Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 November 1884 — BURDETTE AND COLFAX. [ARTICLE]

BURDETTE AND COLFAX.

How the HnmorUt Bode Across the Prairie to Meet the Kx-Vlce President. In the earlier days, when I drew my lecture from its scabbard and swept like a besom of holocaust across the land, I lectured one night in Ma'-omb, 111. As I passed through Bushel! I was told that I must drive up from Macomb that night after the lecture, because Schuyler Colfax would pass through Bushnell the following morning at 5 o’clock; he would have an hour or two to wait for a connecting train; the leading citizens had arranged a little surprise breakfast party for him; there would be much to say, something to eat and nothing to drink, and I had been appointed one of the speakers. There were no trains, but the distance was only twelve miles and I could drive. Drive? I would walk. In those younger days to meet a great man were greater than to be a Kornan, and to make a speech at a great man’s reception—remember, brethren, I was young then. I was not a snarling, toothless old cynic, with ashes of disappointment on my head and the cinder of envious distrust in my eye. So I went willingly, joyously, proudly. I believe, to meet the same man, I would do it again. I left Macomb at midnight. The roads were not of the good, goody; they were of the bad, bady; they were prairie roads. It had been raining on them twenty-two years, off and on—principally on. The night was darker than a theological controversy. It was raining like a house afire. It seemed as though old Aquarius had got mad, pulled her wide open, threw her clear over, and was running wild for the next deluge. It thundered hard enough to sour a man’s temper. When it lightened, which was nearly all the time, you couldn’t see anything but the blinding glare. When it was dark, which was most of the time, you could reach out and feel the darkness like a fog bank. Splash, splash, splash, splash went the horses through the mud. Where they couldn’t wade they could swim. By-and-by there was a scrambling sound in the darkness. The driver would have disappeared if he had been apparent. As it was, without missing anybody particularly, I felt that I was alone. Presently a voice came up from the darkness: “Where are you?” I recognized the voice of my driver. I had not seen him since we left Macomb, but he had been swearing all the way, and his voice had grown familiar to me. I said that I was right where I belonged, on the seat in the buggy, and asked where he was. He informed me that the horses had stepped upon a fallen bridge, under our end of which there had been a washout. The forward wheels were resting on the sunken bridge, while the hind ones were perched on the great round earth, which is the planet we inhabit This accounted for the peculiar sensation I experienced of sitting on the roof of a house or the side of a mountain. The driver told me that he had fallen over the dash-board, and was now sitting down between the horses. He had the dash-board with him, but he did not know what to do with it. He concluded by asking me if I was hurt. I told him that at first I felt a little piqued at not receiving an invitation to the bridge-opening, but since his explanation I forgave, everything—cherished no feelings of resentment. He suggested that I get out and walk across the bridge, while he held the horses, and I could see if the other end was all right. I replied with much feeling, that while I could not do that, I w ould remain where I w r as till daylight, when I could look across and tell him how it was. Finally he led the horses safely across, and we resumed our pleasant loitering along the darkened way. At the merry hour of 2:30 a. m., we reched Bushnell. I was mud to the eyes. I was wet to the bone. My eyes burned for sleep. I had smoked 150 cigars on the way, and was a little nervous.

1 crawled into bed just in time to hea: the reporter say it was time t.i get up. I sat up on the side of the bed, and, beginning at my neck, counted nearly 300 distinct and definite aches, and stopped at the floating ribs discouraged. I arrayed myself in my wet and muddy raiment and danced merrily off to the banquet hall. I sat at the festive board with smiles on my pale, false face, and murder in my wicked heart. When the festive board did not groan, I did. I was among good, kind, loving friends, but their words of cheer fell upon an icy heart, for I wanted to crawl under the table and go to sleep. I loved and admired Mr. Colfax with genuine afifee-. tion. I meant all the true and beautiful things I said about him that morning, and he will forgive me when he knows that I wanted to hit him with a stove leg. I went back to the hotel and went to sleep leaning up against the wall of my room before I could get close enough to the bed to fall upon it. I dreamed that I was a man with two hundred heads, and only one eye to sleep for all of them; that I hadn't been asleep in a hundred years, and had just crawled into a steamboat boiler to take a nap, when Schuyler Colfax, wearing a waiter’s jacket, with a napkin on his arm, sat down at the manhole and read me Benton’s “Thirty Years in the United States Senate” clear through, while two men hammered cold rivets in the boiler to keep me awake. Somehow my meetings with great men are always attended with certain features of pomp and circumstance with which a man of my retiring habits would willingly . dispense. I am not grown proud and haughty. I would even to-day unbend to shake hands with the President, but I would hardly drive twelve miles in the mud and rain now, even to sit up all night with the Press Club. —Brooklyn Eagle. The New York Mail says one of the highest of the high churches in that city compels its female members who confess having sinned to woar next the skin a heavy brass plate, on which is a crucifix. The wearer can scarcely movo without pain from the pressure of the plate. Have the dark ages returned ?