roducing
masses. It has won the support of corporate monopoly by blind
submission to its demands, and, with brazen audacity, sought and
obtained the co-operation of the survivors of the army by doling out
pensions and promises. And yet, with a record that would have
crimsoned the cheek of a Nero or Caligula, its leaders are posing as
critics of honest statesmen, and the only friends and defenders of the
soldier and laborer. The leaders of its earlier and better days have
been ostracised and silenced in party councils, while audacious
demagogues have used its places of trust as a means of casting anchors
to windward for personal profit. Its party conventions are controlled
by notorious lobbyists and railroad attorneys, and the agricultural
population appealed to for support. Truly the world is governed more
by prejudice than by reason, and American politics of the present day
offer but slight rewards to manliness or patriotism.

Clinton Furbish.

THE HONOR OF AN ELECTION.

(President Cleveland's Defeat, 1888.)

Whose is the honor? Once again
The million-drifted shower is spent
Of votes that into power have whirled two men:--
One man, defeated; one, made President.

Whose is the honor? His who wins
The people's wreath of favor, cast
At venture?--Lo, his thraldom just begins!--
Or is it his who, losing, yet stands fast?

The first takes power, in mockery grave
Of freedom--made, by writ unsigned,
The people's servant, whom a few enslave.
The other is master of an honest mind.

From venomed spite that stung and ceased,
From slander's petty craft set free,
This man--the bonds of formal power released--
Moves higher, dowered with large integrity.

Though stabs of cynic hypocrites
And festering malice of false friends
Have won their noisome way, unmoved he fits
His patriot purpose still to lofty ends.

Whose is the honor? Freemen--yours,
Who found him faithful to the right,
Clean-handed, true, yet turned him from your doors
And bartered daybreak for corruption's night?

Weak-shouldered nation, that endures
So painfully an upright sway,
Four little years,