Mr. Head: "I am a Mugwump to the extent of voting as I choose, and irrespective of party, but I draw the line at Grover Cleveland this time." (Great sensation.)
Mr. Stone: "I guess you've got into the wrong 'bus, my friend, and I'm rather glad of it, for one vice-president of a bank is all the Mugwump party can stand."
Mr. Thompson: "I supposed he was all right, or I wouldn't have brought him in."
General McClurg: "No, he is far from the truth. Upon the vital, the essential point, he is fatally weak. Go back, erring brother—go back into the outer darkness; it is not for you to sit with the elect."
Mr. Stone invited the party to a grand gala picnic which he proposed to give in August in Melville Park, Glencoe. He would order a basket of chicken sandwiches, a gallon of iced tea, and three pink umbrellas, and they would have a royal time of it.
Mr. Thompson moved, out of respect to the Greatest of Modern Fishermen, to strike out "chicken" and insert "sardine." Mr. Stone accepted the suggestion, and thus amended, the invitation was hilariously accepted.
After adopting a resolution instructing Mr. Stone to buy the sardines and tea at Brother Franklin MacVeagh's, the party adjourned for one week.
Field was very fond of describing himself as a martyr to the Mugwump vapors and megrims that prevailed in the editorial rooms of the Daily News. He would say that the imperishable crowns won by the heroes of Fox's "Book of Martyrs" were nothing to what he, a stanch Republican partisan, earned by enduring and associating daily with the piping, puling independents who infested that "ranch." He said that he expected a place high up in the dictionary of latter-day saints and in the encyclopedia of nineteenth-century tribulations, because of the Christian fortitude with which he endured and forgave the stings and jibes of his puny tormentors.
There was a great scene in the reporters' room of the Morning News the day after Cleveland's first election. The News had been one of the first of the independent newspapers of the country to bolt the nomination of Mr. Blaine. It had favored the renomination of President Arthur, and had convincing evidence of a shameful deal by which certain members of the Illinois delegation, elected as Arthur men, were seduced into the Blaine camp. But this alone would not have decided the course of the paper—that was dictated by the widespread mistrust felt throughout the country as to Mr. Blaine's entire impeccability in the matter of the Little Rock bonds. Field, throughout the campaign, stood by Blaine and Logan and defied the Mugwumps to do their worst. So on the morning after the election he was in a thoroughly disgusted mood. He scoffed at the idea of becoming a Mugwump, but declared himself ready to renounce his Republicanism and become a Democrat. To that end he prepared a formal renunciation. It consisted of a flamboyant denunciation of the past glories and present virtues of the Republican party and an enthusiastic eulogy of the crimes, blunders, and base methods of the Democratic party. Field announced that he preferred to be enrolled as a Democrat, and to accept his share in all the obloquy which he laid at the Democratic door rather than affiliate with the Mugwump bolters. He said that he would rather be classed as a thoroughbred donkey than be feared as a mule without pride of pedigree or hope of posterity, whose only virtue lay in its heels. Then he swathed himself in a shroud of newspapers and laid himself out in the centre of the floor in the rôle of a martyred Republican. He bade the rest of us form a procession and walk over him, taking care not to step on the corpse. After the ceremony was carried out he rose up, a Jacksonian Democrat in name, but a bluer Republican than ever.
There was a sequel to this scene, for which it will serve as an introduction. In May, 1888, Mr. Stone sold out his interest in the Morning and Daily News and retired from the editorship of the former. Under Mr. Lawson, who succeeded him in sole control, both papers retained their independence, but became less aggressive in the maintenance of their views. Mr. Lawson sought to make them impartial purveyors of unbiased news to all parties. Hardly had the blue pencil of supervision dropped from Mr. Stone's fingers before Field made an opportunity to unburden his soul upon the subject of his martyrdom in the following extraordinary and highly entertaining screed: