“There are two or three miracles which we would gladly see worked in this country. There is that great miracle which always seems near at hand, yet which never seems nearer—the miracle of a great popular awakening to a healthy political life.... Is it not a disgrace, indeed, that we should talk about electing to the highest office in the nation a man of whom an honest, unprejudiced and unbiased journal has to say that although he is clever and strong, he has not an absolutely unblemished record?! An absolutely unblemished record! Why, a statesman’s record should be as unblemished as a woman’s should be. And yet it is very possible that we shall find the man of whom this is said the very best man whom it is possible to put at the head of our Government in 1884. Is it not time for a miracle?”
It was pretty nearly time: the miracle was worked in 1884.
HELPING THE RASCALS IN.
PUCK, October 22nd, 1884.
The New York Sun’s “bolt” of the Democratic ticket during the Cleveland Campaign of 1884 was so characteristic, so extravagant and so funny in its fantastic futility, that it can not be forgotten, even now. This cartoon appeared about the time that Mr. Chas. A. Dana was running General Benj. F. Butler as a candidate for the Presidency, and was predicting for that harlequin among political adventurers a majority over Mr. Cleveland in the City of New York. General Butler came out of the death-struggle with four-thousand-odd-hundred votes, in all, as his share of the suffrages of New York’s citizens; and Mr. Dana, a day or two after the election, blithely caroled, to the somewhat discordant accompaniment of his organ:
“We may be happy yet,
You bet.”
