The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-02-09

bear heavily upon him at g. a time Of life
when even the most tireless workers begin
to acknowledge that they hear the sound
OF the steps of departing youth and the
first footballs of old age. The numbering
nediocrity of an administration like Cleve-
lands would be intolerable and impossible
to Blaine; he would bring to his work the
energy and speed Of high-mettled, proud
stepping racer, and the tread-mill move
ment of the Democratic mule would give
place to the pace and cry of tally-ho
team.
-Four years of the presidency would
probably try severely the health of Mr..
Blaine, who would always feel that char
acteristic discomfort with his best work
that really able workers always feel. The
mere execution of the perfunctory duties
of his position would not rufIie him.
although they made Cleveland sweat and
puff like Falstaf at Gadshill, but the
great responsibility of his place would
stimulate Blaine to exertions that
would probably tax his constitu-
tional endurance severely. Cleveland car
ried his presidential work as hod-carrier
his load of brick in his bod; he tires be-
cause he tolls, not because he thinks.
while Blaine would tire because incessant
thinking was his toll. What to Cleveland
was q load of bricks would be to Blaine q
feather-weight, while to think, like Blaine,
would be the despair of Cleveland. Blaine,
as a statesmanlike, ambitious thinker,
would be sensitive to responsibility, while
Cleveland is only fat. political hod-car-
rier, who knows when his shoulder aches;
his head, which does not carry his hod,
is never weary. To carry a bod for sec
ond term would only mean back -ache for
Cleveland; to be really president and
leader of his party in thought and action
would wear heavily on q man of brains,
even for a single term. Doubtless for
these reasons Blaine in his present state
of but intermittent and uncertain strong
health does not care to be candidate for
load OF burdensome cares and response
bilities if unsuccessful, and for q still
more ponderous, exhausting load if
elected.
OF course his friends can plead in JUS
tification of his decision that there are
higher and nobler spheres of action than
to be president of the United States; that
life is still sweet to him. so sweet that he
would not embitter what is left of it by
further wrestling with doubtful political
battles; that Mr.. Blaine had tasted of life
in the same spirit of wisdom that made
Sir William Temple glad to leave sue
cessful career as diplomat and statesman
and go back to his books, his garden and
his friends; that he had risen to the worldly
wisdom OF the genial old Roman, Horace,
who always congratulated himself that
when he was tired of the court or the
court tired of him he could yet go back to
his farm, his library and his friends.
In our judgment, however, this plea
will not avail much for Mr.. Blaine with
his average American admirer; it is char
acteristic of the English race to admire
the soldier who dies with his harness on
rather than the invalid who retires to the
army hospital or the soldiers home. Will
liam Pitt, a martyr to feeble health all his
days. who stood by his guns as prime
minister of England during twenty years
of stormy administration and died in
office, is one of the most heroic civic fig
ures on the roll of English statesmen.
Mr.. Blaine very likely has made a wise
decision for man who loves length of
days for the mere sake of holding off death
at arms length as long as possible, but the
great party, that has so long loved and
honored him, hoped to find in him some
thing of the high resolve that made Mel
son say Now for peerage or Westmins-
ter Abbey"