Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 August 1887 — S.S.Cox on the Flag Episode. [ARTICLE]

S.S.Cox on the Flag Episode.

Harper’s Weekly which occupied a position of much prominence and to a very large extent contributed to the anti-Blaine defection from the republican party in the last presidential contest says: “The mugwumps in supporting Cleveland against Mr. Blaine in 1884 walked largely by faith. In supporting Cleveland against Mr. Blaine in ’BB they walk by sight. Whatever his mistakes, and however his course may have disappointed certain ardent expectations, no sagacious observer can doubt that Mr. Cleveland is much stronger with the people of the United States than he has ever been and that the very character of th? opposition to him shows that his adversari s »re conscious of the fact.”

The New York Herald, independent, says: “The great body of the people, including a large contingent of the Republicans are more than satisfied with the present Democratic Administration. — It meahs caution, stability and prosperity. And a great body of the people, including a majority of the Republicans, are tired of this everlasting chatter about the bloody shirt, with all that the words imply. They are disgusted with the Tuttle threats of violence and the sickly palsies of Fairchild. If, therefor, the administration takes its position definitely on the necessity of reducing taxation, and the Democratic party backs it up by redeeming the pledges it has already made, the Wateiloo of 1888 will be reserved for ‘our’ friends, the “enemy.”

From a brilliant speech of “Sunset” Cox, at the Tammany Hall celebration on the 4th of July, we print the foil iwing extract: “Time rolls along! A quarter of a century elapses! A new generation appears! Slaves are counted one for one in the representation. The amendments of the constitution are unquestioned. The south is fraternal;they vote pensions to their late enemies; they meet together, as at Gettysburg, upon the old fields of strife, to renew their pledges to a united country—are proud to recognize the sentiment of Cicero—one thought for the republic! (Cheers.) The flags of ehe battle lie mouldering in the attics of the war department. A tender —illegal, but gene.ous—is made of these new symbols of the unhappy strife, when lo! a cataclysm that has no parallel for violence, noise and quake since the world begrn! A party without an issue, a party without hope, seizes on this innocent and clement though! to arrouse into flame the embers, almost fireless, of sectional hate. I can find no par allel or illustration, for the unseemly performance. I beg par ’on. I have one:

“Last summer it was my pleasure to live in one of the isles of the Princes. It is called Prinkipos. It is a few miles below Constantinople in the sea of Marmora. It is a sort of Saratoga for pleasure and health seekers, set on a mountainous island of pines—a Paradise—a new south, bursting out of the old and harried Propontis! There was one drawback to the pleasure of Pnnkipos. The Isle, like that in Shakespere’s ‘tempest,’ was ‘full of strange noises’—not the nightingale in t e evening, nor.the cocks at dawn, nor the shepherds or the venders of fish, nor the dry cicada, nor the flap of the American flag in front of our legation. These were pleasures, and they did not interrupt my morning dreams, but hark! when the sun paints in gold and purple the Asian mountains, I hear an equivocal sort of brute. Is it the distant thunder of Jove from Mt. Olympus, in sight of our Ismid train across the channel ? It starts afar! It approaches! it is—No? Yes? It is th ? "r?vvd diapason of* 1 j.'ic.ms.rri. ' ;r.r3 cz ; •>- '

longed laughter.) It frights the isle from its propriety. “Be it known that the isle is full of donkeys. They carry water and vegetables— and tourists —up and down and over the mountains. I am not unfriendly to the donkey. He has a good name for oatience and industry. I was familiar with them in and out of congress. I admire their courage. They can whin a California grizzly. Most of those who are donkeys don’t know it, and therefore they are donkeys. (Laughter.) When they know it they are donkeys. ( Laughter. The Republicans don’t know it. ( Laughter.) But I must draw the line on some of his qualities. 1 draw it on the bray. When Jack salutes his Jenney, though miles apart, then the jubilee of noisy affection begins. It is an infernal concert, amorous, jocund and ear-benumbing. It starts with an exaggerated case of asthma.— (Laughter.) This rasps your soul. The biast loses, then catcnes, its breath with a harsh, squeakish sibilation, until a roar as of forty hungry lions comes to it* relief. (Laughter.) All the powers of wheezy, whistling, grasping suction are exhausted. Th«~n follows terrific expirations of the bellowing monster. (Laughter.) Sucti n and emission—repeated with ‘damnable iteration’ —until the noise dies -„t in an agony unutterable. I used to hear when a boy the creaking of the untarred wheels of the Conestoga wagon from Pennsylvania. I have lately heard the screaming shadoof turned by blind buffaloes, pumping +he Nile upon the fruitful land of Egypt, but never before or -ince have I heard such a diabolical concert as this braying of the donkeys of Prinkipos—until Foraker got the asthma about the flags and Fairchild got palsy, and John Sherman got bo.h.’ (Roarsof Laughter.)