The Portland daily press., 1872-09-16
Making Months ut Maine.

One of the greatest celebrities in fictitious
literature bore all the insults and contumely
that could be heaped upon him, until his an
tagonst, using familiar scriptural imagery,
called him ga wepsel'' (vessel)-"a wepsel O
wrath" Then his anger, long restrained,
burst forth in uncomfortable fury. The word
had the same effect on Mr.. Weller that SPAR
allelopipedan" did on the scoding fisherwo-
man whom Sheridan tried to silence with
abuse more intolerable than her own. The
case of. our beloved State of Maine is harder
than either of these we have mentioned, and
five were not proverbaly patient people
somebody's house would come down. Here
have we been through all of leafy June, pleas
ant July and majestic August, soothed with
honeyed words of flattery, placated by every
known form Of compliment, encouraged by
appreciative notices, personal and historical,
in short, intoxicated with open expressions
of admiration from all our neighbors. Maine
was "sturdy Old Maine;' ''the Dirigo
STATE, rightly so caled;' ''the Star in the
East;' ''the birth place of reform.
Its people were ''the honest yeomanry of
want to make a man feel particularly proud
and happy you must call him ''yeoman."
So we were ''yeomen." every one Of us. And
such intelligent people, too! Why, bless our
stars, there was nothing like it to be seen
elsewhere in the world! Such noble, honest,
refined and cultivated men! Such beautiful,
chaste and intelligent women! Even the ba-
bies were somehow superior to trans-Piscata-
qua urchins. The very day before the cleo
ton the great Tribune thrilled every fibre of
our being by graciously speaking of us as
eth Intelligent people of Maine'' How I'M
prepared we were for the sudden nipping
frosts of September! Who could have sup
posed that the same softly wooing paper, that
spoke us so fair and that was so enamored of
us, would have contained, on the very next
day this crushing sentence: "The Cincinnati
movement is a revolution, and revolutions do
not begin in populations like that of Maine"
And we are told plainly atlast that the Union
doesn't go as Maine does. Nay, the Tribune
says that ''the Dirigo State,' is "a follower
and not leader''-that it is "a measure of the
current and not a means of starting it," Eel
low countrymen! shall we endure this Shall
we be called followers and 'a measure ?''
We might as well be called g pint-pot,'; as
Falstaff called Prince Henry, and done with
it! And the Chicago Times, too, inspired by
prophetic glimpses of the coming election, de-
clared w-days ago that the people of
Maine were brutally ignorant, so that cam
paign speakers made statements to them that
would be received with credulity nowhere
else in the country except among the most
ignorant and degraded blacks of the South.
1t is said that the Russians have a fantastic
way of bathing by piunging first into very hot
and then Immediately into very cold water.
If any gentleman voluntarily chooses to un-
dergo such sudden transitions of tempera-
ture nobody ought to object. But it is a
cruel and unusual punishment to take the |
people ola whole State, with their pores
opened, their muscles relaxed and their whole |
system enervated by fattery, and without a
moments warning souse them into the freez-
ing flood, by calling them Followers" and
Ignorant and ga MEASURE.
We warn the people of Pennsylvania and
Indiana that our experience is about to be |
theirs. Give no heed to the enticing words |
OF itinsrant politicians when they call YOU |
their sweet little iron pigs" and their '.yen-
Grated Suckers" If your action on the Sth
OF October does not suit them you will in
stantly find yourselves described in the ''re-
form" prints as western Yahoos, half horse
and half alligator and ''pig-headed Dutch
men -