imagine M. de Freycinet or M. de St. Val- 
 lier doine such things ! 
 
THE DIPLOMATS. 
 
 171 
 
 I have seen some of the diplomats of Un- 
 cle Sam, at the Elysee, for instance, and they 
 have made a very poor showing. 
 
 Sent by a democratic Repubhc professing- 
 to be exemplars of simplicity, they appear 
 uncouth, bourgeois, plain, in their black 
 evening dress, amid the gorgeous costumes 
 and shining decorations of the representa- 
 tives of other lands. 
 
 Look at the most of them, cursorily, at a 
 reception, and you confound them with the 
 waiters. 
 
 A very few of the envoys of the United 
 States abroad have received consideration 
 for their intrinsic worth. 
 
 Such men are Mr. Bancroft, Mr. Wheaton, 
 Mr. Motley, Mr. Irving, Mr. Bayard Taylor, 
 Mr. John Hay, who were Ministers. 
 
 Such men are Mr. Hawthorne, Mr. Bret 
 Harte, Mr. Howells, who were Consuls. 
 
 They may have made bad campaign 
 speeches at home, written fulsome political 
 biographies or partisan newspaper articles; 
 but they were scholarly, representative men, 
 who, when abroad, reflected credit on their 
 country. 
 
 The ordinary politicians of Uncle Sam 
 
1-2 ^^f^-^'- l'-\'CLE SAM. 
 
 despise the men who make fame and money 
 by the pen. They contemptuously call them 
 " literary fellers," and scratch their names 
 from the slate. 
 
 One of the ablest diplomats this country 
 ever sent abroad was Charles Francis Adams. 
 
 He was Minister to the Court of St. James, 
 durino; the administration of Lincoln. 
 
 His grandfather. John Adams, held the 
 same post in the time of the Confederation. 
 
 This short, stumpy, cold man. this Charles 
 Francis Adams, with his bald head, his im- 
 passive face, his small, keen eyes, kept a 
 sharp lookout for his country's interests. 
 
 The great war between the North and 
 South was going on; England, while profess- 
 ing neutrality, was secretly abetting the 
 South, for whom cruisers were fitted out in 
 her ports. 
 
 When Mr. Adams heard of it. he wrote to 
 Lord Russell. 
 
 " It would be superfluous in me to point 
 out to your lordship that this is war." 
 
 Three days after. Mr. Adams received the 
 following reply from the Foreign Office. 
 
 " Lord Russell presents his compliments 
 to Mr. Adams, and has the honor to inform 
 
THE DIPLOMATS. 
 
 17: 
 
 him that instructions have been issued which 
 will prevent the departure of the two iron- 
 clad vessels from Liverpool." 
 
 The short, bald, cold man sent by Uncle 
 Sam to do some work, did it effectually. 
 
 He was the son of John Quincy Adams, 
 also a statesman and a diplomat, also a 
 scholar. 
 
 When Algernon Sidney visited the pubhc 
 library of Copenhagen, he wrote in the album 
 there : 
 
 " Manus Jicec inimica tyrannis, Ense petit 
 placida'}n sub libertate guietamT 
 
 Terlon, ambassador of Louis XIV, tore it 
 out as insulting to his master. 
 
 John Quincy Adams periphrased these 
 lines of Sidney's in the following spirited 
 fashion in the midst of a debate in the House 
 of Representatives. 
 
 " This hand to tyrants ever sworn the foe, 
 For Freedom only deals the deadly blow, 
 Then sheathes in calm repose the venj^eful blade, 
 For gentle peace in Freedom's holy shade.' 
 
 The Adamses, the Danas, the Fishes, have 
 done some good work in the politics of Uncle 
 Sam. 
 
 Mr. Washburne, slight, long-haired, suave, 
 
174 i^^^'^- Ux\CLE SAM. 
 
 the Minister of the United States in Paris 
 during the Franco-German War, attained an 
 international reputation for his energy and 
 intelHgence. 
 
 He was the first foreign Minister to recog- 
 nize the Government of the French RepubHc. 
 
 He did more. 
 
 He managed, with remarkable tact, to 
 keep on confidential terms at the same time 
 with Bismarck, with Favre, and \\ith Rigault. 
 
 It was at this period that Mr. Henry La- 
 bouchere, then a " Besieged Resident in 
 Paris," wrote : 
 
 •' How different American diplomatists are to the prim 
 old women who represent us abroad, with a staff' of half a 
 dozen dandies, helping each other to do nothing, who have 
 been taught to regard all who are not of their craft as their 
 natural enemies!" 
 
 Mr. Lowell, who was Minister in London 
 under Mr. President Arthur, was a model 
 diplomat. But he was unpopular at home on 
 account of his chilly attitude toward the Irish. 
 
 An Anglo-Saxon to the backbone, Mr. 
 Lowell has no fondness for the Irish. There 
 is nothing of the demagogue about him. 
 
 He parts what remains of his hair in the 
 middle. He runs up a respectable wash bill. 
 
THE DIPLOMATS. 
 
 175 
 
 He does not believe either in the infalli- 
 bility of the Pope or of the populace. 
 
 He writes and speaks correctly. 
 
 He does not necessarily detest a lord, and 
 has dined with the Queen. 
 
 That settles his fate with the electors of 
 Uncle Sam. 
 
 Speaking of Ministers to England, I must 
 not forget Mr. Schenck. 
 
 As a general in the war between the North 
 and South, he spilt more claret on the table- 
 cloth than he did blood on the battle-field, so 
 President Grant, who was a friend of his, 
 sent him to St. James's by way of consolation 
 and reward. 
 
 Mr. Schenck neither distinguished himself 
 by the elegance of his manners nor the qual- 
 ity of his wit or his whisky, nor the flavor 
 of his anecdotes or his segars. 
 
 He arrived at fame in a more unique way. 
 
 He published a little hand-book on poker. 
 
 Imagine the horror and disgust of so starch 
 and stiff an old gentleman as Edward Ever- 
 ett, one of his highly respectable predeces- 
 sors at St. James's, had he known in his day 
 that a man like Mr. Schenck should ever 
 succeed him. 
 
176 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 And yet Mr. Schcnck made more of a hit 
 in England with his booklet on poker than 
 Mr. Everett ever made with his speeches 
 and letters. 
 
 There was a little 7)iot current at the time 
 in London. 
 
 " I hear that Parliament will be opened by 
 the Queen," said one American to another. 
 
 ' That's nothing. When Schenck plays 
 poker, jack-pots are frequently opened with 
 two, and sometimes three queens." 
 
 Please do not infer from my remarks that 
 al! the representatives of Uncle Sam abroad 
 are of a low stamp. That would be an in- 
 justice. In those sad days when Mrs. Presi- 
 dent Hayes wouldn't allow wine to be served 
 at diplomatic dinners, there were some good 
 men at foreign posts. 
 
 There was Mr. White at Berlin, Mr. John 
 Welch in London, Mr. Noyes in Paris. 
 
 Mr. White, as Minister, had great social 
 success in Germany. 
 
 Just think of it, M. de Bismarck gave the 
 diplomat his picture with his autograph ! 
 
 Mr. White is an educated, hospitable gen- 
 tleman with good manners and a little 
 vanity. 
 
THE DIPLOMATS. 
 
 17; 
 
 Mr. Noyes, as Minister in Paris, was the 
 type of the bluff, western stump-speaker in 
 a dress-coat. He had lost a leg in the war ; 
 had been Governor of Ohio ; had nominated 
 Hayes. 
 
