Year: 1869




world are triAes, after all We might say
with quite as much emphasis as can be justly
claimed for the utterance of some of the most
unquestioned of current dogmas, that trides
as fnger-boards point the way to the out
come Of mystifed destinies, that they are
the true solvents in all critical problems,
that they are the only keys which viii un-
fasten those deadlocks which result from
the equiponderance of opposing forces. The
greatness of the apparently little is just now
undergoing illustration in Washington City.
Few people have yet fathomed one-hundredth
part of the significance of Gen. Grants re-
fusal to appear as the central parsonage in
the proposed Inauguration ball Dancing
had q terrible amount of meaning when
Herodias danced off John the Baptist's head.
But it is doubtful if toe ever cut figures OF
portent more dreadful than that which, to
the apprehension of some people in Washing
ton City, hangs upon Grants veto of the
pretty scheme of insugurating, with the SUI
preme sanctionl of bis name and presence,
in the guise of an Inauguration ball, and
under the very dome Of the National Capitol
the era of the equality of all men, social and
political provided, always, that "rebelsP 7
are to be excepted as inferior beings, and that
all men are presumptively rebels |" who do
not vote the Radical ticket. On this aus
picious notwithstanding to the origi-
nal programme-Sambo was to receive his
apotheosis before the gaze of all the
nation, and the Mumbojumbos Of the
"trooly loil" tribes, selfappointed to the
regulation of the reconstructed order OF
affairs based upon the broad platform Of the
way they do things in Africa, or rather of the
way they might, could, would and shouldSdo
things in that fatherland of illimitable poten-
tialities of genius and virtue, were to stir up
the dancers with sharp sticks and stinging
thongs and cause them to keep time
faithfully to the music of the new civilization.
But Grants presence, as the presiding lay
figure at least, was indispensable to the COM
pleteness and symmetry Of the sublime per-
Torrance and spectacle. Nothing else could
impress upon the event the seal of unequiyo-
cal, official, authentic nationality. And
Grant, it appears, is obstinately wanting to
the essential service which the too confident
trainers of the programme had assigned to him.
Now it is not to be inferred from this that he
disapproves of dancing in the abstract or in
toto Hence his tacit disapproval of this par
ticular scheme for grand national and capi-
tolian, Sambo and Mumbo-jumbo terpsicho-
rean gumbo, has special significance which
no one who has not studied the momentous
possibilities of seemingly trivial circum-
stances will ever be able to fathom. But it
cannot be doubted that the Radical musicians
who have been so assiduously, in season and
out of season, piping and chanting to or at
General Grant, begin to have painful misgiv-
ings as to his slacrity to respond with
appropriate saltations to the new-fangled
tunes which they have in store for his in
coming administration. The immobility,
under musical invocation, of this man of
phlegm, is evidently to those men of fummery
something tremendously inscrutable and
positively appalling. They reason, not
unwisely, that the man who has no frenzy in
his soul and is not moved by the discord of
"trooly loil " sounds, is not ft for the treason,
strategem and spoils for which they need Ua
faithful minion in the executive Office; but is
fit, perhaps-horrible to think for illustrat-
ing the character of truly national and truly
patriotic President The Emperor Louis
Napoleon, it it said, once concluded session
of his cabinet in which he had held out to
the last against the too impetuous counsels of
his ministers, by remarking. Remember,
gentlemen, that the world belongs to intelli-
gent phlegmatics." That Gen. Grant is
phlegmatic, all who pretend to know anything
about the philosophy and classification of
temperaments unhesitatingly admit ALI of
the peculiar strength of the man, in the
opinion of some judges, is bottomed in a
phlegm so inspissated, so tough and SO
opaque as to amount to preternatural stolidity.
Now, it is safe TO say that this more than
Napoleonic phlegm, if attended by only
moderate degree of the Nspoleonic intelli-
gence, will prove the rock on which the whole
Radical combination of fanaticism and
knavery is destined to split At all events, it
isn't paying business, as general rule, to
insist on making phlegmatic specimen of
humanity cut saltatory capers when he
doesn't want to. And this the Radical
fddlers are finding out to their grief and
cost