CHAPTER XIV.
IMMENSE NTHUSIASM.—SUM POINTERS ON THE TARIFF.—THE OHIO
BABY'S.——POOR LITTLE CAST OFF.—THE FALLEN GRATE.
My bussum swells to-nite with pride cos we've tuk the town by storm. If peepel warnt all Demmycrats before, they is now, cos our speechyfyin has struck in purty deep. The meetin was a grand suckcess fizzically, morally, numerrically, and, I guess, votingly.
From the furst, we pollytishuns was received with a perfect ovashun. Chair after chair rended the air, and the seen was only comparable to the nitely concerts of the tommas cats and there parrymores on the back fences of 42d street.
The silence was so grate you culd of hurd a dudine smile, wen Mr. Gilley, in answer to a request to say sumthin bout the tariff, sed: “Gentlemen and other Demmercrats, I regret very much that I can not axceed to your request to menshun that all important questshun, the tariff. My hart is reddy to bust with greef wen I think how menney of you listened last Thursday nite to that Republercan demmygog, John Sherman, and was deseeved. I met that gentelman in a hotel in New York the other day. Sum one axed him if he'd sed enything in his Troy speech bout the tariff. 'Yes,' sed he, 'I fed them durn country gallutes with tariff taffy til they was runnin over.' I shall refrane from sayin enythin more on the subject, cos you want to let your stummacks settel again fore you take a nuther emettick.” Mr. Gilley finished up his speech, by pointin to the glorious victory in Oio, and urgin the dem-mercrazey to “wurk, wurk, for the day is at hand. Look at Oio. A Republican legislatur begat a baby, & it called it Seccund Amendment Propersishun, it put it up, for the admirashun of the peepel. The demmercrazy had a baby also, it was cristened Wiskey, it grew fat, saucy, & popular. Seccund Amendment Propersishun appared to hav ben a littel too previous, wen it come round, & grew to be a littel, puney, sickley, child. Wot would eny mother have done? Wouldnt she have hired a wet nurse? Did the Republican mother do this? No, gentlemen, not by a long shot she didn't! She got ashamed of the baby, & abandoned it at the dores of the wimmin of Oio, leavin it to them, to bring up on the bottel. This was not all, gentlemen, the hartless mother got jellus, & tride to steel littel Wiskey. But the grate buxom, german frawleen, wot he had for nuss, couldnt see it a tall. Too much bottel. Too much W. C. T. U. soothin sirrup, & too many wimmin, killed the poor littel cast off, Seccund Amendment Propersishun, and the remanes was berried last Tuesday. Littel Wiskey is growin to be a big & lazy boy, mother & father doin well.”
This was too much for the crowd 'cos they got wild with nthusyasm, & shoved us in a carriage, & hauled us all over Troy.
The luv I bare the grand, anshunt, and onherabel partie of the grate unwashed, tempts me to pass over, the grand finale of todays proceedins. But my dutie as a chronickler of actooal events, compels me to menshun the fact that after our late drive tonite, the select sircle of pollytishuns, partuk of a banquet, and becom so full of grattytude, sour mash, and old borbon prinsipels, that they are now, down stares, humbly bitin' the dust of the dinin room flure, and confessin there mannyfold sins, & trespasses, to the open and obligin eers, of half a dozen nickel plated cusspy-dores.