St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1880-10-29
Mr.. Buzfuz Barnum.
can.

Mr.. Chairman Barnum of the Demo
cratic Committee is attaining a reputa-
ton as humorist which promises to
put Mr.. Sunset Cox very far into the
shade. On Wednesday he gave to the
public, with many fourishes and the
utmost appearance of solemnity, the
clumsiest political forgery which the
mind of man ever fabricated, and ,on
Friday he came to the front with a
pronunciamentO which is as cleverly
farcical as any witticism which Mr..
Cox ever originated. Mr.. Barnum re-
cites the circumstances under which
two dispatches sent by the Chairman of
the Republican Committee came into
his hands, apparently wishing to re-
lieve himself of the not unnatural sus-
picion of having picked Mr.. JEWELS
pocket. He asks the attention of a
Mortified public to the contents of these
dispatches, which are as follows:
NEW YORK, Oct. ~.
To Hon. Chas. j. NOyes, care of H.
jenkins, Jr., Jacksonville, Fla: | tel
egraphed Yesterday. L will provide as
requested 5000 each for Colienden and
yourself as compensation.
MARSHALL JEWELL.
New YORK, Oct. IL.
To F. w. Wicken, Collector, Kew
West, Fla: City of Dallas took $50,
City of Texas 100, Colorado 100 for Kew
West. Men on deck instructed to saw
nothing about it.
MARSHALL JEWELL.
The first of these dispatches is toler-
ably clear. Two Republican speakers
are on their way to a distant state to
engage in campaign work, and the
Chairman of the National Committee
telegraphs them that he has provided a
very moderate sum for their expenses.
1t would be hard to conceive of a more
legitimate expenditure of campaign
funds than this, and Chairman Barnum,
after parading it before ''the public" as
II it were most atrOciOus and corrupt
ing thing for a campaign committee to
pay the expenses of its speakers, gives
up the attempt to make anything out
of it, and bends his massive intellect to
expounding the other. He says:
1.-THE numbers $50, 100 and 100 in
this last telegram mean so many men.
These kilograms, or rather the one ad-
dressed to j. w. Wicker, United States
Collector at the port of Key West, Fla,
tells its own story. The sun had not
gone down in the state of Indiana,
where one of the greatest frauds ever
perpetrated on free government and
free ballot was about to be consummat-
ed, when the Chairman of the Republi-
can National Committee and an official
of the United States Government were
to repeat in the state of Flor
ida, the infamy. about to be consum-
mated in Indiana"
Now this is very diverting. ANY
one who had not been III the business of
buying ''mules" and laying ''steel rails'
might have supposed that these numer-
ais referred to boxes of campaign docu-
ments, or bundles of torches, or almost
anything else quite as well as to repeat
ers, but Mr.. Barnum knows better, and
he announces positively just what they
mean.
Mr.. Barnum has evidently been a
Close student of the Pickwick Papers,
and he sustains the part of Sergeant
Buzfuz very creditably. His astonish- |
ing acuteness, however, is explained by
an interesting fact which the pu6iica-
ton of these letters has brought 10
LIGHT. 1t turns out that these numerals
did stand for men and for "repeaters,"
as Mr.. Barnum alleges, but with this
difference, that they were
Democratic emissaries, dispatched to
Florida to vote where their votes were
most needed. News of this having
cached the Republican Committee, Mr..
Jewell telegraphed to Key West to put
he Collector of the post on his guard,
md so thwart the Democratic scheme.
Mr.. Barnum, in rage at finding one of
lis favorite plans for carrying" close
districts discovered, attempts to put
uch phase on the matter as to cast
,dium on the Republican Committee
Boston Journal.