Carson daily appeal. [volume] (Carson City, Nev.) 1873-1877, 1875-09-10
BOOTH AND BIDWELl..

OF the thousand strange bedfellow
ships that politics have made. none eve1
was stranger than tina: of Booth and
Bidwell. They do not SO much repre-.
sent the two opposite polls of the bat
terry as they indicate the possible varia-
tons of species in q given genus. Both
are of the same family or group in po-
litical animated nature, as the pumpkin
and the melon are in vegetable classif-
cation. Indeed, those cucurbitaceous
esculents do not unhappily represent
these twain. The writer leaves to the
reader the pleasant task of electing which
is the pumpkin (cuc,ubita pepo) and
which the mush-melon (cucumis melo)
We will not attempt an elucidation of
the contrasting qualities of these inter-
esting persons. not caring to lightly pass
upon q subject which presents SO many
temptations to the student of the eccen-
trio and curious in character. What We
would enlarge upon, as of more imme-
date relevancy, is the escape which
Booth has made by the catastrophe of
the drama in which he has just played
his part.
The ouick-developing train of circum-
stances which lifted Mr.. Booth, like an
asparagus shoot, out of the bed of o po-
litical dilettante into the conspicuous
heading Of Governor and finally ripen-
ed him into Senator in Congress, kept
him, all the time, conspicuous and un-
mistakable as the not unpleasant-appear-
ing cynosure of the so-called independ-
ent movement. He was as agreeable
figurehead as humbuggery and cant ever
took upon themselves. He was, by I'M
disputed consent, a man Of liberal cul-
ture though a protested reformer, he
was no puritan, but a suave man of the
world his mission, severe as it was, was
shorn of its asperities by the welcome
re6nements of his manner he was, in
short, patrician turning his back on
the Establishments and temptations of
his class to pledge his life and fortune
and sacred honor to lead the plebeian
masses up through the valley Of their
discomfort to the happy nights of justice
and popular power. This was the Booth
of appearances. His outward seeming
was almost as handsome as if it had
been real and lasting and true. Only
for the storm and tempest of real battle
this Knight Of the Cyclopedias and pol
isher of platitudes might have come to
be embalmed in the lilies of rhetoric |
as pretty as his own, by that misleading
ignis fatuus of self-ambitious weaklings,
The Future Historian. But his garb has |
proven the garb of the political exqui |
site, and his heroism has degenerated |
INTO the sorry and foppish prettines of a
walking gentleman. And still he is the
head to bodiless and soul
less party, the creation of a passing |
xhim, the living representative of a
Dead Pretense. We said he has escaped |
! possible fate which would have added |
eclipse to humiliation and dwarfed him
n the shadow of a monstrous contrast.
He escaped this living oblivion in the
lefeat of John Bidwell. Had Bidwell
'een made Governor, he would have
,rought to the Office ready-made and
elf habituated grandeur of demeanor
which is in many minds inseparable from
he movement and presence of true great
less. Greatness of mind and character
nd largeness of person are of inevitable
in many minds Bidwell
himself is under this hallucination. He
eports himself just as his own ideals of
reat men carry themselves. Thus
eady-shaped for the dignities of high
fficial station, Mr.. Bidwell would have
at in state in Sacramento, grand, mag I
ifcent, serene and awful. Man born
I woman could have approached him ,
My through those exact and discourage ,
ng formalities which teach the frivolous {
be majesty of greatness and awe the
ght hearted into dependency and self !
basement. In the shadow of such q
resence as this could Booth expect to G
land in equality of grandeur and splen-
or of superiative magnifcence /? The
icture has but to be suggested to shadow !