onable blunder of playing into the hands of his
opponents, and leaving the sound and conservative sentiment of the
country without adequate leadership in Washington.

While we were curiously looking at the Tilden homestead, an old
man came walking slowly down the road, a rake over his shoulder,
one leg of his patched trousers stuck in a boot-top, a suspender
missing, his old straw hat minus a goodly portion of its crown. He
stopped, leaned upon his rake, and looked at us inquisitively,
then remarked in drawling tone,--

"I know'd Sam Tilden."

"Indeed!"

"Yes, I know'd him; he was a great man."

"You are a Democrat?"

"I wuz, but ain't now," pensively.

"Why ar'n't you?"

"Well, you see, I wuz allus a rock-ribbed Jacksonian fr'm a boy;
seed the ole gen'ral onc't, an' I voted for Douglas an' Seymore. I
skipped Greeley, fur he warn't no Dem'crat; an' I voted fur Tilden
an' Hancock an' Cleveland; but when it come to votin' fur a
cyclone fr'm N'braska,--jest wind an' nothin' more,--I kicked over
the traces."

"Then you don't believe in the divine ratio of sixteen to one?"

"Young man, silver an' gold come out'r the ground, jes' lik' corn
an' wheat. When you kin make two bush'ls corn wu'th a bush'l wheat
by law an' keep 'em there, you can fix the rasho 'twixt silver an'
gold, an' not before," and the old man shouldered his rake and
wandered on up the road.

Before leaving the birthplace of Tilden, it is worth noting that
for forty years every candidate favored by Tammany has been
ignominiously defeated; the two candidates bitterly opposed by the
New York machine were successful. It is to the credit of the party
that no Democrat can be elected president unless he is the avowed
and unrelenting foe of corruption within and without the ranks.

The farmer with whom we were staying had earlier in the summer a
flock of sixty young and promising turkeys; of the lot but twenty
were left, and one of them was moping about as his forty brothers
and sisters had moped before, ready to die.

"Ah, he'll go with the others," said the farmer. "Raising turkeys
is a ticklish job; to-day they're scratching gravel for all
they're worth; to-morrow they mope around an' die; no telling
what's the matter."

"Suppose we give that turkey some whiskey and water; it may help
him."

"Can't do him any harm, fur he'll die anyway; but it's a waste of
good medicine."

Soaking some bread in good, strong Scotch, diluted with very
little