"You're both impostors!" roared the Chicago chap, scientifically squaring-off; "for I'mthe Republican party!"
Crash goes the platform; down tumble the banners. Fists are plunging wildly in all directions, while such howls and screams arise from the tempest as though pandemonium were let loose to run a gamut of diabolical sounds.
Seated upon a barrel a short distance off, I was taking a deep interest, through my bit of smoked glass, in this scene of exciting National Thanksgiving, when a strange ringing noise, or lively bellow, and a sharp crash very unexpectedly sounded above the din, and, on looking up, I beheld the Conservative Kentucky chap joyously dancing upon the roof of Paris, with a huge dinner-bell in his right hand, and a smoking three-pounder beside him.
"Hooray!" shouted the Conservative Kentucky chap, blissfully standing on one leg. "Go in! That's the style! Sic 'em! Sic 'em! Hit 'em again, boys. Hem!" says the Conservative chap, with delirious enthusiasm; "this here sort of thing in the enemy's camp is just the ticket for our National Democratic Organization, of which I am the large Kentucky branch!"
Turn away your eyes, my boy, from such scenes as these, and look with me along that hill-side yonder, where the gentle sun casts his tenderest beams upon the new spring grass. You see there are irregular mounds scattered all the way up the slope,—hundreds,—hundreds! Beneath them sleep the brave, the beautiful, the wept of the patriot home. Their loyal blood, poured in a fervid river to the twilight ocean of Eternity, has washed a pollution from our Flag, a blot from our escutcheon; and, oh! that it had also borne hence upon its purifying current that unholy, shifting beacon of political discord, which ever lures our Ship of State toward the breakers.
Yours, reverently,
Orpheus C. Kerr.