The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-04-17

0OIH6 0TTUy
real power, TO be possessed Of the symbols OF
fictitious eminsnoe.
Here is Mr.. Greeley, the creator of that
party which has been ia rice successful in our
national elections aud tne elm ,uc Ipator OF the
blacks, whose val0T rs he uss himself IN
formed us, preserved our national unity
behold him still as anxious for the Gear
rings" OF beauty aud the buttons" Of power
as when he dissolg.d partnership with the
official whom he could ofeaie. whom ne has
DESTROYED, but whom lie could never per-
suade to offer him place or alteration. That
Mr.. Greeley never gets his sash and epau.
lettes Is not the pout. but that he sighs for
them. Could twenty Senators by their votes
do as much as he bv th- Tribune to msks or
mar treaty on the Alabama claims Ger
tainly not; yet see him haukering after the
gilded saloons OF royalty, the dress-sword and
the knee-bIeeohes OF diplomacy, and Offering
to muzzle the Tribune and take his orders
from the Secretary of State, for the sake of
quenchipg that insane thirst Of a soul thus
shown TO be not above buttons.
Here is Mr.. Dana, whose achievements in
gymnastics are only paralleled by his ex-
ploits in literature. Not sufficient to him,
however, is it that he has fastened his head
upon an encyclopedia enterprise and his legs
upon a bicycle invention. The buttons of
the mandarins will not suffer him to sleep,
and he solicits from successive administra-
tions the Colleotorship Of the Port as some-
thing which will raise him in his own esteem
or in that OF his fellow-men. Denied the Col
leotorship-to achieve so trifling an eminenoe
as that of an official appraiser" he is will
ling to sacrifice not merely Mr.. Roberts aspi-
rations to be secretary Of the Navy and Mr..
Conkling's to be Lieutenant General of
the Army Of the United States, but,
what is of deeper moment, the ambition of
his own friend and former chief-the teacher
who formed his nascent mind-to say nothing
of what can alone console his dying hour
when bullion shall have lost its gilt and but
tons their shine, his true and nobler purpose
to be the poet of gymnastics and the veloci-
pedist of poetry. II is not to Mr.. Dana's fail
ure, which his attacks on Johnson as now on
| Grant have betrayed, and which no sap.
praised' praise of Grant can now conceal,
| that we call attention-for what ia worse than
the curse of granted prayer? but to the fact
| that thus he prays to be endued with the
shirt, ay with the undershirt, of impotence
provided only that he may make ostentation
of the buttons Of power.
Here, again, is Mr.. Parke Goodwin, the au-
thor of history of France which will be Pc
| rused by the descendants of Napoleon when
the White House is the coal hole OF an empe-
ror, whose failure to be sent to Spain ipoites
from the Post such dissertations on the need
| of virtue in the Navy Agency which Hender-
| ~
mission to Spain which John p. Hale has
made merchandise of, as must draw tears from
| the eye of every reader, and curses from the
lips of those whose eyes, like Grants, are
quite unused to weep; here is Mr.. Goodwin en-
joyipg his life and perfecting his immortality
in Paris, yet thought to be, by his intimate
associates, willing to make the one burden
and the other problem for the sake of pass
ing ''three months of winter and nine months
of help in Madrid. That neither places OF
profit nor of prominence are able to be ex :
torted by the Post from General Grant is not the
point, but that it should seek to be urbshed
and painted post instead OF a landmark which
men drifting hither and thither might feel
that it would do to tie to.
Besides the dogs which have had the mis-
fortune to have tn-cans tied to their tails, we
never heard that there was a superior breed
which sought the opportunity but declined
the ornament. But man la the paragon OF
animals; and, though your Greeleys and your
| Danas 60 about ululating for the cans which
are seldom tied the species is adorned with a
| Bennett, whose pride il was, when four years
ago the mission to France was tha tin-can of
the period, to demand not an Office indeed,
| but the offer Of an offioe-not the actual can
indeed, but, as Charming sung,
| --''the delusive show of can"
| Such performance as this restores one q
sense of the true dignity of human nature.
Had Mr.. Bennett made no effort to obtain
that station, he might have left it doubtful
to his contemporaries whether it was that
he failed to share common weakness OF
his tribe, or was insensible to the advantage
that might be got by timely and effective
use of the same. Had he been tempted by
the valid offer Of the mission instead Of being
invited to perform his promise TO decline it,
we might now have to mourn another fallen
from his high estate. But by his actual
course he permitted us to believe in the pro-
gress of the race, whilst affording US an accu.
rate picture of his estimate Of its present con-
|