only direct route." It is not probable that this state of
things can last; if there is to be "government by party"--and we should
be sad to think that so inestimable a boon were soon to return to Him
who gave it--men must begin to let their angry passions rise and take
rides. "Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey," where the people
are too wise to dispute and too good to fight. Let us have the good old
political currency of bloody noses and cracked crowns; let the yawp
of the demagogue be heard in the land; let ears be pestered with the
spargent cheers of the masses. Give us a whoop-up that shall rouse us
like a rattling peal of thunder. Will nobody be our Moses--there
should be two Moseses--to lead us through this detestable wilderness of
political stagnation?

II.

Nowhere "on God's green earth"--it is fitting, that this paper contain
a bit of bosh--nowhere is so much insufferable stuff talked in a given
period of time as in an American political convention. It is there that
all those objectionable elements of the national character which evoke
the laughter of Europe and are the despair of our friends find freest
expression, unhampered by fear of any censorship more exacting than
that of "the opposing party"--which takes no account of intellectual
delinquencies, but only of moral. The "organs" of the "opposing party"
will not take the trouble to point out--even to observe--that the
"debasing sentiments" and "criminal views" uttered in speech and
platform are expressed in sickening syntax and offensive rhetoric.
Doubtless an American politician, statesman, what you will, could
go into a political convention and signify his views with simple,
unpretentious common sense, but doubtless he never does.

Every community is cursed with a number of "orators"--men regarded as
"eloquent"--"silver tongued" men--fellows who to the common American
knack at brandishing the tongue add an exceptional felicity of
platitude, a captivating mastery of dog's-eared sentiment, a copious and
obedient vocabulary of eulogium, an iron insensibility to the ridiculous
and an infinite affinity to fools. These afflicting Chrysostoms are
always lying in wait for an "occasion" It matters not what it is: a
"reception" to some great man from abroad, a popular ceremony like the
laying of a corner-stone, the opening of a fair, the dedication of a
public building, an anniversary banquet of an ancient and honorable
order (they all belong to