 *' He doesn't speak French. What a pity !" 
 I said of Noyes to Henri Martin, the historian, 
 at Passy one afternoon. 
 
 " Oh, le general Noyes," answered the old 
 man, " he have no need to speak ze French 
 language ! He so aimable, he smile ze French 
 language ! " 
 
 Mr. John Welch, Minister in London, was 
 a specimen of the merchant prince sent by 
 Uncle Sam to represent him abroad. 
 
 He was one of those rich men who con- 
 tribute big sums to the campaign funds of 
 their parties, and receive their reward in for- 
 eign missions. 
 
 Mr. Morton, who was Minister to France, 
 is such a man. 
 
 Mr. Astor, who was Minister to Italy, is 
 another. 
 
 Mr. Morton has written many cheques in 
 the cour.se of his political career. 
 
 Mr. Astor has written a novel. 
 
 I prefer Mr. Morton as an author. 
 
I 78 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 Let me now grlance at some of the diplo- 
 mats of the present Administration. 
 
 Mr. Secretary of State Bayard is a tall, 
 muscular man, of courtly bearing and old- 
 school manners. He has a long, solemn, 
 clean-shaven face. He claims to come from 
 Huguenot and Dutch stock. His father and 
 grandfather were Senators from his native 
 duodecimo State of Delaware. 
 
 Mr. Secretary Bayard is very deaf. 
 
 Lucky man ! 
 
 He does not hear all the evil the " short- 
 hair Democrats " say of him. 
 
 I must inform you here, by-the-way, that 
 the Democrats of the Union are divided into 
 two classes, " swallow-tail Democrats " and 
 " short-hair Democrats." 
 
 The "swallow-tail Democrats" are the 
 wealthy, fashionable, conservative members 
 of the party. 
 
 The *' short-hair Democrats" are the poor, 
 unwashed, riff-raff members of the party. 
 Mr. Secretary Bayard, I need hardly say, is 
 a " swallow-tail Democrat." 
 
 He had a great reputation for brains be- 
 fore his elevation to the Secretaryship. 
 
 Mr. Secretary Bayard is now famous main- 
 
THE DIPLOMATS. 
 
 79 
 
 ly for his knowledge of blooded horses, for 
 the way he prepares terrapin, and for his 
 poHteness to the fair sex. 
 
 Mr. Adee, the Assistant Secretary, is the 
 possessor of one of the finest Hbraries in 
 Washington. It may not be unnecessary to 
 add that he is a gentleman who reads his 
 books, and that he has charming manners. 
 Mr. Adee is slightly deaf — less so than Mr. 
 Secretary Bayard and Lord Chesterfield, 
 but, like those gentlemen, he can be gallant 
 all the same. 
 
 " The only reason why I regret my in- 
 firmity," he remarked to Miss Thursby, 
 after endeavoring to hear her sing at a 
 soiree some time ago, " is that the pleasure 
 to catch the full sound of your voice is de- 
 nied me." 
 
 Mr. Sevelon Brown — I don't know wheth- 
 er I have his ridiculous first name correct — 
 was for a long time the chief clerk of the 
 State Department. 
 
 Though a Republican, this baby-faced, 
 pompous little man was able to keep his of- 
 fice under an opposition Administration. He 
 knew the ropes. His wife is rich, and, I 
 hear, has influence. 
 
l8o HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 Mr. James Fenner Lee ably replaces Mr. 
 Sevelon Brown. 
 
 I tell you. Count, rich women have more 
 power in the politics of Uncle Sam than they 
 have in Europe. 
 
 Mere riches does it here, however ; there 
 is not so much need of tact, wit. refinement. 
 
 Most of the lady politicians of Washing- 
 ton differ from those of Paris and St. Peters- 
 burg as Miss Fanny Davenport, when play- 
 Fcdora, differs from Madame Sarah Bern- 
 hardt. 
 
 I know pretty well that Mr. R. R. Hitt, for 
 instance, now member of Congress from Illi- 
 nois, member of the Foreign Affairs Com- 
 mittee, would never have been Secretary of 
 Legation under President Hayes, Assistant 
 Secretary of State under President Garfield, 
 if his attractive and intelligent wife had not 
 furnished him with the scudi. 
 
 But I must say that Mr. Hitt. in spite of 
 his bow-legs and his indifferent manners, is 
 an interesting man. 
 
 The Chairman of the House Committee 
 on Foreign Affairs is Mr. Perry Belmont, of 
 New York. 
 
 He is a young man. the son of a rich 
 
THE DIPLOMATS. l8l 
 
 banker, and made a name for himself a few 
 years ago by asking Mr. Blaine, then before 
 his committee, some sharp questions on his 
 implication in some foreign land swindles. 
 
 The two men almost came to blows. 
 
 Statesmen in this country nowadays rarely 
 fight with swords or pistols. Hamilton had 
 a duel with Burr, and was killed. Clay and 
 Jackson had a meeting on the field of honor. 
 Benton and Gratz Brown, of Missouri, were 
 duelists, and so were Randolph of Virginia, 
 and Butler, of South Carolina. 
 
 But duelling is not a general practice 
 here. 
 
 The politicians of Uncle Sam fight with 
 their fists, or their jaws, rather than with 
 their rapiers and their pistols. 
 
 Some of the best-trained diplomats in the 
 foreign service of this country are the first 
 and second Secretaries (jf Legation, who 
 have been kept in office during several Ad- 
 ministrations. There is Mr. Henry White, 
 in London; Mr. Henri Vignaud, in Paris; 
 Mr. Chapman Coleman, in Berlin. 
 
 Their main business seems to be to teach 
 their chiefs the etiquette of the country to 
 which they are accredited, and to see to it 
 
1 82 mu. (.\i/./-; s.LU. 
 
 that the foreicrn letters are not written with 
 too many faults of orthoorraphy. 
 
 Mr. Phelps, of Vermont, who now repre- 
 sents this Government at St. James's, was a 
 lawyer and a juristic lecturer before his ap- 
 pointment. 
 
 Mr. McLane. of Maryland, who is Minis- 
 ter at Paris, owes his position to his family- 
 connections. He was educated at the Lycee 
 Henri IV.. however, and has some fitness 
 for his post. 
 
 Mr. Pendleton, of Ohio, the Minister to 
 Germany, is styled " Gentleman George " 
 at home, and is the father of the present 
 Civil-Service Law. 
 
 The diplomats of I'ncle Sam. though their 
 business is of little moment, and is almost 
 all transacted by telegraph, still keep up a 
 good deal of old-time red tape, and main- 
 tain a certain we-could-tell-if-we-would mys- 
 tery. 
 
 Not as much as we do. but still more than 
 enough. 
 
 Mr. Stallo. at Rome. Mr. Hubbard, in Ja- 
 pan. Mr. Lothrop. in St. Petersburg, consider 
 themselves of great importance. 
 
 M-. John Biorelow. at Paris, used to think 
 
THE DIPLOMATS. 
 
 183 
 
 the fate of Europe depended on his de- 
 spatches. 
 
 He is a dabbler in letters and diplomacy. 
 
 The best thing- he has is the original man- 
 uscript (A Franklin's " Autobiography," a 
 rarit)- which he bought while abroad. 
 
 Ask these gentlemen a simple question, 
 and they will reply to that simple question 
 as Martin Van Buren, according to Thurlow 
 Weed, was wont to do. 
 
 You may not have heard this story : 
 
 One day, the merits of Mr. Van l^uren 
 were being discussed by a party of gentle- 
 men on a Hudson River steamboat. One of 
 the party had been dwelling upon his non- 
 committalism, and complaining that " a 
 plain answer to a plain cjuestion was never 
 yet elicited from him." 
 
 " I'll w^ager the champagne for the com- 
 pany," added he. " that one of us shall go 
 down to the cabin and ask Mr. Van Buren 
 the simplest question which can be thought 
 of, and he will evade a direct answer. Yes, 
 and I'll give him leave, too, to tell Mr. Van 
 i^uren why he asks the question, and that 
 there is a bet depending on his reply." 
 
 This seemed fair enough. One of tlie 
 
184 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 party was deputed to go down and try 
 the experiment. He found Mr. Van Buren. 
 whom he knew well, in the saloon, and said 
 to him : 
 
 " Mr. Van Buren. some gentlemen on the 
 upper deck have been accusing you of non- 
 committalism, and have just laid a wager 
 that you would not give a plain answer to 
 the simplest question, and they deputed me 
 to test the fact. Now. sir, allow me to ask 
 you : Where does the sun rise ?" 
 
 Mr. Van Buren's brow contracted ; he 
 hesitated a moment, and then said : 
 
 " The terms east and west are conven- 
 tional ; but I — " 
 
 " That'll do ! " interrupted the interroga- 
 tor ; " we've lost the bet !" 
 
 I said, in an early part of this letter, that 
 there are few boiimots to be attributed to 
 the diplomats of Uncle Sam. 
 
 I heard Senator Evarts get off a witty 
 saying at the State Department one morn- 
 ing. 
 
 He had entered the elevator, which hap- 
 pened to be loaded with an unusual number 
 of strangers, presumably applicants for min- 
 isterships and consulships. 
 
TIfE DIPLOMATS. 
 
 i«5 
 
 Turning to a friend who accompanied 
 him, Mr. Evarts said, "This is the largest 
 collection for foreign missions that I have 
 seen taken up for some time." 
 
 And Colonel Charles Chaille-Long, who 
 has served his country as a diplomat in 
 Egypt, is also credited with a bright, if 
 cynical, reply. 
 
 " Sir," said an enthusiast to him one day, 
 "we ought to open all the nation's doors to 
 Liberty !" 
 
 " Aren't you afraid of a draught ?" 
 
 With these rather prosy views on the dip- 
 lomats of Uncle Sam, I close, my dear Count, 
 and I pray God that He may have you in His 
 holy keeping. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE FINANCIERS. 
 
 If Uncle Sam dearly loves a lord at times, 
 he always dearly loves a financier. 
 
 Our honorable friend always bows to the 
 man who manipulates money on a large scale. 
 
 The broker, the banker, the railroad mag- 
 nate, are objects of his admiration. 
 
 " Put money in thy purse !" 
 
 The advice which lago gives Cassio is the 
 advice which Uncle Sam gives his nephews. 
 
 Uncle Sam is proud of the humble origins 
 of his millionaires. 
 
 Mr. Jay Gould peddled mousetraps and 
 wrote a county history. 
 
 Mr. Mackay worked the mines with pick- 
 axe and shovel. 
 
 Mr. Astor, who founded the fortunes of 
 his house, dealt in furs. 
 
 Mr. Lorrillard Imd a little tobacco shop. 
 
 The lower these men were down, and the 
 
 i86 
 
riTF. FIKAA'CfERS. 787 
 
 higher they rose, thinks Uncle Sam, the 
 g^reater the credit and honr)r. 
 
 Mr. Armour, of Chicago, Mr. Huntington 
 and Mr. Crocker, of San Francisc<=j, Mr. Kus- 
 sell Sage, Mr. Sidney Dillon, and Mr. Cyrus 
 Field, of New York, are the cynosure of the 
 eyes of Uncle Sam. 
 
 He likes to read their names at the foot 
 of cheques drawn for political and social 
 purposes. 
 
 Drexel and Cooke, lielmont and Clews, 
 Morgan and Morton, the Seligmans, the 
 Browns, Kuhn, Loeb & Co. — members of the 
 haute finance — Uncle Sam consults and courts, 
 smiles upon, shakes hands with, and enter- 
 tains. 
 
 They are powers in financial circles in Xew 
 York and Washington. 
 
 Have you any idea, my dear Count, of 
 the vastness of the financial operations of this 
 Government ? 
 
 I took up the Banker s Monthly the other 
 day, and read the following array of facts 
 and figures : 
 
 " The growth and magnitude of the United States are 
 brought out very strikingly in a little volume of sixty 
 pages just issued by the Treasury Department, entitled 
 
1 88 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 ' Receipts and Disbursements of the United States for the 
 P'iscal Year Ending June 30, 1887. Over a million dol- 
 lars a day, including Sundays — that is what the statement 
 of receipts shows. The total gross receipts for the year 
 were $37^.403,277. That is several millions more than 
 the year before, and, in fact, is more than any year except 
 war times. The customs service paid |!2 18,000.000 of it, 
 internal revenue $118,000,000, public lands $10,000,000, 
 miscellaneous $23,000,000. As to the other side, the 
 grand total of expenses is set down at $267,000,000. 
 That leaves a net profit for the year's business of over 
 $100,000,000. Of the disbursements $45,000,000 were 
 for salaries, $68,000,000 for ordinary expenses, $14,000,- 
 000 for public works, and $137,000,000 for unusual and 
 extraordinary expenses, meaning pensions, war claims, 
 headstones for soldiers' graves, maintenance of soldiers' 
 homes, etc. There are some curious points among the 
 incidentals of the expenses. It shows, for instance, the 
 salaries of the much-groaned-about navy to be less than a 
 quarter of a million a year, while those of the War De- 
 partment are four times as much, and those of the Treas- 
 ury officials ten times as much as the navy salaries. The 
 salaries and mileage of Congress are estimated at over 
 $2,000,000 a year." 
 
 It is the fashion just now, in this time of 
 labor unions, to berate the big financiers 
 here. 
 
 The masses look upon them with distrust 
 and suspicion. 
 
 But many of these big" financiers have con- 
 
THE FINANCIERS. 1 89 
 
 tributed very essentially to the material and 
 intellectual standing of Uncle Sam. 
 
 George Peabody founded a system of 
 schools. 
 
 Johns Hopkins founded a university. 
 
 James Lick built a magnificent observa- 
 tory. 
 
 Astor and Lenox established libraries. 
 
 Mr. Bloodgood, I hear, patronizes comic 
 opera. 
 
 Vanderbilt built a finely equipped school 
 of medicine and surgery. 
 
 Almost all the eleemosynary literary and 
 art institutions in this country owe their ori- 
 gin to the munificence of private citizens of 
 large means. 
 
 How often have I strolled through the 
 Corcoran Art Gallery, in Washington, and 
 thanked the rich old, gentleman who estab- 
 lished it ! 
 
 In no country more than this are the finan- 
 ciers directly interested in the Government. 
 
 When the late war broke out, the rich men 
 of Uncle Sam promptly got out their cheque- 
 books and supported the Administration. 
 
 Vanderbilt put a steamer at the disposal 
 of the Government. 
 
[90 
 
 //ox. CWC/.E SAM. 
 
 The Union Loague C'lub. composed largely 
 of the. nabobs of commerce and finance, sub- 
 scribed Hberally to carry on the war. 
 
 We are apt to think of the rich men of 
 America as wholly devoted to the acquisi- 
 tion of the mighty dollar. 
 
 Thev also know how to spend it. 
 
 Thev back up musical enterprises, foreign 
 expeditions, home improvements. 
 
