Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1889-01-23
KELLEY,s FUNERAL GRAFTON
Over the Dead Body OF the Prohibition Third
Party in the State of Tennessee.
McMinnville tTenn.) standal


Mcsfinnville fTenn.) Standard.
Following is a discourse delivered by
DR.. ID. @. Kelley a few weeks after the
election last fall. 1t is full of good sense
as well as satire, and is is to be hoped
that the learned doctor will stick TO his
good resolutions therein, eschewing poll
ties in the future, and devoting himself
to his true field of usefulness pull
pit. Here is his funeral Grafton over the
dead party:
Brethren, our party is dead. It
touched, as it were, the chill waters of
the dark river of defeat, and has passed
the mystic confines that separate it from
the great national parties 1t died Noyem-
Der 8 just as the pendulum time swung
the o CLOCK tick Age, ten months,
two weeks and three days, and the SAD
dest of all, it was left to die alone with
out preacher at its side to soothe it in
its dark hours of defeat and remorse.
Ny brethren, Prohibition transformed
into third party politics has failed to
work the wonders we preachers said it
would, and we to-day look as badly
ruffled up as a gang of yallar
legged. roosters caught in a northeastern
hail storm. Yes, our time is up in this
country and we will have to hobble off to
some hobgoblin S mysterious abode, for
we are all broke up; there's no use in
raving and tearing about it; it IS not good
form or true religion.
The only thing left for US is to kneel
humbly down to the Democratic party as
a patron saint, for Notwithstanding we
left it we still have a kind of dog-in-the-
lnanger regard for it. L for one am
willing to bow down at its feet and expi-
ate my folly in saclIcloth and ashes.
Brethren, have Tepented of my folly;
1 see it as I never saw it before, that the
corpse of the third party now lying in
state before me ready for burial is
the serpent that has trailed its Shiny
length across the Eden of thousands of
pulpits, checking the progress and zeal
of Christianity, but my brethren, why
mourn over our condition? We are still
safe, for we can repent.
There s no use, brethren, in trying to
put sentimental face on the matter,
tor in the political world we have lived
unnoticed and died unmissed. The last
throw of prohibition dice has been made
and the cause stranded. AS Sampson
destroyed the temple GAIA, so
has the ballot-box pulled down the fair
ediffces of our third party erection, de-
stroying US all in its ruins? We are
sneered at, scoffed, scorned and set
aside, and robed in the deepest, leadiest
habiliments of woe and defeat. Oh, my
brethren, how uncertain is ife-how GER
tain is DEATH
Three weeks ago, when I was presiding
over the third party like 4 high and
mighty popinjay dude from foreign parts,
l felt as a Tar Flat policeman out on a
picnic holiday. To-day [ am sitting in
the corner like little Jack Homer, my
head all bowed down, mourning as
Jacob mourned when they showed
him the coat all dabbled with blood
Three weeks ago the very sight of the
Democrat party to me was like the red
flag to the Spanish bun in the arena.
l wanted to gore it to death; while to-day
I viii do anything for Democracy if it
won't record my faults and mistakes
against me. am bowed down in sack
cloth and ashes, feeling like a little
gimlet whirling round in two inch auger
hole.
AS a party, my brethren, we have
no plans. We are a leaf, a buckeye
chip, a piece of red-oak tan bark q
drift on the waves of fate, as a
party, we didn 1T come here to stay
for we rose up suddenly from behind a
Republican drift pile, like Macbeth s
witches, to vanish into the thin air at
the first rattle of the ballot box. We
came and went as mysteriOusly as the
black horseman in the old German tale.
My brethren, am going to leave you
now and go back to the pulpit. A voice
cries out from the people of Gallatin:
''Come to us. my brother; since you left
us and went to the mud-slinging bust
ness of politics, all has gone wrong with
you, everybody is blaming and ridi-
culing you for your childish
folly; you were made to preach -
A voice from Gallatin deacon cries:
"Come on Brother Kelly, for some
genius up here has invented contribu-
ton box that rings a bell every time
bad nickIe or suspender button fall in
TO it, the knowledge of which, to me,
dear brother, was like shaking bundle
of fodder before stubborn mule. -
1 rise and go. In bidding you farewell,
my brethren, leave you in harmless
state, for it is sleeping under opiate
administered by the just hand of the bal
lot box. It's paroxysms have all passed
off and it is now lying in a comatose
state where it will never compre-
bend what Bob Taylor meant
by coming down like a wolf in the fold
upon silly lot of sheep like us.
Now, brethren, take this corpse and
bury it, far away in France, Scotland or
Italy for the Democratic winds of Ten
nessee are too keen for its thin blood.
Brother Daughty, my Republican
friend, please lead in prayer. FINS.