New-York tribune., 1874-10-28
JOB TRO7TER ON TIE STUMP.

intimately associated are tears and smiles.
The thinness of the line between the sublime
and the ridiculous, between mirth and melan-
chOly, is prOverbial. No one who has ever
attended funeral when he felt the cOnstraint
of sincere sorrow as well as of the ordinary
proprieties of life, and was at the same time
conscious that the Obsequies were carried
along on the brittle edge Of some
frightful absurdity, can fail to recognize
the narrowness of the line that sepa-
rates what we consider the two extremes OF
emotion. 1t is always possible for the most
solemnly disposed persons upon the most mel
anchOly occasions to do what Artemus Ward
said George Washington never did, "siop
"overn And when they do, it always happens
that the grief of the hysterical mourner turns
to indignation, and sorrow curdles into anger
at the irreverence and brutality of the mer-
cural persons who are unable to resist the
impulse of smile.
Just now Mr.. Dawes of Massachusetts, ID
greatly exercised in his mind, and IS exhiplt-
ing his mental exercises upon the stump with
graceful gestures and appropriate elocution'
because certain newspapers in the couDtry
are not 80 lachrymose over the Southern OUT
RACES as he thinks, in the light OF Charles
Hays's graphic descriptions, Detective Hesters
narrowing narrative and the full text OF the
Republican platforms, they ought to be. IL
certainly appears from all the testimony on
both sides that one colored man in Alabama,
q mail agent, and doubtless respectable ana
inOffensive person, has been killed py
ambushed assassins, who deserve hahS-
ing for the crime. 1t can hardiy
be denied that it was what mieht
be called political murder, that the man was
assassinated chiefly on account OF his politics.
1t was an outrage; there is no doubt OF It, nor
denial of it. All good men in Alabama ana
everywhere else sincerely deplore it, and all
good men everywhere are In favor OF the
adoption of measures to put down that or any
other kind of lawlessness. But Mr. Dawes
and the other gentlemen who with him on
the stump are endeayOring to persuade the
people to retain the dominant party In power
complain that the press is unfeeling and heart
less because it has treated the outrage busi-
dess in a somewhat facetious vein that instead
of Joining in general lamentatlon it makes
a lest of the subject, and that its heartless
comment upon the late election returns Is that
"the outrage business does not seem to pay"
We humbly submit that all the eloquent
gentlemen who are playing Job Trotter through
the country to delighted audiences mlslnter-
pret the cause and the source OF what they
call unseemly and irreverent mlrth. Inc
average journalist, though he be not In the
employ of the Administration, has the ordl-
nary feelings of human nature. lie would Do
no more likely than Mr.. Dawes himself to
make murder Jest or receive with sneer
any true story of oppression and wrong. 1t Is
not the fact that there has been an outrage that
has been treated with so much levity. 1t is
the insane overriding of the outrage business
as political capital that the press and the peo-
pie have laughed at. What else could any
one with any perception OF humor do VINO
witnessed the proceedings of the Chattanooga
Convention. with its requisitOn for outrages
for political consumption and its appointment
of a committee to gather and compile them 7
What but laugh at Charles Hays's Munchau-
senisms when the men whose assassination he
described rose up and denied not only
the assassination, but that they were dead
at all Or what but laugh at the alb
surd cock k-and-bull stories of the detective
Hester, who prefaces his narrative with the
confession that he took false oath, and
recites with great Calmness that he
got the confidence of his associates
by telling them he had killed several
Radicals in North Carolinaf Is there any
other reasonable way to treat such astound-
ingly absurd attempts to practice on the credu-
lity of the American people than to drive them
out with derisiOnf And because there has
been one outrage or two, shall we for fear or
being charged with heartlessness treat the
whole tissue of fctons with seriousness and
solemnityf
A story is told of gentleman from HOl-
land, profound believer in signs, who related
one day with great seriousness how the night
before, just at midnight, dog howled omi-
nously under his window; how he wakened his
wife and told her something dreadful was
going to happen; how the dog hOwled at
intervals through the night, and each time he
was more than ever impressed with sense Of
impending evil; how he slept uneasily, and
woke with this dreadful horror on his mind !;
and, finally, how all his fears were verified
when he opened the newspaper at the break
fast table, and there found, said he: "By
"shinks, vas you dinkf Dere vas man
"d-i--ed in Pheeladelfy." The subject of the
story was a serious one, but we submit to the
perambulating Job Trotters that person might
have laughed at it without being heartless. May
we add also that in the light of a reasonable
charity, as well indeed as in the light of
common justice and common decency, the
readiness with which Mr.. Dawes accepts as
true all the libels and ISLANDERS which interested
demagogues and detectives invent and circu-
late, and upon the strength of them denounces
a whole people as murderers and assassins.
and the abetiOrs of murder and assassination,
ia as gross and glaring an outrage as was