Muscatine weekly journal. [volume] (Muscatine, Iowa) 185?-1890, 1858-07-02
mr.. Buehanan ana hi. Parry.

rIr. Buchanan and hts Party.
The harmonious Democracy" Of Iowa met
in convention on the oath day of June, in
the. year Of our Lord, one thousand eight
hundred and fifty eight. 1t was in the first
month of summer, when hope in the hearts
Of men revives like flowers in the hearts of
meadows, and even Office seekers feel some
thing Of the Joy of honest men. The old
man who had taken his seat in the imperial
white. house, scarcely one year before,
amidst the shouts and hosannas of the same
harmonious Democracy, was sitting in his
west-room listening what report the breath
of the prairies should bring from the banks
of the far Mississippi of the doings of his
beloved children in said convention gathered.
To be sure he was not very anxious, for he
had sent forth to these docile children, by
his trusty and we'll beloved servants, Van
Antwerp, Dow, Clark and Plummer, some
very safe and wholesome directions for their
guidance, and they could not well 60 astray.
Among these fatherly precepts was one inti-
mating, that as in all other we'll regulated
families, it would be beautiful sight to the
old patriarch, to behold among his children
in Iowa dutiful and unanimous concurrence
with his family government, and that it
would gladden. his heart to hear hearty aye
roll up from the prairies of Iowa, to all his
actions past, present and to come, before
they went home from their play.
We forgot to say that the old man had
allowed these children holiday, and that
accordingly they had assembled on the
aforesaid day to have game very popular
in the harmonious" family, of which the
chief sport was that these children acted the
parts of great men, initiating their words
and manners, something after the style in
which boys and girls often play school among
themselves. The great joke is that the
smallest member of the harmonious fam
ily puts on the part of the greatest man.
Tradition says that the old father, Buchanan,
excelled at this game, and still plays it very
we'll.
As we were saying, the old man was
listening on the beautiful evening of the
oath, sitting at the west window, and looking
out.wistfully over the Potomac, which flashed
in the yellow sunbeams of the evening like
molten gold. Listening, he sat till these
same waves turned leadcn, and then black
as night, as the last ray of twilight faded on
the hills, and still the expected sound came
not. The old mans heart sank within him
as he began to think that his children might
have disobeyed him.
Let us take peep at the harmonious
family at Iowa City, and see the reason of
this unwonted silence. The children had
finished their play. 1t was nine o'clock
time to return to their homes The question
came up whether they should crafty the old
patriarch by hearty assent to all his gov
eminent. One of the smallest children, a
pet of the old father, proposed a resolution
to the effect that they all believed the
esteemed old patriarch to be the greatest man
in the world and the best of fathers, and that
ali he had done was we'll done. When, to the
surprise of the smaller children, one hundred
and sixty three of the older boys laid hold Of
the resolution and put it away high and dry
upon a shelf, laconic way of intimating
that they would see the old man in another
world before they would carry any such
resolution home
This was the way that the silence happened,
instead of the shout of applause for which
the old man in the white house was listening.
MoRAL.-The people of Iowa, next Octo-
Der, will act precisely as the Democratic
Convention acted, refuse to endorse Presi-
dent Buchanan.