Year: 1878

Glover has "got 'em again." The luck that
attends that mans fishing just beats every
thing. To be sure, he has caught nothing yet
that he has been fishing for, but the number
Of Democrats whose trowsers have suffered
whenever be has jerked on his line and shouted
"Got bite!' passes computation. 1t was only
few days ago that we were called upon to
describe the effect of one of his Lervous ef-
forts upon the bounding Banning whom he
had successfully impaled on an ordinary sucker
hook and jerked off the dock into the stream,
instead of out of the water and on the dock.
1t was upon that occasion that Banning ex-
pressed, with good deal of splutter and drip
ping of dirty water, the decided opinion that
Glover's fishing was doing the party no good,
but, on the contrary making a great deal of
trouble. The effect of these repeated alarms
upon the Democratic mind was such-as
pointed out at the time-that some of the
most Influential Democrats were demanding
that Glover be called off, or that his hook be
taken away from him, or something be done to
put an end to his wild and devastating career.
Things had come to such pass that leading
Democrats took themselves by the seat of the
trowsers and scattered in every direction as
soon as Glover's stentorian voice was heard
crying, ''Got bitel'


But Glover has kept on fishing. And now
he has pulled again. Nothing, of course that
he is fishing for; but more of 1.-THE boys" I'm
mediately after Banning delivered himself of
his crude but earnest protests and went off to
dry himself, the experts baited Glover's hook,
and the old man gave the pole flourish and
the hook and line long, free swing "Another
'bite'l" said Glover, before the hook touched
water, and began to pull in nervously. And
this time he has the whole crowd of Democrats
who went down to Louisiana last year to in
vestigate the election frauds. They took $32, 900
out of the contingent funds to pay the expenses
of their search for fraud, and can only account
for $4,000 of it. The conundrum Glover has
struck relates to the other $4,000 1t has not
been accounted for, and nobody knows what
became of il. Glover doesn't want to know;
nor does the Democratic majority in the House.
They all say it was another dreadful blunder to
fish up such an unfortunate question. They
are not looking for that sort of thing, and they
haven't the slightest curiosity about it. Mean
time Glover's experts and clerks and witnesses
are all stepping round uneasily, and protesting
they did not mean to catch any such fish; that
It is all pure accident and that if this blunder
is overlooked they will never do it again.
Glover, however, keeps at work, and the
whole party is kept lodging. The only conso-
lation that remains is that be has not done a
tenth part the mischief he might if he had had
all the machinery given him that he asked for
at the beginning of the session. If that man
Aad been allowed full swing at the start there
wouldn't have been enough left of the Demo-
cratic party by this time to make Presiden-
tial ticket.


Glover has been lkened to nervous fisher
man catching bis hook into the trowsers of the
boys on the dock. He might also be likened to
careless man on tenpin alley who invariably
knocks down the boy on the alley without ever
hitting pin. Or to q man with ladder on
his shoulder in Democratic procession who
turns round SO frequently and so suddenly that
the average Democrat refuses to travel within
half block of him. Or to a man in charge
OF the Roman candles and sky rockets in the
same procession who has dropped fire into the
basket and set the whole stock fizzing and
banging horizontally through the line, break
ing up the celebration and setting everybody
by the ears. IRdeed, there is almost no end
to the suggestions and comparisons of the
noble Glover's career. He is by all odds the
most gifted investigator of this or any other era.
No fisherman ever caught so many things he
wasn't fishing for and didn't want, or failed SO
completely to get even a good square nibble
from the fish he was after. And this Congress
will have to be known as his and the Door
keepers. The next time he cries out "Got a
biter' we expect to see Congress break up as
though torpedo had dropped in the House.