Mexico weekly ledger., 1896-08-06
Advice From Champ Clark.
He HAS A WORD TO SAY TO MEN
WHO CRITlCISE WILLIAM j.
BRYAN's SPEECH.
First he Shows the Inconsistency of
the Many Objections Put Forward
and Then Offers Some Advice.

opened the Democratic campaign il
Lincoln county before a large and en-
thuslastic audience here to-day. The
Democracy of Lincoln is lining up il
fine shape. After discussing the issues
of the day in a thorough manner, Mr.
Clark took up Bryan's Chicago speech
and the people who criticise it, ano
spoke as follows:
"Bryan's great speech at Chicago
appears to be causing many persons
to lose a vast quantity of sleep
Thousands of men, usually dumb al
oysters, have rushed into print to ex,
plain precisely what sort of a speech
he should have Smade. 1t is to be
hoped that these mute, inglorious
Ciceros feel better for spewing theil
bile upon the public-even if the pub
lie does not. 1t is safe to say that
n~ine-tenths of his critics would have
forever remained in that deep obscur-
ity which they are SO well fitted tc
adorn had it not been for Bryan's
speech. Any Ounce can find spots on
the sun; but, nevertheless, he contin-
ues to shine, fructifying and lighting
the world. So with Bryan's speech.
1t will be read by coming generations
as a splendid piece of robust American
eloquence, long after the very names
of his dictators r forgotten.
"In their eagerness to discredit him,
his enemies have overdone the thing.
They merely demonstrate their own
ignorance and malice. They contradict
and stultify each other constantly.
They owe it to suffering humanity to
bold a convention and to agree on a
line of criticism, and thereby cease to
make indecent exposure of their puny
intelleets.
"When John G. Breckenridge and
old Governor Bob Letcher locked
horns for Congress in the Kentucky
Blue Grass District, Breckenridge said
that Letcher's position on a certain
proposition reminded him of a man
named Smith, who borrowed a kettle
from his neighbor, Jones, and when
Jones claimed damages by reason of a
hole knocked in the kettle, Smith
urged what the lawyers call there in
consistent defense2-
First, that the kettle never had q
hole in it.
"Second, that it had a hole in it when
he borrowed it.
Third, that he had the hole patched
up before he returned it.
WHAT THEY SAY OF IT.
"Now, the objections to Bryan's
speech r as inconsistent as Smiths
defenses about the hole in the kettle.
According to muddled carpers, his
speech is too rhetorical and not rhe-
torical enough too long and too short;
utterly without argument and brim-
full of socialistic argument; shows the
raggedness of extemporaneous effort,
and at the same time smells of the
midnight lamp it is the wild, uncon
sidered jabber of a mere mouther of
words, and had been rehearsed a
great many times; was too new in it's
ideas, and get had been spoken in
Congress and Nebraska; it was the
senseless gush of a grandiloquent
and yet, marvellous to tell,
was stolen bodily from Patrick Henry;
it was the idiotic gibberish of a red
handed Anarchist, and yet was pur-
Joined from Mr.. Mccall, a Republican
Congressman from staid and prudish
Massachusetts,, the home of the soul
and the inhabitant of George Frisbie
Hoar, Henry Cabot Lodge and Bunker
Hill monument; it was not worth a
bulrush, and yet won a presidential
"Ali these things have been said
about that speech by men who roll
their eyes to heaven, stand on the
corners, smite their breasts and
thank God they are not like other
people. 1t is all b~ewildering to a
plain, blunt man. One thing dead
uiC DI1db inadc tudI many uiAOf
emit sorts of speeches in 80 minutes, he
the most marvellous orator that ever
"My old college mate, DIR. William
Benjamin Smith, r~usticating up in
let his brain pan become so
supefheated that he took his pen in
hand to inform a startled world that
Bryan 10 plagiarist, because, forsooth,
one sentence in that speech reads a
little like n generally attributed to
Patrick Henry. Now, to borrow a
from Sidney Smith, William
Benjamin Smiths sfoible is omnis-
but in all his knowing he
ought to know that neither he nor
anybody else knows what Patrick
did say. William Wirt-one of
he most fanciful romancers that ever
engaged in the deleetable business of
fction-wrote ont several
classical and beautiful orations and
put them into the mouth of the i'm !