 If the financiers often have their hands in 
 other people's pockets, they also often have 
 them in their own : and they don't keep them 
 there. 
 
 It is a mistake to think that the financiers 
 of Uncle Sam are any less able to enjoy the 
 amenities of life than are our own. 
 
 M. de Rothschild is not more versed in rare 
 books than Mr. Brayton Ives. 
 
 M. Ephrussi or M. Lagrange is not a more 
 liberal patron of the turf than Mr. Keene or 
 Mr. Belmont. 
 
 The financiers of Wall Street are quite as 
 fond of fast horses, of pretty actresses, of 
 the pleasures of the table, as those of the 
 Place de la Bourse. 
 
 Though the possession of a comfortable 
 bank account undoubtedly crives vou influ- 
 
 ■j &' 
 
IJJh J-/\A A './/:/<■:.. 
 
 191 
 
 cnce, you do not feel the hand of Uncle Sam 
 on your shoulder at every step here. 
 
 The power of a uniformed bureaucracy is 
 almost invisible here. 
 
 The officials of Uncle Sam enjoy but a 
 limited tenure of office, and behave accord- 
 
 There is little red tape, little arrogance, 
 here. 
 
 Titles are as plentiful as decorations are 
 among us, but titles do not convey any 
 great prestige. 
 
 Even the judges are, in a measure, depend- 
 ent on popular suffrage. 
 
 The big financiers of Uncle Sam are in- 
 clined to support the Republican party. 
 
 Their interests lead them that way. 
 
 But in times of crisis they stand by Uncle 
 Sam without regard to political affiliations. 
 
 And any overweening pride these finan- 
 ciers may have in their power is qualified by 
 the public opinion couched by the poet Saxe 
 in these witty lines : 
 
 " Of all the notable thin;(s on earth, 
 The queerest one is pride of birth, 
 Amon;^ our fierce Democracie ! 
 A bridge across a hundred years, 
 
192 nchw uxcj./-: sam. 
 
 Without a prop to save it from sneers — 
 Not even a couple of rotten Peers — 
 A thing for laughter, fleers, and jeers, 
 Is American aristocracy ! 
 
 " English and Irish. French and Sixinish, 
 German, Italian, Dutch, and Danish, 
 Crossing their veins until they vanish 
 
 In one conglomeration ! 
 So subtle a tangle of Blood, indeed, 
 No modern Harvey will ever succeed 
 
 In finding the circulation ! 
 
 "Depend upon it, my snojbbish friend. 
 Your family thread you can't ascend 
 Without good reason to apprehend 
 You will find it waxad at the farther end 
 
 By some plebeian vocation; 
 Or, worse than that, your boasted line 
 May end in a loop of stronger twine. 
 That plagued some worthy rela'tion ! " 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE WITS. 
 
 Uncle Sam likes a joke. 
 
 His wit is of a purely local order. 
 
 Each section of his domain has its own. 
 
 Uncle Sam laughs at one thing in Massa- 
 chusetts, at another in California, at another 
 in Georgia, at another in Indiana. 
 
 Josh Hillings is one of the most famous 
 wits of Uncle Sam. 
 
 lie gives his early experiences character- 
 istically, thus : 
 
 " In common with most all Americans who have to push 
 early, to test their own wings, I engaged in all the usual 
 enterprises of a frontiersman, having been at times a land- 
 hunter, farmer, drover, steamboat captain, auctioneer, pol- 
 itician, and even pioneer, for I partially organized an en- 
 terprise, as early as 1835, to cross the Rocky Mountains. 
 This last-named enterprise was a profound failure, but its 
 inception and preliminary arrangements afforded me one 
 of the choicest relics of my early adventures, and that in 
 three letters^ now in my |)ossessioii, written to me person- 
 13 '93 
 
194 
 
 nOA\ UNCLE SAM. 
 
 ally by Henry Clay, John Quincy Adams, and Martin 
 Van Buren, recommending me and the undertaking 
 to the kind care and patronage of all people and all 
 nations. 
 
 " If I may be said to ever have commenced a literary 
 career, it certainly was much later in life than most men 
 commit the folly, for I had passed forty-five years before 
 I wrote a line for the public eye. What little reputation I 
 may have made has been accomplished within the last nine 
 years, and I consider that I owe all this little to the kind- 
 ness of the world at large, who, while they have discovered 
 but little wit, or even humor, in what I have written, have 
 done me the credit to acknowledge that my productions 
 have been free from malice. I pin all my faith, hope, and 
 charity upon this one impulse of my nature; and that is, 
 if I could have my way, there would be a smile contin- 
 ually on the face of every human being on God's footstool, 
 and this smile should ever and anon widen into a broad 
 grin. 
 
 " I have not the inclination to go into an extended ac- 
 count of the trials and failures that I have met with since 
 I first put on the cap and bells, but I can assure you that 
 I would not contend with them again for what little glory 
 and stamps they have won for me. I have written two 
 books, but my pet is 'Josh Billings's Farmer's Almanac,' 
 which has been issued for the last three years, the annual 
 sale of which has exceeded one hundred thousand copies." 
 
 Petroleum V. Nasby is another humorist. 
 Henry Clay Lukens is another. 
 Joel Chandler Harris has caught the essence 
 of negro wit. 
 
THE WITS. 195 
 
 Here are some specimens : 
 
 Drive out de dreamin' dog. 
 
 Mighty few horses fits a barley hatch. 
 
 Noddin' nigger gives the ash-cake a chill. 
 
 Don't fall out wid de fat what cook de 'possum. 
 
 Fightin' nigger ain't far from de callaboose. 
 
 Ole cloze better go 'round de picket fence. 
 
 You kin sell mo' patter rallers dan boozer-bears. 
 
 Short stirrups en a do'-back horse. 
 
 Mighty good sheep w'ats wuff mo' dan his wool. 
 
 Sunday pra'rs ain't gwineter las' all de week. 
 
 You will, I fear, find these as hard to un- 
 derstand as Jasmin. 
 
 The wit and humor of Uncle Sam are, in 
 fact, untranslatable. 
 
 Each newspaper here has what they call 
 "a funny man," a kind of a paid jester. 
 
 The wits of the press write in parables 
 and proverbs. 
 
 They reproduce the common sense of 
 Uncle Sam. 
 
 Ingersoll once said that Abraham Lincoln 
 was a cross between ^sop, Rabelais, and 
 Franklin. 
 
 Of many of the newspaper wits of Uncle 
 Sam the same can be said. 
 
 Artemus Ward wa-s a great wag in his way. 
 
196 
 
 //c>.\. ( AC/./-: SAM. 
 
 You mustn't expect In his writingfs the 
 point of Chamfort or Rivarol ; but a pithy 
 kind of homely wisdom ) ou will certainly 
 find in him. 
 
 Mark Twain, in a private letter to a friend 
 in Tennessee, said o( Artemus Ward : 
 
 " He was one of the kindest and gentlest of men, and the 
 hold he took on the English people surpasses imagination. 
 Artemus Ward once said to me gravely, almost sadly : 
 
 " ' Clemens, I have done too much fooling, too much 
 trifling ; I am going to write something that will live.' 
 
 " ' Well, what, for instance ? ' 
 
 " In the same grave way, he said : 
 
 "'Alie.' 
 
 " It was an admirable surprise. 1 was just ready to 
 cry ; he was becoming pathetic." 
 
 One of Artemus Ward's best things was 
 his parody of the census-taker. 
 
 Uncle Sam, by the way, takes a census 
 every ten years. 
 
