Cleveland daily leader. [volume] ([Cleveland, Ohio]) 1865-1873, 1866-05-22
From the White House via LONDON

lAA-4 AZ y nay q
President johnson has broken out in a
new spot Glove and smoke says the
prophet q cannot conceal themselves
and that is true also Of self-love. II must
find an escape. One has often seen it in
the hypochondriae or the nervous female,
when IL wearies the ears of the family
and intimate friends, until, in sheer dis
gust they refuse longerte listen, or do not
heed the perpetual complaints Then it
clutches casual visitors, OF, in the absence
of these, and as a last resort, seizes the
cook or the s%cullion and repeats its tale of
woe and sorrow to the menials who can
not escape from it, or who feel fattered
by the cOndeseension which this morbid
desire for ~eternRlly rehearsing its trivial
ills compels it to pay TO those whom it
can get to listen.
The symptoms are always the same.
The victims of this inordinate self-Iove,
accompanied by mental weakness, imag-
inc themselves the objects of persecution
from those who have been most patient,
and magnify the petty cares and crosses
of daily lifeinto burdens which crush, and
sorrows which can scarcely be horne.
And so they exhibit their scratches as
though they were deep wounds which
should excite compassion or stir the iudig-
nation of the community.
Mr.. johnson avails himself of all OPP
portunities to make a display of the perse-
cutions which the Radicals inhict upon
him, and of the trouble to which they con-
stantly put him. If he has a message to
send to Congress he will institute in if that
he has not bean tenderly dealt with. In
deed, we have sometimes been inclined
almost to suspect that when, as in the case
ofthe Freedmen's Bureau and Civil Rights
bill, he had previously approved of them,
this irresistible and overpowering tempta-,
ton to say something about himself, sud-
denly seized him, and in s spasm of van
ity he vetoed them in order TO indulge
this pernicious and ludicrous habit. When
sensible people got tired of it, then his
footmen in the kitchen cabinet-Florence
and Mrs. Surrstt's lawyers and the rest
would plunge into the highways and
hedges, and drag a promiscuous crowd
into his presence to be stirred to the very
depths as the novelists say, by the story
Of his wrongs experienced, at the rough
hands of Stevens and Sumner, Wade or
Phillips. When this material ran short,
by reason Of dog-ights or a free-negro
hunt being more interesting to them, spu-
rious soldiers and sham sailors were hur-
ried before him and underwent q similar
experience, for the qualification of his de-,
sire to praise himself and abuse his enc
mics.
If he were only in actual command of
the army hes might detail q brigade or
more every day for the purpose, or if he
were an Oriental potentate like the Sultan
or an Occidental one like Brigham Young
he might summon the barem before him,
discourse to them without mercy, on the
prosecutions which he has endured, the
Affections which wasted his sad heart, the
brutality with which he is outraged, and
the general ~depravity of the Abolitionists
which is so painfully exhibited to their
astounding incapaeity to see that he is
right and they are wrong. But as he has
no army or hsrem, and as the Washing
ton sec~essionists are not DESTROYS of shout
ing themselves hoarse even for him, and
as the bogus soldiers dislike another per-
functory display of admiration, and as he
cannot even Htell it to tho marines"
again, he has fallen back on the vicarious
bosom of the Thunderer itself and empties
his misery into the lap Of the London
TD,esb