CHAPTER XVI.
ON THE POLITICAL STUMP.
I had always been somewhat prominent in politics, being President of the Republican Club in our town, and that autumn I was hired by Dr. George B. Loring to conduct his campaign for the position of Representative in Congress; this I accomplished so successfully that Judge Thayer, the chairman of the State Committee, hired me to stump the Commonwealth against General Butler and in favor of the Hon. George D. Robinson as candidate for Governor. This campaign will long be remembered as being the most fiercely contested of any in the political history of Massachusetts, and many incidents in my career as a public speaker are much pleasanter in the reminiscence than in the endurance. One will suffice by way of illustration.
Free speech was not tolerated by our frantic greenback opponents, and stale eggs with decayed cabbages hurled at the heads of Republican orators were the strongest arguments used by the General's admirers to combat our appeals for protective tariff and sound money. At a meeting of our state committee in Boston, Judge Thayer announced that General Hall of Maine, one of our most brilliant speakers, could not reach Rockport, where he was billed to hold forth, before ten o'clock that evening, and called for volunteers to hold the audience for two hours. Rockport was almost solid for Butler, and his friends had declared that no Republican should speak there, consequently no one volunteered. At last, the Judge, in despair, said:
"Foss, will you go?"
"I shall obey orders," was my reply, amid cheers of the much-relieved shirkers, and I bolted for the train.
On arriving at my destination, I found the station crowded with a howling mob, and the Republican town committee were frantically shouting: "General Hall, General Hall!" "Here," said I, and only by the vigorous aid of the clubs of the police was I hustled through the embattled hosts to a hack, which took me to the hall where I walked on the shoulders of a friendly uniformed club to the platform, which I finally reached with torn apparel and in a condition of almost physical and mental collapse.
The "hail to the chief," by the band was drowned by the cat-calls: "Put him out!"—"Duck him!"—"Ride him on a rail!" etc., etc., Yells of the Butlerites who had packed the hall. At last I got my "mad up," and rising, I lighted a cigar, puffed vigorously, and smiled upon my uproarious foes. This astonished the "great unwashed," and a big Irishman jumped on the stage, shouting:
"Shut up, shut up, byes! Let's hear what the cuss has to say; he's a cool un."
There was silence. Taking out my cigar, I laughed long and loud.
"What you laughing at?" howled the mob.
"This reminds me," said I, very slowly, "of a little story."
"Out with it," was the response.
"When I was a teacher in Marblehead," drawled I, "I had occasion to wallop a boy with a cowhide. I made him touch his toes with his fingers and laid on the braid where it would do the most good; the more I whaled him the more he laughed. I laid on Macduff with a 'damned be he who first cries hold, enough,' determination, and yet he laughed. 'What you laughing at?' cried I. 'Oh, ha, ha, ha, you're licking the wrong boy,' giggled the unspeakable scamp. It's just that way here. You gentlemen are licking the wrong boy; I am not General Hall, at all, I am Lieutenant-General Ulysses S. Grant." The crowd roared: "He's a good un, let's hear him—ha, ha, ha, he's a good un," and for two hours I had as good-natured an audience as you ever saw.
"You say you don't want a protective tariff; you don't want sound money. Well, you remind me of the man who killed his father, mother, brothers, sisters, and when condemned to death he begged the judge to have mercy upon a poor orphan. You have killed the tariff twice, and nearly every mill wheel stopped, and you and I had to beg from door to door or live on dry crackers and shin-bones. Do you want that kind of provender again? Butler says, 'give us greenbacks by the ton, and everybody will be rich.' You tried that once and you carried your money to market in a bushel basket, and brought back the dinner you bought with it in a gill dipper. Do you want any more such times?"
"Be Gorrah," cried my big Irish friend, "that's so: I rimimber it well. I'd forgut it; the bye's right, he is."
"Yes," I yelled, "Butler says he'll leave the Republican party out in the cold. It reminds me of the old farmer who rushed outdoors in his bed-shirt, bareheaded and barefooted in winter, grabbed a barking dog who was disturbing his rest, by the ears; his wife came down to hunt him up. 'What on airth, father, you doin'?' she cried, as she saw his knees knocking together, and his teeth chattering with the cold. 'I've gut the cuss,' he shouted, 'and I'll hold him here till he freezes to death.'
"You'll hold your employers out in the cold, will you? Well, who'll freeze to death first if you stop the factories? The owners who have plenty of money, or you who are dependent upon the work they give you for every cent you get? General Butler who lives in a palace, and drives a kingly equipage tries to frighten you by painting the bugaboo; 'the rich growing richer, and the poor growing poorer,' that soon a half-dozen plutocrats will have all the money there is in the world, and then the rest of the people will all starve. It reminds me of the old farmer who set up such an outrageous looking scarecrow in his field that the crows not only let his present corn alone, but they actually brought back in their terrible fright all the corn they had stolen in the previous ten years. Are we craven crows to be scared by such windy effigies?"
Thus having caught their attention by light weight stories, I gave them broadsides of facts and arguments until I won the greatest political fight of my life. We won a famous victory; the workers, as usual, were soon forgotten; the elected exulted in their brief authority; the defeated at once began log-rolling for the next election, and so the office hunting strife goes on forever. After this I resumed the work of my crusade against ignorance and bad literature, having had my pockets well filled by those who are always eager to trade money for fame.
Our home was three miles from the railroad station, and the wintry winds with deep snows made the frequent journeys to and fro over the bleak, uncomfortable country roads, extremely cold and often hazardous.
I had endured for years these alternate freezing and roasting rides for the pleasure of living near the old folks; but now the numerous colds and coughs resulting from the exposure drove me to move nearer to the depot, and we bought a large three-story house with barn and fourteen acres of land on High Street in the city of N——.
We rejuvenated our old castle with paint, new boiler and paper, letting loose upon our devoted heads numerous fevers and other diseases which generations had stored up on the walls, all eager for new victims. Strange it is, that all bad things are so contagious and so long-lived to punish the innocent for the sins of the guilty.
Upon me, the descendant of a long line of farmers, fell the agricultural fever, and I broke my own back as well as that of the hired man, cultivating that sterile soil where my potatoes cost me about a quarter of a dollar a piece, and each blade of grass, sickness and much hard-earned cash. We made the old place to bud and blossom like the rose, but the game as usual was not worth the candle, and an ulcerated sore throat which some predecessor had breathed upon the paper which we tore off, left me a walking skeleton, when ex-Congressman Loring, then United States Commissioner of Agriculture, came to my relief by appointing me his deputy for Florida at a good salary, to investigate and report upon the developed and undeveloped resources of that State, and its attractions for northern settlers. I gladly accepted this commission to serve my country, for—
Somewhere the sun is shining,
I thought as I toiled along
In the freezing cold of the winter,
Yes, somewhere the sun is shining
Though here I shiver and sigh,
Not a breath of warmth is stirring
Not a beam in the arctic sky.
Somewhere the thing we long for
Exists on earth's wide bound,
Somewhere the heat is cheering
While here winter nips the ground.
Somewhere the flowers are springing,
Somewhere the corn is brown,
And is ready unto the harvest
To feed the hungry town.
Somewhere the twilight gathers,
And weary men lay by
The burdens of the daytime,
And wrapped in slumber lie.
Somewhere the day is breaking,
And gloom and darkness flee;
Though storms our bark are tossing,
There's somewhere a placid sea.
And thus, I thought, 'tis always
In this mysterious life,
There's always gladness somewhere
In spite of its pain and strife;
And somewhere the sin and sorrow
Of earth are known no more;
Somewhere our weary spirits
Shall find a peaceful shore.