 " The sences taker in our town being taken sick, he dep- 
 pertised me to go out for him one day, and as he was too 
 ill to give me information how to perceed, I was conse- 
 kently compelled to go it blind. Sittin' down by the road- 
 siile, I draw'd up the foUerin' list of questions, which I 
 proposed to ax the people I visited : 
 
 " ' Wat's your age ?' 
 
 " ' Whar' was you born ?' 
 
'I'Hh WITS. 
 
 97 
 
 " ' Air you married i* and if so, hf;w dfj you like it ?' 
 
 '■' ' ll(jw many children hav' you ? and do they sufficiently 
 resemble you so as to preclood the possibility of their 
 belongin' to any of your nabers ?' 
 
 "'Did you ever have the measles? and if so, how 
 many ? ' 
 
 ** * Hav' you a twin brother several years older than 
 yourself ?' 
 
 *' ' State how much pork, impendin' crysis, Dutch cheese, 
 poplar survinity, standard poetry, children's strainers, 
 slave code, catnip, red flannel, ancient history, pickled to- 
 matoes, old junk, perfoomery, coal ile, liberty, hoop-skirts, 
 etc., have you got on hand ?' 
 
 " But it didn't work, I got into a row, at the first house 
 I stopt at, with some old maids. Disbelievin' the answers 
 they give in regard to their ages, I endeavored to open 
 their mouths and look at their teeth, same as they do with 
 horses, but they floo into a violent rage, and tackled me 
 with brooms and sich. Takin' the sences requires expe- 
 rience, like as any other bizness." 
 
 Much of the wit and humor floating about 
 in the dominions of Uncle Sam depends on 
 odd orthography, local dialect, eccentricity 
 of arrangement. 
 
 Other newspaper wits are Eli Perkins, 
 Miner Griswold, James Bailey — pert, perti- 
 nent, pointed. 
 
 I am especially fond of Max Adeler. 
 
 One of his best satires is his proposed new 
 Congressional Record, the official publication 
 
\gS HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 containing the speeches of Senators and Rep- 
 resentatives. 
 
 " If Congress resolve to act upon the suggestion of Sen- 
 ator Miller, that the Congressional Record \it issued as a 
 weekly, and sent to every family in the country, some 
 modification ought to be made in the contents of the 
 Record. The jiaper is much too heavy and dismal in its 
 present condition. As for the general contents, describ- 
 ing the business proceedings in the Senate and the House, 
 we recommend that these should be put in the form of 
 verse. 
 
 " We should treat them, say, something in this fashion : 
 
 Mr. Hill 
 Introduced a bill 
 To give John Smith a pension. 
 
 Then Atkinson, of Kansas, rose to make an explanation, 
 But was pulled down by a colleague in a state of indig- 
 nation. 
 And Mr. Alexander, in a speech about insurance, 
 Taxed the patience of his hearers pretty nearly past en- 
 durance; 
 After which Judge Whittaker denounced the Reciprocity 
 Treaty with Hawaii as a scandalous monstrosity. 
 
 " Of course, versification of the Congressional Record 
 would require the services of a poet laureate of rather un- 
 usual powers. If Congress shall accept seriously the sug- 
 gestions which we make, with an earnest desire to promote 
 the public interest, we shall venture to recommend the 
 selection of the Sweet Singer of Michigan as the first oc- 
 cupant of the laureate's ofiice." 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHERS. 
 
 In writing his new play, " Anarchy," Mr. 
 Steele Mackaye proves himself to be a politi- 
 cal philosopher. He shows, by scenes and 
 acts founded on incidents of the French Rev- 
 olution, that unbridled liberty leads to ruin 
 and death. 
 
 Political philosophers have not always been 
 as interesting as Mr. .Steele Mackaye. 
 
 Jefferson and Hamilton, for instance, two 
 of the earliest political philosophers of Uncle 
 Sam, discussed limited suffrage, the division 
 and balance of power, and other such topics. 
 Jefferson, of Virginia, a disciple of Rousseau 
 and Voltaire, advocated, a popular govern- 
 ment, with public suffrage, limited executive 
 powers, and wide scope to local authorities. 
 
 Hamilton, of New York, a disciple of 
 Locke and Burke, was in favor of a more 
 centralized government. 
 199 
 
200 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 Jefferson was a dilettante in democracy; 
 Hamilton was an admirer of aristocracy. 
 
 Jefferson vented his views in a voluminous 
 private correspondence; Hamilton published 
 his in the public prints. 
 
 Jefferson was Secretary of State during the 
 Washington administration; Hamilton was 
 Secretary of the Treasury. 
 
 Jefferson had a pleasant farm at Monticello, 
 where he entertained generously; Hamilton 
 was always in financial straits. 
 
 " I have beheld one of the wonders of the 
 world," Talleyrand wrote of him in 1794 — 
 " a man who has made the fortune of a nation 
 laboring all night to support a family." 
 
 Hamilton, during several years, did more 
 than support one family. 
 
 He supported two. 
 
 There is quite a little romance here. 
 
 A political philosopher can 'get into trou- 
 ble, like the rest of mankind. 
 
 It appears that one day, in Philadelphia, a 
 Mrs. Reynolds, of New York, called on Mr. 
 Secretary Hamilton, and asked him to let her 
 have a little money to get back home. Ham- 
 ilton assured the lady that he had no money 
 then, but that he would be pleased to procure 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS. 20I 
 
 enough for her purpose later. The lady was 
 as complaisant as she was comely, and gave 
 the Secretary her address. 
 
 In the evening Mr. Secretary Hamilton 
 called upon her. 
 
 A few days afterward she was " Maria," 
 and not " Mrs. Reynolds," to him. 
 
 The liaison lasted, and a correspondence 
 between the two began. 
 
 Then troubles arose. 
 
 The husband of Mrs. Reynolds got wind 
 of the amour, and the worthless scamp 
 profited by it. 
 
 He wrote the Secretary for gifts of money — 
 which he termed loans — and received them. 
 
 He wrote again and again for loans, al- 
 ways in a humble and respectful tone, and 
 received them. 
 
 He once asked Hamilton for a position in 
 the Treasury Department, but Hamiltofi 
 refused. 
 
 Money, Reynolds received whenever he 
 asked for it, but public office was denied him. 
 His consent and silence were bought. . 
 
 This state of things lasted for some time. 
 
 Again and again Hamilton resolved to 
 break with the siren. 
 
202 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 Then he would receive a note like this : 
 
 " For God sake be not so voed of all 
 hummanity as to deni me this Last request, 
 i)ut if you will not Call sometime this night 
 I no its late but any tim between this and 
 twelve A'clock I shall be up Let me Intreat 
 you If )'ou wont Come to send me a Line oh 
 my head I can rite no more do something to 
 Ease My heart or Els I no not what I shall 
 do for so I cannot live. Commit this to the 
 care of my maid be not offended I beg." 
 
 And Hamilton yielded again. 
 
 Now it happened that the husband Rey- 
 nolds found himself in prison for debt, about 
 live years after the liaison, and thought he 
 could get himself out by selling the good 
 name of Hamilton to his political opponents. 
 
 He showed letters in Hamilton's hand- 
 writing, proving that between himself and 
 the Secretary of the Treasury some myste- 
 rious connection, in\olving monetary trans- 
 actions, had existed. 
 
 To clear his official honor from suspicion, 
 Hamilton boldly printed a pamphlet in 1797, 
 in which he made a clean breast of the mat- 
 ter, and asked the indulgence of his country- 
 men. 
 
