The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1874-05-26
Our Political Sphinxes and What
They Mean.


settled Events may be read now in the
same spirit in which we read our weather
reports variable winds, with tendencies to
light rains and cloudy skies" The horizon
looks like one of the mists which we see
hanging over the Scottish lakes. Gloom,
darkness, damp, the trailing fogs, and now
and then strange shadows coming out of the
fancies of the rain and the mist-burdened
atmosphere. We look towards the South and
see volcanic influences, Arkansas and Louis-
ana throwing out smoke and fire, darkening
the heavens with the lurid CLEANS of civil
war. We look towards the East, and over
that terrified community Butlerism hangs
like the Afrite in the fable, and no one
knows whom the monster will next devour
In Connecticut sudden democratic vic
tory is followed by the election Of Bour-
bon democrat to the Senate, statesman whose
principal qualifications are that he once re-
sided in South Carolina and still believes in
John c. Calhoun. We look to the West, aud
the clash of contest between the ''grangers
and the railways fills the air, threatening to be
the most serious problem submitted to the
people since the downfall Of slavery. All is
confusion, anxiety, uproar uncertainty; and
the ambitious politician aspiring to lead events
is in the position Of one of our intrepid Arctic
| navigators who finds himself in northern lati-
tudes, where there is no day, who sails on and
on. through icebergs and fogs and snow and
Implying cold, and no guide but what comes
from the Elusive auroral light flushing the
sombre heavens
What, for instance, do we see IN the me-
| tropolis? Mainly what is seen in every part
of the country. Chaos and doubt every
where. The leaders of Tammany have van
ished; new ring has taken their place. a
ring of venerable statesmen, and at the
head our time-honored Mayor, whose radiant
Dutch face, with the white mass of silver
hair, remind us of what Holmes calls "a
rose in the snow" We fancy that the
| spirit of Van Twiller or Stuyvesant has
returned in the old Mayor; and we half
believe that he wears pigtail and a
wooden leg like old Peter the Governor
as we see his likeness presiding over
insurance companies and benevolent
associations. If anything could increase
our perplexity it would be the Mayor. The
politicians turn him over and over again
as curious formation. What is he? Can
anybody tell what function be performs
in nature? Upon what theory can we account
for him? There was never 80 much perplex-
ity among the experienced politicians Some
times he looks like weasel and then like a
camel, and, again, like whale. One day we
are told he is run by the Custom House ring
the next day we discover that be runs the
ring, only the next day to run away from it
and appear with ring of his own, and Dis
becker as a solitary diamond setting. Peter
Bismarck Sweeny (may he find peace in his
Boulevard exile y was wont to be mystery
in his ruling days, but no such mystery as this
contemporary and representative of Stuyves-
ant and Van Twiller.
We have often thought that most things, for
instance the reading Of the Rosetta stone and
Runic inscriptions, were only difficult because
we made merit Of doing them in the most
difficult manner. We think the same about
Havemeyer He is only difficult because we
will not see how simple and plain and trans
parent is his honest old Dutch soul Did it
ever occur to our political wiseacres, as they
studied over his actions and tried to find
place for him in the geology of political
formations, that what he wanted to be was
really Mayor, and Mayor in his own way,
and Mayor again by the vote Of
the people? We can understand how
he might be Mayor to please John Kelly or
Thomas Murphy or A. H. Green or twenty
other eminent metropolitan statesmen who
would like to be pleased. If he adopted any
of these policies his course would be simple
and plain. But be chooses to be Mayor to
please William F. Havemeyer, and this the
politicians can never comprehend, and so the
wise men of all parties sit in endless counsel
over him, and weary the public mind with
their discussions and controversies. When we
consider, however, that the Mayor is now in
the second tenure of his power, that
he returns to its possession after the
lapse of o new generation, that he is like
an old widower who has welded young wife
or merchant who has found again the for
tune he lost in earlier years, we can under
stand the deep, sweeping current of his pas
sion. The passion for power, like love and
avarice when it returns takes possession of
its victim, and ambition burns in the soul like
mines Of sulphur So our venerable Chief
Magistrate who puzzles everybody by his
course is simply politician newly welded to
power, and SO much in love with his bride
that, to use the tremendous metaphor Of Rich
ard Ill, he would undertake the death of all
the world to live one more term in sweet and
undsturbed possession.
But if we are puzzled by the stolid old
Knickerbocker, who smokes his pipe and sits
in contented, silent bliss, over in the City
Hall, watching the swarming politicians with