Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 September 1883 — Cipher Sammy. [ARTICLE]

Cipher Sammy.

Democratic shadows are rapidly lengthening into shapes which foretell the events of the next Democratic Presidential Convention. The collapse of the movement to reorganise the New York City Democracy by the body of reformers known as the “County Democracy,” and the harmony which has suddenly arisen between Kelly’s Tammany Hall and the other factions of the party in New York, the moves in Ohio and Indiana, have practically no doubt that the “old ticket” is to be again the iu-

spiratlon of the Democracy. Tilden and Hendricks! How familiar it sounds, and how easy it will be to beat. The illustrated papers and all of us will be glad to see our old friend Cipher Sammy again in the field. The illuniinated nose of Cronin, of Oregon, will loom up as a beacon fire for the voting masses, and the shrinking Marble will be once more dragged from his scholarly retirement to tell all about' his mysterious visit to Florida in 1876. The cipher dispatches are already translated, so that hard job will not have to be done over again, and all we will have to do will be to reprint them in installments like a serial story. It was to put himself in training for this Presidential race that Cipher Sammy lately ran a sixty-mile foot-race with a catamaran sailing on Long Island sound. The stories of his complete physical deterioration invented by envious Democratic rivals for the nomination have kept the Cipher Sammy Literary Bureau busy with countervailing reports /of his prowess. Thanks to their efforts, every one now knows that the old gentleman’s muscle has reached such perfection’ that he can twist Indian clubs like the Manhattan or the Tammany as if he were only pulling wire, and that he can sling an Irish bull from Greystone to the White House. John Quincy Adams was called the “Old Man Eloquent;’’ Sammy, if he makes this canvass, will go down to posterity as the “Old Man Gymnastic.” The nomination of Hoadly was, according to good information, a move in Tilden’s game. It does not seem to have, been a very shrewd one. If it did nothing else it estranged a large and not the least-influential part of the Ohio Democracy. But the blunders which Ho dly has since made with what his Democratic friend Jayhawker -cruelly calls his No. 26 mouth, opening it when it should have been kept shut and shutting it when it should have been open, have very sadly dimmed the pro pects that Ohio would lead off with a handsome Democratic majority in 1883 as the pioneer in the great work of acting as the vanguard for the march of the old ticket intothe White House in-1884. The world has had a hard time in 1883, with its cyclones, epidemics, accidents by water and rail, its earthquakes and horrible eruptions, and it will be some consolation to have the next year enlivened by a spectacle which would excite as much amusement as that of Cipiier Sammy’s contest for the Presidency. No one has yet, in American history, claimed that office on the sole ground that he was an athlete, which is, if we understand the Literary Bureau, the basis of Mr.‘Tilden’s qualifications. Athletes are very popular in this country, as is shown by the crowds that attended the exhibitions given by that prominent Democrat, Mr. Sullivan, and followed Prizefighter Elliott to the grave. Mr. Tilden’s candidacy would have a vastlystimulating effect on physical- culture in this country, a branch of education in which we are confessedly deficient, and it would also contribute unspeakably to the general health of the people. All authorities are agreed that there is nothing more hygienic than laughter, and the country would be on the grin from the day of Tilden’s nonlination to that of the election—of the other candidate.—Chicago Tribune.