Birmingham state herald., 1897-04-30

l lowing entertaining manner of the way
 Mir. Cleveland's Reform Club speech to 1 the exss was received in Washingtcn Men here are laughing at Clevelani' s 1 Reform Club speech. They seoff at the 1 term Reform in this dinner table con-
 nection. They dec1aae that not a soul CT patriotic disinteres& piled knife and fork l or filled clinking glass that night. They 1 grim widely att Cleveland's oratioa. They argue that it was the mereSt announce ment of the Never Will-Be; an address | of a Once-WaS to an audience of Has Beens. Of course, listen to all of this cynicism anent our ex-PresaGent, and l. ls, his latestt fulmina tos, with regret, not to say grief For myself, I've had my shot and have fallen back. I therefore say nothing.
 But can't help hearing these others in their jeerngs. They read his speeches
 where he finds fault with the Mckinley Rann1 syndicate, and accuses them of the burco in politics; for that these folks
 won a fight on the financial issue and then called an extra session to pass tar fir bill. They read this and then wonder whether Cleveland recalls the fact that he won presidency in '92 on the tariff issues and then called an extra session to
 repeal the sherman law. If he remem- Lars an this. what does he call his action in this Gouble-cross behalf? McKinley's conduct is the duplicate Of his own. Our capital cly1lscS read on to that part of Cl.Welarii's utterances wherein he be-
 comes as one mourning because the re-
 publicaes in their tariff antics fail to
 keep campaign faith with him and his
 Then our cynics arch the derisive eye , brow and ask questions. What does
 Cleveland mean? How does Mckinley
 come to owe Cleveland anything? Didn't
 he (CsvelanD write letter of regret to one Bynum for that he (Cleveand) could
 not be present with those other lost dogs
 of the democracy at Indianapolis and bolt the Chicago nonira ton? Does he
 now pretend that the Palmer-Buckner campaign, whereof he (Clevsland), from
 first to last was the bug under the chip.
 was not on the square, that it was mere
 hunco, that hla sole purpose was to aid
 Mckinley ard that Mckinley owes for it?
 At th.s point our cynics laugh loud and
 hard.
 Go.ng forward. they discover added
 food for their fl-na tured glee in Cleve-
 land, where he sweeps onward with the
 currents of his own smlrky complacency
 and self-app'luss, to thank heaven he
 is not as other men, even as did the Pub
 swallowed him up. They wonder if he ever perused Burns at that Well-thumbed part where he walls:
 Oh, wud some power the giftie gie us To see oursel's as ithers see us.
 That dcne, cur idle 'claverars state that Cleveland woefully reminds them of Eal- staff where he ayers: There live n5t
 three good men unhanged in England, and one of them is fat and grows old" They say, too, that all this eXhubera1ce
 on our laterChief Magistrates part is the way he has of organizing to get in the way of q mugwump nomination in 1900. But after 3Cl they don't use harsh lan- | gu3ge about Cleveland. An "ex., they say, is Q sheath without blade; @ bee without sting; cartridge of the breed
 known as blank. All that ever lured
 men was his patronage: ard now he has no patrcC2ge, All that men ever feared was Lis veto; and the thunderbolt of that veto is no longer patent. It was quenched in the waters of present Princeton ob- livion; waters which are to rise with the running tides of time. Therefore, they say, it is not worth while to be severe. HERE IS WHERE THEY WONDER. They do enc thing more, however, these carping cynics of ours. They look ovsr
 the list of guests, and IS Cleveland de- nounces as un-American and yanarcaistic | such as Jones' and Faulkner ard German and Ccckrelr and Bryan and all others who supported Bryan, and names them and their fellows as either treason-bit- ten or idiots born; when he does this and
 with the next breath halls his auditors as patriots of purest oldest blood; when he does all this, I say, our critics here look over the list of guests I'd marvel what Ickelheimer fell with ButtriclS in
 Concord fights; what Lebenthal felleii trees ard fought Indians with Daniel Boone; what Schwabs and what Strauss es stood shoulder against shoulder with Jackson at New Orleans, and later. what Speyers and what Rothschlds fought with. Grant about Vichsburg and rode with that worthless soldier in the bloody battles of the wilderness. Of course. we know that these, with such as Carlisle who, born in Kentucky. can't live there ard with Wilson-that lame little man ,af the academies, who exists only to do as Cleveland teGla him-and Herbert and Tracy and Patterson-late luukheads of the House. These thres are. the last bul- wsrks of Amerfcanism, the last citadel of refuge of the prime pleN of Jefferson. be- cause Cleveland tells us so; aHd we know that the six millions who voted for Brya albeit the blood of nine-tenths of them hos been American for two hundred years without a cross-are determined mena- ces to a free people. because Cleveland tells us that, also Yet. as I say, rot withstaEding aN this Cleveland-fung in formation and light, our cynics scoff at these truths and insist that the whole Reform club dinner was only one of | those amiable little pro tenn. floats meant | to help keep Cleveland bobbing on the 1 surface of events until, in 1900, a mug wump nomination might push to his re- | lief. Let them laugh: the scorn of the | sinner is the praise of the truly good. -,r+ ctf