The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1903-10-04
AUDIENCES DOWN
IN DIXIE LAND
Two Spellbinders Tell of Their Expert.
ences in Arkansas and
Virginia.


Several old-time political speakers
were exchanging reconections up at the
Republican Club in Fortleth street the
other night a recent convert, an ex-
Confederate, by the way, who is now
a bank lawyer in New York, told the
following story;
My first political speech was made
in Arkansas in the Greeley campaign
My audience was composed of ex-Con-
federates like myself. In fact, most of
US had been in the same command, and
some of US were still unreconstructed.
The campaign committee, all John
ny Rebs, had browbeaten me into a
promise TO make speech. 1 made a
frantic protest at saying anything for
Horace Greeley. To the committee /
applied TO him epithets that would
have caused fire alarm box to ex-
plode.
THE committee agreed with all
said, but they insisted that the Demo-
cratic party had to break loose some
only place in sight. 1 said 1 did not
ty at such a time.
"tYou can tell the boys, Paul. said
the chairman of the committee, that
old Greeley went on President Davis's
bond when our President was in prison,
and that ought to help us to forget all
that Greeley ever said about Demo-
Gratis
Il said the boys knew all that, but
the chairman said he didn't think it
was generally known. Anyway, he
said, it had never been warmed up for
the boys by one of their own kind.
finally yielded and went to the meet
ing.
THE band played all the old South
ern airs, and the two speakers who
preceded me never alluded to Greeley
Nothing they said had any reference
to Presidential election. 1t was up to
me, after all.
when I had rambled in my remarks,
dreading to come up to the line as a raw
recruit breads his first battle. I drew
picture of President Davis-Jeff Davis
as you in the North called HMM
prison. 1 was touched by my own re-
marks. My voice had the shivers. My
audience was in tears.
while I had 'em on the mourner's
bench I cautiously referred to an old
white-haired man who, always an enc
my to the South, forgot his bitterness,
| went to the prison and broke the
shackles from our down-fallen hero.
| Working a handcar on an up grade was
| loafing compared with that effort.
After it was over / sat down.
THE chairman of the committee got
lup and said the speaker-meaning me
had inadvertently forgot to mention
the name of the old man who had brok-
en- the shackles. He said he was a New
York man, and that his name was
Greeley-Horace Greeley.
There wasn't murmur in the audi
ence. The chairman explained that Mr..
Greeley had been endorsed by the
Democrats as their candidate for Pres
ident, and out OF consideration for
what Greeley had done in striking the
shackles from jefferson Davis he pro-
posed three cheers for Greeley.
Quicker than a fly an old Confed-
crate who had been sobbing over the
picture which I drew jumped and said:
Boys, nary a holler for Greeley.
move that we substitute the name of
Jefferson Davis for Horace Greeley
'Well, of all the torn-down stam-
pedeS you ever saw that was the hot
test and it kept getting hotter! L rails
ed the back window and the chairman
dropped out of sight. / never saw him
afterward but after the election l re-
, ceived a letter from him.
He was in Butte. Mon. He wrote
!, that politics was not his game.
THAT was my first political speech
When the votes were counted on cleo
ton day in the town where L made the
speech every Greeley elector was
scratched
Col. Charles H. Denison. chairman OF
, the Republican Clubs Committee or
F National Affairs and one of the Ma
, tional Committees effective speakers
said he knew something about round
: ing up a Southern audience himself.
He was sent into Virginia during tn
10 CT iaI ion m talk fh