TIIK I'lJILOSOniKRS. 20 -^ 
 
 You can imagine how the Democratic 
 press of the period gloated over those reve- 
 lations. 
 
 They make use of any weapons in their 
 pohtical warfare here. 
 Private Hfe is not sacred. 
 M. de Cormenin used to be blamed by*" 
 M. Alphonse Karr for exposing to public 
 view the extravagant wash bills of his Ma- 
 jesty, Louis Philippe. 
 They go further here. 
 
 Neither a candidate's home nor his hotel 
 apartment is his castle on the domain of 
 Uncle Sam. 
 
 They went so far, a few years ago, as to 
 get on a step-ladder, look in at the transom 
 of a certain candidate's hotel room, and re- 
 port what wicked things he was doing there. 
 Reveiions a 710s inoulons. 
 When the philosophers had discussed and 
 decided that a popular and not a royal Gov- 
 ernment was best for Uncle Sam, they began 
 to discuss what were the rights of the nation 
 recently constituted, and what were the 
 rights of the States. 
 
 Is the Union temporary or permanent } Is 
 the State or the Union superior? 
 
204 
 
 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 Three theories, with three sets of philo- 
 sophic advocates, now appeared 
 
 Hamilton, Jay, Marshall, Story, Web- 
 ster, maintained the national theory. The 
 Union is a nation indivisible and per- 
 petual. 
 
 Jefferson and Calhoun maintained the 
 States'-right theory. They affirmed that the 
 United States were not a nation at the time 
 of the Revolution, and that hence the States 
 arc, in a moment of dissatisfaction with the 
 Union, the independent and supreme arbi- 
 ters of their destinies. 
 
 The Union is temporary and divisible. 
 
 A third set of philosophic politicans, Mad- 
 ison, Jackson, Taney, maintained what is 
 known as the " partial national " theory. The 
 States were originally independent, they af- 
 fu-mcd,but surrendered a part of their sove- 
 reignty when the Constitution was voted 
 and adc^pted by them. 
 
 The Union is perpetual; the States have 
 permanent reserved rights. 
 
 Pounds of polemics and arguments, yards 
 of debate and oratory, were expended on 
 these points. In spite of all this, they were 
 finally settled in 1865, not by the ingenuity 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS. 
 
 205 
 
 of the philosophers, but by the swords of the 
 soldiers. 
 
 Simultaneously with the discussion of 
 Governmental powers arose questions of 
 political economy. 
 
 Different sections of the country, accord- 
 ing to their interests or according- to what 
 they supposed were their interests, adopted 
 low or high tariif views. 
 
 The South, an agricultural region, was early 
 for free trade. 
 
 The North and East, manufacturing sec- 
 tions, pronounced for protection. 
 
 The political economists manufactured 
 treaties for or against these theories, accord- 
 ing to the latitude and longitude wherein 
 they lived. 
 
 Carey, Greeley, Bowen, published works 
 for a protective tariff. 
 
 Perry and Wells are philosophic exponents 
 of a low tariff. 
 
 To-day Mr. Kelley and Mr. Randall, of 
 Pennsylvania, are the stoutest advocates 
 of protection ; Mr. Cox, of New York, 
 and Mr. Frank Hurd, of Ohio, are free- 
 traders. 
 
 There is so much discussion about tariff 
 
2o6 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 nowadays that, you would suppose tariff 
 were a being of flesh and blood — a candi- 
 date for office. 
 
 Political speculation in this country has, 
 up to a year or two, been of a very practical 
 and matter-of-fact nature. 
 
 The cold Anglo-Saxon does not gesticu- 
 late toward the clouds, like the excitable 
 Gaul and the dreamy, beery Teuton. 
 
 He always asks for the tangible results of 
 his theories. He never loses sight of the 
 earth in his speculative flights. 
 
 " I tell you, you are nothing but an ideal- 
 ist in politics !" hotly said General Kilpatrick, 
 while in Washington on furlough during the 
 war, discussing a point of martial law with 
 Secretary Chase. " I maintain that you can 
 do anything and everything with bayonets." 
 
 " Yes, yes," calmly replied the stolid law- 
 yer — " except sit on them !" 
 
 The philosophers of Uncle Sam of the old 
 school were timid, conservative, rarely lost 
 their heads. 
 
 It is true some of them were alarmists, 
 false prophets. I remember having read 
 somewhere that such philosophic jurists as 
 Judge Kent and Judge Story thought the 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS. 207 
 
 country was going to the devil in the days 
 of Jackson, simply because Jackson did not 
 share their views on politics. 
 
 Vet, as a general thing, the political phi- 
 losophers of Uncle Sam are long-headed and 
 far-sighted. 
 
 Dreamers like Henry Thoreau and Felix 
 Adler exercise but little sway over peo- 
 ple's minds here. The majority of even 
 speculative Americans seem to believe that 
 you cannot " save the world by a return to 
 acorns and the golden age," as Carlyle once 
 told Emerson the reformers of New England 
 evidently tried to do. 
 
 I have found some wise philosophic max- 
 ims in the history of Uncle Sam. 
 
 Franklin, who always seems to me to have 
 written his precepts on grocery paper, gave 
 all his countrymen the cue. 
 
 Allow me to quote some of the senten- 
 tious sayings I find current : 
 
 " Politics," said Theodore Parker, "is the 
 science of exigencies." 
 
 " Great political questions," said Wendell 
 Phillips, " stir the deepest nature of one- 
 half the nation; but they pass far above the 
 heads of the other half." 
 
2o8 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 " This country," said Longfellow, " is not 
 priest-ridden, but press-ridden." 
 
 " It is wonderful," said Emerson, " how 
 soon a piano gets into a log hut on the fron- 
 tier ! You would think they found it under 
 a pine stump." 
 
 " The public is wiser," wrote George Ban- 
 croft, " than the wisest critic." 
 
 "Heroes in history seem to us poetic," 
 says George William Curtis, " because they 
 are there ; " but if we should tell the simple 
 truth of some of our neighbors, it would 
 sound like poetry." 
 
 The ponderous disquisitions of your ped- 
 ant of Germany, oi yowt savant oi the Col- 
 lege de France, of your professor at Oxford 
 or Cambridge, find little favor, small audi- 
 ence, here. 
 
 The average citizen of this country has 
 the gift of expressing his opinion in pointed 
 and pertinent form. 
 
 He takes his philosophy and his poli- 
 tics like his cocktail and his lunch — in a 
 hurry. 
 
 The driest political philosophers here are, 
 strange to say, the ones that have the most 
 
THE PIirLOSOPHERS. 
 
 209 
 
 I mean the women who, in print and on 
 platform, advocate women's rights. 
 
 Such an agitator as Belva Lockwood 
 makes me gape. 
 
 Such agitators as Cady Stanton, Anna 
 Brackett, Anna Dickinson, make me nod. 
 
 They are not even as amusing as Louise 
 Michel. 
 
 Uncle Sam, who is uniformly polite to 
 woman, who gives her great scope in every 
 field of activity, who slaves while she shops, 
 is impatient of her political philosophies. 
 
 I don't blame him. 
 
 The place of woman is at home. 
 
 It is neither on the hustings nor in the di- 
 vorce-court. 
 
 Woman neglects the family here. 
 
 " It is safe to say," remarks Dr. Dike, 
 " that divorce has been doubled in propor- 
 tion to marriages and population, in most of 
 the Northern States, within thirty years." 
 
