SPEAKING of elections and returns, brings back to our memory the time when it was pretty close in a certain congressional district in Wisconsin, where W. T. Price is now putting up a job on the Democrats.
In those days returns didn't come in by telegraph, but on horseback and on foot, and it was annoying to wait for figures by which to determine the result. At Hudson the politicians had made a pretty close estimate, but were waiting, one evening after election, at a saloon on Buckeye street, for something definite from Eau Claire county. The session was very dull, and to cheer up the little Spartan hand some one suggested that old Judge Wetherby ought to "set 'em up." Judge Wetherby was a staunch old Democrat and had rigidly treated himself for twenty years, and just as rigidly refused to treat anybody else. The result was that he had secured a vigorous bloom on his own nose, but had never put the glass to his neighbor's lips. He intimated on this occasion, however, that if he could get encouraging news from Eau Claire for the Democrats, he would turn loose. The party waited until midnight, and had just decided to go home, when a travel-worn horseman rode up to the door. He was very reticent, and as he was a stranger, no one seemed to want to open up a conversation with him, till at last Judge Wetherby, who couldn't keep the great question of politics out of his mind, asked him what part of the country he had come from. "Just got in from Eau Claire county," was the reply.
"How did Eau Claire county go?" was the Judge's next question. "O, I don't pay no attention to politics, but they told me it went 453 majority for the Democrats."
Thereupon the judge threw his hat in the air and for the first and last time in his life, treated the entire crowd of Republicans and Democrats alike. It was very late when he went home, also very late when he got down town the next day.
When he did come down he was surprised to find a Republican brass band out, and the news all over the city that the Republican candidate had been elected by several hundred majority. In the afternoon he learned that Hod Taylor, now clergyman to Marseilles, had hired a tramp to ride into the Buckeye saloon the previous evening and report as stated, in order to bring about a good state of feeling on the Judge's part. Judge Wetherby, since that time, is regarded as the most skeptical Democrat in that congressional district, and even if he were to be assured over and over again that his party was victorious, he would still doubt. It is such things as these that go a long way toward encouraging a feeling of distrust between the parties, and causes politicians to be looked upon with great mistrust..
Although Mr. Taylor is now in France attending to the affairs of his government, and trying to become familiar with the French language, he often pauses in his work as the memory of this little incident comes over his mind, and a hot tear falls on the report he is making out to send on to the Secretary of State at Washington. Can it be that his hard heart is at last touched with remorse?
IS DUELING MURDER?
SOMEBODY wants to know whether dueling is murder, and we reply in clarion tones that it depends largely on how fatal it is. Dueling with monogram note paper, at a distance of 1,200 yards, is not murder.