The clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1883-1888, 1884-10-01
The Anecdote.

| Out OF every one thousand people,
born into this world of sin and sorrow,
nine hundred and ninety-nine either
do not know good story when they
hear it, forget it after they have heard
il, do not know how to repeat it them
selves, or haven't good judgment about
| when to introduce it. lay down this
grand principle, as am laying down
all my grand principles this season.
without fear of successful eontradic-
ton.
| / listened to very fair amateur
campaign speech the other evening
very fair, with one exception. The
anecdotes were not made to Illus
trate the speech, but the speech had
| been distorted to fit the anecdotes.
You know an artist sometimes strikes
a good idea in picture and somebody
writes up to the illustration instead Of
writing a good thing and then having
it illustrated incidentally. That's the
way'it was with that speech.
To discriminate between 4 good story
and poor one, to remember the good
ones and forget the poor ones, to bring
in the right one at the right moment
and to do it as naturally as the start
led mud turtle seeks the bosom of the
rolling deep, requires sang froid, mai
vete, chic. pro bono publico and horse
sense. These qualities are rarely
united in ono individual. Chic is use
less without pro bono publico and both
are n. G. without what Herbert Spen-
Ger has SO charmingly characterized as
horse sense.
The world is peopled with denizens
vito are constantly telling anecdotes
that claim to be facetious, but do not
seem to get there. How often is the
joyous group thrown into spasms by
the scrap book story-teller, who is al
ways century behind the patent ill.,
sides, and who joyously sows the seeds
of hypochondria everywhere.
Some men can never take a hint
They 90 through life telling tho same
aforementioned funny stories, cheer
fully showing their bantlings of the al
legged brain under the noses of law
abiding citizens, inviting scorn and
contumely, bravely laughing at their
own salt-rheum humor, and never ac-.
curing the moral courage to take q
grand North American tumble to them
selves.
Most people dislike to give needless
pain. Unless a man is cruel and devil
ish in his disposition, he will not twice
in the same manner wound the feelings
of his friend; and yet we are constant
ly running across the man who has
again and again grieved and saddened
the hearts of his friends with some de-
pressing tale, resurrected from the hu-
morous catacombs of the almanac to
poison the pure air with its pestilential
breath.
One thing is absolutely certain to
me. l feel it as strongly as ever our
felt the first throb of free
dom, and | wonder that neither politi-
cal party has embodied the principle
in its platform. This can never be a
peaceful, prosperous and progressive
people, morally and physically free,
until the strong hand of the law shall
reveal itself like a club flush and quar-
antine the effete, pestiferous, miasmat-
ic, fungus anecdote of our boosted
American institutions, which, like the
large red picnic ant has planted itself
the shoulder-blades of liberty
and defies the civil, the military and
the naval forces of the nation to dis
lodge it. Heart-broken sobs. Blu
Nlo