Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 August 1896 — Pathos of Presidential Conventions. [ARTICLE]

Pathos of Presidential Conventions.

No one rapt examine the records of Presidential conventions, with their personal successes and failures, and easily escape the conviction that there is far more of tragedy than comedy in our national polities. There are touches of humor here and there, but the dominant note is that olf pathos. Behind every great success there is to be seen the somber sliaijpw of bitter disappointment, of wrecked ambition, of lifelong hopes in ruins. As one pursues through biography, autoblgraphy, nnd memoir, the personal history of the chief figures in the conventions that have been held during the sixty years which have passed since that method of nominating Presidential candidates came into use, he finds it almost invnriably ending in sadness arid gloom. Not one of those seeking the Presidency with most persistence has succeeded Jfn getting possession^of that great oftice, and few of them.' when final failure hasVomr, have shown thpruselves able to bear the blow with fortitude.—Century.