The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1869-08-20
Win will be The Goafs

We must tell again to elucidate our subject
the story of the intoxicated sailor, who s:rag-
ged into colored Methodist evening lecture,
under the halucnation that it was some kind
of show. The text was the parable of the
separation of the sheep and the goats, and the
preacher, after depicting the happy portion OF
the favored sheep, and then describing in
few emphatic sentences the deplorabe lot OF
the rejected goats wound up with the starting
Interrogation, ''Who wM be the goats?' 1he
sailor still possessed of the drunken notlon
that all this talk was the managers introtue-
ton to the exhibition and misfaklng the rhe-
t)rical pause for a reluctance on the part OF tie
D performers to come forward. suffered out in
manifest excitement, "For the sake of haring
this play 90 on I soM be the goats"
The Eastern Argus recovered from the hal
lucination under which it has SO long labored
announced last week that its friendIsIwere un-
willing to play the part Of the goats any long
er IN the political drama. And really it seems
to us they have reason. To stand every year
as the defeated party, to come ont second best
in every election, to be the sing side in every
law suit, dismally to make up from depleted
pockets the campaign expenses which were all
tApeuueu no pTOHtiulc icSu'b, tblS Ut-
comes at last not only monotonous but really
painful, not TO say tragic. To get laughed at,
crowed over and tainted after a lost election
is no more disagreeable and tying to human
composure, than to be made the ra,o-head and
bloody-bones against whom, before election, all
the denunciations OF the stump are vehement
ly hurled. Now for something like fifteen
years the political patrons and readers of the
Argus have played this disagreeable, disrepu-
table part of the goats, and been doomed to an
annual casting out into the darkness of politi-
cal astraesm, and separation, and we do not
wonder if even for the sake of keeping the
show going for paying spectators and dead
heads, they are unwilling 10 play the part any
longer.
Very well; il they insist upon coming upon
the sheep side, it were cruelty TO put up the
bars, but we cannot help asking: acho is to
play this pdrt9
If this game of politics must go on, we
must still continue TO contest elections. Iii
therefore necessary that somebody shall take
. the other side. Who is to be the bugbelr
against whose internal Vaccinations we are TO
warn our vgiant aud patriotic friends? Who
rebels, against whose diabolic devices we are
to keep ourselves and the country on the
alert? Whom are we to ridicule, and denounce
and impreeate from the eloquent stump?
Against whom are We to plant the sturdy can
non and flap the wings of that 'Ene grey bird"
which every second Tuesday OF September is to
blaze and flap, petorially, at the head ofthe col
umns of our party papers, the aggravaton of
great Republican victory? In order to beat
there must be somebody to be beaten. Will
NJ good-natured fellow citizen obliee us by
filling that role? In fine, will no kindly gen
tleman undertake the part of the goats?
The argus istired of it. But. dear sir,
only think what important part it is;
and is not your sensitiveness about it
rather late? You know what the woman
pleaded against the charge of cruely
in skinning cells" La, SIR they are atsed
to it," Fifteen years skinniag in so many
successive popular elections ought to have
made the sufferers somewhat Indifferent to
the process @ a -.