Year: 1871

Explanstions In ongrcss-Bem Buffers E3onb-


shell.


Ben Butler, after a weary vigil of several
days, against which his mighty spirit chafed
as might lion brought to bay, and bothered
how to manage 1t. yesterday got chance to
sail In his second powder ship in the shape Of
personal explanation intended to blow up
Fort Davis, Fort Farnsworth and all rebeldom
besides. There was an immense explosion.
1t shook the foundations Of the Kentucky
Commonwealth and is supposed to have
knocked the silver-topped Senator, the garru-
lous, but game little Garrett, higher than the
traditional kite of Ben Franklin. As for the
King Lear Of Illinois, the desolate patriarch
of the Post Office Committee the
fiery Farnsworth, he still lives in
defiance of fate. Ben's first patent powder
boat was failure 1t carried plenty of deto-
mating and destroying material, enough. in
fact, to blow fair margin of the moon If it
had been near enough, but it missed its mark
and hurt nobody. Not 80 with this
second venture. The fuse was in order,
and the fury of the explosion has
not been wasted on the desert air. It was all
moonshine to suppose the same fertile intellect
that tempted Blaine to precipitate himself in
ncautious debate upon the floor would have
failed to pay off the latest aggression on the
sun-dyed fame Of the Essex statesman. Gar
rett Davis is not man to be dcspised, even
though his aggregate physical bulk might be
passed through an ordinary pane Of glass in
cottage window; but when Garrett fell foul Of
Ben Buffers extraordinary optics, and put on
airs to the extent Of exclaiming, "You ID
scoundrel ! why do you look at me2" he ran
counter to all preconceived notions concerning
the Independent exercise of mortal vision, for
getting even that pussy cat has had imme-
mortal license to look at the king.


Why Ben looked as he did at Garrett has
never been properly explained; but what
Garrett saw in Bens looks is known only to
the soul of the Senator from Kentucky. That
he must have observed something ''mortal
never saw nor dreamed before" is tolerably
certain; for sure it is no such out
burst of wrath, piled high and fierce.
would have been provoked by any one short Of
the Old Harry himself. Yet the worst result Of
that terrible vision was not the torrent Of
invective, strong and fiery as 1t was, that
issued from the lips of the Kentucky Senator
when he first caught the cork-screw gaze Of
Butler boring into his very vitals. The thing
haunted him in his waking and sleeping
hours. He read the HERALD in the meantime
for solace and enlightenment, and there he
found this greatest optical encounter of the
age fully and graphically reported. He next
offered few words of explanation in the
Senate based on the HERALD's report, but
though butler was no longer there he saw him
in his minds eye, and saw the same vision
the irate Senator uttered an opinion concern
ing the owner of those marvellous optics
that called up the personal explanation
Of yesterday, which we print in full to-day.
1t is a remarkable story, like most of the per-
sonal explanations nowadays, and after dis
posing of one man it is stretched out to take
in another so that what was ostensibly hurled
at hapless Kentucky in the person Of her
Senator sent splinter in the direction of the
member from Illinois, which was designed to
knock him ''outside the pale of civilized war
fare" The explanation says, substantially,
that assuming Mr.. Davis own description of
the visual delusion and confusion in the Senate
to be true, the candid judgment of all just.
men would be that Ben was no blackguard
and Garrett no gentleman. Personal expla-
nations, like personal comparisons, are odious.
What are intended for explanations are made
vehicles Of abuse and defamation, and few Of
late years have ever been offered without con-
tanning what calls for an explanation. from
somebody else aud then the Original Jacobs
feels bound ''to explain his explanation"
The business has grown to be bore Of the
largest magnitude. 1t interferes with legisla-
tion and is emlnently wearisome to all but the
persons Immediately interested.


The method our public men in Congress
have of tearing each others characters to tat
ters and leaving wondering constituencies to
marvel how they could ever have trusted such
rascals to represent them is unique in its way.
The disinterested public know but little Of the
elaborate and ingenious lodges to which one
honorable member will resort to scrape
together and pile up patiently all sorts Of
charges-as the busy bee collects and arranges
the materials of her waxen CELTIC square
accounts with another honorable member Of
Congress. Since the days of Donnelly, Of
Minnesota, personal explanations, for tho
most part, without losing anything of intrin-
sic coarseness, have undergone sort Of
elaborate and artistic preparation which no
longer entities them to the name. Donnelly, in
his fierce, coarse, cavalry onslaught on Wash
burne, made no preparation, but trusted to a
nortain wild oenius for inuactiva t0 dam0liab