 Gail Hamilton — cousin, adviser, and pri- 
 vate secretary of James G. Blaine — is not 
 abashed by these figures. 
 
 She has no mean opinion of the power of 
 her sex. 
 
 " Man has subdued the world, but woman 
 14. 
 
2 10 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 has subdued man. No monarch has been so 
 great, no peasant so lowly, that he has not 
 been glad to lay his best at the feet of wo- 
 man." 
 
 I continue my quotations : 
 
 They give us foreigners many a hint as to 
 the different kinds of opinion prevalent here. 
 
 Let us compare fancies with facts. 
 
 " Give me the centralism of liberty," said 
 Charles Sumner ; " give me the imperialism 
 of equal rights." 
 
 A fine phrase ! 
 
 And yet the negro in Georgia and Missis- 
 sippi is forced to vote one way. the factory 
 hand in Rhode Island and Massachusetts 
 another. 
 
 " Schoolhouses," wrote Horace Mann, the 
 great advocate for public education, " are 
 the republican line of fortifications." 
 
 The school population of the country is 
 estimated at eighteen millions. 
 
 Of this mass, seven millions five hundred 
 thousand grow up in absolute ignorance of 
 the alphabet. 
 
 Thus one voter in six on the domain of 
 Uncle Sam cannot read or write ! 
 
 These are stern, hard facts. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS. 211 
 
 It's a good thing to occasionally mix sen- 
 timents with statistics. 
 
 Henry Lloyd, four years ago, looked into 
 the condition of child laborers in Pennsyl- 
 vania, and wrote an essay on the subject. 
 
 " Herds of little children of all ages," 
 wrote he, " from six years upward, are at 
 work in the coal-breakers, toiling in dirt 
 and air thick with carbon-dust, from dawn 
 to dark of every day in the week except 
 Sunday. The coal-breakers are the only 
 schools they know." 
 
 There's food for the philosopher ! 
 
 Let us turn to maxims again : 
 
 They are so much pleasanter reading. 
 
 " A politician thinks of the next election," 
 wrote Freeman Clarke; '' a statesman, of the 
 next generation." 
 
 But in spite of all these fine sentiments, 
 theoretical politics are held in slight esteem. 
 
 Transcendentalism in politics is often the 
 object of ridicule. 
 
 You may remember the illustration which 
 Senator Evarts gave ridiculing transcend- 
 ental theoretical politics. 
 
 It was at the banquet to Mr. Blaine at 
 Delmonico's, some three years ago. 
 
212 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 "When Mr. Emerson was first founding and spreading 
 the doctrine of transcendentalism, one of the greatest as- 
 semblies of Presbyterians [before the country was divided 
 at all] had been held in one of the Southern cities, and 
 these eminent Doctors of Divinity, going up on the steam- 
 boat [before railroads were constructed], were conversing 
 very earnestly with one another, and very learnedly, on 
 this new notion of Transcendentalism, and what it por- 
 tended to the institutions of the Church. After their dis- 
 cussion had declined [for there must be an end even to 
 that], a sober and devout layman, who had heard this 
 earnest disputation [without understanding a word of it], 
 asked one of these Doctors of Divinity, with great sub- 
 mission, if he would be so good as briefly to explain to 
 him what Transcendentalism was. * Well,' said he, * my 
 friend, it is a little difficult in a few words, but as we are 
 passing by this bluff on the Mississippi River, do you 
 notice those swallows' holes in the bluff?' 'Yes,' says 
 the man, 'I do.' 'Well,' says he, 'if you break away all 
 that bluff, and leave nothing but the swallows' holes, that 
 is Transcendentalism.' And these now are the swallows' 
 holes in politics [laughter] with the parties all brushed 
 away, and nothing left but the vacant orifices." 
 
 As far as I can make out, there are now 
 three movements of poUtical speculative 
 thought in the domain of Uncle Sam. 
 
 The first is the practico-political philosophy 
 of men like Mr. Blaine, Mr. Evarts, Mr. Til- 
 den, Mr. Tucker, and Mr. Cox. 
 
 They are conservative, studying ways and 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS. 
 
 213 
 
 means, dealing in safe old-time truisms, 
 quoting the ancient authors. 
 
 Speculate, they say, but do not speculate 
 too much. 
 
 " A marksman may improve his aim by 
 shooting at long distances," they say with 
 Cornwall Lewis, "but not by firing at the 
 moon." 
 
 The second school of speculative politics 
 is represented in our time by Mr. James 
 Russell Lowell and Mr. George William 
 Curtis. 
 
 Disciples of Emerson in their younger 
 days, these men now head a small but com- 
 pact and scholarly band of transcendental 
 philosophers and dilettante politicians. They 
 are not conservative, and they are not radi- 
 cal. They believe in the scholar in politics. 
 They believe in the reformer on the hust- 
 ings. 
 
 They are critically optimistic, if I may so 
 say, carping at the present, and hopeful of 
 the future. 
 
 The views of this coterie may be best 
 gleaned from the discourse on " Democracy," 
 delivered by Mr. Lowell before the Midland 
 Institute in London a couple of years ago. 
 
214 tfON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 Said Mr. Lowell : 
 
 " Democracy is nothing more than an experiment in 
 government, more Ukely to succeed in a new soil, but 
 likely to be tried in all soils, which must stand or fall on 
 its own merits, as others have done before it. For there 
 is no trick of perpetual motion in politics any more than 
 in mechanics. President Lincoln defined democracy to 
 be ' the government of the people, by the people, for the 
 people.' This is a sufficiently compact statement of it as 
 a political arrangement. Theodore Parker said that 
 * Democracy meant, not " I'm as good as you are," but 
 ''You're as good as I am." ' And this is the ethical con- 
 ception of it, necessary as the complement of the other ; 
 a conception which, could it be made actual and practical, 
 would easily solve all the riddles of the old sphinx of poli- 
 tical and social economy who sits by the roadside, has 
 been proposing to mankind from the beginning, and which 
 mankind have shown such a singular talent for answering 
 wrongly. In this sense Christ was the first true Democrat 
 that ever breathed, as the old dramatist, Dekker, said he 
 was the first true gentleman. The characters may be eas- 
 ily doubled, so strong is the likeness between them. I am 
 one of those who believe that the real will never find an 
 irremovable basis till it rests on the ideal. It used to be 
 thought that a democracy was possible only in a small ter- 
 ritory, and this is doubtless true of the tlemocracy strictly 
 defined, for in such all the citizens decide directly upon 
 every question of public concern in a general assembly. 
 An example still survives in the tiny Swiss canton of Ap- 
 penzell. But this immediate intervention of the people 
 in their own affairs is not of the essence of democracy ; it 
 is not necessary, nor, indeed, in most cases, practicable. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS. 
 
 215 
 
 Democracies to which Mr. Lincoln's definition would 
 fairly enough apply have existed, and now exist, in 
 which, though the supreme authority resides in the peo- 
 ple, yet they can act only indirect y on the national 
 policy." 
 
 Lowell is witty, pithy, epigrammatic. 
 
 " There is no good in arguing with the 
 inevitable," he says. "The only argument 
 available with an east wind is to put on your 
 overcoat." 
 
 At another point he remarks : 
 
 " We should remember that nothing is 
 more natural for people whose education has 
 been neglected, than to spell evolution w^ith 
 an initial 'r.'" 
 
 Again, we find this bit of wisdom. Speak- 
 ing of the legislative compromise measures 
 between North and South prior to the Civil 
 War, the philosopher said : 
 
 " We learned once for all that compromise 
 makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof ; 
 that it is a temporary expedient often wise 
 in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in 
 statesmanship." 
 
