The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-06-11
F1BrCRAcKERs AND DEMOCRACY.

FIRECRACKERS AND DEMOCRACY.
 It is hard work to follow the tergiver-
 sations of the Registers Mind, but if
 we understand the latest one it is a con- fession that the connection between fire crackers and Democracy is quite as
 close as we made bold to say it was
 And despairing of directly defending
 Democracy the Register seeks to glorify
 the flrecracker in the hope that the
 "cheap noise, the smoke and the bad
 odors" of Democracy will thereby be
 made to seem a little more respectable
 than they do now.
 Tn it's effort to make the Chinese and
 the Hoboken f1recracker both the sub
 structure and the superstructure of American patriotism the Register gives full play to an imagination which could
 gild the Connecticut legislature and cause Representative Cowe1ls reference
 to root beer to seem like the lofty rhe-
 torio of an impassioned orator. It
 makes out that Lincoln, Grant, Adams,
 Jackson, Harrison, Tyler. Sherman,
 Sheridan, Hancock and that especially
 notable Democratic patriot Robert E. Lee built up their patriotism on the
 cheap noise. the smoke and the bad odors" of firecrackers. Firecrackers saved the Union, and though the Reg ister does not say so we infer that the reason that Lee surrendered to Grant was that when Grant was young he had more firecrackers than Lee had and therefore became more warlike and more patriotic. We are surprised that the Register confines it's argument to this country and this age, when it would be just as easy for it to show that Alex ander the Great, Julius Caesar and Ma poleon Bonaparte owe their place in his tory to the enormous number of flre- crackers they shot off when young. We are not surprised, however, that the Registers imagination does not take in China, for though 1t is certain that fire crackers have been in use in China long CT thanl in any other country, and that therefore there ought to be more great patriotic soldiers and statesmen in that country than in any other, the fact is as the late war showed. Lii Hung Chang seems to be about the only Chinese pa- triot who amounts to anything He tried to give the Japs as much of the "cheap noise, smoke and bad odors" of Chinese warfare as he could but he wasn't well supported by those whose training ought to have made them patriotic and warlike, if the Reg ister's imagination is sound.
 It is not to be denied that there is in the attempt of the Dem- ocratic Register to make out that the "cheap noise, the smoke and the bad odors" of f1recrackers and Democracy are worth having. And habit being the thing it is it may be that the Registers l is not wholly assumed. It is perhaps actually eager to get to the Fourth of July so that it may have a l day off and revel in the patriotism, l cheap noise, smoke and bad odors" it l professes to love. But we can tell it | right here and now that its description l of the way firecrackers are fired reveals | a timorous and a dudish spirit rather tham a bold and manly one. If there IS | any patriotism and war in a f1recracker l the way to profit by them is to light | the fuse, take the frecracker tightly | between the thumb and two fingers, shut both eyes and wait for the climax Another good way is to hold the fire cracker between the teeth. Boys three years old, dudes of any age, and girls thirty years old can fire frecrackers ac- ,ording to the Registers style.