Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1898-05-20
HE WAS A JlNGO.
A Plain, Unvnrnisbed, UndipIOmatis
Henp-Big American lingo.


seat of the trailer to his seatmate
you've hit the bull's-eye right in the
center. That's just what l am pre-
cisely-a lingo. I'm a plain, every
day, unvarnished, undiplomatic, whole
team, heap-big American lingo from
Jingoville, without any renewed as
surances of distinguished considera.
ton whatsoever. I'm glad that I'm 8
lingo. l don't want to be anything
else but lingo. George Washington
was a jingo Thomas Jefferson was
lingo. John Hancock was a lingo
Lincoln was a lingo. Blaine was
lingo. That's good enough company
for me. I've got just as much COM
mon horse sense as you or any of my
neighbors have, but I'm a lingo, all
the same, and I'm going to keep right
on being a lingo until they have cook
ed up an epitaph for my headboard. II
l had the influence and the necessary
organizing skill I'd start in right now
and organize a political party that
would take the rank and file of the
taxpayers and good citizens of this
party of the United States of America.
That's what I'd call it, and you can
gamble your last pair of hose it would
be supported. 1t wouldn't be support
ed by pack of anarchists or warrior.
pillage people, either. 1t would be up
held by men from Maine to California
just as dead square as l am myself
nd I
peeped from behind the bars of cell,
never gave man or dog the worst of it.,
never bulldozed a woman, never spent
a cent of other peoples money, never
did any crooked or dishonorable work
whatsoever; men like me, that feel
like taking off their bonnets and wav-
ing 'em in the air and whOOping like
Apaches every time they get within
sight of an American flag; men like
me, that get hoarse and chOked up and
speechless whenever they hear The
Star Spangled Banner or Hail Column
bia,' whether they're played on an ac-
Gordon or by a dinky brass band.
That's the kind of people that would
! jump in a minute under the cover of a
national lingo party, and be darned
| proud to belong to such a party as
that. If there hadn't been any jingos
! in this country back in the days when
men wore knee pants and powdered
wigs there wouldn't have been any
United States of America. I'm a jim
go, as l say and repeat, and I'll keep
on repeating it until that place down
below freezes solid; but that doesn't
mean that I'm zap enough to feel like
trying to stand on Sandy Hook point
and heave rocks across the sea at the
walls of Madrid. It's all tommy-rot to
try to make jngoes out of that kind of
people. But l was born and raised
over on this upper part of the western
hemisphere, and so were all my peo-
pie for a whole long time back, and
like it and I'm stuck on it, and that S
the reason l can't understand or get
next to some of the kind of Americans
that are hopping loose around this
country just now, that jaw about the
horrors of war under any and all cir
cumstances, and try to make people
like me believe that it's the real thing
for this country to lay back and take
cheap CUFF and side swats from all
hands across the way that think they
can put it on us. I'd like to see the
inside of the heads of that kind of pol.
lywogs and jellyfish. I'd like"
But what else this self-confesseC
lingo (who looked like pretty sole
man, too,) would like, he finished tell
ing when he got off the car.