 In spite of a quizzingly critical tone, when 
 speaking of Democracy, Mr. Lowell is proud 
 of its results. 
 
2l6 HON. UNCLE SAM. . 
 
 " No ; amid all the fruitless turmoil and miscarriage of 
 the world, if there be one thing steadfast and of favorable 
 omen, one thing to make optimism distrust its own obscure 
 distrust, it is the rooted instinct in men to admire what is 
 better and more beautiful than themselves. The touch- 
 stone of political and social institutions is their ability to 
 supply them with worthy objects of this sentiment, which 
 is the very tap-root of civilization and progress. There 
 would seem to be no readier way of feeding it with the 
 elements of growth and vigor than such an organization 
 of society as will enable men to respect themselves, and 
 so justify them in respecting others." 
 
 All this is very fine on paper or in the ros- 
 trum, but it is not substantiated by facts. 
 
 The United States is no longer the bliss- 
 ful Arcadia which our travelers in the last 
 century, Rochefoucauld, Robin, Chastel- 
 lux, loved to depict and hold up to our 
 eyes. 
 
 It is true the population has increased 
 from three to sixty millions. 
 
 It is true the original thirteen States have 
 been joined by twenty-five sister-States. 
 
 It is true there are more schools, colleges, 
 churches, than there were. 
 
 There is more money ; there are more 
 manufactories ; there is a more extensive 
 commerce. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS. 21 7 
 
 Telegraphs, telephones, railways, cover the 
 land. 
 
 The public debt is paid with stupendous 
 rapidity. 
 
 There is a large surplus in the treasury. 
 
 The credit of Uncle Sam is excellent. 
 
 But— 
 
 Please open " Progress and Poverty," a 
 book by Henry George, and you will under- 
 stand why I insert that disagreeable dis- 
 junctive conjunction. 
 
 Henry George was a San Francisco jour- 
 nalist when he carried the manuscript of his 
 book from publisher to publisher in vain. 
 Too abstruse, they said, too theoretical ! 
 Finally a New York house accepted it. The 
 success was great from the outset. 
 
 Open the book ! 
 
 The material prosperity of the country, 
 argues George, may seem to be great, but it 
 is a fictitious prosperity. No prosperity can 
 be real that is based on unjust social condi- 
 tions. 
 
 " In the United States it is clear that squalor and mis- 
 ery, and the vices and crimes that spring from them, 
 everywhere increase as the village grows to the city, and 
 the march of development brings the advantages of the 
 
2i8 HON. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 improved methods of production amd exchange. It is in 
 the older and richer sections of the Union that pauperism 
 and distress among the working classes are becoming 
 more painfully apparent. If there is less deep poverty in 
 San Francisco than in New York, is it not because San 
 Francisco is yet behind New York m all that both' cities 
 are striving for ? When San Francisco reaches the point 
 where New York now is, who will doubt that there will 
 also be ragged and barefooted children on her streets ? 
 This association of poverty with progress is the great 
 enigma of our time. It is the central fact from which 
 spring industrial, social, and political difficulties that per- 
 plex the world." 
 
 Henry George, in a style which combines 
 the fervor of Rousseau with the lucidity of 
 Descartes, goes on to state the grievances of 
 the masses of Uncle Sam. Private fortunes, 
 he says, make greater every year the dis- 
 tinction between the classes of citizens. The 
 condition of the hands in factories is virtual 
 slavery. Tenement houses, owned by the 
 rich and greedy, are hotbeds of corruption 
 and misery. The public lands are fast dis- 
 appearing. In New England and the West, 
 farms are already rented at rates varying 
 from one-fourth to one-half of the crop. 
 
 " As liveried carriages appear, so do barefooted chil- 
 dren. We are becoming used to talk of the working 
 classes ; beggars are becoming so common that where it 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS. 2I9 
 
 was once thought a crime little short of highway rob- 
 bery to refuse food to one who asked for it, the gate is 
 now barred and the bull-dog loosed, while laws are passed 
 against vagrants which suggest those of Henry VIII." 
 
 Your boasted progress is accompanied by 
 poverty, affirms the philosopher in substance, 
 and I beheve to do away with this anomaly 
 by this remedy. I propose to abolish private 
 property in land. 
 
 " Historically, as ethically, private property 
 in land is robbery." 
 
 Do you notice the influence of Rousseau 
 here ? of Prudhon ? 
 
 I propose, continues George, that all land 
 now still free in this country remain public 
 domain. I propose that such land as is now 
 called private property be taxed for the pub- 
 lic good. 
 
 " It is not necessary to confiscate land ; it 
 is only necessary to confiscate rent." 
 
 Then the philosopher proposes a system 
 of administration and taxation which seems 
 simple enough on paper, and closes his book 
 with passages fully as fervid aad eloquent as 
 can be found in the ancient prophets. 
 
 Now you may agree with this man, or you 
 may differ with him, but one thing is certain : 
 
220 ■ IfOM. UNCLE SAM. 
 
 Henry George is bound to be influential 
 in the long-run. He will be a power in 
 politics. 
 
 Mr. Evarts, Mr. Depew, Mr. Bayard, Mr. 
 Hewitt, patting their low-cut waistcoats af- 
 fectionately after a public dinner, smoking 
 their twenty-five-cent cigars, may sneer at 
 Socialists and Communists and Anarchists, 
 and belittle them and denounce them. 
 
 They may affirm that everything is all 
 right as it is. 
 
 They may say Uncle Sam is in tip-top 
 health. 
 
 They may make light of the theories of a 
 newspaper man. 
 
 " Sir," blurted Carlyle at a dinner one 
 night, to a young Tory who ridiculed politi- 
 cal theories, " the French nobility of a hun- 
 dred years ago said they could aff"ord to 
 laugh at theories. Then came a man who 
 wrote a book called the ' Social Contract.' 
 The nobles could laugh at his theory, but 
 their skins went to bind the second edition 
 of his book ! " 
 
 I, for my part, do not share the optimistic 
 delusions of the average post-prandial ora- 
 tor of Uncle Sam. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS. 22 1 
 
 His big talk about his country does not 
 ^2l7.A^ me. 
 
 Our political philosophies are so much in- 
 fluenced by what we eat and drink ! 
 
 I know that a " Pudding Nesselrode " is 
 apt to reconcile a fellow to the Czar of 
 Russia, and that, after taking a " Punch 
 Cardinal," a man is not likely to quarrel 
 with the Church of Rome. 
 
 I try to keep my judgment unruffled. 
 
 And when I am asked to go into ecstasies 
 over the politics and politicians of Uncle 
 Sam, I am much inclined to exclaim with 
 Joseph de Maistre : 
 
 " People are continually citing America 
 as an example. I know nothing that puts 
 me so much out of patience as the praise 
 heaped on this child, still in its swaddling- 
 clothes. Let it grow up, and we shall see !" 
 
 THE END. 
 
NEW PUBLICATIONS, 
 
 I beg to announce that I will shortly 
 
 publish a series of translations 
 
 of popular French novels 
 
 at popular prices. 
 
 I have also some rare old books, curious 
 
 autographs, and fine prints on 
 
 hand, which I offer at 
 
 reasonable figures. 
 
 JOHN DELAY, 
 
 DEALER IN 
 
 Bools, Prints, anJ Antosraplis. 
 
 SOLE AGENT IN THE U. S. FOR 
 
 ETIENNE CHARAVAY, OF PARIS. 
 
 816 BROADWAY, NEW YORK.